Far-off friend helping family

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June 10, 2009

By BERNIE HORNICK The Tribune-Democrat Wed Jun 10, 2009, 11:59 PM EDT

A 31-year-old Johnstown mother of five left a string of broken hearts when she died unexpectedly of natural causes last month.

Among Melissa Heider Lingafelt’s broken hearts was a Canadian woman she’d never met, but who was determined to do what she could for Lingafelt’s small children.

Ann Marie Beacock of Saskatchewan met Lingafelt through an Internet social networking site and knew her life would never be the same.

“There’s a feeling you get, ‘I want to know this person,’ ” Beacock said. During the past 21/2 years, they developed a deep connection, talking by phone daily about, well, life.

Now that the shock of Lingafelt’s death has passed, Beacock has set up a Web site to raise a college fund for Lingafelt’s small children.

The two boys and three girls all are 10 or younger.

Beacock hopes to raise at least $5,000, or $1,000 per child. She hopes the mainstream media can push along the fund, which had raised about $250 as of Tuesday.

“Missy would would have done exactly the same thing if it were me or someone else she cared about,” said Beacock, a freelance writer.

Lingafelt’s fiance and father of her two youngest, Ryan Kirkpatrick, 33, of Roxbury, is thankful for the fundraiser.

“We were always planning on the kids going to college,” the recently laid-off dispatcher said Tuesday. “It’s a great relief.

“When it came down to it, her kids were everything to her. She was the epitome of the stay-at-home mom. The kids always came first with her.”

In terms of their mother’s May 27 death, Kirkpatrick said the children “were still processing it. They’re just trying to make it one day at a time.”

The three oldest kids have gone to live with Lingafelt’s father.

Beacock recalled her friendship with Lingafelt, a homemaker.

“She was 31. I was 56. It’s a big age difference, but it never felt like that,” Beacock said.

“She reminded me of myself. There was an instant, ‘Oh, my God. I remember thinking that way, feeling that way.’ I remember being surrounded by a houseful of kids at that age.”

Beacock believes residents will do what they can for the children.

“If it were one child or two, it wouldn’t be quite so urgent. But with five children, what’s going to happen with them now?” she wonders.

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