CD: Rejoicing amid sorrow: Castella Maria Bell remembered as young mother trying to turn her life around

TIM PRATT

A row of hearses sat in the parking lot outside Spring Hill Missionary Baptist Church Monday, one for each of the four caskets inside.

The first cries rang out inside the church at around 12:45 p.m., shortly after the organ player began a slow, somber hymn.

By the time the family of Castella Maria Bell and her three children filed into the packed church 15 minutes later, hardly a dry eye remained. Bell and her children, TaNayia, 4, Jayvion, 3, and Samiya, 6 months, were four of the nine people who died Dec. 28 in the Academy Crossing Apartments fire, just two miles north of Spring Hill MB Church on Old Highway 25.

The Bells’ funeral Monday drew hundreds, from family, friends and coworkers to city officials, Red Cross workers and television news crews.

“We do not know the reason why the Lord allowed this to happen, but we know it happened for a reason,” Bell’s cousin, Elmira Johnson, said after the service. “God has a reason for everything.”

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