After Helene, a mother mourns daughter's tragic death: ‘Wherever I went, she went with me’

ASHEVILLE – Marsha Lynn Ball loved to color roses, her mother Patricia’s favorite flower, on her iPad’s coloring app.  

Named after Marsha Brady, the eldest daughter in the 1970s television show, the Brady Bunch, and the country singer Loretta Lynn, Marsha also loved going to school.

Marsha, who had difficulty with speech and writing, Patricia said, graduated from T.C. Roberson’s Progressive Education Program, which serves students with physical and intellectual disabilities. She enjoyed school so much, Marsha insisted on going even when she wasn’t feeling well.

“I gotta go to school,” Patricia recalled her daughter saying. “I want to graduate.”

Nearly six months after Tropical Storm Helene hit Western North Carolina, a photograph of Marsha wearing her cap and gown sits atop a hotel room microwave at the Red Roof Inn in West Asheville, where most of Marsha's family continues to shelter in wake of the storm.

It's also where Patricia now spends much of the day in bed, nursing a broken leg and grieving the loss of her daughter.

After Helene triggered a landslide that tore through the Ball Family’s Black Mountain home, Patricia was trapped for hours, unable to move under the weight of the refrigerator that had toppled and crushed her leg.

“I thought I was going to die,” Patricia told the Citizen Times in February, nearly five months later. Despite surgery, her leg still hasn’t healed.

Helene triggered more than 2,000 landslides when it swept through the region Sept. 27, with some of the deadliest near the Ball Family home in the Garren Creek community, where landslides killed 13 people.

Trapped beside Patricia that day was her fiancé, Richard Pack. Hoping to calm her, Pack would reach over and place his hand on Patricia’s head, telling her everything was going to be OK.

But it wasn’t.

Marsha, 40, had been sitting on the living room couch when the landslide hit, knocking the home off its foundation. She remained alive for hours pinned under a tree, according to her family. When rescuers finally reached her, Marsha told them that she wasn’t scared, Patricia said.

According to her death certificate, Marsha died of injuries sustained during the landslide. She’s one of more than 100 people killed by the storm or who died in its aftermath, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, the agency tracking Helene-related fatalities.

‘Wherever I went, she went with me’

Marsha always tagged along on grocery store runs and loved helping Patricia in the kitchen, cooking mashed potatoes, gravy and Shake ‘n Bake chicken for the family.

“Wherever I went, she went with me,” Patricia said through tears.

Marsha also loved dogs, and Helene killed her chihuahua-dachshund mix, a “chiweenie,” Scooby Doo. Another family dog is still missing.

Since Helene, the family, which includes Patricia, her son William, father Samuel Craig, and Pack, Patricia's fiancé, have bounced around hotel rooms paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance program.

For now, the family is squeezed into a small room at the Red Roof Inn, along with their two dogs, Sweetie Pie and Casper. Craig, who just celebrated his 88th birthday, is on oxygen most of the time.

When their program eligibility runs out March 20, Patricia, who was recently hospitalized with an infection, is uncertain where the family will go next.

The only thing Patricia knows for sure, is her daughter won’t be with her.

Jacob Biba is the Helene recovery reporter at the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Email him at jbiba@citizentimes.com.