Ashley Markham remembers her mother, Melanie Billings, once telling her that some people grow up wanting to be doctors or lawyers or teachers. What she wanted to be was a mommy. Melanie’s lifelong dream was to love her babies and to be a voice for them.
Byrd and Melanie Billings were well-to-do entrepreneurs. They owned several businesses, including a finance company and a used-car dealership. They opened their nine-bedroom house in Beulah, a rural area west of Pensacola, Fl, to children who were written off and ignored by most other people. They were parents to 17 children total, four biological and 13 adopted. Among the adopted were children with autism, down syndrome and other disabilities.
The couple installed a surveillance system to help them keep track of their children as they wandered through the large house and yard. It was those cameras that captured images of the masked men who shot the wealthy couple to death during a break-in on Thursday, July 9th. Some of the nine children in the house at the time were sleeping, but several others saw the break-in, authorities said. One left the house and went to get a neighbor, who called 911.
In a 2005 story in the Pensacola News Journal, the couple said they wanted to share their wealth with children in need, but didn’t imagine their family would grow so large. “It just happened,” said Melanie Billings, who was 43 when she died. “I just wanted to give them a better life.”
Byrd Billings, 68, was a man with big twinkly-eyed smile, according to Susan Berry, principal of Escambia Westgate School in Pensacola, where some of the Billingses children attended. At one school function, his big hand enveloped hers, leaving a neatly folded check for the school in her palm. She wouldn’t say how much the check was for, but she couldn’t believe how big it was. “They weren’t only generous with their children,” Berry said. “They were generous with everyone that touched their children’s lives.” When Melanie Billings picked up her children from school, she would stretch out her arms, and “the kids would run to her, the ones that could,” Berry said. “They would go as fast they could with their arms in the air for Mom to take them.”
In a time of mourning for celebrities who left their mark in the entertainment world, I hope that we will take some time to mourn this amazing couple who left their mark in the real world doing the work most people shy away from. There are at least 17 lives that they have changed forever and, given their loving nature, I suspect many more.
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