LITTLE ROCK — Last year, a house fire on Christmas Day in Stamford, Conn., killed Madonna Badger’s three daughters — 9-year-old Lily and 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah — and her parents, Pauline and Lomer Johnson.
Badger, a well-known fashion ad executive in New York who has worked on Calvin Klein campaigns, and her boyfriend Michael Borcina were the only survivors.
The early-morning fire was started by embers that had been removed from the fireplace and put in a mudroom attached to the house, said fire officials.
The $1.7 million Victorian home was being renovated by Borcina.
The fire made national news and continues to as the first anniversary nears.
What’s less known is that since early February, Badger has been staying in Little Rock with friends and receiving treatment at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
After the deaths, the 47-year-old was admitted to three psychiatric units.
“I made a suicide gesture — that’s when you do something like put some pills in your hand and threaten to take them,” Badger tells Paper Trails. “But no one knew what to do with me. They kept comparing me to a 9/11 victim but that isn’t what I was going through at all.”
How did she come to choose UAMS in Little Rock for her treatment?
While staying in a psychiatric unit in Tennessee, she confided in Kate Askew of Little Rock, her longtime friend and college roommate from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, that she wasn’t getting better and feared she was getting worse.
Askew brought Badger to Little Rock to stay with her and her husband. The next day, on Feb. 5, Badger met with Dr. Rick Smith, director of the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute (PRI). She has been regularly treated and counseled since then by Smith and Dr. Betty Everett.
“UAMS has saved me,” Badger says. “They have been amazing through all of this. Rick Smith was the first person who described my grief to me. I knew what I was going through, but he’s the first one who put it into words.”
“He said it was as though my three children were physically bound to me and a giant knife had come and severed them from me and I was walking around like a giant raw nerve; the vulnerability was just insane.
“Basically he said I wasn’t crazy, just very, very sad and full of grief.
“When I first arrived here, half my hair had fallen out and I had turned gray,” Badger recalls.
Since then, she has lived with the Askews and has been seen by the PRI staff daily as an outpatient. She also has been treated with acupuncture and has taken yoga.
On Thursday, Badger appeared on NBC’s Today Show with Matt Lauer. The show included video of her Little Rock friends holding signs and showing support for her.
Contact Linda Caillouet at (501) 399-3636 or at lcaillouet @arkansasonline.com
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 12/09/2012