Madonna Badger Remarries: Survivor Of Christmas Day Fire That Killed Daughters, Parents, Finds Love Again

Madonna Badger has remarried, and she shared the joyful news on her Facebook page. Badger was crushed with grief after a Christmas Day 2011 fire that killed her three daughters and her parents. Now, she has managed to find some happiness again.

Badger posted a photo just after her wedding to long-time friend William Duke and said, “We did it!” Madonna Badger remarried by eloping with Duke, and the photo is of the two of them standing outside the church where they wed. She had previously been married to Matthew Badger, the father of the three girls who died in the Christmas Day blaze.

Badger, 50, and Duke, 61, have been engaged for a few months. She previously shared that “Bill Duke was one of the three men at the side of my bed when I woke up in the hospital on that Christmas morning.” The morning she refers to, as People notes, is the morning where she learned that a fire had torn through the Stamford, Connecticult house she had been renovating. Her twin daughters Grace and Sarah, 7, along with Lily, 9, and Madonna’s parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, all died in the fire.

Many friends and followers have congratulated Badger on her new marriage and people are glad she has found life after such heartbreaking tragedy. Madonna had previously shared that she had considered suicide after the tragic fire. It was determined that embers from the fireplace had been put in an outside mudroom and later caused the blaze. It was said that her then-boyfriend, Mike Borcina, who had been the contractor working on the house, had placed the embers in the mudroom.

Badger opened up in a previous interview to say that she had contemplated suicide after the death of her girls and parents. Matthew Badger created the Lily Sarah Grace Fund, a fund supporting Arts-Infused Inquiry-Based Learning in schools. In 2012 Matthew also filed a lawsuit against Borcina in relation to the fire.

Learning to move forward has obviously been a challenge for Madonna, and she has shared that she spent the last two Christmases in Thailand volunteering at an orphanage. She wrote, “Basically, I go to wherever the light is.” She admitted she did that because “anything else is darkness, and it can be a deeply black darknesss.” Despite the heartbreak, the photos from the low-key wedding show that there has been some light in the woman’s life again as well. Though it could not have been easy to embrace the opportunity for happiness again, many seem supportive and thrilled to see the news that Madonna Badger remarried.

[Image via Madonna Badger Facebook page]