Reese Burdette was 7 years old when she woke up in the middle of the night and saw a fire burning in her bedroom. Burdette was spending the weekend with her grandparents when she called out for her grandmother, Patricia Stiles, who raced through the flames to rescue her.
Paramedics transported Reese to the hospital and a helicopter took her to the pediatric burn unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md. After receiving a 2 a.m. phone call about the fire, her parents, Claire and Justin, raced to the hospital from their home in Mercersburg, Pa.
As she was receiving lifesaving treatment, Reese Burdette’s community and the dairy industry rallied to show their support.
Reese remained in the hospital for 662 days, which included months in a medically induced coma. She suffered five cardiac arrests, experienced a total hearing loss in her left ear and a 35% loss in her right one, and had her leg amputated due to poor circulation.
As Reese received lifesaving medical care, the agriculture community rallied around her family.
“I come from a dairy family and married into one. My husband and I have shown across the country, and [Justin] has judged all over the world,” Claire says. “We had a wide range of people we knew, including those both inside and outside of the U.S., who showed their support.”
Fundraisers ranged from GoFundMe campaigns to Pampered Chef parties and 5K runs. Some farmers sold calves and embryos, then donated the funds raised to the Burdette family. Their community also set up a meal train and delivered food to the hospital and the farm. As a show of support, Reese’s classmates wore purple — her favorite color — at their year-end festivities. The family’s custom farming operators even showed up at the farm with purple bows on their tractor grills.
As a Conococheague FFA member, Reese Burdette is finding new ways to fulfill the FFA motto of “Living to Serve.”
“It was unbelievable,” Claire recalls.
Reese, who loved showing cattle before the fire, focused on getting better so she could get back in the ring. When she achieved her goal of learning to stand and walk again, Reese was rewarded with a visit from her favorite cow, Pantene, who walked off the trailer and into the courtyard at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
It’s been 10 years since Burdette, now 16 and a Conococheague FFA member in Pennsylvania, was injured in the fire. To her, the National FFA Living to Serve platform takes on special meaning.
“I show up to as many community events as possible to help pay back what others did for me,” she says. “I want people to know you’re stronger than you think you are. Never give up on what you want, no matter how impossible it seems.”
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