The story of Faith Farm actually begins a few years before that.
In her farmhouse kitchen, Brenda Lawler, her lively face framed with curly, dark hair, stands at her photo-covered refrigerator and points to an image of three pretty girls, her daughters. “This is Shana, Erin and Jess,” she says. “We moved to the Outer Banks in ’98, and in ’99, Shana was killed by a drunk driver.”
It made the national news and Court TV: Four high school friends from New Jersey rode a bus 12 hours to spend spring break with Shana in Colington Harbor, arriving on Easter night. On Tuesday afternoon, a daytime drinker ran a light and T-boned the Chevy Cavalier carrying the five teens. Megan Blong, Amanda Geiger and Angela McGrady died instantly. Mike Horner suffered serious injuries but survived. Shana lingered in a coma for seven days.
The driver is in prison for a minimum of 60 years. The Lawlers’ eldest, Erin, now 30, works full time as a substance abuse counselor in a New Jersey high school. Jessica, 27, lives near her parents with her husband and 2-year-old son and helps on the farm.
And the parents? “You really can’t live through something like this unless—thank God—you have a good marriage, and you can sustain it,” Brenda says. Then she smiles brightly and adds, “And then you give up your life and be a farmer!”
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. “Our real idea to move out here was not to farm—at all,” she says. “At all.”
After the accident, while the Lawlers managed their various business ventures, including a personal chef business started in 2003, they also began to develop a vision of a Christian camp for teenagers, and they started looking at land in Virginia. In 2004, they found the 95 rolling acres in Green Bay, near Farmville.
But issues of liability and greater-than-anticipated complexity rendered the camp idea untenable, and the Lawlers went back home, ready to set it aside. Then, Brenda recalls, a friend said, “‘Where’s your faith, Paul?’ Hence, ‘Faith Farm.’”
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