A California family lost their father’s legacy business in the Palisades fire.

The Morehart family never lost their pet store, a cornerstone of the community for more than 60 years. In the fire of the Palisades. They have lost their primary memory of their former father and husband.

The Malibu Feed Bean has seen four generations pass through its doors, creating a deep sense of community, since Patricia Morehart and her late husband Marty Morehart took over in 1966. They were 20 years old at the time. It was among the thousands of homes and businesses destroyed by wildfires in the Los Angeles area last week.

Nestled at the bottom of Topanga Canyon, the store felt like home not only to Patricia Morhart’s family, but to the many community members who visited their store. In the year After Marty Morehart’s death in 2020, Patricia Morehart continued to run the operation with two of her four children.

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Patricia Morhart told FOX Business, “The hole in the sky was huge, but I had all these memories around me.” They were married for 55 years before his death.

But when the store is out It was destroyed by fire last week. She said she felt as if she had lost her husband again.

“It’s not the building. It’s not really a physical thing. Those are the memories,” she said.

On Jan. 6, Patricia Morhart told her employees to close up shop around 11 a.m. Her employees picked up the animals on the property, cleaned the cash register, locked the doors and went home.

Patricia Morehart and her son Casey Morehart never thought anything would happen to the store because it was the command post for the local fire department during natural disasters.

After Casey Morehart posted on Facebook that the store had been destroyed by fire, the community reached out, with many expressing what the Malibu Feed Bin and the Morehart family meant to them.

“From what I’m reading, the store makes people happy when they’re there. They feel safe and welcome, it’s like going to your mom’s house. I like that part,” said Casey Morehart.

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Patricia Morehart remembers the store’s early days, when she ran operations and Marty Morehart handled deliveries. Their children grew up in the business, and later two – Cassie and Katie – joined the family team.

But Patricia Morhart made it clear that it is more than a pet store. It was a place that “brought people together.”

Over the years, the family’s store has held events such as hamster derbies and ghost races. They sold candy, pickles and for many years Christmas trees. In fact, it has become a safe drop-off point for parents, she said.

But for Casey Morehart, the store was her “safe place.”

“That shop was the only stable thing in my life that I didn’t talk about much except lately with my mom and my sister Katie,” she says. “Always the same and always has been.”

Moreover, it was also a way to “keep her father’s legacy alive.”

Even though the store is gone, Patricia Morhart knows her family is lucky.

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“There are a lot of other people who are hurting worse than me. And I have to put that in perspective,” she said. “It’s a huge loss … but a lot of other people have nothing left.”

The Moreharts hope to open the store one day.

If her husband were here today, Patricia Morhart said she would know exactly what he would tell her.

“I could almost hear the voice … ‘We had a great run there for 60 years. We have to move forward,'” she said. “And in the back of his mind, he was already planning to do something.”