The ongoing Los Angeles wildfires have claimed yet another victim: retired Hollywood actress Dalyce Curry, a staple of 1950s “Old Black Hollywood.”
95-year-old Curry—fondly known as “Momma D” to her loved ones—was found dead at her Altadena home in California, which had been burned to the ground by the Eaton Fire. Her death was confirmed on Sunday by the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office.
One of Curry’s grandchildren, Dalyce Kelley, named after her grandmother, announced the sad news on Facebook on Sunday, Jan. 12.
“About an hour ago the coroner confirmed her remains were indeed found at the property,” she wrote.
“We had a great run. She impacted my life in so many ways. This loss is devastating.”
In an interview with NBC, Kelly, who lived part-time with her grandmother as a caregiver, said she dropped her grandmother off at her house on Tuesday evening around midnight, after a long day at the hospital.
“She was exhausted,” she said, and there appeared to be danger from the faraway fire in the mountains northeast of them.
“I had no idea that the winds would come all the way down to the residential areas and destroy the entire city of Altadena,” Kelly said.
Kelly added that an evacuation order was sent out by text message at 3:30 a.m., but she believes it is unlikely that her grandmother would have heard it, given that the 95-year-old wasn’t too keen on using a smartphone.
“We have to do something else,” she said. “I thought that evacuations would, you know, include, like knocking on the doors, not just a message.”
The day after the fire she rushed to the area to check on her grandmother but was stopped at a barricade. A police officer told her that the area had totally burned down, and Curry was officially reported missing on Friday, Jan. 10.
On Saturday, the National Guard allowed Kelly to visit the ruins of her grandmother’s house.
“She’s under this roof part I know,” she wrote on Facebook. “I just have to wait until the cadavers search at this point.”
Kelly thanked the media for bringing attention to her grandmother’s death, but also to her remarkable story.
“Our grandmother Dalyce Curry would have been honored,” she wrote. “I knew my grandmother was special and seeing how the world is making this go viral is confirmation. What a loss.”
She also thanked the public for their sympathy.
“With her life ending so tragically, the outpouring of sympathy and compassion to tell her story has been comforting.”
Curry worked in Hollywood as an extra for decades, appearing in classics such as “The Ten Commandments,” “The Blues Brothers,” “Lady sings the Blues,” and many more.