Children sat on the altar and blew bubbles, sending their love skyward for the mother and four children who died in an Ohio auto crash while heading home to Parkville.

“Watch over me now, Mom, an angel you are now,” Brett Burkman, 16, said, reciting a poem in honor of his mother, Bethany Griffin, 36, and his sisters Haley Burkman, 10, Lacie Burkman, 7, Jordan Griffin, 8, and 2-month-old Vadie Griffin.

Hundreds of mourners Tuesday packed St. Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church in Baltimore and remembered the family members wiped out Dec. 30 by an alleged drunken driver.

Just three weeks ago, Bethany, still bubbling with excitement about her second marriage to Danny Griffin and their recent addition of Vadie, had run into the Rev. Bruce Kelley, the pastor who baptized three of her children, at the grocery store.

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“She shared how wonderful it was with her new life,” Kelley said, his voice catching.

Bethany’s siblings described a patriotic woman who stayed on the phone from 9:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. with her sister on Election Night 2004 to cheer on her pick, President Bush.

Gayle Sollenberger fondly remembered naming her younger sister Bethany.

“People always said to Bethany, ‘What a beautiful name,’ but they didn’t know it was because of my obsession with the gothic soap opera ‘Dark Shadows,’ ” she said.

Bethany and her sister Phyllis always unloaded items at the Dundalk flea market, but a surprise discovery one time revealed Bethany’s love for all creatures great and small.

“I was unloading a rug when we found two stowaways: two baby white mice with their eyes barely open,” Phyllis said.

“Bethany made a bed out of a shoebox and tissues to keep them as pets. She put out a sign with the rug that read, ‘Now mice-free, price reduced.’ ”

Only later, when Phyllis was driving home on the Baltimore Beltway, did the mother mouse jump into her lap.

“She’ll always be young and beautiful,” she said.

“So we say, ‘It’s not goodbye, it’s so long.’ ”

Teachers at Carney Elementary School described Haley and Lacie as cheerful little girls with big smiles and dimples.

Numerous e-mails and MySpace postings poured in from across the country, from California to Ohio to North Carolina, with people promising to wear blue, Bethany’s favorite color.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said the Rev. Lisa Arrington, St. Luke’s pastor.

“The intensity of this tragedy is only surpassed by the response of love.”

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com