Altadena's Wind Phone offers healing, at no cost

A phone booth in Altadena has an old black rotary phone that doesn't ring or have a busy signal, but it does offer healing for people carrying unimaginable loss.

Seamus Bozeman created a Wind Phone, where anyone can pick up the receiver and speak to loved ones who are gone too soon. He built it to connect to his father, who died from cancer two months before the Eaton Fire.

"It's just the phone here, not connected to anything," Bozeman explained inside the little booth he built at the Healing Arts Center of Altadena. "Don't wait for a ring, start speaking what you want to say."

Bozeman said just as he was mourning the loss of his father, the wind and flames came, forcing his family to flee their West Altadena rental home, which burned down in the Eaton Fire.

"We didn't take much, and the next morning, the whole street was gone," Bozeman said.

After struggling to process the grief, he decided to build something meaningful, a Wind Phone. He says it's a quiet place where people can express their grief, joy, sorrow, or simply say the things left unsaid.

His mother, Leigh McDaniel, takes to the phone booth to express her grief.

"I miss you, the land you are on, miss you little house," she said into the handset. She explained that with the help of family and friends, and donated materials, her son built the booth by hand.

Betty Corral had never seen a Wind Phone before, but moments after walking up, she stepped inside to call her father, who died 45 years ago. "Hi, Dad, talking to you, calling you," she said.

The Wind Phone in Altadena is one of about 400 across the country, with a dozen in Southern California.