Wichita ? One of the few possessions that Shirley Oplinger Briner saved after a fire in August was a metal cross she pulled from the front door of her apartment as she fled.

Officials of Wilton Armetale Co., the Pennsylvania servingware firm that made the cross, read about her misfortune in a newspaper article and were touched. They decided to manufacture a bread tray that bears a favorite saying of Briner’s late husband.

“Let not the tears of yesterday, nor the fears of tomorrow, spoil our joys for today,” the couple said each morning before Francis Briner’s death in 1993.

Fred Wilton, chairman of Wilton Armetale, traveled to Wichita to present one of the trays to the 74-year-old widow.

“Oh, if my husband could see that,” Briner said at a ceremony Thursday. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”

The company plans to give the net proceeds from the sale of the bread tray nationwide to the Midway-Kansas Chapter of the American Red Cross for one year.

Briner said the Armetale cross was a symbol of her life as a minister’s wife. She said she was surprised when she found out that Wilton had learned of the fire and amazed at what the company wanted to do.

“We’re a small, family-owned business,” Wilton said. “We wanted to do something that could make a difference.”

Now resettled in a new apartment, Briner said she was eager to use the bread tray and serving platter when visitors come over.

“We just never know what God has in store,” she said. “He just surprises us again and again.”

No one died in the fire, but it caused an estimated $2 million in damage and forced 13 people from their homes.

Briner said the fire was a reminder of how quickly things can change, and she urged those who attended the ceremony to cherish their loved ones.

“You never know,” she said, “when God’s going to take them to him.”