LEWISTON — When a 2004 car crash killed Christel Blue and robbed seven children of their mother, Lloyd MacFarlane stepped up.

There were few legal or blood bonds. He and Christel never married. Their relationship had undergone separations. And only two of the seven children, then ages 5 to 21, were his.

But they were a family.

“When their mom died, I couldn’t see separating any of them and keeping just my own,” said MacFarlane, a burly former steelworker hobbled by a 2001 industrial accident. “So I got them all.”

A decade later, he still has a home full of children.

Three — Lloyd, 19, Isabella, 16, and Faith, 15, still live at home. Another, Midnight Blue, 24, sleeps there sometimes. So do three grandchildren.

The elder Lloyd gets few breaks. He has few quiet hours. But after so many years, he likes the noise and mayhem.

“When I’m not with these guys, I feel lost,” he said. “It’s too quiet.”

On Sunday — Father’s Day — the whole noisy crowd plans to gather at a lakeside in Greene, fix some barbecue and celebrate the guy who kept them all together.

“He’s not an ordinary dad,” Midnight Blue said. “He’s the dad that most kids wish they had.”

He became a dad all of a sudden in 1990, when he met Christel. She had six kids. He moved in and began helping to raise them.

They were living in Big Bear, Calif., when they experienced a catastrophic house fire. Three children — Bon Scott, 3, Sapphire, 5, and Sky, 6 — died. Three other children, Misty, Jimmy and Midnight, survived, though Midnight had third-degree burns on her back and needed extensive hospitalization.

She still remembers Lloyd staying with her at a Shriner’s hospital as she endured surgery and treatment.

“He was the only strong one,” Midnight said. “He was our rock.”

Christel grieved.

“Once the fire happened, I was already so close to the children, it was like I lost my own kids,” Lloyd MacFarlane said. “We just stayed together and made it work.”

By 2001, the family had moved to Connecticut and grown. First came Autumn, then Lloyd, Isabella and Faith.

Lloyd worked hard to keep them afloat.

“I was an iron worker,” he said. “I made very good money.”

Tragedy happened again.

“I got knocked off a building by a crane,” he said. The fall shattered his right foot. Today, he walks slowly. A scar runs down his calf and the length of his foot.

He was finally back on his feet when Christel died.

“Somehow or another, I manage to keep things going,” he said. “Honestly, sometimes I don’t know how I’ve done it. I’m very strong-willed and have a good sense of family.”

He never contemplated taking his own biological kids and leaving the others, he said. Technically, only Lloyd and Isabella were his. “I just couldn’t see separating the kids, like, ‘You’re not mine, so I don’t care about you.’ My mind just doesn’t work that way,” he said.

“I went straight to probate court and I got custody of all the kids,” he said.

The following year, they moved to Maine to be close to Christel’s family.

Today, they share a four-bedroom apartment in downtown Lewiston. There’s only one bathroom and lots of bickering over the shower and the TVs.

“We didn’t grow up with everything,” Midnight said. “We didn’t grow up with all the things we wanted. But we definitely had a lot more love than most households. I’d take that over an iPhone any day.”

The children say their dad is a great cook, a willing errand-runner and someone to talk with when problems arise.

To them all, he’s Dad. None would dare call him “Lloyd.”

“He doesn’t deserve that,” Midnight Blue said.

And blood matters little, her sister said.

“I know people who are blood-related and don’t know each other,” said Autumn MacFarlane, 21. “Family isn’t about being related or blood. It’s about who is there for you.”

“It takes a man to be a dad,” she said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com