Erin & Ben Napier Open Up About Family Dramas After Heirloom Hotel Fire
According to Ben Napier, the Heirloom Hotel’s August 2025 fire was the first of a few unfortunate circumstances he and Erin Napier experienced at the time.
HGTV‘s Home Town: Inn This Together followed the couple as they and their friends, Jim and Mallorie Rasberry and Josh Nowell, transformed a building in downtown Laurel, Mississippi, into the Heirloom Hotel. The show, which wrapped its four-episode run on May 31, featured the renovation process and the aftermath of the fire.
On the Sunday, June 7, episode of The Heirloom Podcast, Ben opened up about the other difficult situations he and Erin dealt with shortly after the fire. “The fire happens. A close member of the extended family goes into the hospital, and nobody really knows what’s going on. And Erin’s parents chose to have their dog put down that week,” he revealed. “And then, Erin’s turning 40.”
Erin turned 40 years old on August 30, 2025, less than a week after the hotel fire. “Mallorie had volunteered to host my 40th birthday party. And I was like, ‘We are not having the party this weekend. That is not happening.’ And Mallorie said, ‘I need to be with all my people,’” she recalled. “And so, we had the party, and it was the saddest party in the world. All I wanted for my birthday was to eat dip, so we ate dip and cried.”
Ben went on to joke that it’s the “unwritten rule of the 40th birthday” to have something go wrong. Erin agreed, adding, “Emily [Nowell] lost her dad for her 40th birthday. I had a birthday the week of the fire.” Ben, for his part, said, “We celebrated my father-in-law’s 70th for my 40th. It was a great party.”
‘Home Town: Inn This Together’ Stars Share Sweet Fan Letter After Hotel Fire
For Josh, the thing that was “nice” about Erin’s 40th birthday party was getting to be together after the fire. “The locals understood how hard we had been working, but the public had not. They don’t really know until these episodes have aired, how hard we were all working to make this happen,” he stated. “And so, that was pretty special to have friends and just to be around each other.”
Erin joked, “Laurel had a little funeral. That’s okay,” while Josh noted, “We need to redo that one.”
Despite the fire, Ben took to Instagram at the time to celebrate his wife’s special day. “40! Celebrating my girl!” he captioned photos of Erin with family, friends, and their two daughters, Helen and Mae. “The queen of the blonde beach babes! The one my girls look to and look like! Happy birthday @erinapier!!”
On the podcast, the group also discussed their next steps for the hotel amid its ongoing rebuild. “While we don’t know exactly what’s next, that doesn’t mean that we’re not thinking about it. And so, what this has given us, I think, is an opportunity to kind of dream about what’s next and be thinking about what’s next,” Jim said. “It’s not like something that’s not out there. We have a vision. We have goals for our community, for ourselves, for our state, and we continue to want to make it better. So, I think some really cool things are down the pike.”
Josh, meanwhile, addressed whether the hotel’s rebuild will be aired on another HGTV series. “We’re gonna see what it is, and then we’ll work to see what that might look like,” he told listeners. “But we’re very grateful for the network for telling our story, the story of our town to so many people. And yeah, stay tuned.”
