Our son Jon, Asst Fire Chief of the Byron/Amorita Fire Dept got a call late one night close to Christmas time in 1998. A house was on fire in Byron. He and another fireman in full gear got there first to see the house engulfed in flames. He went to the back side of the house and could barely hear moans from a back bedroom. He knew that it was from the lady who was paralyzed from a stroke. They were afraid to Ax their way in as the oxygen would make the place into a fiery inferno.

He crawled into the high and very small bathroom window in full gear, groped his way toward the sounds in the unbearable intense heat in her dark smoke filled room. He lifted the paralyzed lady out of bed and up over a bathtub into the hands of the other fireman, He kept repeating over and over "I did not think I was ever going to get her limp body through the window" The house collapsed just minutes later.

To make matters even worse everyone knows everyone here in our small community. Jon knew the family quite well. The firemen tried to find her husband, Lamar, who had turned in the alarm. No one knew he had gone back into the house to rescue his wife and two tiny grandchildren and yes, our Jon was only a few feet from the door where they later found his body and just a little way further in were the two babies.

The two grand kids were to be returned to their mother either the next day or so. Lamar was such a great guy. One time, when I was caring for two grandchildren in KG, they both fell asleep on his bus. He carried both of them into the house and laid them down on the couch. Another time Ashley, our granddaughter, who was about 10 years old, asked him if he would stop the bus so she could pick some pretty flowers along the roadside. Regulations were you were only to stop at regular stops, but he went over the rule when he stopped the bus and let the kids pick flowers along the road side. That was the kind of guy he was. He was also the school janitor and everyone loved him.

The lady was not expected to live from the extreme heat and smoke inhalation she had endured during the fire. She battled for her life for a couple of months and survived. Jon never took any special honors for saving her life. He said any one of them would have done the same thing. I still cringe when I think of how it could have been another life taken because of his bravery. He never once thought of the danger and as he said, he just did his job. We are all very proud of him.