‘Mr. Word, We Came After You’ : Blind Man Escapes --Thanks to 2 Girls

For Abbie Word, a retired 82-year-old U.S. Navy mechanic, a strange sound was the first indication that something was amiss Tuesday on his Baldwin Hills street.

“It was popping,” he said, “like a truck rumbling.”

Left home alone while his wife retrieved their car from a repair shop, Word made his way to the front door. The noise was not coming from there. He turned around to head for the rear of the house and instantly was struck in the face by a blast of heat.

“I knew there was trouble,” he said.

Completely Blind

Word could only guess how much trouble. He suffers from glaucoma and has been completely blind for a year.

Despite his blindness, it had been Word’s custom to take a stroll each day along Don Carlos Drive. The tall man with closely cropped white hair walking with a stick was a familiar sight in the area.

And now, as fire shot through the street, at least two of Word’s neighbors had remembered him.

Word had gone out the front door. He was dressed in blue coveralls and moccasins, and he carried nothing with him.

‘Just Wanted to Get Out’

“What I wanted was to get off that hill quick,” he said. “I didn’t take nothing with me. I just wanted to get out.”

Outside, he heard two voices calling him. They sounded, he said, like the voices of young girls. He did not know them.

“ ‘Mr. Word,’ ” he recalled them shouting, “ ‘We came after you. We came after you.’

“We started running. One girl was on one arm, and the other was on the other.”

Shelter Set Up

Five hours later, Word was one of about three dozen people gathered in a temporary Red Cross shelter at Dorsey High School. Cots had been set up, but most people were there simply to find relatives and recover their bearings.

Word located his wife there, and a tearful niece was at his side, saying: “I love you. I love you.”

The old man said that he had lost his house to the fire. He recalled moving into it on the very day that then-President John F. Kennedy had been slain--Nov. 22, 1963.

Although sad about losing his home, his overriding emotion was one of relief that, despite his blindness, he had made it out alive.

But what he wanted to do most was to deliver a message of gratitude to the two young voices.