Older Man, Woman Saved in Fire by Deliveryman, 80

An 80-year-old volunteer meal delivery man, credited with saving a 91-year-old man and his 86-year-old sister from their burning house, says he just happened to be there at the right time.

“It’s something any of the other drivers would have done,” said James J. Flynn, who has been delivering meals to elderly shut-ins for Highland Valley Elder Services for seven years.

“There are people out there who need help and nobody knows who they are,” he said Thursday.

Delivers Lunch

Flynn said he was bringing lunch to Roger Readio, 91, and his sister Marion Barton, 86, when he found their house on fire Wednesday morning.

“Smoke was pouring right out the back door,” he said. When he entered the kitchen he found the elderly woman crawling across the floor and saw a couch in flames in the living room.

The room was “chock full of smoke and she’d have never gotten out,” Flynn said. “So I got her onto the porch and I said, ‘Well, where’s Roger? He’s in there somewhere.’ Then I heard a thumping noise and I thought, ‘That must be him.’ ”

Flynn said he ran around the house and through the front door where he found Readio trying to make his way downstairs from the second floor. Then he notified the fire department.

‘Spur of the Moment’

Flynn, who retired 13 years ago from Smith & Wesson, a Springfield gun maker, said he acted on “the spur of the moment . . . you just don’t think of anything else.”

Both victims were reported in good condition Thursday at Cooley Dickinson Hospital.