John P. Conley, 31, telephone repairman, saved Paul F. Sypek, 2, and helped to save Scott A. Sypek, six months, from suffocation, Boston, Massachusetts, January 10, 1966. When fire broke out in the second-floor apartment of a three-story frame building, the mother of Paul took him and two other children onto a rear porch, leaving Scott in a crib in one of the bedrooms. The mother shouted for help as dense smoke filled the apartment and issued from around the windows. Conley and Eugene J. Lacey noticed the smoke. While Lacey went to turn in an alarm, Conley ran to the front entrance and ascended to the second-floor apartment. He heard the mother scream from the rear porch as Paul ran back into the apartment. Deciding to try to enter from the rear of the building, Conley ran outside and to the back yard. With the help of others he climbed over a fence onto the landing of a stairway leading to the second-floor porch. The mother and the two children by then had descended to the landing. Conley ascended to the porch, held his breath, and stepped into the kitchen, where the smoke was hot and very dense. He heard Paul crying, moved to him, and picked him up. Conley then was forced to inhale smoke which caused him to choke. He carried Paul to the porch and down the stairs to the mother. Conley then retraced his steps to the kitchen. Meanwhile Lacey had obtained a ladder and with the aid of another man had raised it to the kitchen window, breaking the glass. As dense smoke poured through the opening, Lacey ascended to the window. He stepped into the kitchen as Conley re-entered from the porch. Each heard but could not see the other as they moved about the kitchen in the dense smoke. Firemen arrived with smoke masks. One entered the kitchen, where he encountered Lacey and thrust him to the window. Coughing on smoke he had inhaled, Lacey then climbed out and descended the ladder. Another fireman located Scott and carried him into the hall, where Conley was probing in the dense smoke. Conley took Scott from the fireman and made his way back through the kitchen to the back porch. He descended the stairway and then gave Scott artificial respiration, reviving him. Paul and Scott were hospitalized and recovered.
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