Charles Thompson, 76, was burned to death in the cellar of his Park street, Pulaski home, the
morning of November 20, before firemen, slowed up by a breakdown of their apparatus, could
rescue him.
Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were sitting in their home at 10 o'clock when they noticed smoke issuing
from the furnace registers. The aged man rushed to the cellar door and down the stairs, crying
out to his wife "everthing is ablaze."
Mrs. Thompson ran to Mrs. G. S. Utley's house next door and sent in an alarm. She was unable
to reenter her house because of smoke.
The new $12,000 fire apparatus was slow in starting. In the two-block run to the Thompson
house the gears of the distributor were stripped and the pump did not work when turned on. The
old fire truck was then obtained.
The house was a raging furnace by that time and flames were bursting through rear windows on
the first and second floors. State Troopers Mitrzyk and Howard Bonney donned smoke masks and
entered the house, but could not find the man.
It was nearly two hours after the fire started that it was sufficiently extinguished to
permit searchers to enter the burned structure. James Waffel, Frederick Lawrence and Charles
Ahrendsen found the charred body of Mr. Thompson at the top of the cellar stairs. He had
apparently made a last-minute effort to escape.
Mr. Thompson came to Pulaski from Redfield four years ago. He was retired from business.
When a young man he was a carpenter and later was a salesman for the Johnson Harvoster Company.
He has served on the Board of Supervisors of Oswego County. He was a member of Pulaski Lodge,
415, F & A. M., and the Masonic Club. He was born November 21, 1853 at Decatur.
He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Ella Fleming Thompson, Pulaski; two daughters, Mrs. F. C.
Burkett, North Syracuse, and Miss Ruth Thompson, Syracuse, and one son, Lewis Thompson, New
York City.
Funeral services were held at two o'clock Friday afternoon in the Masonic Temple.
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