Fire destroys home, generation of memories

FLORAL CITY -- Kelley Burns, 11, brought 84-year-old Mary Reynolds her newspaper every morning. Friends less than a year, the Floral City neighbors had developed a close bond.

Reynolds called to check on Kelley this week when she was sick with a virus, and the young girl made a special craft for her surrogate grandmother at a recent weekend camp.

So when Kelley saw smoke billowing from Reynolds' mobile home Wednesday evening, she was terrified. What if her neighbor, who lived alone, was trapped inside?

"She is a really good person," Kelley said later that evening, tears still streaking her red face. "I just don't think she needs to go yet. That's what I was worried about."

Kelley called 911. Bonnie Burns, Kelley's mother, raced across the street. She tried to get inside, but the doorknob was too hot.

Then Kelley remembered. It was Wednesday. Reynolds always played bingo at the community center on Wednesdays.

Mrs. Burns sped to the bingo hall, where she found her neighbor. Reynolds was safe.

Her home of more than 30 years, however, was not. Under a canopy of moss-draped oaks, a stubborn blaze ravaged the mobile home at Baker Avenue and East Washington Lane. By the time the flames were put out, after dusk had fallen, only a quarter of the home's shell was standing. Everything inside was destroyed.

The fire likely started in the living room, Citrus County Sheriff's Office Detective Jerry Dixon said Thursday. No cause had been determined Thursday afternoon.

Reynolds watched from the Burns family's lawn as her home disappeared. Several of her children and grandchildren surrounded the gray-haired woman, comforting her.

Deputy Tim Langer was among them. He and two other of Reynolds' grandsons work for the Sheriff's Office, so when they heard the call come through their radios, "we responded real quick," he said.

This home, just minutes from downtown historic Floral City, was where he had come to visit his grandparents since he was a boy. His grandfather, a carpenter, died in 1988. Now family heirlooms, including memories from his grandfather's military service, were gone.

But Reynolds was alive, and she had plenty of family in Citrus County to stay with, Langer said.

"She'll come through this," he said.

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