Do you ever look back on memories from your youth and wonder what happened to those people who you grew up with? Where are they now? Do they ever think of you?

A retiree in Newfoundland, Canada, was plagued with those questions every time he thought of two little girls he saved from a house fire in 1951. He hoped they were safe and healthy and living happy lives. But he would never know. Until one day when he learned that one of those girls was living next door. Read on to hear this chilling tale.

When seventy seven year old Edward ‘Kip’ Malone retired to Conception Bay South after forty years of working in Ontario, he was greeted by his next door neighbor, Margaret Fowler. Malone had loads of stories from his decades in Ontario to share with his new friend. Nicknamed ‘Kip’ for his love of kippered herring, Margaret would bring him fish and listen to his tales.

The two soon learned that when they were younger, they both lived in St. John’s, just seventy five miles from their new homes in Conception Bay. Malone then shared a story with Margaret that sent chills up her spine.

On Dec. 20, 1951, Malone’s mother sent him to the store to fetch her some butter. On his way, he passed a row of what he termed “cardboard houses” when he heard a panicked scream from the window above.

“Save the children!” a woman yelled down to Malone from the top floor of a blazing, smoke filled house.

Malone ran up the stairs and found a frightened five-year-old girl. He grabbed her and tried to lead her to safety, but she refused to leave without her sister. So Malone fought through the flames to get to the girl’s bedroom. He swept his arm under the bed and found a three-year-old girl “hiding away from it all,” as Malone recalls. He carried both sisters outside to safety. But then he never saw them again.

“It was always a mystery to me what became of (the girls),” Malone said in a phone interview. “I had never laid eyes on these people since.”

Listening to Malone’s retelling of the story, Fowler said she got goosebumps. “I was that little girl,” Fowler told him. “I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for you.”

At 70, Margaret Fowler now has four children and six grandchildren. She chokes up thinking that all of that could been wiped away were it not for the twelve year old boy who saved her that fateful December day so long ago.

Margaret called on her sister, Barbara Earle, to reunite with Malone and thank him for his bravery in saving their lives. Fowler calls Malone’s reintroduction into their lives an act of “divine intervention.”

“I have this living, breathing angel,” says Earle, a grandmother of two. “This wonderful little boy … put his own life at risk so I could have the wonderful live I have.”

Neight Fowler nor Earle remember much about the fire, nor the boy who hoisted them to safety all those years ago. However, they are both grateful for the opportunity to finally recognize him for his heroic act, and to provide him with the closure he’s been seeking.

“They think I was hero for doing the whole thing, but I don’t think that way at all,” he says. “I think I just did what I was supposed to do … The rewarding part of it (is) that they had a good life and they have families of their own.”

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