Forty-six years later Buffalo firefighter reunites with child he rescued
Click here if video above fails to play
The date was March 6, 1968 when Buffalo Fire Department Lt. Vincent Fildes first met Patrick Weatherspoon. Weatherspoon was four-years-old and trapped in a burning home with his sister. Lt. Fildes was 41-years-old. Both children were found, but only Patrick survived.
The two met again recently and Anne Neville of The Buffalo News was there to chronicle their story. Click here to read it and also watch the video above. Here’s an excerpt:
On a recent winter day at the Sweetness 7 café on Grant Street, Fildes and the boy he saved were reunited for the first time since that day in the hospital. Weatherspoon expressed his gratitude quietly.
His wife and daughter, however, weren’t able to be quite so composed. They wept at the sight of the man who had made their family and future possible.
“I thank you a hundred times, a thousand times,”
Weatherspoon’s daughter Lakeshia Weatherspoon, 32, said as her sons looked on. “You’re an angel.”“I would just like to say thank you, thank you,” Annie Weatherspoon said, as her husband nodded. “I’ve
had 20 great years with this good man, and many more years to come.”
