Firefighter of the Year meets woman whose life he saved in 1967
Published: June 11, 2005
Thirty-eight years ago, Rochester firefighter Willie Johnson went into a burning apartment building on Bartlett Street and rescued an infant.
Friday night, during an emotional ceremony at the Riverside Convention Center, the two were reunited for the first time since that blaze.
The infant — formerly Dita Jackson, now Dita Powell — sang a song she wrote, “Miracle,” to Johnson, who was honored as the Rochester Fire Department’s Firefighter of the Year. The ceremony was part of the department’s fifth annual awards dinner.
The song was appropriate for the occasion, said Powell, an actress and singer.
“I don’t remember much from the fire, of course, but my uncle said my hair smelled like smoke for weeks. They always called me the miracle girl.”
The fire was in September 1967. Dita’s mother had left her and two siblings — a 5-year-old sister and a 4-year-old brother — alone in their apartment while she went to a store. A child in another apartment started a fire. That’s when the crew at Engine 7 on Genesee Street, including Johnson, got the call and headed to the scene.
Johnson went in and found Dita in a bed, her family’s apartment filled with smoke. Then he found her brother and sister, hiding in the apartment.
Johnson passed the children out a window to waiting firefighters, who administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Nevertheless, Dita’s siblings died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
But thanks to Johnson, Dita lived — and that was reason for celebration Friday night.
“If I had more time, I could have saved the other kids,” said Johnson, who retired in May after a 39-year career with the Rochester Fire Department. “It’s just by the grace of God I saw (Dita). It’s part of my job. It was the way I was trained.”
Johnson’s humility is typical, friends and family members said. But they weren’t about to let his accomplishments go without praise. The crowd of several hundred in the Lilac Ballroom rose as one, giving him a standing ovation.
“It was a dark day for us, we had two caskets of two children at one funeral,” said Pastor Eulah Nelson, Dita’s aunt, who was there the day of the deadly blaze. “But the great thing is, one was saved. Firefighter Johnson was our angel.”
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