Boy helps save family from fire

When Paul Ketter returned home to Brookline on April Fool's Day after dropping his wife off at work at PNC Park, he thought his three sons had conspired to play a practical joke on him.

Instead of greeting him, his oldest son, Joe, 10, ran right past him across the street. He ran back to the Plainview Avenue house carrying a screwdriver.

His youngest son, Dan, 7, had black hands, covered with what Paul Ketter thought was dirt.

Then he looked up and saw the smoke coming out of the house.

Joe Ketter was the hero of that day. When he ran across the street, he did so to tell a neighbor to call the fire department. When he ran back with a screwdriver, he was going to open the lock to a basement room and get his uncle, Brian Hanifan, out of the room where he was sleeping.

'I knew he was down there, so I grabbed him out,' Joe Ketter said. 'He was sleeping.'

The Ketter family, which also includes 8-year-old Tyler, escaped the fire, but their possessions were all lost. They are currently living in the Days Inn along Banksville Road.

The fire started when Dan Ketter was playing with a lighter on the second floor of the house. Paul Ketter, who had a stepbrother and stepsister who died in a fire, always tried to teach his children that lighters and matches were not toys.

Dan came downstairs, where his grandmother, Gloria Cannon, was.

'I thought he had dirt on his hands,' she said. 'It was skin burns.'

Dan was treated and released at Mercy Hospital, and he's wearing bandages over the burns now, the only remnants of the fire. A rekindling of the fire later that night gutted the house.

The only thing that was saved was the children's baseball card collection.

Joe lost his posters and video games, things he bought with money he earned working with his father. The elder Ketter operates Pittsburgh Iron and Metal, a scrap iron company, and on Saturdays during the summer, he and his son would work together, driving up and down Route 19 collecting scrap.

Paul Ketter said he is looking for another house in Brookline, so his children could continue going to Brookline Elementary School and playing football and baseball.

Joe said he learned about calling the fire department at school, where he is a fourth-grader. However, when asked where he learned to open locks with a screwdriver, he pointed to his father.

For his heroism, Joe - an amateur boxer - was honored at the Golden Gloves Tournament in Monroeville. And out of gratitude, Brian Hanifan is giving his nephew his Sony PlayStation and some games, to replace the video games lost in the fire.

Joe counts as his heroes cartoon characters, professional wrestlers and race car drivers. But his father has a different idea.

'He's my hero,' Ketter said of his oldest son.

Vince Guerrieri can be reached at vguerrieri@tribweb.com or (412) 306-4533.