Heroes from 1968 fire reunite with woman they saved

FOR 42 YEARS, six months and a few days, Danny Mitchum drove down Rock Hill’s White Street and looked at the house at 325 E. White St. with the big front window and remembered. He saw flames and the screams of children and his shoulder smashing through that front door.

Cedric “Spud” Huckabee did the same thing driving past, going that way on purpose, remembering hurling his fist and arms, head and body through that front window to find a stranger kid crying out in the dark.

“I just wished I could have gotten in for the last one, the girl who died,” Mitchum said to himself every one of those days. “The flames were just too much. The fire drove me back out through the door.”

Thursday, 42 years later, these two guys had a chance to talk to one of the children they helped. They were working on a race car two buildings down White Street at long-gone Boone’s service station that cold March night and ran to the house fire.