Serviceman loses belongings in Glenburn blaze

GLENBURN – A Pushaw Road man who set aside a teaching career to serve his country after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks lost his belongings Monday in an early morning fire.

The fire at 1080 Pushaw Road destroyed a garage that Spencer Tracy had converted to an apartment for his son Patrick Tracy, 37, and his son’s wife and daughter.

About 20 feet away, the main home where Spencer Tracy lives with his wife, Sue, was largely spared, although the heat was so intense that it melted some of the siding.

Tracy said he had insurance for the garage-turned-apartment, but there was no insurance for the belongings inside.

“Everything,” is all that Spencer Tracy could muster to explain what had been lost. Family pictures and mementos are gone. A pet rabbit inside perished.

No one was home at the time of the fire that first was noticed by a motorist passing by at 8:24 a.m. While Patrick served abroad for much of the past three years as a sergeant in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, his wife, Patty, and daughter Kayla, 12, had been living in the converted garage.

But the mother and daughter left last week for Fort Bragg in North Carolina to meet up with Patrick Spencer who finally had returned stateside, his father said Monday. The younger Spencer is scheduled for discharge April 21, his father said.

The fire is still under investigation, and an official with the State Fire Marshal’s Office was on the scene Monday during the day.

The fire had been burning for a while when the motorist called it in. Tracy said he had left for work about 6:15 a.m., and his wife had left about a half-hour earlier.

Even before arriving, firefighters knew they had an extensive fire on their hands. A thick column of smoke was visible in the air from a mile away.

“We could see the header of smoke, a heavy, black plume of smoke,” Lt. Steven Blount of the Glenburn Fire Department said.

By the time the Glenburn Fire Department arrived, the roof was burning and flames were coming from all of the windows, Blount said.

Firefighters from Levant, Kenduskeag, Hudson and Bangor assisted Glenburn firefighters who had the flames under control in about 90 minutes, Blount said. Firefighters would remain on the scene for about four hours, putting out the fire and cleaning up.

Patrick Tracy was going back to school at the University of Maine to become a teacher, when his career plans were redirected.

Everything changed after Sept. 11.

Patrick Tracy previously had served in the Air National Guard. After the attacks, he decided to set aside his teaching career and return to duty. The younger Spencer completed his teaching degree in the spring of 2002 and signed up with the Army, reaching Iraq before the war did, his father said.

“He felt he had to do something for his country,” his father said.