Ninety-year-old Maurice Smith who was rescued from a fire which engulfed his home and claimed the life of his labrado
r dog, Minnie, has died.
Great grandfather Mr Smith died of a heart attack seven weeks after the fire which occurred in converted stables off Close Lane in Rowde.
His body was found last Thursday at home.
Despite losing all his possessions in the fire Mr Smith moved back to where he lived the day afterwards.
He moved into what had been a storage shed while his son, Mike Smith, rebuilt a home for him in time for the winter.
Mike Smith, 59, a mechanic of Bromham, said his father had been pleased to return to his home.
He said: “That’s all he wanted. He lost everything in the fire. The only thing he had left was a pair of trousers, a shirt, two odd slippers and his pipe. He said he had been in worse conditions than that.”
Maurice Smith suffered a small burn to his arm in the fire as he tried in vain to rescue Minnie from the fire but did not need medical attention.
Mr Smith said his father had had no trouble with his heart and his death was a shock.
He said: “I think he was lucky to survive the fire as it caused total devastation to his home.
“It could have been the fire slowly wore him down but when we last spoke to him he was his normal self. Whether it was gnawing away at him I don’t know. Losing his dog ate him up. He got so attached to Minnie. She was like a shadow to him.”
His father had owned Minnie for just seven months when she died in the fire.Before that he had had a German Shepherd dog for ten years.
Mike Smith added: “My father was capable and his mind was totally intact. He was a very clever man; whatever he turned his hand to he achieved it. He will be greatly missed.”
Maurice Smith, who had ten children, lived at Rowde for 40 years after moving from Reading where he was born and raised.
He served in the RAF as ground crew during the Second World War. He became a plumber after the war and had a successful engineering business in Reading which he gave up to move to Rowde and he kept animals, including pigs and chickens, on his land.
His son said: “He enjoyed living where he did because it was so quiet and peaceful.
“He loved his own company. He used to wander up into the village to the former shop and post office to collect his pension and chatted to people he met there.
“My father had a very good life and enjoyed his life to the full. He took great pride in entertaining his grandchildren and great grandchildren.
“He seemed infallible. He smoked since he was 14 and he said it had never done him no harm. He didn’t go to the pub but he used to have a drop of whisky in the evenings.”
The funeral service for Mr Smith will be on Tuesday at West Wiltshire Crematorium, Semington, at 10.45am.
This is Wiltshire 12 August 2010