John and Lynn Ring, a New Harbor couple who survived a March 9 fire that consumed their home, are inviting the community to a Sat., Oct. 15 open house at their new home.
The Rings recounted their experience during and after the fire in an Oct. 7 interview.
Early the morning of the fire, Lynn Ring’s 11-year-old Maine Coon, Tinker, woke her up.
“He kept pulling the sides of my hair,” Lynn Ring said. “I said, ‘What are you wanting? Mommy gave you water. I gave you milk.'”
Finally, Lynn Ring relented. “I said, ‘Okay, Tink, I’m coming.'”
Downstairs, Lynn Ring didn’t immediately think disaster upon entering her smoky kitchen. “I said, ‘Oh, no. Daddy’s trying to cook an egg again.'”
Not until placing her hand on a red-hot doorknob did she realize the house was on fire.
Lynn Ring went to the top of the stairs where she found her husband lying on the floor. “I thought, ‘I got to get him out of here,'” she said.
She quickly grabbed an afghan from the back of a nearby loveseat. “I kind of wrapped him like a jelly roll inside the afghan,” she said.
The 68-year-old Ring dragged her husband on his makeshift stretcher out onto the porch, just moments before a large explosion in the garage.
A neighbor, Dr. Ronald Carroll, helped move John Ring off the porch.
“If it wasn’t for Dr. Carroll and my wife, I wouldn’t be here today,” John Ring said.
The Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service transported John Ring to Miles Memorial Hospital, where he spent three days in the intensive care unit receiving treatment for burns and smoke inhalation.
Lynn Ring was treated and released the same day. Tinker, the cat, died in the fire.
“We lost everything, everything,” Lynn Ring said. “I came out of there with a wedding band and a 20-year-old nightgown and he came out of there with a pair of pajamas out of 50 years of accumulation.”
“It’s quite an experience to lose everything you own within 25 minutes,” Lynn Ring said. “Everything you owned – gone.”
In the days after the fire, the Rings stayed at a series of hotels before settling in a rental home on Glidden Street in Newcastle. The homeowner, Stephen Dixon, “was more than a landlord,” the Rings said. “We will miss him and his lovely family.”
John Ring, a former builder, designed a new, single-story house and local contractor Nate Powell, a friend of the Rings, is building it. It’s approximately half the size of the two-story, four-bedroom home John Ring built in the late 1980s, and the Rings didn’t replace the two-room area over the garage Lynn called her husband’s “man’s cave.”
“It’s a little bit of all the houses I’ve ever built,” John Ring said. The couple plans to move in before the end of the month.
The Rings considered their options before starting construction, but in the end, they couldn’t leave the community they’ve grown to love.
“The people were so wonderful after the fire. The people in the area are just amazing,” Lynn Ring said. “I said to my mother, ‘I’ll never go back to Connecticut,'” the Middlebury native said.
The open house “is our way of saying ‘Thank you’ for your prayers [and] kindness,” the Rings wrote in their invitation.
Carroll and his wife, Mary Lou Carroll, Bristol Fire and Rescue, the four other volunteer fire departments (Bremen, Damariscotta, Newcastle and South Bristol) who responded to the scene, the ambulance crew, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, the Miles Memorial Hospital staff, the Red Cross and the people of New Harbor are on the long list of invitees.
“Everyone is welcome to come,” the couple said. The open house starts at 2 p.m. and will feature live entertainment and refreshments, including appetizers, beer, wine and non-alcoholic beverages. The evening will wrap up at 8 p.m.
The Ring home is at 16 Oceanside Lane in New Harbor. For directions, or for more information, call John Ring at 350-9369.