It was 3:12 a.m. when nine-year-old Glenn Kreamer awoke to the smell of burning. Except for the crackling  of flames somewhere below there was not a sound in the two-storey house at Baldwin, Long Island. With his father away on night duty at a local factory, Glenn was worried about the safety of his mother, his sister Karen, 14 and his 12-year-old brother Todd. He ran downstairs through the smoke-filled house to push and pull at Karen and Todd until they sat up. Then he helped each one through the house to the safety of the garden. There, his sister and brother, taking short and quick breaths and coughing, collapsed on the lawn.     The nine-year-old raced back into the house and upstairs to his mother's room. He found it impossible to wake her up. Mrs. Kreamer, a victim of the smoke, was unconscious, and there was nobody to help Glenn carry her to the garden. But the boy remained calm and , as a fireman said later, "acted with all the self-control of a trained adult."    On the bedroom telephone, luckily still working, Glenn called his father and, leaving Mr. Kreamer to telephone the fire brigade and ambulance service, got on with the task of saving his mother.    First he filled a bucket with water from the bathroom and threw water over his mother and her bed. Then, with a wet cloth around his head he went back to the garden.    He could hear the fire engine coming up, but how would the firemen find his mother in the smoke-filled house where flames had almost swallowed up the ground floor? Grasping firmly a ball of string  from the garage, Glenn raced back into the house and dashed upstairs to his mother's room. Tying one end of the string to her hand, he ran back, laying out the string as he went, through the hall and back out into the garden. Minutes later he was telling fire chief John Coughlan: "The string will lead you to my mother." Mrs. Kreamer was carried to safety as the flames were breaking through her bedroom floor. Who called the fire brigade and ambulance service?
Glenn. Glenn's father. Glenn's sister. Glenn's neighbor.