Walter Bailey isn't sure why more than 1,000 people believed a busboy on that night nearly 20 years ago.
"It was like God gave me this power," he said.
Mr. Bailey was the 18-year-old who interrupted comedians on stage at the overcrowded Beverly Hills Supper Club to warn patrons the building was on fire.
The May 28, 1977, blaze at the popular Southgate nightspot claimed 165 lives.
"When I was a kid, I thought: 'I did what I had to do.' Now that I look back on it, I say, 'Gee, I did too many things that were right,' " said Mr. Bailey, 38, a Texas stockbroker who is writing a book about the fire.
Before he interrupted comics Teter and McDonald on the Cabaret Room stage and calmly told patrons to leave, Mr. Bailey had cleared the Main Bar near the lobby, told a Cabaret Room manager about the fire, and led about 75 people to safety from a hall outside the Cabaret Room.
When he raced back to the Cabaret Room, he was shocked to see 1,360 people - more than double the normal capacity of 614 - still seated watching the comedy team.
"The damn show was still going! Nothing was happening," he recalled.
"I thought: 'I've got to do something. I've got to clear this room. I'm going to get fired, but it doesn't matter. I've got to get these people out now in case this fire gets out of hand.' "
A haunted hero
His letter from President Jimmy Carter, a national Salvation Army award, newspaper clippings and thank-you letters from survivors are in a box at his home. Haunted by memories, he has declined to speak in detail about that night.
Co-workers at the Dallas-Fort Worth office of Charles Schwab & Co. know nothing about his role in the fire. He moved to Flower Mound, Texas, in 1993, when he married a Schwab training officer. He and his wife, Decho, have a 2-month-old daughter, Anna Jane.
"It (the fire) really did a number on me. After the fire, I took a shower to get all that smoke off me, and as the water hit my head, I could hear the voices of people calling out for help. It was intense. "I just couldn't deal with the fact that I had cleared the room, but yet people died. . . . All this was on my shoulders. I thought, 'Gee, what could I have done differently and save people?' "
As the 20th anniversary approached, Mr. Bailey started writing a book - for himself and for Anna Jane.
"It's been therapeutic," he said. "I don't know if I have enough for a book or not, but my children and their children will be curious someday about: 'What did Dad or Grandpa do?' "
Here's what he did:
About 9 p.m., a waitress told him there was a fire in the Zebra Room, a banquet room near the entrance. He saw trickles of smoke "like from a puff of a cigarette."
The Campbell County High School graduate ran to the nearby Main Bar and asked everyone to leave. They did.
Then he sprinted down a long hall to tell a manager of the Cabaret Room.
When the manager went inside the Cabaret Room, apparently to unlock or unblock exits, Mr. Bailey led about 75 people lined up to see singer John Davidson out to the club's rear garden.
"To my amazement, this line just starts filing out, following me. I mean, how many people waiting to see a show are going to follow some busboy out to the garden area? But they did - single file - right out of the building."
A warning from the stage
He knew it wouldn't be as easy to empty the Cabaret Room. Aisles were crammed with additional tables and chairs. Exits led to a maze of hallways, not directly outside.
When he walked on stage at 9:08 p.m., one of the comics handed him the microphone. He pointed out the exits and asked people to leave calmly because there was a fire.
From there, he wormed his way down a hall to three exterior doors, one of which he said was locked.
Then he went back past the Cabaret Room, where he could see a man open the Zebra Room doors. Boom! The oxygen fueled the fire, spewing a wall of thick smoke.
"The panic was so intense that I shot out of that (rear) door like shooting out a fire hydrant," he said.
In the rear garden area, he helped firefighters, employees and patrons help people escape. Then he noticed people stumbling out of the northeast Cabaret Room exit.
"There were piles of people just reaching out, and I was grabbing them, yanking them, trying to pull them out," he said. He feared "somebody would grab me, and hang on to me, and I'd be stuck in there. If you took two or three breaths of that smoke, it would burn your lungs."
'That's Walter!'
After midnight, a friend drove him to his Alexandria home. He was surprised to see lights on.
"When I walked in the door, my mother screamed and grabbed me and started crying," he said.
"She was watching television, and they said there was a busboy who got up on the stage, made an announcement, cleared out the room and saved people. And she had said, 'That's Walter! That sounds like him!'
"Somehow she figured I was that busboy."
