By Jane Prendergast
Enquirer staff writer

Jackie Worley (right) gets a comforting hug from Briggs Place neighbor Marlene Brokaw outside of Worley's home Thursday. An early morning fire there killed Shirley Baker and critically injured Hobert Worley. The Enquirer/ERNEST COLEMAN

OAKLEY - Twice, fire has ripped through the life of Hobert Worley.

A dozen years ago, he lost the love of his life - his wife, Violet - in a blaze. And Thursday, the 87-year-old was critically burned by a fire that killed his daughter, Shirley Baker, 60.

Worley was nearly out of the burning house on Briggs Place when he went back inside. When firefighters rescued him minutes later, he had changed into clothes from his pajama bottoms and T-shirt, and had put some money in his pocket.

Hobert Worley's daughter-in-law, Jackie Worley, lived with him and his daughter. A nurse, she helped care for them both. She was asleep upstairs when she smelled the smoke and heard the smoke detectors.

She saw the couch and Baker on fire, turned off the oxygen tank Baker used for her emphysema and tried to put out the flames with water and a blanket. Then she grabbed the blue recliner Baker was sitting in and dragged it out the front door. That's when the front window blew out.

"I was yelling, "Come on, Dad! Come on - we have to get out!'' Jackie Worley said Thursday afternoon, standing in front of the burned house. "And he was just in there, yelling for help.''

By daybreak, the fire had brought more bad news: Doctors at University Hospital told them Hobert Worley might not make it.

The cause of the 1 a.m. fire, which did $40,000 damage, was still being investigated Thursday. Worley remained in critical condition Thursday night.

Baker's family said that despite her lung condition, she still smoked unfiltered Pall Malls. They had just talked Wednesday about how smoking could kill her and that she and her niece Gaylene Dinkel - Jackie Worley's daughter - should quit.

"She said, 'I'm too old to quit,''' Dinkel said.

"And she said, 'You gotta go somehow.'''

Baker, a mother of four and grandmother, stocked shelves for years at bigg's in Columbia Township, they said, before she had to quit because of ulcers that required part of her stomach to be removed.

The family talked as they waited outside the house for their insurance representative.

Workers arrived to board up the burned house. They talked about how they hoped Hobert Worley would get to come home to a fixed-up house and die someday in the future of natural causes.

Dinkel put her arm around her mother.

"You tried,'' she said, whispering in her ear.

"You tried, Mom.''

Crying, her mother said, "I know. I know I did.''

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com