Fire raged around him as firefighter Jimmy Flynn clawed his way to the third floor.
"You could hear the fire and I had the tank on and I was crawling," Flynn said.
He came face to face with a pregnant woman trapped in the blaze and trying to find her way out.
"It wasn't pretty. ... I dragged her down the stairs. We got her out and she survived," said Flynn, adding the woman later gave birth to a healthy baby.
That award-winning rescue from a Chestnut Street home in 1989 was just one of the memories Flynn — now a lieutenant — recalled Thursday, his last day after 35 years on the Lawrence Fire Department.
Flynn turned 65 on June 17, making him the oldest firefighter in the state at this time.
Capt. Eric Zahn, the fire union president, described Flynn as "100 percent legend."