When Linda Fisher, of Cranston, hugged the lead singer of Great White, she says "he was shaking like a leaf."

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 28, 2003

BY JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer

ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- She found him 277 miles from Rhode Island, in a barroom between a bus terminal and a homeless shelter.

She recognized the strings of beads in his hair and the trademark bandanna on his head. It's what Jack Russell wears for shows. It's what he wore last night and it's the kind of thing he wore seven months ago, the night his band Great White set off the pyrotechnics that sparked the Rhode Island nightclub fire.

She wore a shirt that showed off her burns.

I want him to see me, she said.

Jack Russell came into her life through cassettes in the days when she wore purple eye shadow and feathered hair and lived in her first apartment overlooking Route 10 in Providence.

He sang about "humming and strumming all over God's world" and not wanting to face the day.

Times were getting hard, little girl, he sang, and sometimes, the heater doesn't work. He sang about real life; she lived it.

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl LINDA FISHER, scarred from The Station fire, went to Allentown, Pa., to look Jack Russell in the eye. She ended up getting a hug and spending 5 minutes or so with the lead singer of Great White - the band whose pyrotechnics set off the fire.

In her 20s, she left a man that she still loved, packing up her cats and her U-haul and driving from Florida back home to Rhode Island. Her boyfriend followed her, with the marriage proposal she had wanted.

She worked her way up to assistant manager at a toy store at the Warwick Mall, unloading the freight trucks herself so she could tell her customers what she had in stock. By the time she was 34, she was married with a mortgage and a daughter, whom she taught to be polite and take care of her room.

She still had her Great White cassettes, and she went to the band's show in Rhode Island a few years ago and brought things to be autographed. She heard the band's songs and she thought about her first apartment and the friends she knew then.

And when she heard from her friends at The Station that Great White was coming back to Rhode Island, she agreed to sell band CDs and T-shirts. Her pay was to be $40, two T-shirts and free admission.

HER HUSBAND Kevin Fisher, a 36-year-old electrician, knew she was going to be all right when he showed up at The Station, maybe 20 minutes after the fire. She was surrounded by people lying on floor, but she was standing even though she was badly burned.

Even in the hospital, a seven-week stay, Linda talked about being of use in life. She told Kevin to go home and finish the work he had been doing on the porch and kitchen.

He wasn't surprised when she announced to him that she was going to go see Jack Russell at his Allentown show, the closest concert to Rhode Island on Russell's tour to raise money for victims of the fire.

He still owes me $40 and two T-shirts, she told her husband. He owes me a good time.

Yet, there was more to it.

Most of the survivors Fisher knew had forgiven the band. Afterall, the band has raised $30,000 for the Station Family Fund, according to Jody King, whose brother Tracy King died in the fire.

Fisher did not entirely blame the band either. Everyone, from fire officials to the club owners who tacked up flammable soundproofing foam, was to blame. But the reverence toward the band was coming back too easily, she thought.

And she did not believe that Jack Russell had seen anyone yet who was burned, people who need "someone to help you shower, fix your hair, go to the bathroom."

"He needs to see the reality," she said.

She needed to show him.

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl FISHER drove to Allentown with her friend Val Long. She did not believe that Jack Russell had seen anyone yet who was burned. "He needs to see the reality," she said.

She had seen the other burn survivors, quiet and depressed and hurt. She could never picture them facing Jack Russell. She could.

SHE LEFT Rhode Island Saturday riding in her friend Val's boyfriend's truck.

They passed through heavy rain, down the highway and through the towns that once made their living off of steel and coal. Val Long chain-smoked Marlboros, while Fisher sang along to the '80s tapes, including Great White.

They found The Sterling Hotel, a bar, in Allentown's old industrial area. It is a sprawling storefront next to a shelter with the Ten Commandments in the window. The Sterling advertises the longest bar east of the Mississippi, and a lineup rich with blasts from the past. Vanilla Ice played there three weeks ago.

Inside, it was dim, a perpetual dusk. It smelled vaguely of corn dogs. There were three rooms, the concert room being the size of a warehouse. Amplifiers squealed and yellow and blue splashed across the walls in sound and lighting checks. Stagehands had been working in there for hours, even polishing the drums on stage with Lemon Pledge.

Fisher wore black sweat pants and a short-sleeved black T-shirt that on the front, said, "The Station, we will never forget." On the back, it continued, "how quickly life can turn around in an instant."

She wore teal nail polish, which went with a new teal shirt she intended to wear to the concert. But she had stopped by the bar first to try to catch Jack Russell before the show.

It started to seem like it wasn't going to happen when the singer did not show up for his 5:30 p.m. sound check. Her friend Val was a nervous wreck, smoking and drinking coffee and pacing; she wore sweat pants with the words "whatever" on the backside. Fisher suggested that maybe they should just go to the hotel. No, Long told her, you are not leaving here until you see him.

It almost 6 p.m. when Fisher peaked her head into the "The Rock Room" and saw Jack Russell. "Jack's here. Jack's here," she said.

She and Long walked into "The Rock Room," and watched Russell from a distance until Long hissed at her friend, "Go, Go now. Go!"

So they walked slowly up to the 40sh rocker, surrounded by people.

"Excuse me, Jack, my name is Vallerie," Long began, "and this is my friend Linda; she is a survivor in The Station fire."

Fisher thought she saw Jack Russell tear up. She knows that when he hugged her, "he was shaking like a leaf."

He told her, "There are no words I can say to you, no words."

God bless you, he told her. Thank you for being here. I know how hard this must be. Not a day goes by that I don't think about this.

And then, he and Fisher and Long went into a quiet patio area, where they talked. They talked about how fast the bar had gone up in flames. At first, he told her, he didn't think the fire was a big deal. Neither did she.

She told him how she had tried to save the T-shirts and CDs that she had been selling that night. How she had ducked down, hoping for sprinklers that never went on because there were none. She told him about her skin grafts and she lifted up the pant leg of her jeans to show him the bruises from her donor site. She told him about the elastic pressure garments she must wear to prevent scarring.

Fisher thought, she said later, that he seemed genuine, and looked her in the eye. She felt like something in her had been settled. Not because their conversation was deep. It wasn't. They were still strangers, linked by only music and fire.

She told him she had met him once before when he played at The Station in 2001 and she remembered that he had hung around after the show because something was wrong with his bus. He turned to another band member, who had wandered out, and said, "I could never remember what gig that was. Remember the night the bright guy punched the windshield out in the bus. That was The Station."

Val Long told Russell that Fisher loved the song "Save Your Love." Could he call her up on stage when he sang it. He said he would, and then, he left, saying he needed to figure out his set.

"I'll call you up . . . cool."

He signed an autograph, "To Linda, all my love. You rule," and then Jack Russell went back into the main bar where his fans were gathering. One man had brought his Great White albums and his white Gibson guitar to be signed. When this fan saw Fisher, he told her, "I will pray for you."

Great White's sound check was underway. They were playing the song, "Down on my Knees."

And Linda Fisher went back to her hotel to get ready for the concert.