HOUSTON (AP) -- Famed oil well firefighter Paul N. ``Red'' Adair was remembered Tuesday as ``a common man who did extraordinary things.''
``Red is truly one of a kind,'' longtime friend and Houston television anchorman Dave Ward said at Adair's funeral service. ``He took on jobs that were hard to accomplish and heavy with risks and he succeeded. His firefighting career is legendary.''
Adair died Saturday of natural causes at a Houston hospital. He was 89.
More than 350 people, many wearing red - Adair's favorite color - crowded the funeral home chapel where Adair's mahogany casket was covered with red roses.
His red firefighting jumpsuit and silver helmet were hung nearby, not far from a fire extinguisher with the words: ``Liberated from Iraq Fire Station 69.''
``He loved the color red,'' Ward said. ``He had red hair. Red coveralls. He had red cars and he had red boats. The only red thing he didn't like was red tape, and he blasted his way through a whole lot of that.''
Adair, who earned the nickname ``Hellfighter,'' is credited with battling more than 2,000 land and offshore oil well fires before retiring in 1994. His death-defying feats included battling the 1988 explosion of the Piper Alpha platform that killed 167 men in the stormy North Sea, 120 miles off the coast of Scotland.
``In his dangerous line of work, his attention to detail paid off,'' Ward said. ``He never lost a man.''
Former President George H.W. Bush, who did not attend the funeral but was listed as an honorary pallbearer, called Adair a true hero, ``a friend, a wonderful human being and a patriot.''
``He will be sorely missed,'' Bush said in a statement.
Adair's teams were among the first of 27 teams from 16 countries that spent eight months capping 732 Kuwaiti wells after the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
His expertise helped shorten an operation that had been expected to last three to five years, saving millions of barrels of oil and stopping an intercontinental air pollution disaster.
Jay Ewend, who befriended Adair more than two decades ago, said the call beckoning Adair to Kuwait came while he sat in a hotel bar with friends watching the Kuwaiti oil fields go up in flames.
Ewend said the phone rang and a waitress came to get Adair, telling him the president was on the phone.
``President of what company?'' Ewend recalled Adair asking.
``He is still sitting there. He is glued to his chair,'' Ewend said. ``The waitress looks at us and she says, 'Red, they say it is the president of the United States of America.'''
Adair took the call, and three days later was headed to Kuwait.
He revolutionized the science of snuffing and controlling wells spewing high-pressure jets of oil and gas, using explosives, water cannons, bulldozers, drilling mud and concrete.
Adair was the first to cap an underwater well and the first to cap a floating vessel. He led the industry in developing modern equipment and firefighting techniques, including the semi-submersible firefighting vessel.
His prowess inspired the title of the 1968 John Wayne movie based on his life, ``The Hellfighters.''
Adair's career began in 1938 at an Oklahoma oilfield where he was working as a roughneck for 30 cents an hour. Years later, Adair recalled a time when a valve apparently blew and everybody ran - except him.
``I stayed up there and put the valve back on and almost got fired,'' he said.
Instead, he attracted the attention of Myron Kinley, then the dean of oil well firefighting. When Kinley retired in 1959, Adair started the Red Adair Co. Inc.
Three years later, Adair capped the ``Devil's Cigarette Lighter'' in the Sahara desert in 1962. The blowout shot flames so high that former astronaut John Glenn said he could see the blaze from his space capsule.
On his 76th birthday, Adair was working in Kuwait, attired in his trademark red overalls and swinging valves into place atop out-of-control wells.
Ward described Adair as honorable, loyal, truthful, stubborn, brave, likable, lovable and generous. A smile came to many mourners as Adair's casket left the chapel to George Strait's song, ``The Fireman.''
``Red truly made a difference in all of our lives. And I am sure he'll make a big difference in heaven,'' Ward said. ``God may have a special job for him now. To put out the devil's fires of hell.
``After all, Red already put out his cigarette lighter.''
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