Paul Avery, the veteran actor who spent more than a decade tending a fictional bar on "All My Children" and appeared in the original 1978 "Superman" film, died alongside his wife Sheila after a fire tore through their Blairstown, New Jersey, home just before 1 a.m. Tuesday. He was also a Vietnam veteran and the founder of a community newspaper. She was his partner through all of it. Firefighters pulled both from the burning house, performed CPR, and lost them anyway.
The cause of the fire is reportedly under investigation. No agency has been publicly named as leading the probe, and no preliminary cause has been disclosed.
Their daughter, Kyle Avery, announced the deaths in a Facebook post that cut through the noise of social media with the kind of plainspoken grief most people can only hope to muster in such a moment.
"I'm devastated to share that our parents, Paul and Sheila Garry Avery, passed away early this morning. We loved them so much, and they loved us so much, and nobody ever had to wonder if that was so."
That last line, "nobody ever had to wonder", says more about the Averys than any résumé ever could.
Paul Avery was not a household name in the way that phrase usually gets deployed. He didn't headline blockbusters or collect magazine covers. But he built a career and a life that most people would envy for its sheer range. He served in Vietnam. He acted on daytime television for years. He jumped out of airplanes. And when he settled into small-town New Jersey, he started a newspaper.
On "All My Children," the long-running ABC soap opera, Avery played Hughie, the bartender at a dive called Foxy's. He held the role through the 1980s and beyond, more than a decade behind that fictional bar, as the New York Post reported. Before that, he landed an uncredited part in the original "Superman" movie in 1978, playing a TV cameraman. It was a small role in a massive film, but it placed him inside one of the most iconic productions in American cinema history.
Those credits alone would make for a solid obituary. But Avery wasn't content to be defined by a single chapter.
He founded the Ridge View Echo, a community newspaper serving Blairstown and the surrounding towns. Joe Phalon, a friend who works at the paper, spoke to WFMZ about what Avery meant to the area.
"I always like to call Paul the most interesting man in the world, because he was when you consider everything he's done in his life. Acting, skydiving, Vietnam veteran, started a newspaper."
That description, actor, skydiver, combat veteran, newspaperman, reads like the biography of four different people. Avery packed it into one.
Blairstown is a small township in Warren County, the kind of place where one person's energy can hold together more than outsiders realize. Avery was that person. Phalon made the point directly when he spoke about what comes next.
"His death is going to leave a real void in this community. Not just Blairstown, but the towns around as well. I think we'll really miss him, and I think it's going to become more apparent over time."
That warning, "more apparent over time", is the mark of a man whose contributions were woven into the daily fabric of a place rather than stamped on a single monument. The newspaper he built, the relationships he maintained, the institutional memory he carried as a longtime resident and veteran, all of it now has to be shouldered by someone else, or it doesn't get carried at all.
The tragedy is compounded by the loss of Sheila Avery, identified in her daughter's tribute as Sheila Garry Avery. The couple died together. Firefighters arrived just before 1 a.m. and found both unconscious inside the home. Both were in critical condition when pulled from the structure. CPR could not save either of them.
The deaths are a reminder of how fast fire moves and how little time it leaves. A recent house fire in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, killed a reporter and three young children, underscoring the lethal speed of residential fires even in communities with professional emergency response.
Several basic questions remain open. No fire department or emergency agency has been publicly identified as the responding unit. The cause of the blaze has not been disclosed. Investigators have not said whether anyone else was present in or near the home at the time. The timeline, "just before 1 a.m. Tuesday", has not been anchored to a specific calendar date in public reporting so far.
Those gaps matter. House fires that kill occupants often trigger arson investigations as a matter of protocol, and the community will want answers. But for now, the investigation is in its early stages, and the family is left with grief rather than explanations.
The sudden loss of a public figure always draws attention, but the loss of someone embedded in a local community hits differently. The recent death of another well-known figure at just 36 left fans heartbroken, a reminder that these losses ripple far beyond the immediate family.
Hollywood credits tell you where someone worked. They don't tell you who someone was. Paul Avery's credits, "All My Children," "Superman", placed him inside two of the most recognizable entertainment properties of the late twentieth century. But his life after the cameras stopped rolling may have been the more impressive act.
He served his country in Vietnam. He came home and built a career in front of the camera. Then he moved to a small New Jersey town and built something else entirely, a newspaper, a reputation, a community presence that friends describe in terms usually reserved for people who've held office or run major institutions.
Sheila Avery's own story is less detailed in public accounts, but her daughter's tribute makes clear she was no footnote. "We loved them so much, and they loved us so much." The plural matters. This was a partnership, and the community lost both halves of it in a single night.
The fire took two people who, by every available account, spent their lives building things, a family, a career, a newspaper, a community. The investigation will eventually produce a cause. It won't produce a replacement.
Some lives are too full to summarize and too rooted to replace. Blairstown just lost one of those, and the town knows it.
