The multicolored Gymboree in the backyard stands empty. The play area inside the picket fence is still.

And on a gray afternoon, as Cisco Nochera approaches the yellow house with the boarded-up windows and opens the door, it's the musty smell of smoke, not the laughter of children, that pours out.

"Unbelievable, isn't it?" says Nochera, a longtime teacher of special-needs children. "You never think this kind of thing is going to happen."

Nochera, 55, retired from the Anne Arundel County public school system two years ago after three decades as a "legendary" educator, in the words of a principal who supervised him. He made the move so he could plow his life savings, expertise and considerable positive energies into creating the Cisco Center, a small, nonprofit institution for developmentally disabled kids in this bungalow on Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard.

Here, Nochera and his wife, Carla, a speech and language pathologist, have been offering about 40 special-needs children per semester what parents call an almost magically supportive environment.

"It [was] such a warm, wonderful, safe place for our son to learn," says Amy Weekley of Pasadena, whose child, John, 5, has been diagnosed with PDD-COS, a form of autism. "That's rare in [the special-needs] field. You just walk in there, and you can feel that they love and cherish these guys."

But an electrical fire tore through the place last month, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of damage. The Nocheras are awaiting a payment on their claim from their insurance company. The center that was a ray of hope for many parents is hemorrhaging $6,500 a month.

Now offering a reduced menu of programs in a borrowed classroom, Nochera fears he might never be able to resuscitate his life's dream.

Stepping past half-burned children's artwork on a wall, he shines a flashlight into what used to be the kitchen, now a tangle of charred wood and melted plastic.

He stares for a moment, as if searching for an answer. "They say it started there," he says.

His dream began half a century ago, when Francis Nochera IV was growing up as the eldest son of a CIA agent based in Washington.

Nochera's father, Frank, showed his five kids a broad swath of life, including half a decade living in Port Said, Egypt. But Frank Nochera's personal values made the deepest impression.

"He always said it was our duty to look out for the less fortunate," Nochera says. "No matter how poor you are, he said, you can always help other people."

Nochera applied the idea while at Gonzaga High in Washington, a Jesuit school whose motto, "Men For Others," inspired him, he says, to do lots of volunteering in the community. It never occurred to him to apply it to special-needs kids, though, since he hadn't met any. That changed in 1970.

Eunice Shriver, sister of the late President John F. Kennedy, and her husband, R. Sargent Shriver, visited Gonzaga looking for volunteers for Camp Shriver, the Rockville summer camp for kids with disabilities that became the basis for the Special Olympics.

"This seemed different," Nochera says. He signed up, and a world opened.

Even without training, the 15-year-old had no trouble communicating with the kind of kids then called "retarded," perhaps because he saw them as people first. Even now, parents he works with say they've never heard him use the word "disability."

One day that first summer, Shriver staffers took him to visit Forest Haven Children's Center, an institution for developmentally disabled kids in Laurel that was not atypical of the day. What he saw made him sick.

They kept the low-functioning kids in the back wards, Nochera says, where they lived in a barnlike building with scant ventilation. Kids between ages 2 and 12 spent their lives in cribs. Negligent medical treatment left many deformed, staff didn't bother to remove feces and visitors never came.

"These children were treated like animals," he says, tears welling in his eyes.

By then, Eunice Shriver's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, had long since started helping publicize conditions at places like Forest Haven, which the federal government finally closed in 1991.

That movement led, in time, to the passage of Public Law 94-142 (the Right to Education Act) in 1976, which gave all "handicapped" people between ages 3 and 21 the right to an appropriate public education.

"That created a whole new field," says Nochera, who by then was far into it, making his own path.

A chanceNochera, a burly, gladhanding man, has always been a pioneer. He couldn't help that. When he first started out, the study of special-needs children was so new that he had trouble finding programs that taught it.

Eventually, he got a degree in teaching the disabled from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania.

The closest he could come to focusing on autism in kids was a master's program in severe and profound disabilites at the Johns Hopkins University.

But it was as a student-teacher that he decided his calling was in the classroom. "Mr. Cisco," as kids still call him (it's easy to pronounce), was free and easy with disabled kids, happy to act the fool to get a reaction.

He dressed as a cowboy or a Native American, a chef, Winnie the Pooh. He sat on the floor, pitched tents, perched under the table.

Otherwise shy students, many with language disorders, laughed, chattered and spoke. And improved.

Nochera "looks each child in the eye, individually, and coaxes them to respond," says Caroline Nold of Severna Park, whose son William, 5, has developmental delays. "He's educated on so many different approaches, and he seems to mix them up, using whatever works. But once, when I asked him his methodology, he just said, 'Hey, we're having fun here.' "

"Whatever I'm doing, my focus is on socialization and communication," says Nochera, who looked around his first classroom and "saw I had eight lives I could definitely change for the better." Since then, he has starred in a succession of teaching roles that might have driven less focused (or more serious) colleagues to distraction.

His first job, at 21, took him to bitterly poor Summers County, W.Va., where the Hatfields and McCoys once feuded. He was tasked with "driving up and down the [Appalachian] hollers" to round up developmentally disabled children who had never been to school.

Many parents greeted him with shotguns, he says. By the time he was finished teaching their kids that year, though, most had embraced him as an extended family member. Some remain in touch.

He later taught deaf and blind children at Rosewood in Baltimore County (three years), ECI (early childhood intervention) classes to preschoolers in Baltimore City (five years) and Anne Arundel County (22 years), and during summers ran Camp Greentop, a residential camp for kids and adults with special needs (22 years), always mixing pedagogy and fun.

The years solidified within him a few beliefs: that it's key is to "meet a child where he or she is," but to reach out and engage the family; that it's key to find and nurture a child's talents; that a multidisciplinary team approach works best, mixing the insights of a teacher, a physical therapist, a speech therapist and a nurse; and above all, that special-needs kids, like all kids, are unique individuals who thrive when acknowledged and engaged.

"He sees each child as a unique individual, and he has high expectations," says Millicent Miller of Pasadena, whose son Joey, 11, has language delays and attends the Cisco Center. "These kids rise to meet them. That's all our children want - a chance."

The paradise lostTo parents of special-needs kids, the Cisco Center was like an oasis - walls packed with pictures and kids' art, rooms bright and welcoming. "Those things make a big difference," says Heather Ferguson of Pasadena, whose son Caleb, 4, brightened when it was time to head there.

It was also an extension of the Nocheras.

Nochera retired after 14 years at Benfield Elementary, where he was a finalist for Anne Arundel County public schools' Teacher of the Year in 2004, won multiple prizes from the Arc, a national organization that advocates for the developmentally disabled, and "left a legacy that's impossible to replace," according to Principal Terri Sachetti. Nochera and Carla, the parents of three grown daughters, paid $250,000 for the house in Severna Park, moved in upstairs and commenced a renovation.

A staff of three full-time teachers and teams of volunteers have offered 10 programs for kids between ages 2 and 12, many but not all of them autistic, for fees ranging from $50 an hour to $1,145 per month. More than 60 percent of the students have some form of financial aid. The student-teacher ratio is about 3 to 1.

It was Nochera's kind of lab. "I bombard them with as much stimulus and experience as possible," he says with a laugh. He trots out a new "theme" each week, using art, colors, conversation, cooking and more to illustrate it.

It works. Amy Weekley's son John isn't just speaking; he's singing around the house. "Beyond incredible," she says. Caroline Nold, who thought her son William "would never sit in a chair for long," says he bolts to his seat in Mr. Cisco's circle time.

"Finally, we've met a man who understand our son," says Millicent Miller of Joey.

It helps that Nochera just plain gets a kick out of the kids, who he says teach as much as they learn.

He asks parents to encourage independence, including giving kids permission to choose their own clothes. It can make for interesting getups. One boy showed up with his right shoe on his left foot and vice versa.

"I said, 'You have your shoes on the wrong feet!' " Nochera says, laughing. "[He] said, 'No, Mr. Cisco, these are my feet, not anyone else's.' How can you argue?"

Among the ashesNochera was sound asleep in his family's house in Pasadena the night of Feb. 3 when the phone rang.

"We have a four-alarm blaze at 350 Baltimore Annapolis Blvd.," the fire marshal said. "We have to contact the owner."

A passing driver had seen the flames engulfing the Cisco Center. The smoke was so thick, officials had to shut down traffic. By the time Nochera arrived, the fire was out, but the damage was done.

The likely cause: a wiring problem inside the oven.

Since they'd lived on-site for a time, the Nocheras had taken out a residential policy on the place. A renter's policy would have covered the building's contents; a business one would have reimbursed lost income.

Allstate reps have made no commitment to pay any claims.

There has been plenty of help. A day care center in Millersville has provided a classroom, where he's offering many of his programs on a temporary basis. Parents shocked by the news have volunteered by the dozens, hauling ruined toys to the dump, offering contracting services, driving friends to fundraisers.

Many have replaced supplies on the school's list of needs, now posted on its Web site. Still on it: everything from a $60 child rocker to a $9,000 sprinkler system. Total value: about $120,000.

As Nochera shows a visitor around, pointing out water-damaged walls, melted clocks and orange markers left by the fire marshal, he looks tired, but he never complains. It's possible the center will never open again, he says, but with luck it could be up and running by this summer.

After all, the kids need it, and they deal with harder stuff than this every day. "And look how well they do," he says. "They just need a little help."