It seemed very peculiar to be having a fire drill at 2:40 pm since we would have to stand outside in the freezing weather without coats, turn around and march inside to get our coats and turn around again and leave for the day. We had been wrapping up our lessons and the boys were collecting discarded papers to take down to the trash bins by the boilers. We lined up and marched out as usual for a drill. In the hallway, bigger kids were running down from the 2nd floor and we could hear kids screaming from the other side of the building. A few thick tendrils or smoke were creeping down the stairs. By the time I realized this was not a drill and a huge wave of fear descended, we were down the half flight of stairs and out the southeast doorway that had been right outside our door, 106, onto Iowa St. We were out in less than a minute. There was some pushing and shoving but basically we stuck together and performed as we had been drilled. As we ran past the gangway between the school and the rectory, I happpened to glance down the gangway and saw a bright, glaring light that I took to be the setting sun. It was decades later, in my adulthood, when I was thinking about the experience that I was stunned to realize it was: a) too early for sunset and b) I was looking north and not west. What I had so briefly seen was flames shooting out of the northeast doorway. I just couldn't comprehend it.
We were herded into the church and instructed to pray for the school and the children. Probably the Rosary. The atmosphere was confused and distracted and some kids from throughout the church were agitated and crying but it was reasonably orderly. Then a rumor, totally false, spread that the church was on fire, too. We were promptly dismissed and told to go home. As we poured out of the church and down the steps, I looked right, back towards the school and saw many adults just milling about. Maybe there were some fire hoses sprawled about, too. There wasn't anything out of order on the south side, not even much smoke because the wind was blowing to the north or northeast. I turned left and crossed Hamlin and started the 3 blocks to home. It seemed like the farther I got from school, the more my anxiety level rose. I started to cry, thinking, my school is hurting, my school is hurting. It never crossed my mind that CHILDREN were injured, that CHILDREN were dying. What does a 9 year old know about death? Even watching the TV that night, hearing the death toll rise, it didn't seem to be REALLY happening to children I knew and saw every day. One thing I did know, though, is that the rooms we so carelessly left, we would never enter again.
Walking down Iowa St. past Ridgeway and Lawndale, I don't remember seeing other people at all. The public schools should have been out by then and there always seemed to be people around in the neighborhood, but I don't remember seeing anyone except for one mother who was hurrying to school to find her own child. She stopped to comfort me and hug me and went on her way.
When I got home to our 2 flat on Monticello, I ran up the back stairs into the house, crying "Mama, Mama, the school is on fire". My mother, who had been sewing in the back bedroom looked up in horror and asked where Mary, my 2nd grade sister, was. I didn't know so she grabbed her coat and one for Mary and ran out ordering me to stay home with my toddler sister and my grandma. Whe it seemed like she had been gone so long, I asked my grandma if I could go outside to wait. She gave me permission and I walked down to the corner of Iowa and Monticello to see if I could see them coming, because you could almost see somone coming all the way from Hamlin. I looked and looked and there seemed to be no one on the streets. There may have been people coming home from work or from the schools, but I was looking so hard for my mother and sister that I don't remember. I even tried to stand on the fire hydrant to see better but I couldn't balance and look at the same time. Eventually it got too dark or too cold to wait outside anymore so I went home. Eventually my mother and my sister returned unharmed. We watched the TV all night in utter shock and disbelief along with the rest of the city and the country. So many children. So much grief.
We finished out the school year by attending Our Lady Help of Christians. This was way cool because we got prepared lunches and got to ride chartered buses every day and only had classes for a half day. The 2nd floor wasn't too high off the ground, either. But, eventually, the novelty wore off and we just wanted to be back at our school, the everyday way we used to be. Such a simple, beautiful, impossible wish.
The next year, arrangements were made for us to attend 3 local public schools, Orr, Hay and Cameron. The largest group went to Hay. Mary and I went to Cameron. Cameron was a big oldfashioned Chicago public school with high, airy rooms and tall windows that you opened from the top with a big pole. The rooms seemed very much like our old OLA rooms. They were sunny and breezy and so high up over the bungalows and 2 flats of the neighborhood that we felt that we could see about half the city from up there. Of course, if you looked down from those windows you knew it was way too high to jump from in case of another fire. So we tried to forget our unease about that.
Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, in the fall of 1960, we came back together to be a whole school again. The new Our Lady of the Angels was complete and it was the newest, safest and most modern school in the country. The halls were wide and sparkly clean and the rooms were large and sunny. Everything was new, new, new. New desks, new books, new everything. I was so proud to be there and relieved to be back with all the classes. I felt out fallen classmates were looking out for us and happy for us even as we remembered them and hoped they were with us. They were always, always with us. After 1 year, my parents bought a house in Austin and we moved away.
I felt like my heart was ripped out. Although OLA will always be remembered with unspeakable sadness, it was a great school to attend in a great, comfortable, and safe neighborhood. It is easy to forget that a large majority of children escaped unharmed. And I haven't even started on the wonderful, beautiful faces I remember and all the funny, goofy ordinary kid things we did. I loved OLA. And it was so worth loving. In spite of the grief and horror associated with OLA, in spite of all the difficult and complex emotions and memories, it was so worth loving.
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