I was six years old at the time of the fire. My brother, 9 years older than I am, was a student at Gage Park High School. I don't think I really understood what had happened but I know that it had a big impact on him. A bigger impact on me came after the fire and it's seems so unimportant now as the true impact of the horror of that day is clearer to me as an adult years later. My Mother passed away several weeks after my birth. She had been in poor health for most of life, had been stricken with polio as well as a heart problem. My birth was too much for her to come back from. When she was stricken with polio, one of the agencies that provided assistance to her family during those years, gave her a doll. She was 'too old' to play with it, she thought, so she saved it. She was saving it to give to the daughter she would have someday. The doll remained, high up on a closet shelf, wrapped in paper and rags. Sometimes I would beg and beg until someone hauled it down so I could peek at it but I was thought to be to young to be given it. At some point in the year after the fire, I went to the closet and noticed that there was only an empty space where the doll should have been. I must have immediately created a fuss because everyone was looking for the doll. Later, when my brother returned home, he admitted that he had taken the doll when his school was collecting toys for the survivors of the Our Lady of the Angels fire and donated it. For most of my adult life, I found myself purchasing dolls that I 'had' to have and then never getting much enjoyment from them. I always needed a different one or another one. It finally, after many years, occurred to me that I was probably looking for the one doll I couldn't remember and would never have. I truly hope that my brother's gift brought pleasure to some young survivor of the fire. I worry because the doll was probably percieved as 'old' at the time but I hope it was kept and that my Mother's treasure lives on although she did not. My heart breaks when I read the stories of the fire and to all of the survivors and the families of those that perished, you are in my prayers.
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