Posted by: |
Tony |
On: |
2/14/2013 |
ID: |
613 |
At OLA on 12/1/58? |
Born before or after 12/1/58? |
Where Lived on 12/1/58? |
No |
Before |
Detroit, Michigan |
In December of 1958, I was a third grade student at a Catholic elementary school in Detroit. Our school, built in 1954, did not have modern fireproof construction ("Modern" meaning 2013), but it was brick, firebrick and steel construction, interior too. There were also "pull" type fire alarms all over the building, and fire extinguishers all over the place, at adult chest level. It did not have a sprinkler system, and the steel and brick stairwells did not have fireproof doors - perhaps the most critical fire safety concern. But it was fully up to code when built in the Detroit of 1954. After thoroughly reading this site, I do now remember the principal coming to every room to talk to us the next day about all those children who died in a Catholic school fire in Chicago, and having us pray for them. I had a lay teacher that year, but had our homeroom teacher been a nun, I am sure we would have been told about it much more, and more often (our lay teacher tried at all cost to avoid upsetting the children). By third grade, I was also an avid daily reader of the Detroit News, and I do also remember reading about the fire there, but "Chicago" was far away to an eight-year-old in Detroit, and with the other major events that happened in our own city that fall, such as the crash of a British jet bomber on the East Side of Detroit in late October, and the death of Francis Cardinal Mooney at the same time (a beloved Detroit icon), the OLA fire was quickly forgotten. I am actually grateful to this site for reminding me of a horrible tragedy that never should have happened in the first place. Eternal rest to those 92 innocent children and the three nuns. The most lasting and haunting memory I will carry away from this superbly well done site? The faces of those 95 kids (I was a career elementary teacher, so I feel the pain more than most would), and the conviction that a cruel, sadistic genius could not have designed a more perfect firetrap than OLA was on December 1, 1958.
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