Posted by: |
Carol |
On: |
6/4/2014 |
ID: |
641 |
At OLA on 12/1/58? |
Born before or after 12/1/58? |
Where Lived on 12/1/58? |
No |
After |
n/a |
I read about the fire in the Catholic Digest, and I never forgot it to this day. I was in parochial school at the time. Our classrooms, also, were wall-to-wall desks. One wing of our school still had wooden flooring. This website brings back to me so vividly those years.
In those days, private schools often got the kind of "grandfathering" leniency about codes that became such a tragedy for Our Lady of the Angels. As I look back, I think that there was less worry and fewer precautions taken about dangers like fire. I wonder if it was because the threat of nuclear war loomed so large that other disasters seemed small by comparison. Or possibly, when news was not accessible 24/7, it was less easy to imagine a disaster happening to you. In any case, a thing like a locked exit door would not have seemed the outrageous stupidity it would be today.
Elsewhere on this website it is noted that no emotional counseling was offered the victims and their families. This seems incredibly callous to us today, but oldsters like me remember that such counseling didn't exist then; we should understand that it was not something readily available and callously withheld.
About 10 years ago, a young firefighter told me that the fire at Our Lady of the Angels is one that she and her colleagues studied. I am glad it has not been forgotten. I am glad that we reverence the memory of all who suffered, and that the tragedy is part of building knowledge and skills to benefit those who were unborn when it happened.
|
|