I have been following the OLA website for four or five years, not because I was a student at the school, but because the tragedy has been such a compelling point in my memory. I was born and raised in Minnesota, and moved to Colorado following my marriage. One day in the late 1970's my husband and I were sitting on the front porch of our neighbors' house, just talking and the conversation got around to the topic of our families. My neighbor, Steve Biscan, mentioned that he had lost a younger brother, named David, in a fire at his school in the 1950's. Steve remembered his parents going from hospital to hospital that evening looking for David, without success. Without hesitating, I asked him if it was the Our Lady of the Angels School fire on December 1, 1958. I'm sure the look of shock on my face matched the look of shock on my neighbor's face. I have never been to Chicago, or Illinois for that matter, and had no idea of where the memory of the fire, especially the school name and exact date, came from. Later I had a flash of memory of seeing the front page of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper sitting on the breakfast table the morning of Tuesday, December 2, 1958, with a picture of the school building on fire. I was 8 years old at the time and the building looked exactly like the one I had attended the year before. It terrified me, and apparently emblazoned an image in my brain. During the ensuing years after the conversation with my neighbor, I have read both "The Fire That Will Not Die" as well as "To Sleep With the Angels" and eventually discovered the web site. As the 50th anniversary of the tragedy approaches, I hope everyone will stop and say a prayer for those people that were involved in the fire. I know I will, with a special prayer for David Biscan, a little boy I never knew but somehow feel a strong connection to.
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