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Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) School Fire, December 1, 1958
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Personal Experiences with Our Lady of the Angels School Fire

If you have a personal experience, recollection or opinion about the December 1, 1958 Our Lady of the Angels school fire, whether you were present at the fire or not, you can relate it here. Any story or information is welcome as long as it relates to Our Lady of the Angels school fire.
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Posted by: Paul J. Sanborn On: 11/19/2008 ID: 391
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before Upper Darby, Pennsylvania
I was a Lieutenant of Safeties, seventh grade, on 1 December 1958 at St. Laurence Grade School, Highland Park, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. I was one of those seventh graders who was fifty years old at the time. Always my curse but strength too. I read about the fire in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Evening Bulletin. I read everything I could find. Another Catholic grade school. An older building similar to the one in which I attended school. So many people gone. So much tragedy. The TV also had some coverage. I had trouble sleeping for weeks and even today, in 2008, I vividly remember this event. I immediately called my safety squad together the next school day after we learned of the tragedy and drilled them on fire safety, at least at the standards of a very concerned seventh grade student safety lieutenant. I spent the next year and a half until graduation always watching and waiting for the same fate to hit us. It never did.
In the Marine Corps, and later as an educator, principal and today, director of curriculum and instruction for Devon Prep School, a small Catholic independent school west of Philadelphia, I have always stressed emergency planning and fire safety. I even live in a ranch home to stack the odds in my family's favor. One possible good thing that came of this horrible event was to sensitize many of us around the country to the dangers of fire and the need for proper zoning, building and drilling to prevent such losses of life. It just seems to be the nature of humans that Cassandra's are always seen as irritants and it takes some horror to awaken in people the need to take care.
God bless everyone who has been influenced by this fire.


Posted by: Michelle (LoPresti) Jenkins On: 11/17/2008 ID: 390
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before Ridgeway and Division: Chicago
I was attending D.R. Cameron school in kindergarten on Dec 1, 1958. My sister, Paulette, was in 3rd grade at OLA and my cousin, Nancy Pilas, was in 8th grade at OLA. I was home from school on that day and remember having lunch with my mother, when somehow, there was news of a fire in the neighborhood. It was then known to be OLA school. I was unaware of how that news came to be.
Both my mother and my aunt left the house to run to the school-both my sister and cousin were there. A friend happened to be visiting my aunt that day and I was left with him, while they ran.
I remember the phone starting to ring continuously...I also remember my sister running to the house, crying and scared. Instead of staying there, she ran back toward the school, since that was where my mother was. There was much running back and forth of adults, asking, wondering where the children were. We then knew my sister was safe-and she was then staying by a neighbor's house. We waited for word about my cousin.
The phone continued to ring, my aunt, my uncle, my mom, continued to run back and forth from the school to the house to see if she had come home.
The rest of the evening was a flurry of tears, people coming over, more tears, prayers, and no sign of my cousin Nancy.
The day ended in tragedy for our family. There were reporters, phone calls, and non-stop people visiting, questioning, paying their sorrowful respects.
My memory of that day will always be with me. My aunt and uncle kept a picture of my cousin and a vigil to her memory every day, until their deaths. They were also featured in an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry-and I will always remember that as well.
When I became a school teacher, and then a school principal for the Archdiocese of Chicago, I knew how important fire safety was, and always will.
Nancy will always be in our prayers, along with all the other victims of the OLA tragedy.


Posted by: Don Fredrick On: 11/13/2008 ID: 389
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before 854 N. Homan Avenue
My family lived at 854 N. Homan Avenue, just one house away from Iowa Street and about a mile east of Our lady of the Angels School. I was the second of four sons, and was eight years old at the time of the tragedy. Many of our neighbors were Italian and Catholic and their children attended OLA. Our family was of German ancestry and was Lutheran, so my brothers and I attended public school (D.R. Cameron, on Monticello, just north of Grand Avenue). Many of our friends, of course, attended OLA, and we knew several children who died in the fire.

My mother, Ardelle Fredrick, passed away in 2006. Among her belongings was a copy of the book, "To Sleep With the Angels." I found the book yesterday and began reading it. Inside the book was a note written by my mother. She wrote:

"Our Lady of the Angels Church School Fire 12/1/58

It was about 3 PM when I went out to the back porch to shake a dust rag. The rear of our house faced west, we lived on the 2nd floor. I saw a poof of smoke go up - the telephone rang - it was Aunt Stella. I told her I hoped it was not our church (Hope Epiphany Evangelical Lutheran Church) which also was on Iowa St. but a few blocks west of OLA.

The whole neighborhood was chaos for days. Jimmy Ragona - across the alley from us - died in the fire and lived upstairs on the corner of Trumbull and Iowa. The day before the fire, I'd found Jimmy burning matches, sitting on the pavement, against the garage directly in back of us. I immediately took him up to his mother. How could this be? Almost like a bad omen. Jimmy was their only child. They were not young. It took her a long time to get pregnant.

Johnny and Dorothy Porcaro's daughter, Joan, had been transferred from the class that was found, all dead, sitting with folded hands praying - to another room. She'd begged her father to have them put her with her old friends. He said 'no' - how right he was.

The whole neighborhood was in chaos for days and I have several other memories of that day, too."

My mother believed the story that the chidren had died at their desks, hands folded and prying, because the nuns foolishly told them simply to trust God and did little to help the students. There was perhaps only a very small kernel of truth to that, but the story nevertheless most certainly caused some of the non-Catholics in the neighborhood to be skeptical of Catholic judgment in a real world.

I was eight years old at the time of the fire. For the next 50 years I remained skeptical of religion in general. How could a God have allowed such a tragedy to occur? Even now, I attend church only for weddings and funerals. Would I have felt the same way without that tragedy? I don't know.

My paternal grandfather, Elmer Fredrick, had been a blacksmith early in the 20th century. As the years went by, he lost his four-legged "customers" and turned his iron-working skills to iron railings and fences. Many of the more elaborate railings in the OLA neighborhood were the work of my grandfather - I would recognize them even today if I saw them again. His shop was on Chicago Avenue, not far from OLA.

Elmer Fredrick grew up in Roberts, Illinois, where his grandfather (my great-great-grandfather) had a blacksmith shop. A tremendous fire in 1894 swept through Roberts and the entire main street, including the blacksmith shop, had to be rebuilt.

Decades later in Chicago, my grandfather constructed and installed the sturdy iron fence at OLA. Until he died in 1966, he always felt a sense of guilt about that fence and gate. He heard the stories about firefighters having a difficult time knocking it down to get ladders into the school courtyard, and wished he hadn't done such a good job building it. Everyone told him it wasn't his fault the gate had been locked, but no doubt those words were of little comfort.

Just a few years before the OLA tragedy was the much-publicized murder of young Bobby Peterson and the two Schuessler brothers. The Petersons were lifelong friends of my parents. That triple murder signaled a historic "loss of innocence" in Chicago in the 1950s, and the fire was, of course, an even more intense tragedy that signaled another end of innocence in Chicago in the 1950s.

My mother's maternal grandfather was a skilled stonemason who helped build Chicago's Iroquois Theatre. As a bonus for his construction work, he was given tickets to a performance. At the last minute, he and his wife (my great-grandmother) decided not to attend - on the very same day in 1903 on which the theater was destroyed by fire, killing 603 people.

At least two of my mother's ancestors witnessed the Chicago Fire of 1871, escaping the flames by taking to the Chicago River in a boat. It seems that my family has managed to escape fire tragedies over the last 150 years, despite being relatively close to them.

I am now a semi-retired writer, living in a beach town in Brasil. Despite the vast distance in both time and location, from time to time I still think of that tragic December afternoon. I can still see the smoke rising in the distance, and can still hear the sounds of the wailing sirens that were too late for 95 innocent people.

Don Fredrick
www.colony14.net


Posted by: sgate On: 11/3/2008 ID: 388
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before Chicago, Illinois south side
I remember my mother telling me that I cried and cried after hearing about the fire on the news. I was only four years old at the time, but was impacted greatly by the news stories recountuing the tragic deaths of the children and the nuns. It seems hard to believe today that such lax regulations existed or were allowed back then.


Posted by: karin On: 10/29/2008 ID: 387
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before Cleveland, Ohio
I live in CA and two years ago I met a gal that confided in me that she was in the first grade when her school had a devastating fire. She has a "story" but I suppose she does not want to share. I do not see her on this website even athough she suggested I visit. Since then I have visited often. I have read both books and I suppose I am one of the "curious." I am a Bereavement Minister at my catholic church. I grew up in a Polish community in Cleveland and was in the second grade on 12/1/58. In school we were told about the fire in Chicago and even had a special Mass. When we moved to CA in "87 my boys attended a catholic school that (this was told in the history of the school) moved to a new location because the school did not meet fire standards after a school burned in Chicago in 1958.

I cant even begin to imagine what the survivors and their families went through. I especially feel for the moms and dads that had to go on without their children. Back in 58 things were so different. Dont talk, just go on. It's all so different now. What a blessing that you have this website to vent and express. Please do not think badly of us who visit. I pray for all often and even have our prayer chain at church remember you on the 1st of each month.

My younger son moved to Chicago on 9/17 and is living in the Lincoln Park area.

God bless all of you and I pray for your continued healing.


Posted by: Mary Newell On: 10/28/2008 ID: 386
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before 4549 N. Lowell Ave., Chicago
I was a second grader at St. Edward's School on the northwest side at the time of the fire. I heard about it that night at home, but with little information except that there had been a fire at Our Lady of Angels and that there were children killed.

The next day, though, our second grade teacher, Sr. Lillian, told us a great deal more. As the days passed, she reverted to the topic over and over. She relayed news stories as well as stories passed through Chicago's convents. One of the things that she told us was that our school was built on the same plan as Our Lady of Angels. Looking at the pictures on this site, I can see that isn't accurate, but I had believed it until now. It seems like an odd thing for her to have insisted on.

While my parents were unperturbed by the fire and didn't discuss it, the nuns were consumed with it. They took their responsibilities for us very seriously.

The nuns at St. Edwards had always been safety conscious, but they became absolute fanatics about fire drills. Up until the fire, we had worn our winter coats for the occasional cold weather drills, but afterward we were reminded constantly to evacuate without picking up coats or books. The drills were timed and if we were too slow, Sr. Isabelle, the principal, would schedule another drill almost immediately. Their goal was to evacuate the entire school, 1248 students, in five minutes. We managed that feat on a pretty regular basis.

Sr. Lillian was obsessed with the classrooms that were trapped. She had various pieces of advice (stay calm; jump even if you're scared; roll down the stairs; feel the door before you try to open it, etc.) but the thing she was most constant about was the necessity of being able to say a good Act of Contrition automatically.

The remainder of my time in grade school was normal, but with an almost daily emphasis on fire safety. I remember years later, when I was in 7th grade, we were waiting for one of the parish priests to come to the classroom and hand out our report cards. Our teacher, Sr. St. Frances Cabrini, a strict disciplinarian of great good humor, glanced at the transom, turned white and ran for the door. She paused (probably feeling the door, I suppose) threw it open and looked out into the hall. We heard her say something, then she leaned back into the room, closed the door and practically collapsed against the wall. After a minute she started laughing and told us that she had seen smoke curling up over the transom and had run to the door expecting a fire. Turns out the young priest was standing outside of our room having a cigarette break. Funny story, even at the time, but the look on her face when she ran to the door is a vivid memory.

I remember there were rumors at the time that a boy who was truant that day had been hanging around the school, smoking, and had tossed the lit cigarette in through a basement window onto a pile of newspapers. I have no idea where the rumor started, but it was given great currency at the time. One of the details offered in the rumor was that the boy's name would never be published because he hadn't intended to cause the tragedy and that he would be unable to deal with public sentiment if his role were known.

The thing that I carried away from the fire at Our Lady of Angels was a sense of responsibility to ensure safety for children. One of the first things I did when moving was to lay out routes out of the house for my children and make them practice them. And always, a place to meet outside of the house and wait.

I don't know if I can convey the sense of grief that still haunts me over the fire. I have never been able to mention it or read about it without crying. Fifty years. Hard to believe.


Posted by: David On: 10/24/2008 ID: 385
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before Malden, Massachusetts
I have been a guest on this site -- visiting almost daily at some points -- since April or May 2008 and had begun to wonder why I kept coming back to the site over and over again.

The story of OLA first became known to me a number of years ago when I read about the fire in one of my uncle's firefighting magazines (he was a career firefighter). Through the years since, I kept "stumbling across" the OLA story off and on -- e.g., Readers' Digest at the doctor's office, YouTube, etc. I have read the books, watched the videos, and even downloaded the YouTube "tributes." But, I didn't quite get why I was coming back so often until reading John Kuenster's "Remembrances of Angels" the other night.

A number of those whose stories are told there spoke of the telling of the story being like "therapy." Based on my work as a bereavement counselor, my sense of therapy is that there are two parts -- the telling of the story and having the story heard.My sense of being present with you all is as one who comes to listen to your story ... and as one who listens so as to truly hear your story.

My thoughts and prayers are with those who died, those who survived, those who still suffer, and all who love them ...

May God bless you and keep you in peace,

(Rev.) David Dismas
Hospice Bereavement Associate
Chelsea, Massachusetts


Posted by: Ann On: 10/12/2008 ID: 384
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before Minnesota
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.


Posted by: Burt from Long Beach, CA On: 10/10/2008 ID: 383
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No After n/a
I actually wasn't born until almost five months after this tragedy; my only connection, very remote at that, was with a classmate in elementary school whose older brother was an acquaintance of a boy who perished in that tragic event. My classmate's family moved from Chicago in 1964, and I have only a sketchy recollection of this event from what was relayed by his brother after we experienced a much more minor fire that occurred at our local school, back in 1969. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt in that incident.I hadn't really given it any thought at all since that time, I recently inadvertently ran across an article on Google about an upcoming memorial in recognition of the 50th anniversary of this horrific event. For all the distance the modern technological age puts between mankind, there's something to be said for the wonders of the internet, and it may very well be through this same medium that we can recollect our past, and connect once with those we thought were forever forgotten to us.As I never knew any of the victims, either deceased or still alive, I think we must be ever mindful that their sacrifice wasn't in vain; the fire drills and evacuations that were part-and-parcel of our school experiences, indifferent and disdainful of them that we may have been at the time, were, in fact, the outcome of this tragedy, and it may be that many thousands of lives were saved, due to changes in the building code and the mandating of period fire drills. I know that every time I look back on my school experience, I'll reflect a moment of silence in honor of the 89 children and three nuns, whose lives were so prematurely ended on that dreadful day. As ungrateful of the mercy and goodness of our Lord that I've all too often been guilty of during my almost 50 years, I know I owe a debt of gratitude for having been given the gift of life, and the opportunities to give back for all that I've been given; an opportunity that was denied to 92 individuals undoubtedly more worthy than I.I ask of those who may have occasion to read this post, or visit this website, to consider requesting that a Mass be said for these 92 victims, as a 50th anniversary, on or about November 30th of this year, at your local parish, wherever that may be. I believe we owe to their memory, to never forget the victims of one of the worst school fires in U.S. history, and to never take for granted our own leases on life."Ave Maria, Gratia Plena . . ."Ad Majorem Gloria Dei!


Posted by: mh On: 10/4/2008 ID: 382
At OLA on 12/1/58? Born before or after 12/1/58? Where Lived on 12/1/58?
No Before Cincinnati, Ohio
I have always had, what I thought to be, a very good memory. And although I was only three years old at the time of the fire, I recall bits and pieces of my mom: sitting in front of our old Crosley television, and she was crying as the news unfolded. As I have said, I only remember bits and pieces of that day, but I did not realize that I would remember so much until so many years later...I went on to become an elementary teacher in Ohio at the age of 45. My second job was in a rural school near Columbus. When I got my first 'real' classroom in this district, I had a curtain of dread and maybe even gloom hanging over me. I did not realize what that was because I was a very happy older teacher. But my classroom was on the third floor of an older brick building, and I was always cognizant of what I would do if there were a fire. I even recall that first year telling my students that no matter what would happen, if there were a fire, I would save them- by hook or by crook. I even had the plan worked out in my head. That year- three years ago- I began thinking deeply about my mom sitting in front of that TV back in 1958 and I recalled her telling me that a nun rolled kids down a stairwell like logs- that is exactly what I told my students that I would do to them if I had to- that I would get them out.Outside of my door [then] there was a cockloft. It suddenly dawned on me one day, as I stood staring at the cockloft- that I was remembering things. I remember breaking out in a cold sweat. I told my husband- a retired police officer- about what I felt looking at the ceiling outside my room- and then it hit me: I had remembered the OLA fire. Somewhere deep inside, distant? yes! but I did recall it. And I died a little more inside, remembering all of you who went through it. I am so sorry, but do know that in my head, I have my plan all made out if I have to survive a fire. I have pushed for and I have received aluminum excape ladders for my school 'in the event'...I think of each and every one of you every day now since the light came back on in my mind, recalling the events of that day. Your names are etched forever in my heart, and there is not one single day that goes by that I do not pray for and think of you who have survived- and say a silent prayer for those of you who did not. God bless you and keep you- may His face shine upon you and comfort you in all these times when you are forced to remember. More of us pray for you than you would ever know. Love you!