I'm a physician in Southern California and have no personal connection to Chicago or OLA parish. However, in an odd way, I've known about the tragedy nearly my entire life.
I was only two years old at the time of the fire, and began public school Kindergarten in San Diego in 1961. I attended an elementary school, the original wing of which was founded in 1915. In the late 1930s, as the surrounding area switched from rural/farm to residential, a U-shaped addition was added to make the school into a rectangle, with a courtyard in the middle. The original 1915 wing has since been torn down, in accordance with state law (did not meet earthquake safety codes laid down in 1935), but the rest of the school, built in 1938, still stands. The school was almost all single story, except for one wing where the grade level was higher on one side than the other (due to San Diego's steep hills). One side of this wing was one-story, while on the other side it was two stories (and there were first-floor classrooms below on one side). All stairs were OUTSIDE, partly because of San Diego's mild climate and partly because they didn't want any interior stairwells.
The Kindergarten was housed in two conjoined classrooms with their own large fenced-in playground. The school was built between two hills, so that the street in front of the Kindergarten complex sloped steeply down to meet in a low point about 15 feet below the level of the playground. As a result, there was a 15 foot retaining wall topped by a high fence to keep the kids safe. The only exit was a gate on one end that led out to the street (where the street was level with the playground). I remember our Kindergarten teacher (who was, if I may say, a real witch!) explaining that our school in San Diego was one of the first to be built with fire alarms (that rang in the fire department) and with sprinklers. The walls were concrete, the floors composite, and there was little wood used in construction. [So apparently by the late 1930s, they knew how to build a relatively fire-proof school]
The first time we ever practiced a fire drill, she explained that this was no laughing matter, because nearly 100 children in a Catholic school in Chicago had died only a few years back. We also had a fireman come to the class to talk about fire safety. He brought a poster showing a Chicago fireman carrying the lifeless body of a boy [whom I now know was John Jajkowski] as an example of how important fire safety was. Also, there was a girl in our class named Antoinette whose family had moved to San Diego from Chicago the previous year, and she seemed to know a little about the OLA fire as well (from her older siblings), though I don't think they lived in the OLA parish area.
No one explained to us that the Chicago school was unsafe, and the implication was that they had not adequately rehearsed fire drills at the school [after reading this site and the book "To Sleep With The Angels", I know that this is not true, and the 1915 wing of my school, where I attended 5th and 6th grades, was just as dangerous, though only one story high]. I used to have nightmares about that poster. We lived in a two-story home and my parents bought a chain ladder for each bedroom, and we were taught how to use them in case of fire.
During my Kindergarten year, several modifications were made to the rooms, which must have been a reaction to the OLA fire. The rooms opened to a hallway on one side (rear) and to the exterior in the front (again, because of our mild climate) on the other side. Both doors were refitted with push bars instead of knobs, as was a third door leading to a storage room for play equipment; the storage room's door to the outside was also retrofitted. In addition, a second gate was cut on the other side of the playground fence leading to one of two playing fields for the older kids. Finally, a third gate was cut at the highest point of the retaining wall, a steel ladder was attached to the retaining wall, and each of the Kindergarten teachers had a key to the padlock for this gate. Due to liability issues, we never practiced descending the ladder, but we did practice lining up and walking to the gate and pretending to take our turns going down the ladder. We rehearsed different scenarios, such as a fire in the storage room, a fire in the front of the room (go out via the rear door to the hallway while led to an exit door), or fire in the hallway (go out via the front exterior door). I never understood at the time why fire safety was stressed to this degree, but now I know why: the OLA fire catalyzed a nationwide push toward better school safety.
Fast forwarding to the present, I have a patient (whom we'll call Gena--last name left out for privacy) who is a Chicago native and who moved to California in the 1960s. Recently, during an office visit, we discussed the recent (a day or two before the visit) tragic nightclub fire in Rhode Island. She knew I'd attended college there (Brown Univ.) and asked if I knew where the club was, etc. I said I'd never been there, but did know some of the physicians treating the survivors at Rhode Island Hospital. At that point, she mentioned that she had witnessed a similar tragedy: the Our Lady of the Angels fire in 1958. Her husband's nephew George Canella died in the fire, and she could recite the exact date (12/1/58) from memory, without pausing to think. She was returning from work and saw the smoke and hurried to the school, since she had relatives who were students. She recalls seeing a nun lead a group of students out of the building and then go back inside to bring out a second group; since I have now read the book, perhaps this was Sr. Andrienne Carolan.
The weird thing was that I had very vague memories of a terrible school fire in Chicago (which is why they were so strict about fire safety drills in my Kindergarten) and now, forty years later, one of my patients fills in all the details on a personal level. What a small world. I then did an internet search and discovered this site, and also learned about the book (which I have now bought and read). Today we have grief counselling and professionals to help children through tragedies, but back then it must have been awful for people to have lost loved ones and have no one with whom to discuss their feelings. I have to salute the people who survived and who carried on in the face of their losses, it's really remarkable.
passatdoc@cox.net
|