Today’s Badly-Burned Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Fires are not supposed to happen, but when they do and people die, they can affect an entire community, especially if children are involved. Never was this more apparent than on December 1, 1958, when Chicago and the nation experienced one of the most heartbreaking tragedies in history. On that day a fire enveloped the half-century-old Our Lady of the Angels parochial school on Chicago’s west side, leaving 92 students and three nuns dead.
Avers Avenue in front of the north wing of Our Lady of the Angels school where 95 died on December 1, 1958.
To examine the school fire is to revisit a story filled with startling inconsistencies and shattering grief, a tale of ordinary people caught up in a mind-numbing disaster, the effects of which would still be felt decades later. Not only did this fire shock the world and tear apart a close-knit community, it left lingering questions that turned the event into a mystery that has deepened with each passing year.
What is known is that in the fall of 1958, classroom space at Our Lady of the Angels was strained to capacity, a dangerous situation present in hundreds of American elementary schools, public and private. Some 1,400 students, 20 nuns, and nine lay teachers occupied its 24 classrooms where, in some, up to 60 children were jammed together. The 2 1/2-story brick school building on the corner of Avers Avenue and Iowa Street was the hub of a thriving Roman Catholic parish in a well-kept, predominantly Italian neighborhood. The U-shaped school consisted of a north and south wing connected by an annex. The south wing was built in 1903, and the north wing, which had originally been designed as a combination church-school, was built in 1910. In 1939, after a new church was built next door, the school’s north wing was converted entirely into classrooms, and a chapel was built in its basement.
December 1, 1958, promised to be a cold but clear day in Chicago. For pupils at Our Lady of the Angels, it was the first day of class since school had let out the week before for Thanksgiving. The day passed without fanfare and everything seemed normal. At 2 P.M. the students settled down for their final hour of lessons, eagerly awaiting the three o’clock bell that would signal their dismissal. But lurking nearby was a hidden fire burning in the basement stairwell of the school’s north wing. Exactly when it started was never fixed to the precise minute, but the date of its occurrence will never be forgotten. Because the school lacked an adequate fire detection system, several minutes would pass before anyone discovered the blaze.
Two boys returning to their second-floor classroom after emptying wastebaskets thought they smelled something burning. When they reached their room in the building’s annex, they informed their teacher, who stepped into the hallway to find smoke gathering at ceiling level. After conferring with a neighboring teacher, she ran down to the principal’s office in the school’s south wing to seek direction. (A standing rule prohibited anyone from sounding the school’s fire alarm without first notifying the mother superior.) After learning the principal was substituting in another classroom downstairs, the teacher hastened back to her own classroom, where the smoke in the hallway had thickened. Rather than wait for an alarm, she and the neighboring teacher promptly evacuated their children down a stairway to a set of exit doors in the south wing. After marching their pupils into the church next door, the first teacher ran back to the school and pulled the fire alarm while the other teacher took off for the convent across the street to use the telephone. The fire alarm started ringing in the school at 2:42 P.M., the same time the first telephone call reporting the fire was received by the fire department. For the 329 students and teachers in the north wing’s second floor classrooms, the signal came too late. Flames and smoke had already traveled up the rear stairway and entered the long corridor, cutting off escape.
Firefighters bring victims down from blazing classrooms in the alley north of the school.
The unsuspecting occupants were first alerted to the fire not by the alarm but by a series of events that began with an ominous rising heat inside the building and the sound of doors rattling. In Room 208, next to the burning stairway, children giggled when someone suggested “it must be ghosts.” But the laughter stopped when a boy got up from his desk and opened the back door. “There’s smoke in the hallway!” he exclaimed. Waiting for the first alarm, Sister Mary St. Canice instructed her 46 seventh graders to stay seated and calm. “We mustn’t panic,” she told them. “Get down on your knees and pray. The firemen will come.” The nun meant well. But he instructions were quickly abandoned by the will to survive. When glass transoms over the doors shattered, smoke and fire spilled into the room across the combustible ceiling tile, plunging it into superheated darkness. Chased by flames, the children rushed to the windows and began screaming “the school’s on fire!” Seconds later the youngsters started jumping out the windows, bouncing off the pavement 25 feet below. Some broke bones and limped or crawled away. Others remained silent and still. Those unable to escape the room fell to the floor where they died. As the fire advanced further through the corridor, the same harrowing scene was repeated in each of the remaining five classrooms.
The body of a young girl is carried down a ladder from Room 212 when the fire is nearly extinguished.
As terror unfolded inside, those outside became aware of the fire. At around 2:30 P.M., janitor Jim Raymond had been walking between the narrow gangway separating the back of the school and parish rectory when he saw smoke and a red glow coming from one of the school’s frosted basement window panes. Raymond ran into the rectory to get help. “The school’s on fire!” he yelled to the housekeeper Nora Maloney. “Call the fire department, quick!” Raymond then disappeared back in the school, inside of which were four of his own children. Maloney’s actions at this point remain unclear because her call, the first report to the fire department, wasn’t received until 2:42 P.M. Meanwhile, after reentering the school basement, Raymond attempted to douse the flames himself. But the fire was too big for him to handle alone, so he ran up a set of stairs to the second floor where he was met by one of the parish priests. Together they helped evacuate a classroom next to the building’s only fire escape. In the next few minutes, the janitor made several more trips before passing out.
Another victim is removed down a ladder.
About the same time Raymond discovered the fire, traveling salesman Elmer Barkhaus was driving south of Avers Avenue when he too saw smoke coming from the school’s northeast doorway that led to the basement and faced the alley directly north of the school. Barkhaus pulled his car over and, after finding no fire alarm box on the corner, ran into a small candy store next door to telephone. The store’s owner, a Polish immigrant named Barbara Glowacki, was leery of strangers, so when the excited Barkhaus barged up to her front counter, she said she had “no public phone.”
“The school next door is on fire,” Barkhaus yelled before running out the door to ring doorbells on neighboring homes. Glowacki went into the alley to investigate the stranger’s report. She saw smoke and a wisp of flame shooting from the transom above the school’s rear stairwell door. Fear shot through he body; her daughter Helena’s classroom was on the first floor. She hurried back to the store and called the fire department. After being told that “help is on the way,” Glowacki returned to the alley. This time she saw frantic students and nuns leaning out the upper windows. They were shrouded in black smoke that pushed from behind them. “Help us,” they screamed. “We’re trapped.” But before Glowacki could react, the first of dozens of students began jumping the 25 feet to the icy pavement.
Firemen carefully retrieve the body of a young girl from room 212 before the fire is completely extinguished.
Sirens began to fill the neighborhood and harried parents and neighbors ran into the alley carrying painting ladders that fell far short of the window ledges. When Engine 85 pulled up, its crew saw smoke and flames surging in from the school’s upper window ledges and children dropping from the sills, many with their clothing and hair aflame. The fire was soon elevated to five alarms, bringing 60 fire companies and ambulances to the scene. Desperate as the situation was, in the decisive early moments of their arrival, firefighters still managed to save 160 children by pulling them out windows, passing them down ladders, catching them in life nets, or otherwise breaking their falls before they hit the ground. One rescuer who climbed a ladder to Room 211 was Lieutenant Charles Kamin of Hook-and-Ladder 35. When he reached the window, scores of 8th graders were bunched together trying to squeeze out. The fireman reached in and began grabbing the children one at a time, swinging them around his back and dropping them to the ladder. He didn’t have time to worry if they missed. A broken bone from falling was better than dying. Kamin rescued about nine children, mostly boys because he could grab them by their belts. He was stopped when the room exploded in fire and the remaining pupils at the window fell back in the flames beyond his reach.
Joseph Maffiola was ostensibly the first victim removed from the school after the fire was out and it became clear that no more survivors would be found. The ten-year-old was found, along with 25 classmates, in room 212. He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Cook County Hospital. His teacher, Sister Therese Champagne, was among the fatalities in his classroom.
It took fire crews a little more than an hour to put out the fire. But when they entered the second-story classrooms in the north wing, their discoveries were grim. Flames had consumed everything in their path. In Room 212, 27 5th graders and the nun were dead, most asphyxiated by smoke. Next door, in Room 210, the nun and 29 4th graders were burned to death. At the end of the corridor, amid the debris from the partially collapsed roof, the badly-burned bodies of nine 7th graders were discovered huddled next to their nun near the front of Room 208. Across the hallway, in Rooms 209 and 211, another 27 8th graders lay dead.
Firefighters carry a body to an awaiting police squadron for the trip to the county morgue.
For the hundreds of parents and relatives standing in stunned silence outside the school, the huge loss of life became apparent. As weary firefighters emerged from the ruined building carrying cloth-covered stretchers, a long line of ambulances and police squadrons crept slowly past to collect the bodies. For many parents the plight was made worse by not knowing if their child was dead or alive. Although many did locate their youngsters in the streets outside the school or in neighboring homes, others were left to search among the seven hospitals that had received the injured. For some parents, the search would not end until they reached the county morgue. By night’s end, 90 bodies had been counted, 87 students and 3 nuns.
Chicago, a city tempered by past tragedies, was stunned by the appalling loss. In addition to the dead, another 100 people were injured, including students, school staff, firefighters, and civilians. Two families had each lost two children. Among the injured, some had fractured skulls, broken bones, smoke-damaged lungs, and terrible burns. Five more children died in the coming months, bringing the final death toll to 55 girls, 37 boys and 3 nuns.
John Jajkowski, a ten-year-old in Sister Theresa Champagne’s fifth grade class in room 212, was found dead under a window near the back of room 212. Firefighter Richard Scheidt carried the boy’s smudged but unburned body from the school, along with 19 other children. As Scheidt stepped from the side door of the north wing on the alley side of the school with John in his arms, photographer Steve Lasker of the Chicago American newspaper snapped this heartbreaking photograph. It became the defining image of the tragedy and appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. This photo, perhaps more than any other, conveys a sense of the unmeasurable sorrow caused by the OLA fire.
As the destroyed school still smoldered questions arose: How did the fire start? How was it able to spread so fast? Why did it go unnoticed for up to 20 minutes? And why did so many perish?
Accusing fingers pointed in all directions. The church’s pastor received death threats. Angry parents charged the fire department with slow response. Fire officials blamed school personnel for a delay in turning in an alarm. Candy store owner Barbara Glowacki was criticized for not letting Elmer Barkhaus use her telephone. The janitor was accused of poor housekeeping. The Archdiocese of Chicago was blamed for overcrowding. As newswires reported the disaster around the globe, the Pope sent personal condolences to the parish and its families, while the Soviet Union criticized the United States for spending too much money on weapons systems and less on safety devices for schools.
Faces of grief – Robert McNeilly (center) carries an unconscious girl from the school, with the assistance of Sister Adrienne Corolan and an unidentified man. Robert was among those who helped with rescue efforts before the fire department arrived. (Photo courtesy of Bob McNeilly and Robert Denstedt)
Investigators sifted the ruins to piece together the fire’s rapid progression: sometime after 2 p.m., the blaze broke out in a ringed, 30-gallon cardboard trash drum located at the bottom of the school’s northeast stairwell. After consuming refuse in the container, the fire at first simmered from a lack of oxygen and smoldered undetected, elevating temperatures in the confined stairwell space. When intense heat shattered a window at the bottom of the stairwell, a fresh supply of oxygen was sucked into the area, causing the fire in the waste drum to flash up. The flames quickly spread to the unprotected wooden and asphalt-tile staircase, feeding off varnished woodwork and walls coasted with 14 layers of paint, the top two layers composed of an extremely flammable rubberized-plastic paint that produced heavy black smoke.
Fire-charred main corridor on the school’s second floor. Note the collapsed roof.
Because the building had no sprinkler system, the stairwell quickly turned into a chimney as flames, smoke, and gases billowed up from the basement. A closed fire door on the first floor stopped the blaze from entering the first-floor corridor. But there was no door on the second floor, allowing the fire to continue up the stairway and sweep into the 85-foot-long corridor leading to the second-floor classrooms. Once inside the corridor the fire fed on combustible wooden flooring, walls, and trim, as well as the ceiling, which was also coated in the flammable rubberized-plastic paint, thus filling the corridor with deadly columns of penetrating black smoke. While the fire made its way up the stairwell, hot air and gases in the basement had entered a shaft in the basement wall and ascended two stories inside the wall. This hot air fanned out into the shallow cockloft above the second-floor ceiling, sparking serious secondary burning in the hidden area directly above the six north-wing classrooms packed with 323 students and 6 teachers. These flames also dropped into the second-floor corridor from two ventilator grilles in the ceiling.
Some survivors reported that after classroom doors had been opened and quickly closed, they heard a loud whoosh, thought to have come from an explosion that accompanied the ignition of volatile fire gases that had built up in the corridor. When intense heat from the fire began breaking large glass transoms over classroom doors, smoke and flames entered the rooms, spread across flammable ceiling tile, and forced the occupants to the windows. This was the situation in the school’s north wing when the first firefighters arrived at 2:44 p.m. As they concentrated fist on rescue, the fire on the upper story of the north wing grew steadily worse and eventually burned off one-third of the roof before being brought under control.
This is looking southeast across room 211, toward the windows overlooking the courtyard. While the roof did not collapse in this room, as it did in rooms 208 and 209, the death toll was nevertheless very high, largely due to the sheer number of students (nearly 60) jammed into the room. (Life Magazine Photo)
Though investigators were able to pinpoint the start of the fire, its cause eluded them. A check of the heating and electrical systems revealed no problems. And no evidence suggested the fire was fed by an accelerant. Several pupils were known to sneak cigarettes in the stairwell, but no solid evidence pointe to a discarded smoke as a possible cause. The only other possibility was arson.
The week after the fire, a blue-ribbon coroner’s jury heard testimony from firefighters, church officials, students, teachers, and parents. The inquest revealed some disturbing facts: Our Lady of the Angels School, like many other school buildings at that time, had no sprinkler system or smoke detectors, and its fire alarm rang only in the building, it did not transmit a signal to the fire department. The nearest street fire alarm box was two blocks away. All but one of the school’s staircases were open, without fire doors, and the building had just one fire escape. Window ledges were 37 inches from the floor—too high, it was learned, for some children to climb onto. Consequently, many of the dead had been found stacked beneath the windowsills. Finally, with an enrollment of approximately 1,400 students, the school was severely overcrowded.
Larry Walter, 13, peers from beneath bandages intended to protect massive open burn wounds and ward off infection. Hospitals that normally handled a few burn patients a week suddenly had dozens in one day. Nearly 100 children were hospitalized with injuries ranging from cuts and sprains to severe burns, broken bones and fractured skulls.
Nevertheless, the school had passed its most recent fire inspection the previous October. Chicago’s municipal code at the time did not apply to pre-ordinance buildings built before 1949. Instead, a 1905 law that lacked such modern safety requirements as sprinkler systems, automatic fire alarms, and enclosed stairways covered Our Lady of the Angels. It was later determined that a sprinkler system for the school would have cost about $8 per parent—the same price as one football helmet used by the school’s 8th grade football team.
Despite all its hoopla, the coroner’s jury failed to find the fire’s cause and did little more than issue 22 non-binding recommendations for providing schools in the city with more extensive fire protection. After fading from the public consciousness, in January 1962, the school fire once again became front-page news when police in suburban Cicero, Illinois, questioned a 13-year-old boy about a series of fires he had set in the western suburb. When the police learned that the boy had been a troubled 5th grader at Our Lady of the Angels at the time of the fire, they pressed him for more information. His mother and stepfather hired an attorney, who recommended that the boy submit to a lie detector test.
In his interview with the boy, Chicago polygraph expert John Reid learned that the youth’s firesetting tendencies stretched back to the age of five, when he first set fire to a garage. Reid learned the youth had set up to 11 fires in apartment buildings in Chicago and Cicero, mostly by tossing matches onto papers placed at the bottom of stairways. At first, the boy denied that he had set the Our Lady of the Angels fire, but the test results suggested he was lying. In a Family Court hearing in February 1962, Reid described how he leaned over to the boy and said to him, “There are 92 children and three nuns sitting in heaven who want the truth.”
Susan Smaldone, a 9-year-old from room 210, lies critically burned in the hospital the day after the fire. Her injuries were very severe and she died in the hospital on December 22, 1958 from kidney failure.
The boy, Reid testified, then “became evasive, turning his eyes from side to side, and then told me how he started the Our Lady of the Angels fire.” The boy admitted to Reid that he started the fire in the hopes that any damage would be just enough to allow for a couple of extra days off from school. The boy also told Reid he had set the fire because he hated his teachers and his principal, who, he said, “always wanted to expel me from school.” The boy’s attendance record at the school was poor, and his behavior was listed as “deplorable.” His teachers, a report shows, said he was a “troublemaker”.
In his eight-page confession, the boy described how he started the fire in the basement after going to the washroom. “I looked around and I didn’t see anybody. I threw three matches in the can and then I ran up the stairs to my room.” The boy also filled in a pencil sketch of the basement, pinpointing exactly where the fire was started. He said he waited at the trash barrel for “a few minutes” after setting the fire and watched the flames “get bigger and bigger.” He then returned to his room on the second floor and was evacuated with his class.
When Reid asked why he had never before told anyone about setting fire to the school, the boy replied, “I was afraid my dad was going to give me a beating and I’d get in trouble with the police and I’d get the electric chair or something.” Reid turned the confession over to authorities, and the boy was placed in the Audy Juvenile Home. Chicago police pursued a juvenile petition charging him in the school fire, but after series of closed-door Family Court hearings that ended in March 1962, Judge Alfred Cilella threw out the boy’s confession, ruling that Reid had obtained it improperly. Moreover, because the boy was under 13 at the time of the fire, the judge said he could not be tried for a felony in Illinois. Nevertheless, the judge found the youth delinquent for starting the Cicero fires, and he sent him away to a home for troubled boys in Michigan.
Despite the judge’s ruling, the boy’s description of how, where, and when the fire was started, details that only the fire setter would have known, corroborated much information compiled by investigators that, up to 1962, had been previously unreleased. Also telling are the similarities in the way the fires started in the apartment buildings and school, blazes that began in papers in a stairwell, further supporting the claims of Reid and other investigators who remained convinced that the boy was being truthful in his confession.
The day after: unbelieving crowds flock to view the school.
Culled from: Great Chicago Fires
More photos can be viewed at the wonderful OLAFire website.
The ruins of the school were demolished in 1959 and another school, built to modern safety standards, replaced it. This is what the site looks like today.
