WWTBAM Bored

A horrendous tragedy occurred in Chicago. Our Lady of Angels fire. 92 children and 3 nuns died in the blaze. I was 7 at the time and came home to hear a noise that I had never heard before and have never heard since. I have since read in literature of "keening", but experienced it first hand that day. My landlady's nephew was in the fire. He stood at the window and was afraid to jump from the 2nd story. Crowds pushed past him to jump and the people in the crowd below never saw his face again. Her screams through the night made me shudder and still raise goosebumps.

Some kids burned while sitting at their desks with their hands folded because the nun told them to sit and pray.

My whole life has been colored by this incident. I always look for fire exits and am scrupulous about looking for secondary exits as well.

The entire city was shattered by this fire and some have never healed.

please take a moment for silent prayer for the victims, the survivors and their families on this sad anniversary.

thank you.

For those like me who have never heard of this and are curious here is a link http://www.olafire.com/FireSummary.asp

This is so sad.

Sorry, I meant to put the link to the website that lists the details. There were stories today in the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald that followed up with with survivors, next of kin that are equally heart-wrenching.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi- ... 6256.story

When I was in first grade (1962), at the conclusion of the first fire drill of our school year, our teacher told our class how important it was for us to follow her instructions the next time we heard the fire alarm sound. She then told us of a horrible fire where kids were burned to death at their desks because they could not get out of the school building in time. Now, the whole concept of death of any kind was foreign to most of us kids at that age; nevertheless, there was something in what she said that made the story stick in my mind for a long time.

Over the years, though, the story made less and less sense - why in God's name would kids be sitting at their desks in a fire? And given that I never heard of the story again after that day in first grade, I eventually attributed it to a well-intentioned white lie on the part of Sister Barbara.

Now I know.

lilyvonschtupp26 wrote:please take a moment for silent prayer for the victims, the survivors and their families on this sad anniversary.

thank you.

Done.

I heard about the fire at the time, but over the years, it had been pushed to a deep crevice in my brain. Your post brought the memory bubbling back to the surface. I felt very sad for those children. In particular, I can remember looking out of a second-floor classroom with classmates to decide if we would be brave enough to jump out, if it ever became necessary. One of my friends kept saying she couldn't do it. I thought the worst that would happen might be a broken leg. I argued that broken legs could get fixed, but being burned couldn't. I may have been bluffing, but fortunately I never had to put my own bravado to the test.