CHICAGO REMEMBERS ONE OF ITS BIGEST FIRE TRAGEDIES – 50 Years Later!
CHICAGO REMEMBERS ONE OF ITS BIGEST FIRE TRAGEDIES – 50 Years Later!
OUR LADY OF THE ANGELS SCHOOL FIRE KILLED 92 STUDENTS 3 NUNS – DECEMBER 1 1958!
The tragic fire in the Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago didn’t have to happen. Or it could have happened again and again at dozens of other older schools across the country in the 1950’s.
In the end one of the worst school fires in U.S. history is remembered today along with its young victims.
One was a ten-year-old fifth-grade boy – John Jajkowski. He lived with his family in the surrounding West Humboldt Park Neighborhood of Chicago.
(Chicago Tribune Archives Photo)
I never would have had a connection to John and his family until many years later when I attended Maine East High School with his younger brother Steve in the mid-1970’s.
In 2005 Steve asked me if our Team and I would help sell her mother’s Chicago Suburban condo. While meeting with Mrs. Jajkowski at her dining room table in April 2005 I noticed an oversized blow-up of a young boy in a white shirt and tie hanging on her dining room wall the large size seeming odd.
Only after I left our meeting that day did I realize the connection. I knew the boy in the wall-mounted blow-up was the same young boy pictured in the December 15 1958 issue of Life Magazine lifeless in the arms of Chicago Firefighter Robert Scheidt.
According to accounts by the Chicago Fire Department the fire started in the basement of the old north wing of the school on the 900 Block of North Avers Avenue on the Northwest Side of Chicago. It spread up an adjoining stairwell before engulfing a nearly-unprotected second floor of the school in thick black smoke heat and flames.
In 1958 roughly 1600 students in grades Kindergarten through Eight attended Our Lady of The Angels. The school had passed a routine fire inspection from the City of Chicago just a couple of weeks before but the circa-1910 old wing of the school was grandfathered in its fire safety requirements.
On December 1 1958 there was no fire door on the second floor where the fatalities occurred. No nearby fire alarm sprinklers or fire extinguishers. The on-street fire alarm at first did not work and the arrival of firefighters delayed until the fire was a massive five-alarm blaze.
There was no easy means of escape from the fire-engulfed school. Many of those children who did survive that day jumped from high second-story windows many suffering extensive burns and broken ankles and legs but they lived.
Fire-friendly materials may have accelerated the fast-spreading fire. The roof was heavy and layered. Asbestos tile then legal hung in the drop ceiling. The floors had coat after coat of flammable wax and varnish. Children’s winter coats hung from coat hooks in the hallways instead of in metal lockers.
There are many stories of that tragic day. One involved a nine year old boy standing at a second floor classroom window with the heat and smoke at his back. In his hand was a small Catholic religious statue that he he had won by answering a quiz question earlier that day.
Despite his father’s urging from the street below the boy was too scared to jump into his dad’s waiting arms was brushed back by other older children trying to escape. He was later identified in the Cook County Morgue with a crumbled homework assignment in his pants pocket.
The cause of the fire was never conclusively determined and blame was never pinned. However four years after the fire in 1962 one ten year old boy then a fifth-grade student at Our Lady of the Angels first confessed then recanted to setting the fire in a waste basket after being excused to the restroom about 2PM that afternoon. He was never prosecuted and has since passed away.
The surrounding West Humboldt Park and Austin Neighborhoods never seemed the same after the fire. Although the school was rebuilt in 1960 surviving as a Catholic School until 1999 and currently the Galapagos Charter School many neighboring families moved away.
Today a predominantly Italian and Polish Neighborhood of the late-1950’s is overwhelmingly African American. The church has closed.
The migration might be best attributed to fear and "white flight" that was pervasive in parts of the West Side of Chicago during the 1950’s and 1960’s rather than the school tragedy. But one would assume during the course of going about their daily lives few living nearby today would remember the history of the school without prompting.
The tragic Our Lady of the Angels fire here in Chicago prompted lightning-fast fire code reform all over the world. Thousands of older schools were retrofitted with fire sprinklers more extinguishers easy means of escape and direct fire department access within one year of the tragedy.
In most locales "grandfathering" was eliminated in favor of bringing all schools up to the latest fire code. These more stringent fire codes appear to be the one positive outcome from the devastating fire.
But the tragedy lingers in the minds of long-time Chicago Residents especially of course those who were personally touched by the fire.
Extensive coverage was provided over the weekend in Rex W. Huppke’s story in The Chicago Tribune. Wikipedia.com also provides a detailed history. Photos and drawings in each story. Also read the book To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire by David Cowan and John Kuenster (Ivan R. Dee Chicago 1996).
DEAN MOSS & DEAN’S TEAM CHICAGO
