90 Die In School Fire

CHICAGO, Dec 1 - (UPI)- Fire and murderous black smoke mushroomed through an old Roman Catholic parochial school Monday, trapping and killing children at their desks or as they fled through corridors.

Ninety persons, 87 of them children, were killed.

As the night wore on, it was feared the final death toll in the holocaust which swept through the Our Lady of the Angels School might reach 100.

Dr. James Seagraves, staff physician of St. Anne's Hospital where 35 of the 96 injured children were taken, said four to six of the youngsters were not expected to last the night.

Many of the children's bodies had been broken when they jumped from second story windows, he said. The flesh of others had been seared to the bone.

The Cook County Morgue, a scene of tragedy and pandemonium where hysterical parents thronged to seek out their young, said it had received the bodies of three nuns, 53 little girls and 34 boys.

Federal, city and county investigations were ordered into the blaze which caught 1300 of the school's 1700 students in a building with only one fire escape just a half hour before classes would have been dismissed for the day.

Coroner Walter McCarron said a "blue ribbon jury" would be impaneled Tuesday to investigate the causes of one of the worst disasters in Chicago history.

Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn ordered an investigation to determine whether the fire was set by an arsonist. The FBI said in Washington it was working in "close liaison" with the investigation. Meanwhile, a search was ordered for a man reported by a grocery owner to have been loitering about the school.

Police and firemen also investigated reports that a 30-gallon steel drum was found at the base of the stairwell where the fire broke out. Authorities said Monday night they could not confirm the report.

The school building, once used as a church, had portions which were more than 40 years old. Although it had a large English-style basement, it was classed as a 2-story building and fire officials said it lawfully required only the one fire escape. Quinn said the building had been inspected by fire inspectors only a week ago and its fire precautions had been approved.

At the height of the fire, children died at their desks, children jumped screaming from the windows, a nun rolled children down the stairs and a father begged in vain for his little boy to jump into his arms.

In the aftermath, searchlights played across the fire-blackened school. Hysterical parents crowded the street corners, begged doctors in hospital emergency rooms for news of their children, and then went in ashen-faced fear to the morgue basement and to a police station where headquarters were set up for identification of the dead.

Toll Mounts

The death count jumped rapidly. Firemen found 24 children at their desks in one room, their school books open before them. It was presumed that their teacher, knowing escape was impossible through the smoke-filled corridor, had told the children to await rescue.

They obeyed and died, apparently when smoke overcame them or when the fire's heat exhausted the oxygen in the room.

A father, Max Stachura, stood outside the burning building, begging his little boy, Mark, 9, to jump into his arms.

Children were falling all about the father and he caught or stopped the fall of 12 of them. But little Mark was too frightened or he didn't understand his father. Mark didn't jump and he was among the missing and feared dead Monday night.

Another father, Daniel Grimaldi, was luckier, he dashed into the building searching for his children. Students grabbed at his hand and he led them downstairs. Still searching for his children, Grimaldi opened a classroom door, but had to slam it in the face of a blast of furnace-like heat. Later his two youngsters were found safe.

Bundles Checked

For the others, the waiting and the anguish continued into the night.

The basement of the morgue had the atmosphere of delirium as doctors, policemen and attendants shouted to each other. Fathers were brought downstairs in groups of seven to look at the small covered bundles.

One, John Jakowski(sic) Sr., screamed "Oh, my God., my boy, my God, my boy." He had just lifted a sheet and seen the face of his son, John Jr., 10. The father's legs buckled under and he fell.

Through the basement ran a monotonous chant as attendants lifted the sheets. "This is a boy," they would say, or "this is a girl." Catholic priests moved among the bodies giving the last rites of their church.

The first sign of the fire had been black smoke seeping beneath the school doors. Then the ringing of the school's fire alarm and calm orders from the nuns to proceed out of the building in accordance with fire-drill techniques.

But when the school doors opened on the second floor of the building's northeast and southwest corners, black, suffocating smoke rolled in.

Children Jump

The luckier children piled into the corridor helter-skelter. There were screams as youngsters went down in the crush. The bolder children ordered their companions to grab old of each other's skirts. A nun made it by crawling through the smoke with students hanging onto her skirt.

For others, there was no escape.

Scores of more children turned to the windows for salvation.

They stood on the second-floor window sills and one of them, 12-year-old Tommy Raymond, recalled later, "All I could think of was how I would look dead."

The children began jumping. Neighbors and firemen tried to catch them as they fell, but many lay on the pavement with broken legs. Some of the plummeting children had hair and clothing afire. At least one of those who tried to catch the children, 74-year-old Ed Klock, was a heart patient. He suffered a stoke and was taken to a hospital. Other children, more agile or more lucky, slid down drain pipes or hopped to lower roofs and then to the ground. At the school doors, children poured out-hatless, coatless, panic written on their faces.

Hours after the holocaust, authorities were seeking to determine whether there were adequate precautions at the school. An investigation showed there was only one fire escape - a wrought iron ladder at the rear of the building.

All available fire equipment and medical aid was rushed to the West Side, middle-class area. The fire continued for three hours before it was officially struck.

Floor Blackened

The scene of the disaster was a U-shaped building consisting of wings and additions dating back more than 40 years. Once a church, the building was remodeled into a school when a new church was erected. School authorities said that every summer the school was remodeled and reconditioned. Quinn said the fire broke out in the lower part of the school's rear stairwell in the northwest(sic) corner of the building. The flames and smoke swept up the stairwell and mushroomed out.

At the end, the school's second floor was completely blackened. Except for a wall in the middle, observers could look through it from one end to the others. Ladders straddled the building on three sides and hoses and safety nets littered the ground, along with discarded children's school books and clothing.

The extent of the tragedy was revealed when firemen entered the building and began bringing out the bodies in cloth sacks and blanket-covered stretchers. There were constant calls from shattered upper windows for "more stretchers - more blankets."

More than 5,000 persons ringed the building so thickly that the steady stream of ambulances had trouble getting through. Many of the watchers were hysterical mothers and fathers. Hardened policemen and ambulance workers wept openly.

Two of the watchers were the new archbishop of Chicago, the Rev. Albert George Meyer, and Mayor Richard J. Daley. The archbishop helped shifts of priests administer extreme unction to the dead. The mayor entered the school while it was still on fire. Then the spiritual and civic leaders of Chicago met and talked together, gray-faced, in the street.

A nun teaching seventh grade, who would not give her name, said smoke forced her back when she tried to lead her children from the room.

"The children began to cry" she said. "I told them to get down on their knees and to crawl through the door one after another. I crawled out first and the first ones held on to my skirt.

"But they were afraid to get down on their knees and to crawl down the stairs. I carried down six and went back for more. A couple wouldn't go down and I rolled them down the stairs. I rolled them down even when they screamed.

"Finally I told all of the children who were left to go back in the room and stand by the window. We closed the door and prayed."

Another nun said "I could see children standing there and crying and banging on the windows. I couldn't do a thing to help them." The nun wept. Max Stachura, who lives across an alley from the school, had two children inside. He dashed in and led 12 children to safety. But one of his own children was among the missing.

At the hospitals and morgue, parents fought for news of their children. Case-hardened police wept as they brought in new bodies.

Last Rites

A mother dashed up to United Press International Reporter Pat Craig at St. Anne's Hospital and sobbed, "Tell me this - he's not dead."

"Who?" Craig asked.

"My little boy," the mother screamed. Then she grabbed a nurse and repeated the entreaty.

A husband walked out of the Emergency Hospital morgue and his wife screamed and fainted when she saw his face. He had just identified their daughter, 8-year-old Margaret Chambers.

The new archbishop of Chicago, the Rev. Albert G. Meyer, came to the morgue to administer the last rites to the child victims. Chicago's Mayor, Richard J. Daley, entered the school while it was still blazing and remained to stare stony-faced at the scene.

Although the fire was reported out three hours after it began, the parade of dead continued.

74 Hurt, Blast Traps Scores

CHICAGO, Dec 1 - The death toll of the fire at Our Lady of the Angels parochial grammar school was fixed at 75 by Msgr. William McManus, superintendent of Catholic schools. He rushed to the scene from his office in the Loop.

Twenty-five children and one nun were reported killed in a flash fire that swept Our Lady of the Angels grammar school at 3808 Iowa st.

At least 74 children were burned or injured. The fire followed a mysterious explosion.

Firemen said the blast shook the school and other buildings in the block.

The blast and fire occurred at 2:42 p.m., a short time before school closing time.

The school has two stories and a basement - all used for classes.

The principal, Sister Mary St. Florence, was unaccounted for.

First of the dead to be identified were Sister Mary Clare Therese, teacher of the fifth grade in Room 212, and Margaret Kucan, 8, a pupil. The child is believed to live in the 3800 block of Chicago avenue.

The fire broke out on the second floor of the school.

Ambulances sped the burned and injured to hospitals all around the area.

Four children reportedly died after being taken to St. Anne's Hospital. In all, 40 children were admitted there.

The flash fire trapped many of the children.

JUMP FROM WINDOWS

Some were said to have jumped from the second-floor windows.

Other children were led out safely.

Fire Commissioner Quinn said firemen spotted the unconscious forms of children on the second floor.

It was not known immediately whether these children were dead or overcome.

Fifteen children were taken to Franklin Boulevard Hospital. There were 10 at Walther Memorial Hospital. Garfield Park Hospital took in nine children.

15 BODIES IN MORGUE

Bodies of 15 victims were taken to the County Morgue.

Frantic parents converged on the school and the hospitals as soon as they learned of the disaster.

Firemen and spectators had to quiet many of them.

Father Gorman, Fire Department chaplain, said 25 to 30 pupils were carried out of the burning building on stretchers.

A 5-11 alarm brought fire apparatus to the scene from all sections of the city.

The neighborhood of the Catholic Parochial school is heavily populated.

The fire sent up clouds of black smoke which blanketed the neighborhood. Smoke could be seen a mile away.

Gary Wassinger, 7, a pupil, said he saw smoke seeping under his classroom door on the second floor at 2:30 p.m.

This was shortly before classes were to be dismissed.

EYEWITNESS STORY

Gary said:

"About 10 second later, the fire gong rang. We all heard the bell and we know this was for real.

"Our nun opened the door and everybody ran out. A couple of boys fell while we were running out and I think they broke their legs.

"My buddy, Michael Giacomino - he's 13 - was in the class room with me. He said he heard a lot of kids screaming and crying and yelling for their brothers and sisters."

DALEY AT SCENE

Father Gorman said the children carried out on stretchers appeared to be dead "or near dead."

Learning of the magnitude of the disaster, Mayor Daley sped to the school.

He joined Commissioner Quinn at the scene.

Some residents of the neighborhood, as well as children who got out unharmed, said they saw boys and girls leaping from the windows of the second floor.

CLOTHES AFIRE

A witness said:

"In most cases their clothing was burning.

"It was a horrible thing. They screamed as they jumped."

Tough Chicago Police Weep At The Tragic, Tiny Bundles

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 - (AP) - Tough Chicago policemen, big ambulance drivers hardened to their craft, wept Monday night as they came to the Cook County morgue.

Fire had swept Our Lady of the Angels Parochial School on Chicago's West Side.

The morgue was where they took the tragic, tiny bundles which were the human debris of that fire.

Telephones rang incessantly as parents sought word of children who had not returned home from school.

Bereaved relatives jammed the morgue, hopeful of not being able to identify a body but fearing the worst.

Ambulances backed up to the rear platform of the morgue to unload blanket-covered stretchers, from which an arm or a leg of a dead child occasionally protruded.

Ambulances were backed up 10 deep, as drivers waited to unload their victims and return to the scene of the blaze or to a hospital to pick up more tiny victims.

Tom Feared Sight Of Death's Mask

(Editor's note: Tommy Raymond, 12, a seventh grader, who was trapped for 20 minutes in his second floor classroom at Our Lady of the Angels School. Here is Tommy's story.)

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 - I stood there on the window sill and all I could think of was how I would look dead.

Most of my other classmates had already got out and I was the last one, and when I walked into the hall the smoke was so thick I ran back into the room. Then I went to the window and took some books and threw them out through the glass to break the window. It's funny, but I remember which books I threw out. I threw out my reader and some test books.

After the window broke I stood up on the sill and began to think about jumping out from the second floor. That's when I saw the firemen down below. They shouted at me not to jump, that they'd come up and get me, so I got back off the sill.

Now that I think back how it started, I remember it was a singing lesson we were having. We didn't know anything about the fire until all of a sudden we heard a lot of screams. We couldn't make out what the screams were for a moment. Then we knew it was the eighth graders yelling, 'Fire, fire, fire.'

We started going out just like we did in fire drills. You know we had two or three fire drills already this winter because this was an old school and somebody always figured it was going to burn down someday.

By the time I got out into the hall I couldn't breathe, the smoke was so thick, so I ran into the back room. For a while I was all by myself and then some girls came running into the room.

They were from another room. I yelled at them to lie down on the floor, because that's what I remember from fire drills to do when there's a lot of smoke.

The girls said kids from other rooms were hanging on one another's belts to form a line to get to the stairs because it was dark as night on the second floor.

Then I saw a man coming through the door and we could see flames on the other side of the building. The man grabbed a few girls and led them back out with him.

I stayed by the window, though, and I was scared. All I could think of was how I would look dead. Then the fireman came up and led me down the ladder.

Margaret Was a Little Girl Who Didn't Like to Be Sick

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 - (UPI) - Margaret Chambers was a little girl who didn't like to be sick.

The child, 9, stayed home from class at Our Lady of the Angels School Monday morning with a cold. But her mother, Mrs. Rose Chambers, said she complained constantly.

"I don't want to stay home," the grief-stricken mother quoted her daughter. "I don't like being sick."

Mrs. Chambers said she finally relented and permitted Margaret to attend class Monday afternoon.

Margaret was one of the children who died in the fire and explosion which swept the school.

Joe Wasn't Hurt, He Saw Only Horror

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 - (AP) - "I can't stop shaking."

Joseph Brocato, 11, said this to a doctor who stopped Monday afternoon to look at him in busy St. Anne's Hospital where victims of the Our Lady of the Angels Parochial School fire were brought.

The words gushed out.

"We heard it. We were emptying the wastebasket in the basement.

"It was a boom in the furnace room. And the janitor ran out.

"He shouted to get upstairs."

Herded to Safety

Joseph and his companion - he didn't name the other boy - ran upstairs. They were herded out of the school. Later his father brought him into the hospital because the shaking wouldn't stop.

Joseph wasn't burned. He didn't have to jump. He only saw the horror.

It was a heart-breaking thing as firemen carried victims down into the milling throng of youngsters and older people. Clothes were burned off of some of the charred bodies of boys and girls.

It began with deceptive excitement. There was the noise, and some smoke.

A priest, Father Joseph Ognoibene(sic), said he drove up to the school shortly after the fire began.

"I thought it was a fire drill. Then I saw the smoke and knew it was the real thing," he said.

The trapped children were mostly seventh and eighth graders whose classrooms were on the second floor.

While ambulances and fire trucks jammed the street, and mothers sought frantically for their children, Mrs. Mary Jalowietki stood weeping outside her house across the street from the school.

Children Leap

"I saw the kids come out of the school," she told a reporter. "My son, Ronald, was one of the first out." The boy was unhurt.

Again she sobbed.

"The kids on the second floor were leaping out the windows. At least 10 jumped. This was after I went into the school. It was full of black smoke. The smoke hit me and I came right back.

"And there they were - five or six sitting or laying on the ground. They were full of blood. It was awful."

Thomas Raymond, 12, who was trapped briefly in an eighth grade classroom on the second floor, said he and several classmates were rescued by firemen who lifted a ladder to the window.

"We thought at first that the yells came from some kids playing in the corridor," he said. "Then, we heard someone shout: 'Fire! Fire!"

He said the fire bell rang, and his teacher said, "Get up and get out fast."

Raymond said he was the last of the class to reach the corridor.

"There was lots of smoke," he said. "I couldn't breathe or nothing. I was going to jump, but just then some girls came in. I told them to get down on the floor because of the smoke."

"I kept thinking how I'd look dead," Raymond said. He was not hurt.

Sobbing Nun Tells of Horror In School Fire

(Editor's Note: Nuns who were teaching classes Monday at Our Lady of the Angels School when it was hit by a tragic fire described the scene for a United Press International reporter. The nuns withheld their names.)

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 - A sobbing seventh-grade teacher said she was conducting a geography class when the fire broke out.

"I heard the fire bell," she said. "All of the children stood up and I opened the door. The hallway was filled with smoke and it nearly filled the room immediately.

"I tried to go into the hall but the smoke forced me back. I didn't see any flames. I just couldn't breathe.

"The children began to cry. I told them to get down on their knees and to crawl out through the door one after another. I crawled out first and the first ones held on to my skirt. But they were afraid to go down the stairs. I carried down six and went back up for more. A couple wouldn't go down and I rolled them down the stairs. I rolled them down even though they screamed.

"Finally I told all of the children who were left to get back into the room and stand by the window. We closed the door and prayed."

At St. Anne's Hospital, where the injured were taken, one of them stood in a hallway. She seemed oblivious to everyone around her. She fingered her beads and prayed.

Another sister, a third grade teacher, said she "was lucky" to have only 20 students in her class when the fire bell rang.

"They told me there was an explosion, but I didn't hear it," she said. "I lined my children up and took them out right away and they were very good.

"But when I got out I was afraid to look at the building. Smoke was pouring and billowing out of the windows all along the second floor.

"I could see children standing there crying and banging on the windows. I couldn't do a thing to help them."

She wept.

Parish Families Seek Children

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 - (UPI) - Tragedy hit the parish of Our Lady of Angels Roman Catholic Church Monday when fire swept the church's school.

Many of the families of the predominantly Italian and middle class neighborhood were involved in the tragedy, with either the loss or injury of children.

Mothers and fathers rushed to the scene, wandering through streets seeking their children. Many youngsters fled the blazing 3-story school coatless and hatless and were taken in by residents living near the school.

Parents were advised by police and fire department loudspeakers in the church parish house to claim their children. Neighbors also were urged to bring children they took in to the parish house for reunions with the parents.

The neighborhood is inhabited by Italian, Polish and German families - and is a section of Chicago's vast West Side.

The brick, wood-trimmed 3-story school originally was the parish church, but was converted when a new place of worship was constructed.

The school was filled to capacity of 1,700.

Man, 74, Stricken Helping Children

Chicago, Dec. 1 - (UPI) - Mrs. Ella Klock wept Monday night as she told how her husband, Ed, 74, ill with a heart condition, suffered a stroke while trying to save children from the burning Our Lady of the Angels School.

"We saw the fire from our back porch. Ed ran over there," she said. "The children were jumping from second floor windows all over. Ed tried to catch a few, and helped those who already had fallen. One girl, I remember, had her hair on fire and Ed grabbed part of his coat to try to smother it out.

"I remember it was hard for him to stand up."

After a while, the Klocks ran back to their house and Mrs. Klock dialed the operator and told her to send "all the ambulances in the city."

"I guess Ed left then, without me and went back to the school to help some more," Mrs. Klock said. Then she wept.

On his second trip back to the school, Klock suffered a stroke and was taken to the hospital.

90 PERISH IN CHICAGO SCHOOL FIRE; 3 NUNS ARE VICTIMS; SCORES HURT; PUPILS LEAP OUT WINDOWS IN PANIC

1,500 ARE RESCUED

24 in One Class Die at Desks - Closing Bell 18 Minutes Away

Chicago, Dec 1 - A fast-spreading fire today killed at least eighty-seven Chicago school children and three nuns.

The disaster occurred at Our Lady of the Angels Roman Catholic Parochial School at 3808 West Iowa Street, eighteen minutes before the bell that would have closed the school day. About 1,515 grade-school and 120 kindergarten children were attending classes.

At least 100 other children were taken to seven hospitals where the condition of many was listed as critical. It was feared the death toil would continue to mount.

Many children had leaped from windows in panic.

Priests of the parish dashed from the church and joined teachers in rescue efforts.

Two Buildings Occupied

It was believed that nuns, lay teachers, priests, janitors and passers-by had rescued more than 1,000 of the children.

The children occupied two buildings, which made up the school facilities of Our Lady of the Angels parish.

The fire occurred at 2:42 P.M. in the older two-story brick building.

Firemen who fought their way into a classroom found twenty-four children sitting dead at their desks. Books and homework assignments for tomorrow were stacked neatly before the children.

Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn said that the boiler room of the building appeared to be intact. An earlier report said that an explosion had occurred there.

Blaze in Stairwell

Heavy black smudges were found on the stairwell leading from the room, Mr. Quinn said. He reported that the fire might have started from and oil type of blaze in the stairwell. He said he was mystified as to how the fire had spread so rapidly.

City officials, at the direction of Mayer Richard J. Daley, immediately opened what was promised to be "one of the greatest fire investigations in the city's history."

Mr. Quinn said the tragedy might have been caused by a "touch-off." Touch-off is the firemen's word for arson.

Chicago schools have been targets of anonymous phone callers who reported that bombs had been planted in buildings. Schools have been evacuated for hours and classes have been canceled while firemen searched the premises.

Drew Brown, head of the Police Arson Squad, said that the fire appeared to have started in a corridor below the first floor in a corner of the building.

He said that the rubbish might have been left there and could have been the source of the flames. At 8:30 P.M. he said that no evidence of arson had been found.

The city's Building Commissioner, George L. Ramsey, said after a preliminary inspection of the building that he had found six exits from the second floor of the building. He said that they and the width of the corridors were adequate for escape.

Mrs. Barbara Glowacki, owner of a grocery story less than a block north of the school, added to the mystery of the fire's origin. She told investigators that twenty minutes before she heard the fire engines a strange man entered her store and asked if she had a public telephone.

Police Hunt Man

She said she did not. She quoted him as saying, calmly, "I was going to report that the school's on fire."

He then walked out, Mrs. Glowacki said. The police are searching for the man.

The police said they found a thirty-gallon metal can, sealed at both ends, at the foot of the basement stairway where the fire was believed to have started. It was taken to the Police Crime Laboratory for examination.

Pupils of the school, including two boys detailed to empty waste baskets in the larger building's boiler room, told of hearing strange sounds from the building's radiators just before the flames raced through the building.

A janitor of the school ran through the halls seconds later, shouting, "Call the Fire Department."

Jump in Panic

Flames spread so rapidly that scores of children had been killed, many at their desks, or had leaped from windows before firemen arrived. Others were trampled or crushed by their companions in a panic dash for safety.

Panic raged though the school and in the streets adjacent. Scores of parents rushed to the scene, where they saw billowing smoke and towering sheets of flames swirling from the building in which their children were trapped or too frightened to escape.

So rapid was the spread of the flames that carefully rehearsed fire-drill procedures were forgotten by many of the children.

Within minutes, hundreds of parents pressed frantically against the police and fire lines in an attempt to enter the school to find their children.

Mothers Plead to Enter

Hysterical mothers raced futilely up and down the safety lines pleading to be permitted to enter the building.

The neighborhood of the school is a quiet residential section made up chiefly of single family frame houses and two-family buildings. Most of the residents are second and third-generation Chicagoans of Italian, Irish and German extraction. The neighborhood is heavily populated by Roman Catholics.

It was a typical, calm, early winter day with the sun shining and the temperatures in the upper twenties.

Some of the others of the younger pupils had already donned coats to go to the school yard to meet their children.

Persons living in the vicinity of the school became aware of the mishap when the sounds of school letting out were strangely different. Instead of happy shouts and laughter they heard young voices screaming in terror.

Smoke in Classrooms

Within minutes smoke swirled through the classrooms and flames licked through the stairways.

Without heeding their teachers children began to open and leap through windows on the first, second and third floors. Those on the lower floors managed to flee.

The children dropping from the upper floors lay still where the fell or crawled in pain away from the burning building.

Others huddled in panic in their rooms or jammed the corridors, unheeding the efforts of their teachers to organize them for an orderly evacuation.

Later when firemen were able to enter the building they found children's bodies, some burned so badly that identification was difficult or impossible.

They lay in groups or sprawling singly down the corridors and on the stairways.

Among the earliest to arrive at the scene was Chicago's recently appointed Archbishop Albert Meyer. The Archbishop of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the nation stood with tears coursing his cheeks. Mayor Daley stood beside him.

Firemen arrived at the scene in time to help hundreds of children down the ladders. Others had found their way to the school fire escapes and had assisted classmates to safety.

In some instances firemen fought their way against fumes and smoke into classrooms and found groups of children still alive.

The firemen gave their first attention to the living. Then came the task of gathering the bodies of others.

As the firemen carried the bodies out of the badly damaged building parents rushed in groups, now in the direction and now in that, seeking to learn if the firemen's burdens were their own children.

Twenty nuns of the Order of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and nine lay women teachers made up the faculty.

The dead nuns were identified as Sister Mary Seraphica, Sister Mary Canice and Sister Mary Claire Teresa.

The principal of the school is Sister Mary St. Florence. The pastor of Our Lady of the Angels is the Right Rev. Joseph F. Cassen (sic).

The structure was built in 1910. Originally it had classrooms on its second floor and a church on the first floor.

In 1939, a new church was built for the Our Lady of the Angels parish, of which the school is part. The structure was then given over entirely to classrooms. It was remodeled in 1951. it retained its high ceilings and extensive wood trim.

Adjacent to the ill-fated building was another school building. It escaped the fire. It had been constructed within the last five years on the site occupied by the parish church and the older school building at 3808 West Iowa Street on Chicago's West Side. The buildings were constructed of brick.

The victims of the fire were children between 8 and 14 years of age.

The building that burned had only one outside fire escape. It was at the rear and consisted of a conventional iron stairway with a railing.

A pupil reported that the children and their teachers had been unable to open the door to the stairway from the inside. A priest reportedly climbed the stairway to open the door from the outside.

Fire Department officials said that the exits from the second floor consisted of six stairways in addition to the fire escape and that these were regarded as adequate by safety inspectors.

The ceilings were of wood and plaster. No violations were found, officials said, in an inspection of the building last October.

F.B.I. Ready to Assist Chicago Fire Inquiry

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation said tonight that it was maintaining "very close liaison" with the Chicago Police Department on the parochial school fire disaster.

An F.B.I. spokesman said its full facilities were being made available to the authorities in Chicago "for any possible assistance we can give."

The bureau is not expected to have any direct jurisdiction. It might become involved, however, if arson were involved and a suspected arsonist crossed state lines.

Panic Grips Classrooms; Confusion Increases Toll

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 (UPI) - Panic aided the flames at Our Lady of the Angels School today. While some children recalled the disciplines of fire drills to make their way to safety, others perished in their confusion.

Some pupils jumped from windows; others were pushed. Still others were trampled as they groped for exits. The smaller ones huddled in confusion in corridors. Efforts to get some to move were of little avail.

In a few classrooms teachers were able to maintain control.

Mrs. Eda Shanahan, one of the nine lay teachers, talked soothingly to her pupils, urging them to wait for firemen and ladders at the open windows of her second floor room.

Pupils Descend by Ladder

Meanwhile the Rev. Charles Hunt, (sic) assistant pastor of Our Lady of the Angels Church, and James Raymond, a janitor of the school, managed to get a fire ladder in place on the building outside Mrs. Shanahan's room. Her charges reached the ground safely.

Another teacher told how she had persuaded pupils to form a human chain by clutching each other's clothing and leading them to safety.

A nun who made three trips into the burning building to rescue children said:

"I felt untold strength."

One teacher, who was not identified, told of leading her charges to the head of a stairway and rolling them down to safety when fright immobilized them.

Sam Tortorice, the father of a pupil, rushed from his nearby home. Plunging through the smoke, he ran to his daughter's second-floor classroom. One by one he managed to swing six children in the arms of another man leaning from a window on an adjacent wall of an inside ell of the building. Before being driven from the window himself, he managed to pass the sixth child, his daughter.

"I just knew where my daughter should be," he said.

What happened?

Joseph Brocato, an 11-year-old pupil who was taken to a hospital, told his father:

"I was carrying a wastebasket to the boiler room. I saw the janitor running from the boiler room. He shouted, 'Call the Fire Department.' I heard an explosion and there where flames. My classmate and I ran upstairs and we were told by one of the nuns to go to the church. A lot of children were in the church. We were then told to go home."

Mr. Raymond, the school's chief janitor, said that he had been across the street from the school when he saw smoke billowing from the building. He rushed to the school. His attempts to swing a fire escape from the second floor to the ground failed. He broke a window on the ground floor and was cut by flying glass. Then the fire escape suddenly plunged down and struck him on the head. He was treated at a hospital.

"I Smell Smoke"

Few children were able to provide coherent accounts of what had happened. Mary Brock, 10, said someone told her, "I smell smoke."

"When the door was opened a gust of smoke blew in," she said. "Sister Mary Clara (sic) Therese said, 'Get out of the window, get on the ledge and stay there.' I got out the window and stood on the ledge. Lots of others jumped."

Mary was rescued by firemen. Her companions who left the ledge were found on the pavement below by the first firemen who arrived.

Among those who survived the plunge to the paved yard from a first (sic) floor window was Linda Barleto, 12.

"Our backs were burning, then someone pushed me," Linda said.

Linda was taken to a hospital suffering from burns and bruises, but her condition was reported as good.

Her cousin, Andrea Gagliareo (sic), also 12, told of opening a classroom window and screaming for help.

"Some of the boys jumped out of the window," she said. "When we looked down we saw them lying still on the ground. We stayed and the firemen saved us."

Across the street from the school Leroy Hewlett, 31, heard the screams.

"Kids were hanging from windows, jumping or falling in groups of three and four at at time," he said. "Smoke and flames poured from the windows."

As fire engines and police cars converged on the scene parents rushed to the school. In the chill wind they strained against police lines and sought to enter the building.

Mrs. Pauline Baroni clutched a small red, quilted jacket brought from home to warm her daughter, Karen, 10.

"But I can't find. I can't find her," Mrs. Baroni cried to her friend, Mrs. Mary Sansone. Mrs. Sansone could offer little comfort. She had not been able to find her son, James, 12.

Everybody was Jumping

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 (AP) - Carlos Lozano, 10, whose leg was injured in a leap from a second floor window, said:

"Everybody was jumping. The smoke was terrible. Everybody was screaming. Everybody was trying to get on the firemen's ladders at the same time."

Patricia Perryman, 14, slid head foremost down a fire ladder, scraping her left arm. From her bed in Walther Memorial Hospital, she told of panic in the room where fifth-five girls had been taking a reading test.

"Most of them were fearful, and some of them started jumping up and running around."

Patricia said a nun, Sister Conice, (sic) calmed the children before a fire ladder was lifted to the window.

"There were some coming out after me," she said. "I don't know if all of them got out."

"The first I knew about the fire," said Mrs. Barbara Glowacki, 29, "was when a stranger rushed into my store and asked to use the phone to call the fire department."

Mrs. Glowacki operates a small grocery store adjacent to the school. She is the mother of one of the first graders. She said she had seen flames at the rear of the school. The windows vented clouds of thick black smoke.

She said she had seized youngsters as they marched out of the school.

"I lined them up near my home. All the time I was thinking about Helena. But she got out okay.

"Some of the kids coming out of the school had their hair on fire. I poured water on a number of these."

Concella Bellino, 8, whose burned hands were treated at Walther Memorial Hospital, fretted about her single red slipper. "I lost the other one on the ladder."

List of Identified Dead In Chicago School Fire

CHICAGO, Dec. 1 - (AP) - Here is the list of dead identified in the Cook (Chicago) County morgue who perished in a fire Monday at the Our Lady of the Angels grade school. Ninety died and nearly 100 children were injured. Nine pupils still have not been identified.

Joseph Massidla, 11; Karen Culp, 10; Wayne Wise, 10; Marilyn P. Rech, 10; David Biscan, 11; Linda Malinski, 10; Patricia Kuzma, 10; Annette Mantia, 10; Karen Baroni, 9; Donald Mele, 10; Frank Piscopo, 12; Joseph Canella, 10; Barbara Hosking, 10; John Janjkoski (sic), 10; Joanne Ciolino, 10; John A Manganello, 10; Frank Piscopo, 12; Joseph Modiga, no age available.

Elaine Pesoli, 10; Janet Gasteier; James Profita, 9; Linda Stabile, 9; Ronald Fox, 14; John D Trota, 13; Joann Chrzos, 9; William Sarno, 13; Jo Anne Sarno, 9; Rosalie Ciminello, 12; Rosanna Ciochin, 9; Charles Neubert, 9; Kathleen Magerty, 13; Jo Ann Chiappetta, 10; Roger Ramlow, 10; Eileen Pawlie, 13; Raymond Makomski, 12; Diane Karwaki, 9; Richard Bobrowicz, 13; Richard Kampanowski, 10; Peter Cangelosi, 10; Kenneth Kompanowski, 14; Kathleen Mary Carr, 9; Yvonne Pacini, 9; Angeline Kalnowski, no age available.

James Sickels, 10; Mary Virgilio, 15, Nancy Rae Finnigan, 14; Lawrence Grosso, 12; Michele Altobell, 13; Karen Margaret Hobek, 13; Mark Allan Stochura, 9; Milicent Corsiglia, 13; Maria Dijulio, no age available.

Nancy Mary Desanto, 9; Edward Nikinske, 12; Mary Finale, 12; James R Moravek, 13; Helen Ann Busiac, 12; Annette Lanantia, 10; Christine Vitacco, 12; Mary Ellen Moretti, 12; Nancy Riche, 12; Patricia Ann Drzymala, 12; Nancy Smid, 10; Peggy Sansonetti, 11; Margaret Kucan, 10; Robert Anglin, 10; Margaret Chambers, 9; Marge Lasala, no age available.

Richard Hardy, 9; Lawrence Dunn, Jr., 8; Antoinette Secco, 10; Phillip Tampano, 12; Aurelius Chiapette, 11; Mary Louise Tamburrno, 13; Frances Fuzaldo, 12; Nancy Pilas, 12; Carolyn Perry, 10; Antonnette Patrasso, 11; Sister Mary Seraphica Kelley, 43; Sister Mary Claire Theresa Champagne, 27; Sister Mary St. Canice Lynge, 44; Carol Ann Gazzola, 13; James Ragona, 9; Beverly Burda, 13 (tentative).

Fire Gong Tolled A Deadly Message

(Editor's Note: Gary Wassinger, 11, was in his seventh grade classroom on the second floor of Lady of Angels School when a fire broke out Monday: This is his story.)

CHICAGO, Dec 1 - I was sitting in class and just happened to look up at the clock and I saw it was 2:30. That's when it all began.

I looked toward the door and I saw some smoke coming through the door. So I turned around to tell the boy behind me and everybody saw it then, too.

About 10 seconds later - gee, it didn't seem more than 10 seconds - the fire gong rang. We all heard the fire bell and then we knew this was for real.

Our nun opened the door and everybody ran out. A couple of boys fell while we were running out and I think they broke their legs.

My buddy, Michael Giacomino - he's 13 - he was in the classroom there with me and he says he heard a lot of kids screaming and crying and yelling for their brothers and sisters. But I didn't notice that too much.

Well, we started going down the stairs and Mike tells me he saw flames coming out of the first floor washroom.

While I was going down the smoke got so thick I couldn't see my way down the stairs and this other buddy of mine - Basil de Stefano - I heard him cry real loud, "Let's try to get out. Everybody hold to my shirt."

So we grabbed Basil's shirt in line like and start going down and out the building.

I have no idea how many kids got down and how many didn't. Part of the kids got down one set of stairs and part got down the other.

Frantic Dad Tells Fire Rescue Role

By Hal Bruno

CHICAGO, December 1, 1958 - Theresa Gorski, 10, of 935 N. Avers av., a survivor of today's tragic fire at Our Lady of the Angels school, 3808 W. Iowa st., said:

"The first bell rang. We all stood up for a fire drill.

"The sisters took us outside the building and then took us into the church and told us to pray.

"We prayed and one of the altar boys said the fire had started in the boiler.

RACE TO BUILDING

Theresa fingered a rosary as she talked in the grocery store of Mrs. Barbara Glowacki, 919 Avers av., where the girl was sheltered temporarily.

A frantic father raced through the burning building rescuing other children while searching for his own whom he believed were trapped on the second floor.

Daniel Grimaldi, 32, of 852 N. Hamlin av., said he was returning from a barber shop when he saw the children filing out for a fire drill.

SAW FLAMES

He related:

"I saw flames leaping from the second floor.

"I saw that the school was on fire and I knew my kids were in there. I have two of them.

"I ran into the building and up to the second floor.

"It was full of smoke.

"I could hardly breathe. I was yelling for my kids.

"I grabbed some other kids and led them down the stairs.

"Then I ran out in the street and around the other side.

"They were jumping out the windows. I ran up a ladder to help a kid. A little girl jumped from the second floor. I leaned out and my body broke her fall. She hit me with so much force it knocked off my glasses."

HELPED AT WINDOW

He continued:

"I helped some kids out of the window and down the ladder.

"Then I ran around into the church."

When Grimaldi reached the church, he said he was told his two children, Frank 11, and Mary Ann, 8, were safe.

85 Youngsters Still Hospitalized; Blaze 3rd Worst In 100 Years

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - (AP) - Grim investigators today shook off the shock of Chicago's worst school fire and strove to find the answer to this question:

"How did it happen and why?"

The fire that flashed through Our Lady of the Angels School Monday shortly before closing time cost 90 lives - 87 children and three nuns.

More than 85 youngsters remained in hospitals.

It was Chicago's most disastrous blaze since the Iroquois Theater holocaust in 1903 and the third worst school fire in the nation in 100 years.

Like Blowtorch

The flames shot up in the two story brick building like fire from a blowtorch. Heat and smoke trapped the victims on the upper floor of the north wing of the U-shaped structure.

Twenty-four bodies were found in one room. Most of them were jammed near windows. Firemen, sickened by the spectacle, said a few of the children were still at their desks, apparently paralyzed by fear and panic.

Others leaped from windows.

The little survivors suffered from burns, bones broken in falls and the shock of the horror they beheld.

Fire Commissioner Robert J. Quinn considered the possibility of arson. That possibility was raised by the swift spread of the blaze.

"It was the worst thing I have ever seen or ever will see," he said.

30-Gallon Can Found

Quinn also said the black smoke indicated an oil-type fire.

The fire originated in the northeast corner of the school at 3808 W. Iowa St. on the Northwest Side. Investigators pinpointed the placeof origin below the street level.

A 30-gallon can was found in a stairwell in that section of the structure. It was taken to the police crime laboratory for careful examination.

Another possibility was that the fire sprang up in the waste paper in the basement near that corner of the building.

Daniel O'Shea, 12, a pupil who carried the waste paper to the basement a few minutes before the fire started was questioned by police seeking to determine the cause of the disaster.

Dumped Paper

The boy said he left his seventh grade room with a basket of paper about 10 minutes before the fire began. He added that he dumped the paper in the container to be burned later by the janitor.

Sgt. Drew Brown, head of the police arson squat, said the waste paper was dumped in the boiler room about 15 feet from the stairwell where the fire was believed to have started.

One theory was that a cigarette may have been discarded in the refuse.

Sgt. Brown found black smudges on the lower walls of the stairwell that indicated an oil-like substance had burned there.

He stated that no evidence of a touchoff had been found thus far.

Pope John XXIII send to the Chicago Archdiocese a telegram of profound sorrow over the disaster in the Roman Catholic school.

Just 18 minutes was the difference between life and death for the 1,300 students and black-robed teachers in the school. The first box alarm was turned in at 2:42 p.m. The school let out at 3 p.m.

Wild Inferno

Within minutes the building turned into a wild, screaming inferno. Smoke and heat filled staircases and second-floor corridors so fast that normal exits were impassable.

"We are trapped. We are trapped," nuns screamed from the windows as they huddled with groups of pupils.

Many children panicked, stampeded to window. Some leaped to death on sidewalks below.

"Nothing killed those kids but heat and smoke," Quinn said. "They just couldn't get out into the corridor to go downstairs."

Nearly all the eighth-grader class in two upper-floor classrooms perished.

Screams of children trapped on upper floors drifted down to hundreds of horrified spectators and hysterical parents.

Firemen raised ladders and brought down dozens of pupils. Priests, on the scene even before the fire fighters, led out others.

Nuns Save Many

Nuns, with disregard for their own safety, rolled some pupils down staircases. Children ducked to the floor, seeking cool and fresh air, and clawed out. Others groped their way to freedom by grasping hands and beltbuckles of classmates and filing out the smoke-filled structure.

For some there was no rescue, however.

"God, we tried. God, how we tried," sobbed one fireman. "But we couldn't move fast enough. No one could live in that fire."

As the bodies were brought down in the eerie, hazy light, parents pushed against police lines, crying. "Where are our children? Where are our children?"

The dead were placed in a courtyard where only a few hours before the children had been laughing and playing.

The injured were taken to seven nearby West Side hospitals. Twenty-two victims died en route to hospitals or soon after arrival. Sixty-eight bodies were sent directly to the morgue where parents and relatives gathered for the dreaded identification ordeal.

Of the dead 53 were girls and 34 boys. The heroic nuns accounted for the other three.

40 Years Old

The U-shaped school as 3808 Iowa St. was built some 40 years ago. It was remodeled about five years ago. Fire officials said the school was checked last October and no violations were found. Exits were adequate, they said, and the ceilings were of wood lath and plaster. There were no false ceilings. The heating plant is fueled by oil.

A single fire escape, with exits from the first and second fllors, was in the center of the read, or east side of the building - the bottom of the U which joined the wings.

As news of the impending disaster spread through the low-income neighborhood, hundreds rushed to the scene. Grief-stricken parents began crashing through police cordons as the dead were removed. Several people fainted in the surging mass of humanity.

Priests walked through the crowd and stood near the doomed building, administering Extreme Unction, last rite of the Catholic Church.

Tales Of Heroism

As in most tragedies, there were countless tales of heroism.

A nun, who refused to identify herself, made three trips into the blistering fire, each time leading out six pupils. "I felt untold strength," she told newsmen while being treated for burns at St. Anne's Hospital.

Casimir Janik, 38, a milkman, said an unexplainable impulse made him alter his regular route home. He arrived at the school before firemen. He parked nearby and several times ran into the school, carrying burned children to safety.

"I found one girl, her shoes missing, hanging on to a banister, seemingly in a state of shock," he said. "I yanked her loose, took her to church and placed her on a pew. Twice I carried two girls out, one under each arm."

Students in the school painted a grisly picture of terror.

Pushed Out Of Windows

Linda Barleto, 12, said she was pushed out of a window in a second-floor classroom. "Our backs were burning. Then someone pushed me out the window." She suffered burns and bruises.

Her cousin Andrea Gagliareo, 12, told newsmen, "Some of the boys jumped out the window. When we looked out we saw them lying still on the ground. It was like a miracle when we saw the firemen with their ladders."

A boy who lives across from the school, Deroy Hewlett, 13, gave this graphic description: "Kids were hanging from the windows, jumping or falling in groups of three or four at a time. Smoke and flame poured from the windows. A little girl stood at the window of a ledge, screaming for help."

Early reports that there had been an explosion were discounted by firemen. Commissioner Quinn said the boiler room was intact. Then he said, "This could have been a touch-off. It spread too damn rapidly."

Fire investigators were closely checking the story of Mrs. Barbara Glowacki, who operates a candy store adjacent to the school on the north. She said just before she learned about the fire a man came into her store and asked to use at telephone.

Search For Man

The man, said Mrs. Glowacki, ran out quickly, calling out, "The school is on fire," after she told him she had no public telephone.

Police began a search for the man, described as middle-aged.

With a toll of 90 the fire is the nation's third most disastrous school tragedy in the last century. The toll is exceeded only by the New London, Tex., explosion and fire which killed 294 March 18, 1937, and the Collinwood school fire which claimed 176 lives March 4, 1908 in Cleveland.

In Chicago it ranked as the second greatest fire killer of the century. On Dec. 30, 1903, 602 persons died when flames swept through the downtown Iroquois Theater.

87 Children, 3 Nuns Die in School Fire

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - (AP) - Ninety persons died Monday when fire struck a parochial grade school with terrifying swiftness, trapping pupils and teachers at their desks a few minutes before dismissal time.

The final toll included 87 children and three Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The fire was Chicago's worst since the disastrous Iroquois Theater fire of 1903. It was the third worst school fire in the nation in the last 200 years.

More than 85 youngsters remained in hospitals, suffering from burns, broken bones received in frantic leaps for life and from the shivering shock of seeing playmates die in the fiery inferno.

There were 1,300 students and teachers in the Our Lady of the Angels Roman Catholic school.

In the Cook County morgue, sheet covered little corpses, a few charred nearly beyond identification, still lay awaiting to be identified by tearful parents.

Sgt. Drew Brown, head of the police arson squat, favored a theory that a carelessly discarded cigarette caused the fire.

"A carelessly discarded cigarette, tossed into a waste basket by a sneaky smoker," Brown said was the best theory.

He emphasized, however, that it is "strictly a theory."

Brown said his theory was based on these circumstances:

Every day, about 2:30 p.m., pupils from each class go to the basement of the building and empty waste baskets into large cardboard containers. The waste later is burned in boilers by the janitor.

Nearby is a boy's washroom - where, in Brown's theory, a boy might sneak a smoke.

The fire started in the northeast corner of the building near the place where the waste paper is deposited.

Two boys, who are among those performing the waste disposal chore, already have been questioned by police.

Mayor Richard J. Daley started a fund for financial aid for families of children injured or killed in the fire. The fund, within minutes, soared to $11,000.

Just 18 minutes was the difference between life and death. The first box alarm was turned in at 2:42 p.m. The school would have been let out at 3 p.m.

Many Panic

Within minutes the building turned into a wild, screaming inferno. Smoke and heat filled staircases and second floor corridors so fast that normal exits were impassable.

"We are trapped. We are trapped," nuns screamed from the windows as they huddled with groups of pupils.

Many children panicked, stampeded to windows. Some leaped the 30 feet to a crunching death on sidewalks below rather than face the singeing heat and burning smoke.

"Nothing killed those kids but heat and smoke." Quinn said.

"They just couldn't get out into the corridor to go downstairs."

Nearly all of the eighth grade class in two upper-floor classrooms perished.

The screams of the children trapped on upper floors drifted down to hundreds of horrified spectators and hysterical parents standing below in the 30-degree cold.

Firemen raised ladders and brought down dozens of shocked pupils. Priests on the scene even before the firefighters, led out others.

Nuns, with disregard for their own safety, rolled some students down staircases. Children ducked to the floor, seeking cool and fresh air, and crawled out. Others groped their way to freedom by grasping hands and belts of classmates and filing out the smoke-filled structure.

For some there was no rescue, however.

"God we tried, God, how we tried." Sobbed one fireman. "But we couldn't move fast enough. No one could live in that fire."

As the bodies were brought down in the eerie, hazy light, parents pushed against police lines, crying, "Where are our children? Where are our children?"

The U-shaped school at 3808 Iowa Street was built some 40 years ago. It was remodeled about five years ago.

A single fire escape, with exits from the first and second floors, was in the center of the rear, or east side of the building - the bottom of the "U" which joined the wings.

Probers of Fire Ask: Why?

By Leroy McHugh and Basil Talbott

CHICAGO - Dec. 2, 1958 - Doctors and officials, red-eyed and sleepless, worked on today to save lives and unravel some mysteries in the aftermath of Chicago's worst school fire disaster.

The doctors are battling to prevent the death toll from rising.

Officials are trying to supply answers to the questions:

"What caused the fire? What caused it to spread so quickly?"

Nearly 100 children - many burned critically - are in hospitals.

In the County Morgue, arranged in rows, lay 90 sheet-covered bodies.

A heavy grief lay over the city.

The tragedy struck yesterday at Our Lady of the Angels Roman Catholic Elementary School, 3816-20 Iowa st.

Fire swept up from the basement at the northeast corner of the two-story brick building.

The flames and billowing black smoke - described as "oil type" - roared up a wooden stairwell, trapping many 5th, 6th and 7th grade children on the second floor.

Many leaped from windows, their clothing - and in some cases their hair - in flames.

Others were helped out by nuns, firemen and passersby, but were seared by flames.

There were as many acts of heroism as there were scenes of horror. Many heros remained anonymous.

Multiple investigations have begin.

Arson is considered a possibility by some police and fire officials. It is based on a 30-gallon barrel, resembling an oil drum, which was found in the stairwell. No one can say whether it was there before the fire.

The drum was turned over to Lt. John Ascher of the Police Crime Laboratory.

Also considered suspicious are black smudges on the lower walls of the stairwell. No one can explain how they got there.

As to the arson angle, Fire Commissioner Quinn says:

"It's too early to tell - I can't say one way or the other."

Police also are mystified.

SEARCH FOR CLUES

Swarm of inspectors, including firemen and policemen, are checking the ruins in search of evidence.

Building Commissioner Ramsey headed one crew. He carried building department inspection records of the school but did not disclose them. After a visit to the scene last night, he said:

"Six exits from the second floor, including stairways and doors, were in good order. So was the fire escape on the east side of the building."

It is the only fire escape. Ramsey said:

"The fire is a mystery - I don't see how it could have spread so quickly."

There were 1,200 children in the building when the fire started. Another 200 were in the annex, which did not burn.

Children in the first floor classrooms - alerted by a fire alarm - were marched out safely. Those on the second floor heard the alarm but were trapped by flames before they could escape.

Coroner McCarron and State's Attorney Adamowski are among those launching investigations.

McCarron said he will impanel a jury of 15 members - a blue ribbon group to include fire experts and clergymen "of all faiths."

WOODEN STAIRWAYS

Adamowski and his first assistant, Frank Ferlic, appeared at the school during the night. They were accompanied by and investigator, Sidney Monz, and Detective Emil Demko. Adamowski said he is conducting an independent inquiry but would give no details.

Ferlick was asked if wooden stairways in the school constituted a violation of building laws. He replied:

"Well, what do you think? That's up to the building commissioner."

Queried on this point, Building Commissioner Ramsey said regulations specify steel stairways and enclosed stairwells, but added:

"This does not apply to this school, because it was built before the stairway ordinance was adopted."

POLICE QUIZ BOYS

Police activity centered at Austin station. Detective Chief Patrick Deeley, his chief deputy, Frank Pape, and Capt. Harry Penzin, commander of the district, sought the answers to mysterious aspects of the tragedy.

They questioned a 12-year-old boy, a seventh grade pupil, who carried a box of waste paper to the basement from his classroom about 12 minutes before the fire was discovered.

It was his daily chore.

They also questioned his 11-year-old companion, also a seventh grader, who had gone to the basement with him.

'RICHARD' IS SOUGHT

One of the boys said a schoolmate he knows only as Richard was in the basement on a similar chore and did not come up the stairs with them.

Deeley said Richard will be questioned when his identity is established. He said all other pupils will be interviewed, too.

One story was told by Guilio Camerini, 20, of 732 N. Harding av., a pre-medical student at the University of Illinois, and a graduate of the elementary school.

Guilio's brother, Mario, 22, was acting as assistant janitor at the school because of the illness of the regular janitor, David Cumbo, who is in a hospital.

RUBBISH REPORTED

Guilio said he helped Mario on Nov. 25, at which time he noted an accumulation of rubbish under the stairway in the basement. He said this included old rags, some flower stands, a card table and some Christmas ornaments.

After the fire, only ashes remained under the burned stairway.

A section of the stairway was removed for examination at the crime laboratory. This was ordered by Sgt. Drew Brown, head of the police arson squad.

He said the section would be examined by Daniel Dragel, head chemist of the laboratory, who also will make tests of the oil-drum type barrel and some rags.

ARSON INQUIRY

The purpose, Brown said, is to determine if inflammable chemicals are present - such as could have been used by an arsonist.

The FBI men said they are making inquiries because of recent bomb threats at Chicago schools and incidents of racial-inspired arson and bombing of schools of various faiths throughout the country, chiefly in the South.

Some of these incidents were related to the integration fight. But no Negros are enrolled at Our Lady of the Angels schools.

The Army colonel would give no information excepting that he is "from counter-intelligence." He did not consult police, firemen or other authorities.

STRANGER SOUGHT

Chief Deeley said a search is being made for a stranger who appeared at the candy story of Mrs. Barbara Glowacki, 919 N. Avers av., near the school, about the time of the fire.

Mrs. Glowacki said the man asked to use the telephone.

She said she told him she had no public phone and that he walked out, remarking"

"I wanted to report a fire."

She added:

"He seemed wholly unconcerned, but after he left I went into the street and looked toward the school - I saw smoke!"

DESCRIPTION VAGUE

She said he was well dressed and about 45 years old, but could not describe him clearly.

The burned and injured (some fractured bones in their leap for life) were mostly in four hospitals - St. Anne's, Franklin Boulevard, Garfield Park and Walther Memorial.

Frantic parents gathered at these places, some trying to force their way in. they had to be restrained and quitted so as not to interfere with the life and death battle going on in many rooms.

At the County Morgue sorrowing parents collapsed as attendants lifted the sheets from bodies of loved ones.

Morgue attendants are hardened - but they, too, shed tears.

The covered bodies lay on planking.

At the school, a crowd remained throughout the night.

The neighborhood lay under a blanket of grief.

BELLS TOLL

Bells in many Catholic churches tolled in mourning.

Perhaps all of the dead - 87 children and three nuns - may be buried the same day, possibly Friday.

The 1,000 seat Our Lady of the Angels Church will not be able to handle the services - other churches will have to help bury the dead.

Schoolboy Smoking Cigaret Might Have Touched Off Fire

CHICAGO, Dec 2 - (UPI) - A schoolboy who sneaked a forbidden cigaret may be the unwitting arsonist who touched off the fire which killed 87 children and three nuns at Our Lady of the Angels parochial school.

This was the theory Tuesday of Police and Fire Department squads investigating Chicago's worst fire in 55 years, a holocaust which swept the West Side parochial school Monday and shocked the nation and the world.

The horror and pathos of the fire mounted as Chicago became a city in mourning. There were these developments:

Five of the 100 children injured, 82 of them still hospitalized, were not expected to live.

3 Unidentified

The possibility arose that the death count might really be 91. Only three pitifully charred bodies remained unidentified at the at the county morgue, awaiting X-rays and an attempt to give them names. But four of the school's children were missing. Police hoped the extra missing child had wandered from the school in a state of shock and was being cared for by someone living in the neighborhood.

The Chicago Archdiocese announced that Archbishop Albert George Meyer will preside at mass funeral services for the 87 dead children in a National Guard armory Friday. The church will bury the 53 girls and 34 boys, aged 9 to 15, together in the Holy Innocents section of the Queen of Heaven Cemetery if their parents wish.

Mayor Richard J. Daley ordered all flags drawn to half mast on city buildings until the funerals. Appeals went out for donations of money and blood, although so many blood donors volunteered some had to be turned away. A citywide day of mourning was to be declared.

Scenes of heartbreak and grief continued in scores of homes, empty by or more children, at the morgue, where parents collapsed in hysteria upon identifying their children, and at the Our Lady of the Angels rectory, where the nuns' bodies were brought Tuesday night.

Last Rites Set

A large crowd, many of them nuns who could not restrain their sobs, watched the three black coffins, decorated with small silver crosses, taken into the rectory. An auxiliary bishop conducted services outside the building, where last rites for the nuns will be held Thursday.

Police had all but ruled out the possibility that the fire was deliberately touched off by a deranged arsonist who somehow crept into the school.

But their suspicions mounted that some teenage boy had ducked beneath the stairwell, taken a few puffs on a cigaret, and tossed it into a cardboard container stuffed with discarded examination papers before returning to his classes.

The fire swept up the stairwell of the 2-story school and spread through the second floor. Suffocating black smoke boiled up from the well-waxed corridor floors. Then, it was theorized, a nun smelled smoke, ordered windows opened in a classroom, and provided the murderous draft for the flames. Within minutes, children were leaping from second floor windows or dying of heat or asphyxiation at their desks.

Boys Quizzed

Police Sgt. Drew Brown, head of the arson squad, along with a special police squat of 35 men, began intensive questioning of boys who had been assigned by their teachers to carry wastepaper from classrooms to the trash bins near a stairwell.

Throng Just Waits, Looks

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - (AP) - The milling throng had a life of its own - stretching and straining at a leash that was fastened to disaster.

As each lifeless form, shrouded in canvas, came on the hands of firemen to the waiting line of ambulances, faces and forms surged forward, then back.

Some heads turned aside at the sight of the pitifully small figures. Others faced ahead; blank, unbelieving. Monday as they watched firemen carry the dead from Our Lady of the Angels Catholic grade school.

Through the broad door and stairway the tragic procession came - under the arch chiseled with "Our Lady of the Angels."

An old woman held a black kerchief to her thin lips. She crossed herself, her lips moved in prayer.

Two men wept openly. They talked to each other in Polish. Hushed, soft Italian voices joined the murmur.

Most just looked. A man touched the woman by his side - they turned away without words.

And others waited. Those closest to the tragedy, the parents, went to hospitals, then to the morgue in a bitter search for their children.

Nuns who taught the children, knew them, loved them, sat silent in the convent.

Shades were drawn, but lights still burned in every home.

Searchlights still bathe the ruin - but it was over.

The new came, but for many the memory of the old was an etching in sorrow that will not yield to the dawn.

The Morgue

Dad Bends Down to Look - Then He Screams

By Peter Reich

CHICAGO - Dec. 2, 1958 - On hastily erected wooden planking in the basement of the County Morgue they were laid out. The bodies of the children - 4th and 5th graders from Our Lady of the Angels grammar school.

A young father, ashen-faced, expressionless, walked as in a trance between a nurse and a deputy coroner. The group paused. The deputy gently lifted a white cotton sheet mercifully covering the first of the seemingly endless row of small, still forms.

A shock of blond hair, a bobby pin still holding a curl, was exposed to the cold white light of the morgue's bare light bulb.

The father bent forward hesitantly. His lips quivered. The deputy lifted the sheet a little more.

The young father shook his head. "No," he whispered hoarsely. It wasn't his daughter.

The three figures moved silently to the next covered form.

Again the deputy lifted the sheet. Again the father forced himself to bend forward for a closer look.

Then it came. A scream. A deep-throated, anguished man's cry that strangled a second after it began - strangled because the father was screaming so hard he no longer could make a sound.

Great, overwhelming sobs wrenched his body. He twisted from the nurse's restraining grip, flung himself on the dead form and lovingly cradled the lifeless head in his arms.

He looked up then, his face hideously ravaged with grief, and nodding piteously, indicated he found what he had prayed so hard he wouldn't find…

The strong arms of a policeman lifted him to his feet and supported him as he collapsed.

It had begin hours earlier.

At 5:15 p.m., there were 42 fire victims bodies in the morgue. Police, coroner's deputies, doctors from adjacent County Hospital, and morgue personnel clustered in a lobby and a hallway.

Just arriving were a number of priests - summoned to give comfort to bereaved families expected momentarily. Some priests came so hurriedly they hadn't even had time to don clerical garb.

In Polk street, just south of the yellow brick building housing the County Morgue, ambulances were lined up nearly a block - red mars lights blinking eerily in the dusk of evening.

A growing knot of silent spectators watched as the procession of ambulances delivered bodies to the morgue's east entrance.

A woman said:

"My God, won't they ever stop coming?"

At 5:34 p.m., bock-laden stretchers were blocking the morgue's basement corridor … the dead were arriving faster than an emergency team of attendance could place them in the viewing room.

At 5:41 p.m., the count had grown to 58. the line of waiting ambulances had grown, too.

Coroner McCarron directed deputies to show all arriving kin into the morgue's various inquest rooms, so grief-stricken parents and relatives could at least be seated while waiting to identify the bodies.

The coroner also directed a team of County Hospital nurses to prepare smelling salts and strong coffee for the distraught kin. Nurses were instructed further to take names and descriptions of all missing youngsters being sought.

The coroner added:

"Don't let anyone into the viewing room until I talk to them. We don't want to add more deaths from heart attacks to this ghastly tragedy."

To a reporter, he said:

"Have you seen them yet - the little ones, all burned up? My God, I don't know how I'll be able to take it. I've got five of my own, you know."

The coroner, frequently exposed to death and tragedy though he is, was very shaken.

And still the bodies continued to arrive.

A few minutes later, the count had reached 65.

In the basement viewing room, the lifeless forms were gently placed on wooden planking, then covered with sheets.

A small hand and arm showed from one. A child's wristwatch was strapped to it. The hands of the watch had stopped a little after 3 p.m.

Morgue attendants and physicians now began the grim task of sorting bodies … male and female … larger and smaller. Item of identification, such as rings, or lockets, shoes or recognizable bits of clothing, were duly noted on charts. A doctor explained:

"The clothing isn't much help. Most of the kids wore uniforms, apparently.

"But personal items might help identify a youngster, and the sex and size classification will at least spare a parent the necessity of viewing all the bodies. A parent looking for a small daughter, for instance, will have to view only bodies in that category."

The doctor paused to pick up a slip of paper that had dropped on the floor, apparently from a pocket of one of the victims.

It was a card with a child's prayer on it.

Shortly before 6, the first parents arrived.

A slim, young mother with dark hair and a husky man in a wind jacket are brought in by a man who identifies himself as Jay Staggs of 3027 Milwaukee av. He says:

"I'm a Chicago Civil Defense volunteer. I've driven these people to four different hospitals looking for their youngster. This is a last resort.

Neither mother nor father betray emotion. The woman waits silently as the father asks, and receives, permission to view the bodies downstairs.

As the father starts to inspect the ghastly array, a deputy calls him back. The deputy tells him:

"It's still too early, sir. There are 10 more bodies at St. Anne's Hospital, and Lord knows how many more elsewhere. It's no use putting you through this ordeal more than once. Please wait till we have all the kids here.

The father agrees. He and his wife leave quietly

It is 6:15 p.m. The basement room is filled to capacity with small bodies row on row. A second third, even a fourth room are pressed into emergency service.

A deputy announces the total number of bodies thus far received: 68.

Now a steady stream of parents and relatives enters the morgue, all seeking a youngster who did not return from school.

In the shuffling, dread-filled crowd that fills the lobby, snatches and fits of conversation are heard.

A young mother:

"I wanted to ask his teacher if she saw what happened to Johnny, but she's dead."

A nun:

"I was about to release the patrol boys. It was shortly before 3 o'clock when I first smelled the smoke.

A young man in the white gown of an intern:

"I can't take this. I've got to get some fresh air before I go downstairs again. These poor little kids."

A father tells a policeman:

"My little girl was wearing a little gold ring with a purple stone. Will that help?"

A priest to a woman near collapse:

"There still are a lot of children unaccounted for. Perhaps your youngster is not even here. You must not despair.

An elderly couple to a policeman:

"We're looking for Joanne Sciolino. She's 11. We're her aunt and uncle. Can we see if she's downstairs?"

At 7 p.m., the count had risen to 78. A few minutes later, to 83.

A deputy coroner tells a morgue attendant numbering a registration sheet:

"You'd better leave room for a hundred names."

Another familiar face in the crowd, Ald. Patrick Petrone, in whose ward the fire occurred, helps several bereaved families coordinate search efforts by telephoning hospitals and friends.

Downstairs, another flurry of activity as nurses rush to the aid of a mother who has lost consciousness on seeing the array of bodies.

Thirty feet away, a father clutches his face with both hands as he acknowledges identity of a youngster as his.

Except for the intermittent cries of anguish that mark identification of another youngster's body, the morgue is quiet.

Even at this stage, hours after the tragedy, the impact is too great: the horror to overwhelming.

Most simply are too stunned to react.

A father near exhaustion, after viewing numerous bodies in a vain quest for his son, aged 10, he tells an attendant:

"I want to see the other bodies, too. I must find my son."

Later, the attendant tells a reporter:

"The bodies we didn't let him see wouldn't have done him any good to see. They're too charred to be recognizable.

Another father, his eyes blank from horror and shock, staggers by. In his hand he clutches the contents of one victim's pockets - a nickel, a piece of string, a toy propeller, and a key. Those items tell him all he needs to know.

By 8:06 p.m., the body count has risen to 87, with a scant dozen identified. The crowds at the morgue continue to grow.

An hour later, 90 bodies are counted.

The grim task of trying to identify them continues.

The hollow-eyed men and woman aimlessly wandering corridors of the morgue, waiting their turn to view the remains, know in their hearts they'll find the worst.

But some - just a fortunate few - are wrong.

Like Joseph Dembinski, for instance.

He is about to resign all hope when a deputy tells him:

"I have good news, sir. Linda Zeogone, the niece you are seeking, isn't here. We have found out she is safe at one of the hospitals."

But Joseph Dembinski is the exception.

For the vast majority of other people at the morgue, there is not awakening from the nightmare.

School Fire Chicago's Worst in 55 Years

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - (AP) - The fire that struck Our Lady of the Angels School Monday was the third worst school fire in the nation in the last 100 years and the worst in the city in 55 years.

The greatest school disaster occurred March 18, 1937, when 294 died in a school explosion and fire in New London, Texas.

The other major school fire claimed 176 lives in the Collinwood School in Cleveland on March 4, 1908.

There have been 26 fires in this country in which as many as 50 persons died.

More than 1,900 were injured in that conflagration.

Twelve years ago, 61 persons perished in a fire in the LaSalle Hotel, Chicago. Nearly 230 others were injured in that blaze June 5, 1946, 30 of them seriously.

The worst fire in Chicago took 602 lives on Dec. 30, 1903, when the Iroquois Theater burned.

Worst of these recent fires was Coconut Grove Night Club blaze in Boston on Nov. 28, 1942, in which 498 died.

Other fires with major losses of life in the last two decades are: Dec. 7, 1946 - 119 dead in Winecoff Hotel Fire, Atlanta, George.

"I'll Remember It to My Dying Day," Says Fireman

By Marty O'Connor

CHICAGO - Dec. 2, 1958 - Two of the first firemen on the scene at Our Lady of the Angels school fire afterwards had eyes as deep and troubled as those of combat infantrymen.

Richard Duchene and George Harper, Hook and Ladder Company 26, sipped hot coffee less than 30 yards from where the worst ordeal of their lives took place.

Gazing at the school building, lit now by floodlights, gleaming with running streams of water, Duchene said:

"Nobody in the world would believe what went on there less than three hours ago. Merciful God."

SWUNG AROUND CORNER

Duchene said Hook and Ladder Co. 35 was already on the Iowa street side of the school when his own rig with its five men pulled up. He said:

"We swung around the corner to the Avers avenue side and all we did was run up the 85-foot aerial ladder.

"Civilians went up the ladders to do what they could. The firemen were too busy trying to catch or break the falls of children leaping from the bulding.

"The children were screaming and jumping faster than we could catch them. It was the worst thing I ever saw. Children on the ground everywhere, some with their shoes knocked off in the fall. Everywhere."

ROLLING IN SLUSH

Fireman Harper agreed. He said:

"I never saw anything like it before and I never want to again. Some of the children were on fire, rolling around in the slush trying to put out the flames and screaming and screaming.

"I'll remember it to my dying day."

Men of Hook and Ladder Co. 26 were under the command of Lt. Roger Hester.

Also making the run on 26 were firemen Dan Bodner and Robert Thorpe.

BY TRUCKLOAD

Thorpe suffered an eye injury in the furious battle to reach the burning children. Harper and Duchene were active in the removal of dozens of bodies. Duchene said:

"The bodies seemed to be coming out by the truckload and for all I knew they were.

"I don't know which was worst, putting kids in ambulances knowing they would be dead before the vehicle went a block or seeing the little forms trapped in the rear of the building.

"Most of them never had a chance."

LEGEND SAYS IT

Another fireman who had just hit the coffee wagon joined the group.

He eyed the smoking schoolhouse and a legend chiseled in stone over the doorway. The inscription reads:

"Our Lady of the Angels."

The fireman said:

"That's the name of this place now, all right … now and forever."

Chronology Shows Speed of Disaster

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - (AP) - Chronology of Our Lady of the Angels Catholic school fire:

Girl Recalls Burning Backs Of Classmates

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - (AP) - Children from hospital beds, many with burns, told of the frenzy and hysteria, of escapes and rescues in the holocaust at Our Lady of the Angels School Monday.

The scene they described were ones of horror.

Linda Barleto, 12, in a hospital suffering burns and bruises, said as she sipped orange juice:

"Our backs were burning. Then someone pushed me out of a window."

In an adjacent bed was Andrea Gagliareo, 12, Linda's cousin and classmate.

"Some of the boys jumped out of the window," Andrea said.

"When we looked down we say them lying still on the ground. They didn't move."

TELLS OF RESCUE

Frances Panno, 10, her face and hands burned and her black hair charred, told from the Franklin Boulevard Hospital of her rescue of the school by firemen.

"Other pupils were screaming and pushing behind me," she said. "Then some firemen came up ladders put against the windows and took me down the ladder."

Mary Brock, 10, a fifth grade pupil on the second floor of the building, said someone in her classroom yelled, "I smell smoke."

"When the classroom door was opened, a lot of smoke blew in," she said. "Sister Mary Clara Theresa told us to get out of the windows and get on the ledge and stay there. I got out the window and stood on the ledge, but lots of others jumped."

Mary Latianzio, 12, a seventh grader, said she knew nothing about the fire until she heard children screaming in an adjoining eight grade room

"Smoke begin to pour into our room," Mary related. "A lot of children began to cry. There was a big jam at the door of the room because so many wanted to get out. One boy collapsed from inhaling smoke. Another was hanging out of a window, calling for help."

Joseph Brocato, 11, a sixth grade pupil, was brought to St. Elizabeth's Hospital by his father. Anthony Joseph said he and a classmate were emptying waste paper baskets from his classroom in the boiler room. That was near 3 o'clock, the time of dismissal of classes for the day.

"Suddenly," Joseph told a reporter, "I saw the janitor running from the boiler room. The janitor yelled 'Call the fire department.' My classmate and I ran upstairs and were told by the nuns to go into the church (around the corner from the school). A lot of children were in the church. We then were told to go home."

Sylvia Tesauro, 13, an eighth grader, told her story from a room in the Walther Memorial Hospital, where she was confined with three other pupils.

"Two girls entered our classroom and said the hall was filled with smoke," Sylvia related. "Sister tried to lead the classroom downstairs. We were forced back by the thick black smoke and had to go to the windows to get air. Many of the girls were crying, sobbing like everything.

"Firemen raised ladders up against the ledge and I came down a ladder. Other pupils were jumping and falling from windows. On the ground children were lying all around and there was a lot of blood on the ground."

George Tomilia(sic), 10, said [he climbed onto] the second floor ledge. He dangled briefly from the ledge by his fingertips, then jumped. He suffered a fractured hip.

Chicago Presses Search for Clues to Fire At School

Police Think Cigarette May Have Set Blaze - Safety Check Is Ordered Here

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - Investigators searched without success today for the cause of yesterday's fire that took ninety lives in Our Lady of the Angels parochial school on Chicago's West Side. Eighty-seven of the victims were children attending the grade school and three were nuns, who were their teachers.

Police, fire and other city officials, the office of the Coroner of Cook County and the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation collaborated in attempting to determine the cause of the disaster. The death toll was the highest in a school fire in the city's history.

[Officials throughout the nation reacted energetically Tuesday to the Chicago fire tragedy. In New York, city firemen were started on inspection of the 1,500 public, private and parochial schools. Governor Harriman ordered a state-wide check of all schools. Similar precautionary steps were taken in other areas.]

74 Still in Hospital

Seventy-one children and three nuns remained in hospital today. Sixty-three were in good condition. Eleven, including one nun, were on the critical list. Four girls are still missing.

Also in a hospital was James Raymond, 44 years old, a janitor of the school, at 3820 West Iowa Street. Mr. Raymond has not been able to give the police an account of the moments shortly before and after the outbreak of fire at 2:40 P.M.

Mr. Raymond was known to have been on the scene of the fire. The police said they were eager to question him as soon as he was able to give a coherent account.

Cigarette Theory Studies

Arson experts of the Police Department advanced the theory this morning that the blaze might have been caused by a cigarette carelessly discarded by someone who had sneaked a smoke. It is know that the fire started in the stairwell in the basement of the two-story brick building, which had been a church before being converted into a school.

The police cautioned, however, that this theory lacked substantiation. However, they pointed out that a cigarette might have caused a stock of discarded papers to smolder for an hour or so before the blaze burst forth.

Investigators were unable to say whether the possible "sneak" smoker had been a student. However, it was disclosed that some of the boys had told police that "sneak" smoking by boy students did occur occasionally.

The flames spread through the building so rapidly that most of the children had no chance to begin their often-practiced fire drills.

Many of them were killed when they leaped from the second floor windows of the school to the pavement.

Stairwell Focus of Inquiry

The stairwell, leading from the basement to the first floor, was the focal point of the investigation throughout the day.

It was up this stair that an unidentified janitor had rushed to shout, "call the Fire Department." That was twenty minutes before the school was to have been dismissed for the day.

The stairwell is 25 feet long and 15 feet wide. The police found stacks of paper in the basement. Sgt. Drew Brown of the Police Department's Arson Squad said today the condition of the papers had prompted him to theorize that the blaze had started in them.

However, it was established that within ten minutes before the blaze broke out from twelve to fifteen boys had taken wastebaskets of discarded classroom papers to the boiler room. The boys had gone to the room by varying routes, to dump the papers in a container.

It was the custom, it was revealed, to store the papers until conditions outdoors were suitable for burning them in a container in the school yard.

There were no reasons given as to why the papers had not been burned yesterday. The weather was clear and a light breeze was blowing in the afternoon. The temperature was slightly below freezing.

Two boys, a little tardy in their chores, said one had mentioned to the other that he smelled "something different" in the basement as they started back to their home room. Before they reached it the janitor began to shout his warning.

Mr. Raymond told the police last night that he had been walking toward the school, coming from the Our Lady of the Angels Church, in the same block, when he saw smoke coming from the northeast corner of the building.

Whether it was he who gave the alarm could not be determined, it was reported, until the police were able to question him again.

Flames Rush Upstairs

As Sergeant Brown reconstructed the episode, the blaze roared up the stairwell to the second floor. In moments that floor was enveloped in billowing smoke and fast-moving flames. It was on this floor that the trapped victims died. All on the first floor escaped.

The draft created by the mounting flame and heat drew the fire directly to the second floor of the tightly closed building, it was believed. Fire Commissioner Robert J. Quinn said today, that it appeared that the dense smoke might have been caused by burning linoleum.

Survivors continued to recount today how the smoke had rushed into rooms as doors were opened. Its density and the intenseness of the heat appeared to have driven back those attempting to escape into the rooms to seek safety at the windows. Those who were not immediately overcome leaped to death and injury from the windows.

"Once a fire gets going," commissioner Quinn said today, "it goes faster than you can run. All you need is one inhalation of that superheated air. It doesn't take much to trap a person and snuff out his life," he added.

'All Laws Complied With'

He went on to say that the school had been inspected by the Fire Department during Fire Prevention Week, Oct. 5-11.

"All the laws were complied with. The building actually was what one would term very clean," Commissioner Quinn said.

Commissioner Quinn agreed with other investigators that the fire escape leading from the northeast rear corner of the second floor to the ground had played no role in the loss of life.

There had been a delay in pulling the balanced stairway to the ground and another delay in opening the second floor door leading to it. But these delays of a few moments did not cause any fatalities, authorities agreed.

Escape Door Not Closed

The fire escape door, in a corridor, was almost the width of the building away from the stairway, which funneled the smoke and flames to the second floor.

It was found today that all twenty-four to thirty children who had used the fire escape got out of the building safely. Most of the victims died in the three rooms on the west side of the building and two on the east side.

The police today amended last night's report that some twenty-four children had been found dead, seated at their desks. A few of the children were found still at their desks; others lay on the floor.

Commissioner Quinn also agreed with a city building official that while the school building conformed with building and fire codes of the city, such a school could not be built in the same manner today. The parish's original church, now the school, was built in 1908.

It was listed in city records as a "pre-ordinance" structure - not affected by the building code adopted in 1949. The new code requires "enclosure" of stairwells with fire-resistant materials.

Mayor Richard J. Daley said today that the tragedy would bring about a "thorough review and survey by experts" of the city's codes for fire prevention.

Walter McCarron, the County Coroner, said today he would start an inquest next week.

Commissioner Quinn said that an examination at the police crime laboratory of various articles taken from the scene had not shown any evidence of arson.

The police today were trying to find a boy known only as "Richard." The boy was reported to have been seen by other boys loitering in the boiler room although he had no duties there.

'Much More to Be Done'

Public school officials said that in the last four years the city had conducted a fire prevention program, "which is the most extensive in a generation." This has included the installation of fireproof stairwells, replacement of wooden floors and trimming with fireproof materials and relocation of boiler rooms in the city's older schools.

The Right Rev. Joseph F. Cussen, pastor of Our Lady of the Angels Parish, said today that plans to replace the school would await reports from building inspectors and engineers.

Meanwhile, pupils left without classrooms by the disaster will attend classes in near-by parochial schools as son as accommodations can be arranged. The headquarters of Catholic Charities here said today it would provide free bus transportation for the children.

Catholic Charities will also furnish textbooks and other materials lost in the fire.

The Cook County morgue today was a scene of heartbreak for scores of parents as one by one the bodies of the children were identified. In many cases, identification rested on such small personal items as a 10-cent ring on a girl's finger or a pocket knife in a boy's trouser pocket.

Family dentists, carrying dental charts of their young patients, also helped in the identifications.

On a table lay an assortment of Mickey Mouse watches, jewelry and small trinkets, once happily worn by the children.

Last night there [were] sixty-eight bodies in the morgue. Today the number slowly dwindled as sorrowful identifications were made.

The three nuns remaining today in St. Anne's Hospital are: Sister Mary Davidis, Sister Mary Helaine and Sister Mary Geraldita. Sister Mary Helaine is on the critical list. The other two nuns are reported to be in good condition.

'I Won't Give Up Hope,' Says Father

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 - (AP) - A morgue attendant gently lifted a sheet from a charred body and said, "This is a boy."

John Jakowski (sic) Sr., leaned over, looked intently at the lifeless form and screamed.

"Oh my God, my boy, my boy!"

Upstairs in the crowded main hall at Cook County Morgue, a deputy coroner intoned into a megaphone:

"We are looking for the parents of an 11-year-old girl with a medal and cross around her neck. She wore a full school uniform with long black stockings. She can be identified."

A little woman in a tan coat cried out, then sobbed uncontrollably into the ends of her scarf.

A blue-clad student nurse guided the woman to a seat in a smoky meeting room. A policeman led her husband past 20 other anxious parents and relatives and down the long steps to the bodies in the basement.

In the noisy lobby, Vincent Mucci tugged at the sleeves of coroner's deputies - seeking word of his niece, Elaine Pesoli.

"She's 9," he said, "wearing red bobby sox and black suede shoes."

Hours later, Elaine's name was posted on the official death list.

Walter Kalinowski and his red-eyed wife sat in a coroner's jury room, waiting for news of their daughter, Angeline, 14.

"I haven't given up hope," Kalinowski said. "I won't, unless they take me down there and show her to me."

The megaphone drowned out the rest of his words.

"Clear the aisle. Keep the aisle cleared," the deputy coroner ordered. "We'll take you down as soon as we can."

The small bodies, covered with blankets, were carried into the morgue from ambulances and squad cars that drew up 10 and 12 deep in the street outside. Police carried the bodies into a waiting room and put them gently down on the cold concrete floor.

Boy Who Jumped Tells of Tragedy

CHICAGO - Dec. 2, 1958 - A boy who jumped out of a second floor window lived to tell about it.

He is Frank Gallo, Jr., 10, of 3147 Augusta blvd., a fifth grade pupil in Our Lady of the Angels school.

From his bed in St. Anne's Hospital, Frank told how his class was studying geography.

He and the other 45 or so pupils were reading about the Middle Atlantic states, Frank recalled. He said:

"A kid in my room jumped up out of his seat and hollered, 'smoke.' And smoke started coming through the cracks in the door.

"Our nun was writing on the blackboard. She told us to open the windows and start praying.

"Then everybody started runnin' toward the windows 'cause they couldn't breathe. She (the nun) just stood there, cool as a cucumber."

5 BOYS JUMPED

Frank said five boys jumped out the window, then he hoisted himself on the sill, sat down and slid off, just as if her were easing himself into a swimming pool.

When he hit the ground ("hard dirt with stones on top") he said:

"I felt like my back was broken. I crawled along a while and then got up. A lot of them couldn't get up.

"I walked into a story - a little one across the alley from school.

"I wanted to call my mother and tell her to come and help us and bring a car."

NO ONE THERE

The proprietor of the store, however, wasn't there, having been attracted by the commotion across the street.

Frank went back outside. He said:

"Fire trucks were coming and everything."

Frank, who incurred possible internal injuries and possible fractures, doesn't know it, but the nun of whom he spoke, Sister Mary Clare Therese, is dead.

Pope John Wires Condolences to Bereaved Kin

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 2 - (AP) - Pope John XXIII Tuesday sent the Chicago archdiocese of the Roman Catholic church a telegram expressing his profound sorrow over the Our Lady of the Angels school fire.

"We have been profoundly saddened," the telegram said, "to learn of the tragedy which has befallen the school of Our Lady of the Angels. We express from the heart our deepest sympathy with the parents. To the families thus sorely stricken we impart our apostolic benediction in token of the fullness of heavenly consolat"

Arson Squad to Probe Fire in School Last Year

CHICAGO - Dec. 2, 1958 - Sgt. Drew Brown, who is in charge of Fire Attorney Downes arson squad, is expected to start questioning officials of Our Lady of the Angels school about a mysterious fire in the school a year ago.

The story about last year's fire was told to Sgt. Brown by Theresa Gorski, 10, a fifth grade pupil who lives at 935 N. Avers av.

She said in October, 1957, when she was in fourth grade, there was a mysterious fire on the first floor in the boys wash room on the north side of the school.

An investigation by school officials at the time disclosed burned paper and matches in the boys' wash room.

Sgt. Brown said the nuns are too distraught over the loss of life in yesterday's fire for questioning now in the earlier fire.

"It's Just Too Much," Laments Archbishop

By Mervin Block

CHICAGO - Dec. 2, 1958 - Three bodies, grotesquely contorted, lay sid by side in the X-ray room.

A nurse pulled back a blanket, revealing the blood encrusted head of a boy.

Msgr. James Hardiman, the archbishop's secretary, gasped.

In a moment he recovered his composure and said:

"They're just kids … poor little kids."

The archbishop himself, Albert Gregory Meyer, looked as though he wanted to cry.

40-MINUTE TOUR

He make the sign of the cross, uttered a silent prayer and quietly left the room.

"It's just too much," he remarked as he completed a 40-minute tour of St. Anne's Hospital.

The archbishop had been informed of the disaster while praying is his residence, 1555 State pkwy. Msgr. Hardiman, who brought the news, summoned the archbishop's chauffeur and the three went to the hospital.

When they set out shortly after 4 p.m., the radio in their car told of 20 dead. By the time they pulled up at St. Anne's 35 minutes later, the radio said 40 were dead.

ASKS FOR CHILDEN

Sister Almunda, administrator of the hospital, recognized the archbishop as he entered the lobby. He asked:

"Where are the children?"

She led him into the auditorium, which had been converted into a makeshift ward.

The archbishop want from bed to bed, cart to cart, making the sign of the cross and intoning a prayer over each survivor:

"May the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost descend upon you and remain with you forever. Amen."

ALL IS SWIFT

The nurses scurrying back and forth with supplies were too busy to notice him. Those who did gave no sign.

Obviously disturbed by the moaning, the crying and the injuries, the archbishop became particularly upset as he viewed one badly burned child. With a catch in his throat, he exclaimed:

"That's awful."

After the archbishop had blessed the 14 children in the huge room, Sister Almunda led him to an elevator.

As soon as the elevator door slid open on the sixth floor, the passengers were unnerved by the most piteous screams.

Besides outbursts due to pain, many victims were screaming for their mothers.

The archbishop strode from room to room, blessing the greviously hurt, encouraging the staff.

In the corridor, doctors and nurses hurried past, too preoccupied even to nod to him.

When a photographer asked the archbishop to linger a few seconds over one motionless form, the archbishop replied:\"No, we're just in the way."

CLUTCHES CRUCIFIX

A hideously burned boy, clutching a crucifix, was wheeled into an empty room. The archbishop followed him, administering his blessing as attendants adjusted intravenous feedings.

Then the archbishop walked into the sugery section.

While doctors cleaned wounds, set fractures and sewed incisions, the tall priest tiptoed into six of the operating rooms.

After blessing the patients there, he walked down to the third floor to visit two nuns injured in the fire.

One, her face blackened, arms wrapped in bandages, opened her eyes and whispered:

"I'm fine."

TOO LATE

As he emerged from the room, two nurses and a nun were running down the hall pushing a large green tank of oxygen on a dolly.

From there he went down to several suites adjoining the emergency room.

Father Richard Bermingham, hospital chaplain, who preceded the archbishop down the passageway, opened a door and announced"

"They're all dead in here."

VISITS FIRE SITE

The archbishop waled in. a fireman shifting the bodies dropped to his knees as he entered.

The archbishop spent several minutes there, then went to the site of the fire.

The archbishop's driver, Vince McAleer, a policeman on leave, was overwhelmed by the suffering. However, McAleer spoke not of his own feelings but of the archbishop's when he said:

"He's very, very upset."

Hospitals Work Around Clock to Relieve Injured

By Norton Kay

CHICAGO - Dec. 2, 1958 - Hundreds of doctors, nurses, nuns and medical aides last night worked around the clock in four hospitals, administering drugs, sedatives, blood and blood plasma in the battle to save lives and relieve the agony of 100 children burned or injured in the fire at Our Lady of the Angels Catholic school.

The four hospitals are St. Anne's, 4590 W. Thomas st.; Franklin Boulevard Community, 3240 W. Franklin blvd.; Walther Memorial, 1116 N. Kedzie av., and Garfield Park Community, 3821 West Washington blvd.

At St. Anne's, Sister Almunda, administrator of the hospital, realized what lay ahead when the first charred body was brought into the emergency room. She immediately put in calls for Dr. James Callahan, chief of staff, and Dr. James E. Segraves, chairman of the hospital's disaster plan.

HELP SUMMONED

Her next move was to call in more telephone operators to answer the anguished calls of parents.

But even before the summons doctors, nurses, laboratory and X-ray specialists throughout the city were making their way to the hospital to offer their services.

Needed badly was whole blood, also plasma plus glucose solution containing what are know as the body's electrolytes. They are minerals, such as potassium, sodium and magnesium, which are lost in bad burns.

Early today blood supplies began to run short.

Another phase of the disaster plan went into effect. The Chicago Blood Donor Service, Inc., 2056 N. Clark st., was called. So was the Michael Reese Foundation and Mt. Sinai Blood Center. All responded quickly with plasma and whole blood.

Despite requests that calls to the hospital be limited, the switchboard continued buzzing. Some calls offered their blood.

Most difficult were the calls starting with: "My name is ….. and my boy or girl hasn't been found. I wonder if …"

STORY RETOLD

The story at St. Anne's is only one.

At Franklin Boulevard Community Hospital, the staff had been practicing an emergency disaster plan.

An official trial run had been scheduled for Dec. 26.

Dr. Patrick A DeMoon, administrator, and Dr. William J. Krulick, chief of staff, last night found that emergency. There was no humor when DeMoon said:

"We moved up the date. Last night we saw it."

Other School Tragedies

CHICAGO, Dec 2 - The Chicago school explosion and fire Monday was among the worst such disasters ever to strike in the United States.

According to the World Almanac, the worst school tragedy occurred on March 18, 1937, at New London Texas, when an explosion destroyed a schoolhouse, killing 294 persons.

The almanac says a total of 174 children and two teacher were killed in a fire and panic at the Lakewood School in Collinwood, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, on March 4, 1908.

Moscow Says School Fire No Accident

LONDON, Dec 2 - (UPI) - Moscow radio said Tuesday the Chicago school fire was no accident because many American schools were firetraps.

"According to official data of the American education authorities, over five million American children attend school in buildings which are regarded as not safe from the point of view of fires," the broadcast said.

The broadcast said it was significant that the U.S. Government "tabled in Congress a bill providing for a sum equal to only half of 1 percent of the allocations for military ends to be spent on new school buildings."

The fire was the major foreign story in European newspapers Tuesday. Morning and afternoon editions in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Vienna, Stoockholm and Copenhagen put the story on the front pages, many with banner headlines.

Memories of Horror Rack School Janitor

Injured in Disastrous Fire, He Declares He Won't Go Back

The janitor at Our Lady cannot go back again. James Raymond, 43, said from his hospital bed: “I couldn't work alongside memories of those horrible minutes.”

HE IS recovering in Garfield Community hospital from loss of blood suffered when he cut his wrist while breaking a window.

In a broken, weary voice he 'talked of the dead. “I don't want to know their names,” he said.

He described a “peculiar kind of smoke” in the burning school. “I can breathe coal and wood smoke,” he said. “But I couldn't breathe that.”

RAYMOND is expected to be a central figure in the inquest next week into the deaths.

He has maintained the school stairwell was free of rubbish. But inspectors have said they found evidence of debris in the stairwell that helped spread the fire.

From his hospital bed, Raymond insisted, “There was nothing in that stairway that could start a fire.

HE SAID he was in the boiler room when he first saw “a red glow” through the window in a wall separating the room from the basement section of the stairwell. He ran to the church kitchen, adjacent to the boiler room, and told a cook to call the fire department. He said his next thought was the safe exit of the children.

He ran into a first-floor room, he said, and lifted 11 children out a window. Then he turned and ran up a stairway to the second floor to open the fire escape door and lower the fire escape.

BUT BY the time he reached the second floor, children were at windows gasping for air and some were mounting window ledges from which many jumped.

He lowered the fire escape and turned back to try to lead children to safety.

But the smoke began searing his lungs. He broke a corridor window with his flashlight. It was here that he cut his wrist.

FROM THIS point, he said he could only recall dimly what happened afterward.

He saw blood streaming from his wrist. With nothing to bind it, he rushed back to the boiler room and grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his wrist.

Then he dragged himself to a door on the first floor, stumbled outside, and fainted.

The next thing he recalls was the ambulance ride to the hospital.

HIS OWN five children were in the school when the fire broke out.

A son, John, 11, is in Franklin Blvd. Community hospital with a broken hip suffered when he leaped from a second-floor window.

The four others escaped without Injuries.

Raymond, of 1008 N. Hamlin, had been janitor at the school for 13 years.

Third Worst In Nation

CHICAGO, Dec. 3 - (AP) - The fire that struck Our Lady of the Angels School Monday was the third worst school fire in the nation in the last 100 years and the worst in Chicago in 55 years.

The greatest school disaster occurred March 18, 1937, when 294 died in a school explosion and fire in New London, Tex.

The other major school fire claimed 176 lives in the Collinwood School in Cleveland March 4, 1908.

The worst fire in Chicago took 602 lives Dec. 30, 1903, when the Iroquois Theater burned.

On June 5, 1946, 61 persons perished in a fire in the LaSalle Hotel, Chicago.

There have been 26 fires in this country in which as many as 50 persons died. Two were school fires. Only eight fires with such a loss of life have occurred in the last 20 years, none of them in schools.

Worst of these recent fires was the Cocoanut Grove Night Club blaze in Boston Nov. 28, 1942, in which 498 died.

Other fires with major losses of life in the last two decades are:

Dec. 7, 1946 - 119 dead in Winecoff Hotel fire, Atlanta, Ga.

Oct. 20, 1944 - 135 killed in Cleveland liquid gas explosion and fire.

July 6, 1944 - 168 dead in Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus fire at Hartford, Conn.

April 23, 1940 - 198 killed in Negro dance hall fire at Natchez, Miss.

Priests Try Vainly To Comfort Bereaved Relatives And Parents

CHICAGO, Dec. 3 - (AP) - The acrid stench of burned bodies and clothing hung heavily over the morgue at the Cook County Hospital today.

Inside, scores of priests and hospital attendants tried to comfort bereaved relatives still trying to identify the bodies of schoolchildren who died at Monday's fire at Our Lady of the Angels Roman Catholic School.

Ninety sheet-covered bodies lay on stretchers in three rooms of the morgue basement. Some had been identified within hours after the fire.

Some fire-blackened bodies contorted in agony may never be identified.

Among white-clad nurses and morgue attendants could be seen the frocked figures of priests. Here was one, his arm around the shoulder of the weeping woman, trying to console her.

"It was the will of God," was heard in a low whisper from the priest. "Your daughter is an angel in heaven."

The woman wept unrestrainedly.

From the other side of the room came a shriek. A woman collapsed and immediately attendants ringed her, eased her into a chair and administered smelling salts.

Nearby stood a couple in their 30s. Pale, dry of tears, they fingered a rosary, their lips moving wordlessly. The man had said earlier his daughter was not reported in any of the half-dozen hospitals to which many of the children had been taken. The couple came to the morgue, but had not looked at any of the unidentified children. They were praying she still might have only been injured, perhaps still in a hospital through some mixup in names.

Hovering among the parishioners was Father Joseph Oginibene. This 32-year old priest, a native Chicagoan, came to Our Lady as the parish was know, in 1952. It was his first assignment after ordination.

He was "Father Joe" to everyone.

It was his daily routine to walk about the schoolyard and near the entrances during recess, the noon lunch period and as the children left the building at 3 p.m.

Monday, Father Ognibene met an old friend for lunch. They dallied at the table. Then he noticed it would soon be time for his young parishioners to leave school for home.

"I was hurrying to the school in my car," he said. "I saw smoke coming from the upper windows and drove my car the wrong way up a one-way street. I parked the car and ran into the building.

"Some children were leaving the building in an orderly fire-drill manner. Others were running about, screaming. Then everything was ablaze.

"I tried … I wanted to … It was the will of God."

When the first bodies began arriving at the morgue, Father Joe was asked to make tentative identification. He knew the greatest force of the fire was concentrated in the section housing Rooms 207, 208, 209, 211 and 212.

Scores of these children he knew by name. All were his friends.

Yet, when he had to identify them by name, or grade, he could only whisper: "I'm not sure of this little one … I think this one was in 209 … This boy was … I'm not sure."

He pressed a thin, shaking hand to his temple. For a moment, it appeared that he might collapse. An attendant slipped a bottle of salts to the priest's nostrils and he straightened up, backing away from the pungent odor.

Then he walked among the bereaved relatives. He stopped, talked with a weeping father.

"It was the will of God, Stanley. Your daughter is now an angel in heaven."

Struggle to Save Fire Survivors Continues

CHICAGO, Dec. 3 - (AP) -

A long, hard struggle to save survivors of Chicago's tragic school fire was in progress in the quiet hospitals Wednesday while the 90 dead were mourned in the hush of funeral homes.

Puzzled investigators pushed efforts to determine the cause.

They were joined by officials from other cities seeking to make sure their schools are protected against a similar disaster.

An appeal for blood for children under treatment in hospitals touched off a rush of donors.

Gifts of money to help familes of the injured and the dead poured in at a rate of more than $2000 an hour. The fund passed the $60,000 mark 24 hours after it was established.

Still in hospitals were 72 patients who were burned or injured in other ways, and 14 were on the critical list. Those with severe burns confronted doctors with the difficult double task of preserving life while healing bodies.

Fire Commissioner Robert J. Quinn expressed belief the fire started in papers stacked near the bottom of a wooden staircase in the northeast corner of the school.

But how it began remained an unanswered question. Arson is being considered. So is the possibility that a schoolboy sneaked a smoke in the basement and carelessly flipped away his cigaret.

While schools in many parts of the nation were being rechecked for fire hazards, officials of at least a half dozen cities arranged to come to Chicago to get a first hand account of the disaster of Our Lady of the Angels School. Among them were officials of New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Miami, San Francisco and CLeveland.

Fire Leads to School Checkups

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - (AP) - Schools in many parts of the nation were being rechecked anew for fire hazards Wednesday in the wake of the Chicago blaze which took 90 lives.

Numerous steps to insure safety for children were instituted, including new fire drill procedures.

Some cities, such as New York, St. Louis and Pittsburgh, were sending officials to Chicago for a first-hand account of what authorities had learned there. California was doing likewise.

At New Haven, Conn., city officials announced that they are placing school fire prevention and evacuation procedures under direct supervision of the fire department.

In Kansas City a special new check of schools was being made by a team of 30 inspectors.

Both New York state and city authorities ordered sweeping new safety surveys.

Meanwhile in Chicago anguished parents prepared to bury their 87 children who with three nuns died in Chicago's worst school fire, the puzzling cause of the fiery catastrophe still plagued investigators.

SINGLE FUNERAL PLANNED

As the search for clues went on, plans for a single funeral for the children were announced by church officials.

Seventy-five of the injured still required hospitalization. Two of them were nuns and one a school janitor. Eleven children were in critical condition.

Their battle was made easier by the overwhelming response to appeals for blood and even skin for grafts. Calls from prospective blood donors across the country were so great that many were told to call later in the week, and even after.

In the morgue, three charred bodies still lay unidentified. Three girls were missing but hopeful parents refused to believe the victims where their daughters.

Rites Held for Nuns Killed in School Fire

CHICAGO, Dec 4 - (AP) -Funeral rites for the first of 90 victims claimed by the fire which swept through a parochial grade school began Thursday in the church a few steps away from the seared hulk of the school building.

Archbishop Albert Gregory Meyer sang a requiem high mass for three blacked-robed nuns who perished trying to save their young pupils in the Our Lady of the Angels School.

Burial was in Mount Calvary cemetery.

A mass funeral for some 28 of the 87 child victims will be held Friday in an armory in the northwest side neighborhood.

One of the most tragic cases following the fire was that of Stanley Burda, whose daughter, Beverley Ann, 13, died in the blaze. Burda had an eye operation the day of the fire to remove a piece of steel chip.

He left the hospital to be at his wife's side, but was warned by doctors that he must not cry - salt tears might scald the wounded eye and blind it.

At the scene he broke down and the tears streamed down his face.

10,000 Mourners at Funeral Of Three Nuns Killed in Fire

CHICAGO, Dec 4 - (UPI) - Three heroic nuns and five children - the first of 90 dead in the Our Lady of the Angels School fire - were laid to rest Thursday.

Ten thousand mourners came to the parish church, where the smell of smoke and charred wood from the school next door still hung heavily in the air.

They honored the selfless sisters who died with their children in Monday's tragedy.

Biblical Basis

The text of their funeral sermon was the same which had guided their lives and given meaning to their deaths - 20 words from St. Mark:

"Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for of such is the kingdom of God."

In other West Side churches, services were held for five of the school's 87 dead children - Charles Nuebert, 9, Lorraine Nieri, 12, Mary Virgilio, 15, James Rogona, 9, and Karen Margaret Hobik, 13.

Archbishop Albert G. Meyer of Chicago and Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York will offer masses in a National Guard armory for 27 of the victims Friday. Private services will be held for the others Friday and Saturday.

The city's sorrow Thursday centered on the three women of God who were caught up in Chicago's greatest fire desaster in 55 years.

The archbishop celebrated their funeral mass and Msgr. William McManus, superintendent of Chicago's Parochial schools, delivered their sermon.

"Our three sisters died a magnificent death," the monsignor said. "When the fire broke out they knew what to do - pray and save the children - and they did this until their death."

Final Prayer

He recalled that firemen heard the voices of the doomed nuns through the smoke and fire Monday.

They were serenely repeating the last words of the Hail Mary - "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death; amen."

"No mother of any child killed in this fire could have been more unselfish or more heroic than these nuns," the priest said.

"They had taught, and believed, that all that matters is a happy death," he said. "No lesson was ever so well taught as their last lesson."

Msgr. McManus did not mention the nuns' names in his sermon because "they would not have wanted it." But their names and the way they died were well known to the mourners. They were:

Sister Mary Clare Therese, 27; Sister Mary St. Canice, 44; Sister Mary Seraphica, 48.

They were nuns of the order of Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin.

Mass Offered for 28 Small Victims of Fire

CHICAGO, Dec. 5 - (AP) - Twenty-eight small coffins lay in the austere setting of a military armory Friday morning for last solemn tributes to the young victims of Monday's parochial grade school fire.

It was a harsh setting - although black and purple draperies softened the atmosphere and a portable alter stood at the front of big Northwest Armory drill hall. But there was no church big enough.

Four of the 87 children and three nuns who died when flames swept Our Lady of the Angels school were buried Thursday. Private services were being held in churches Friday for many of the other children. Other services will be held Saturday.

Meanwhile, scores of medical authorities - including two Army doctors - worked to save the 70 of them on the critical list.

A special detail of 50 fire department officers stepped up citywide inspection of schools.

NUMBED BY TRAGEDY

The Most Rev. Albert Gregory Meyer, Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago, offered the Solemn Requiem Mass for the 28 children.

The Mass in the 6,100-seat armory was not opened to the public. Families of the 28 children were given 150 tickets each to distribute among parents, relatives and close friends.

Students from all Catholic schools attended services in some 400 churches in the Chicago archdiocese while the funeral was held in the armory.

Fire Victim's Souls Commended to God

CHICAGO, Dec. 5 - (AP) - The souls of 27 small victims of Chicago's tragic school fire were commended to God Friday in a color-rich ceremony conducted in the stark setting of a military drill hall.

The fire tonight claimed its 91st victim, Victor Jocobellis, 9. He suffered extensive burns.

A hushed crowd of 7000 mourners jammed the Northwest Armory for the mass funeral.

Archbishop Albert Gregory Meyer sang a requiem high mass while Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York looked on from a red-draped throne to the left of the altar.

Bishop Raymond Hillinger thanked the world for its compassion and told it, in turn, that love and charity had risen like the fabled phoenix from the ashes of the fire.

These were the final rites for 27 of the 88 youngsters who perished in the blaze that spread quick death Monday in Our Lady of the Angels school. Separate services were held for the other children and the three nuns who died with them

91st Chicago Victim Of School Fire Dies

CHICAGO, Dec. 6 - (AP) - Puzzled investigators Saturday began anew the somber task of finding the cause