| About me: |
Dec.1, 1958, I was a first grader, two weeks away from my sixth birthday. I attended a Catholic school in Baltimore very similar in age and style to OLA. Reading the accounts puts me back my first grade classroom in an amazingly visceral way.
At first I didn't think I remembered hearing about the OLA fire, but then it occurred to me that all through grade school I was as aware of a certain disaster that happened to a mid-western Catholic school as I was aware of the pope, or Fatima, or the threat of the atomic bomb. It was so much a part of our conscious and sub-conscious that we didn't even have to know the details. So it's been a moving experience to see these pictures and read about the individuals involved. The emotion that welled up in me seemed to come up from nowhere--I had no family or friends in that fire, or even in Chicago that I know of. Perhaps it's just that I identified with the kids in their uniforms with those statues in the background to an extent I did not expect. That happens a lot as you get older.
Thank you for doing such a beautiful memorial site to those who didn't live to grow up. Such beauty and potential in their faces.
|
