I never thought about this fire again. Several months ago, I started having nightmares about a school fire, where I saw the building, the smoke, the panic, the burned-out classrooms. Finally, after I started seeing pictures of the children in my dream, I got up in the middle of the night and searched on the internet for the source of my nightmares. I didn't remember the name of the school, only that it was in Chicago, and the approximate timeframe. It didn't take me very long to find my way to this website.

I was fascinated to read the accounts of people like myself who were not personally touched but who, so many years later, find the fire invading their dreams. I am not a psychiatrist, but I think it must be that the pictures and the news of children of our own ages who died so horrifically must have placed an indelible stamp on our brains, that now so many years later can still bring forth the terror of an 8-year old facing death. (Either that, or we are trapped in a Stephen King novel....)

I applaud the efforts of the person(s) who put this site up, which cleared up a lot for me. I am heartbroken for the many who suffered the loss. I am amazed at the decades that I have lived through at the age of 53, that took us from the close-knit Italian communities of the 1950's, like the one I myself lived in, to the poverty-ridden, drug-infested neighborhoods with parents who will abandon two-year old children to fend for themselves. The threat of the kind of fire that struck OLA is largely in the past. The threats facing children today are ones those parents and communities of that age could never have dreamt of.

- DATE: December 1, 1958
- DAY OF WEEK: Monday
- TIME OF DAY: Mid-afternoon, right after school
- WEATHER: Clear, cold
- ROOM: The den (TV room)
- SONG: "The Drummer and the Cook"

My older sister was a fan of Harry Belafonte, and we had just been playing a copy of his 1956 album with this number on it. It was an RCA Victor LP, and I'm quite sure the song was the last track on Side 1. Regrettably, I still can't, to this day, think of the song without also thinking of the OLA tragedy.

I was in fifth grade at Meadowbrook School in Northbrook, about 20 miles north of Chicago. My younger sister had her friend Janet over to visit that day after school. Big Sis and her twin brother, who were juniors at Glenbrook High School -- later renamed Glenbrook North -- were not home yet. One cousin, newly widowed around this time, had just left that morning to return home with her two small children after spending a few days with our family.

The first hint of something wrong was that the regular after-school television shows weren't airing. As I remember, it was THE THREE STOOGES that we had planned to watch. I believe it ran at 3:30 p.m. on WGN-TV (Channel 9).

Janet's reaction to the breaking OLA story is one of my earliest memories of it. She turned to me and said, "The firemen went in and got the bodies."

I don't remember seeing any images of the disaster on TV that afternoon. All I remember is the audio -- a two-way conversation between the news anchor and a reporter on the telephone. During the audio, the "beep" tone would sound at 15-second intervals. It was on this newscast, I believe, that I heard something about a girl jumping from a second-floor window with her hair on fire.

One radio newscaster I vividly remember from this period is Alex Dreyer with NBC RADIO NEWS ON THE HOUR. As I remember, we could hear him at 5:00 p.m., Central Time. I can still hear the high-pitched bell tones and the drumbeat that would open the newscast.

Tuesday, December 2, the Chicago Tribune carried this front-page headline: SCHOOL FIRE KILLS 90.

Until I read your personal stories -- and I have read each one of them -- I didn't realize that your teachers and parents had told you not to talk about the fire. In our fifth-grade class, we talked long -- and quite animatedly -- about it on December 2. In fact, as we were hanging up our wraps before the morning session began, it was already the topic of conversation.

I'm not sure now whether our teacher, Dominic ("Tom") Del Vecchio, was with us on December 2, but I think he was. "Mr. Del," as we knew him, was one of the best teachers I had. He needed to be away at least once during this period, due to the final illness and death of his mother.

Mr. Del's substitute, Mrs. Kelly, was with us on Friday, December 5, which I recall as a gray, overcast day. During the morning session, she mentioned to us the upcoming funeral services "for the children who died in the fire" (her words).

I asked Mrs. Kelly something about fire deaths in general -- how victims die, etc. She replied: "Usually, it's from a lack of oxygen. In most cases, they're dead a long time before the fire gets to them."

The OLA disaster boosted my interest in fire prevention -- plus my interest in safety in general. Something else I didn't know about, until I found this site, was the absence of fire cutoff doors between the second-floor stairwell landing and the corridor. I feel quite sure that those individuals are correct who have said that no one would have died if such doors had been in place -- and kept closed.

As a child, I was highly impressionable, and I still am. The OLA fire was something I just couldn't get out of my mind. And I wasn't even there. Yet the horror I felt 20 miles away had to be pale, indeed, compared with the mental, emotional, and physical traumas you and your families went through.

My good mother and father died of natural causes in 1991 and 1993, respectively -- about a year and a half apart. Although I bounced back fast enough and recovered fully, that period was a major adjustment. Most of us expect to outlive our parents, and this may be one factor that helps prepare us for the hour of parting. But when a parent loses a child -- especially in a catastrophe, with no time to say goodbye -- it's just so out of the natural order. The grief has to be beyond description.

Some of the quotes I've found here and there on this site -- "God took only the good ones," "It was the will of God," "How could God permit such a tragedy to happen?" etc. -- raise a number of serious theological issues. Since there are other cyber-venues more appropriate for full-fledged theological discussions, I am going limit my remarks on such matters here -- particularly out of respect for the deceased and their families, friends, and classmates.

Just a few heartfelt observations, though: No -- I have to believe, from reading and studying God's Word, that this was NOT His will. If it had been His will, then weren't those who called the Fire Department -- not to mention the firemen who battled the blaze -- in fact, defying Him? If God is going to "take" someone, He doesn't need a catastrophe to help Him out. I'm thinking, for instance, of the way He took Enoch, who was certainly one of "the good ones" (Gen. 5:24) -- as well as the way He took Ananias and Sapphira, who were not so good (Acts. 5:1-10).

My earthly sorrows and sufferings -- and, indeed, I've had some -- have been quite different from yours. I know firsthand what a vale of tears this earthly life can sometimes be. Especially when we’re growing up, it can either drive us over the edge or drive us to seek God and draw nearer to Him. When it seems that I can't deal with anything more, I find that it helps to pause, count my blessings -- even the smallest ones -- give God thanks for them, and then remember to use them for His good purposes.

In closing, I never would have guessed, back in 1958, that I'd ever cross paths with you, the OLA survivors. Although I probably will not meet you in this life, being able to get together in the same cyber-room and hear from you this way, thanks to the Internet, is the next-best thing. Thank you so much for all that you have shared with us. From what I know of you, you seem to me to be brave men and women, indeed. May God continue to give you His strength for your ongoing work.