About 4:00 pm on Dec. 1, 1958, I remember being on a CTA trolley bus (Fullerton Ave.) with my mother. We were on our way to a shopping district (Belmont and Central), probably to do some Christmas shopping. The news of the fire was spreading, and I can vividly remember my mom and a number of other women on the bus talking about the breaking news. Returning to St. Genevieve the next day, all the nuns (Sisters of Providence) spoke about the fire. Fire drills became very numerous and very serious, and I recall well standing on the sidewalk during icy Chicago winters, "praying" for the all-clear bell that would allow us to return to the warmth of the building.

St. Gen's was a school not unlike OLA, with three classrooms of 50+ kids for each grade. Even in 4th grade, we knew that the OLA tragedy could have happened at St. Gen's, and coupled with the "bomb" drills (under the desk with our heads between our kness) of the Cold War era, the world seemed like a scarier place.

A few years later (1964), I started high school at St. Pat's on the northwest side, and one of my homeroom classmates was an OLA survivor. (For the purposes of privacy, I am not mentioning his name.) I remember questioning him closely about the events of Dec. 1, 1958. Amazingly, in the mid-1980s while coaching youth hockey in the northern suburbs of Milwaukee, I met a parent of one of my players who was also an OLA survivor. (Again, I will keep his name private.) He was in 8th grade at the time of the fire, and while scanning the list of survivors on this website, I was in awe to see his name. Believe it or not, he was one of the 8th grade boys who was helping out with the clothing drive on the OLA church on that fateful day.

As I view the pictures of the children from the newspaper headlines that awful week, I sit here in my office today and offer a prayer to those whose lives were ended much too soon, as well as for all of the loved ones that they left behind. God bless you all, and know that you do not grieve alone.

I was in the first grade classroom on the first floor and remember your mother, in a panicky voice, stating that the school was on fire, as she ran into our room and up the stairs. That was our first hint that something was wrong. I can still picture the incident.

If I recall correctly we ended school shortly after that and headed home.

I myself attended a parochial school in the south suburbs, but it was a much newer building, and it was also a single story structure. I do remember, my principal, Sister Mary Marcella, explaining to us why we had fire drills. She mentioned often, a school on the north side that caught fire and most of the children had died. It was often among the hushed stories told by my nuns. They never mentioned the name of Our Lady of the Angels, nor did they ever mention that the building was structurally unsafe. We didn't have fire drills during the winter months, probably because during the 1980s, the winters in Chicago were bitterly cold and snowy. During the fall and spring months, fire drills were a regular routine, especially during the infamous Fire Prevention Week in October, when we could not only count on a visit from the local firemen to host an assembly on fire safety, but we could also count on, like clockwork, a fire drill every day during that week. Now that I am grown up, I believe that Sister Marcella made us have those regular fire drills because she might've been afraid that what happened at OLA might happen to us.

One memory that is vivid in my mind, that sounds a lot like the Cheesebox classroom, is that when I was in third grade, we had a special fire exit. Unlike the Cheesebox though, it was held shut by simple bolts that could be lifted out in seconds. When the fire bell rang, instead of going into the main hallway with the other grades, we went into our coatroom and climbed up four wooden stairs to a door, walked across a concrete landing, and down six steps to another door that led to the outside. So if anything did happen, we could very easily escape. One thing that I do want to mention is that what happened at OLA could've very easily happened at my father's school, or at my mother's. I thank God each and every day that He kept my mom and dad safe when they were attending these still "unsafe" schools. For those that perished though, I do pray for their souls and for their families that were left behind, that they find peace with what happened. Honestly, I believe that the tragedy at OLA occured so that it wouldn't happen to other children. I believe that God allows bad things to happen to teach us valuable lessons. I have a saying, "Out of tragedy comes triumph." And I believe in this situation it did. No one ever took fire safety for granted again. Because of those ninety two beautiful little angels and those three brave nuns, it shouldn't have to happen again.

I also wanted to say this in defense of the nuns that were in those six classrooms that day. I read the book "To Sleep with the Angels" several times, and I have heard the rumors that the nuns had the students pray rather than try to escape. From what the authors of the book describe, by the time they were aware of the fire, the hallway was filled with so much smoke and flames that escape through it was impossible. Most of the time, it is the smoke, not the fire, that kills you. In this case however, the fire and the smoke worked together to make a deadly inferno that nobody, not even a fireman wearing protective equipment could've walked through and come out alive. If the teachers had tried to lead their children through the hallway, chances are that a lot more than ninety two children would've died. The second that they hit that door, they would have been asphyixiated before anyone could blink. It sounds to me like they were praying to try and keep some control and calm in an awful situation. I believe that they did the best that they could, given the circumstances. For the nuns who died, they did what any mother would've done, sacrifice her own safety for that of her children. That to me, is a true act of selfless love...

To the survivors, God bless you and keep you always in perfect peace.To those that lost their lives, may God bring you eternal rest and ressurect you to the place that He has called you.

Amen

When I grew up, I became a teacher, and one of my fellow teachers was an OLA survivor. We would use his experience as a reason why our kids had to be quiet, pay attention, and know how to escape in case of fire in their school.

Like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, it took a horrible event to tighten up safety standards. We can never fully eliminate the possibility of fire in homes, schools, stores, or workplaces, but perhaps now we collectively have a better chance of escaping death than the poor OLA kids did.

My prayers are with the survivors and anyone who lost a loved one.

Currently, I am a police officer with the Oakbrook Terrace Police Dept. I hold the rank of Det. Sergeant. Since I became a police officer in November of 1974, I always responded at a quicker pace to fire alarms at schools.