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To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire
The story of one of the deadliest fires in American history that took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at a Catholic elementary school in Chicago. An absorbing account...a tale of terror. —New York Times Book Review
312 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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August 19, 2023
“Black smoke was billowing from every open space on the building’s upper floor. Horrified parents were running back and forth, screaming as children at the windows were throwing out objects, hanging off the sills, dropping or hurtling themselves to the ground. Scores of inert bodies – children who had already jumped or had been pushed…by classmates – covered the pavement. [Engine 85 Lieutenant Stanley] Wojnicki recognized a few of the kids at the windows. The youngster’s faces were turning color. Some had clothing on fire…
The fire had been burning for nearly a half-hour, and heat inside the classrooms had grown so intolerable that children were now plummeting out the windows two and three at a time. Old painting ladders had been thrown against the building, but most were too short. Students trying to reach them were dangling from the sills, hanging by their fingertips, dropping to the ground. The scene in the alley was now complete chaos, and only then did Wojnicki begin to comprehend the full extent of the disaster at hand…”
- David Cowan and John Kuenster, To Sleep With the Angels: The Story of a Fire
The Catholic grade school that my wife attended in St. Louis is a hideous eyesore of glass and metal and tiles of various shades of blue. It’s a vision of the future, as conceived by the 1960s. According to my mother-in-law, that has not always been the case. Once upon a time, that school had been a stately brick building that architecturally resembled the church to which it’s connected.
The reason – according to both my mother-in-law and to local lore – is that the stately old school was torn down in the wake of the Our Lady of the Angels School fire, which in 1958 killed 92 students and 3 nuns in a working-class Chicago neighborhood.
I don’t know if that story is true. I didn’t bother to verify it, for a couple reasons.
First, I don’t want facts getting in the way of a good neighborhood rumor. Second, even if it’s patently false, the existence of the legend says something stark about the memory of what happened to those kids sixty-five years ago.
***
The Our Lady of the Angels fire is nowhere near the deadliest in history. Somehow, though, it feels like the worst.
David Cowan and John Kuenster’s To Sleep With the Angels tells this horrifying story in comprehensive fashion, featuring a near minute-by-minute recounting of the blaze itself, and also giving ample space to the aftermath: the grieving; the healing; and the investigation – still unresolved – into the fire’s cause.
***
The fire started on December 1, 1958, in the basement of Our Lady of the Angels, a Catholic school serving some 1600 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. According to investigators, it began in a cardboard trash barrel beneath a stairwell. It smoldered for as long as 30 minutes, until its intense heat broke a window and supplied it with a breath of oxygen.
The brick exterior of the school exuded security – brick does not burn. The interior, however, was filled with flammable materials: desks, walls, floors, roof, and doors all made of wood; the floor cleaned with petroleum-based wax; classrooms filled with books; glass transoms over the classroom doors.
Because of a grandfather clause to Chicago’s building codes, the school did not have to be retrofitted to meet more-modern safety measures. The school lacked a direct alarm to the fire department. There was only one fire escape. There were no smoke detectors (not widely available at the time), heat detectors, or sprinkler system. There were also no fire doors, and no fire-resistant stairwells, and so the fire rampaged unchecked, cutting off escape routes.
As the fire moved upstairs, it got into the ceiling, tore through the cockloft above the classrooms, and filled the hallways with heat, smoke, and flame. Despite the evident courage of many of the nuns, their responses were often delayed, as they waited for instructions to evacuate, and instead had their students pray.
By the time they took action, the north-wing second-floor classrooms had no chance to escape, except by window, which were twenty-five feet above the ground. Neighbors tried to throw up ladders to help, and in a famous photograph, you can see how all the ladders are just a bit short.
The fire department arrived quickly, but were hampered by a faulty address and an iron picket fence that momentarily kept them from getting into a courtyard and putting up ladders to “pluck” the children from the windows.
Like I said, this feels like the worst.
***
In a book just a shade beneath 300 pages, roughly one-third is devoted to the actual fire. The balance is given over to the long aftermath. Cowan and Kuenster describe the recovery of the bodies, the identifications at the morgue. In painful detail, they follow badly burned survivors as they are treated in late-50s burn wards. They also bore into the regret and recriminations that sundered the neighborhood and its close relationship to the Catholic Church, which was reticent to offer any kind of remembrance for the children. As a Catholic who has been consistently dismayed by the Church’s actions over the entirety of my lifetime, this did not come as a surprise.
***
Easily the most gripping parts of the post-fire chapters deal with the criminal inquiry. Controversy hounded the investigation from the beginning. Initially, many blamed janitor James Raymond for the school’s unsafe and cluttered condition.
Eventually, suspicion fell onto a 10 year-old boy, a fifth-grader from Room 206. This boy was involved in several subsequent arsons, and actually confessed to setting the OLA conflagration. The confession, given to polygraph expert John Reid – of the infamous Reid Technique – entails an entire chapter.
A juvenile court judge found that the boy was not responsible. Since Illinois law at that time protected his identity, he is unnamed in the book, and it’s unclear whether the authors actually know it or not. In any event, it’s ethically responsible – though intellectually frustrating – not to point fingers.
That said, I tried to find it on my own, and spent some dubiously-healthy hours on OLA message boards with dozens of amateur sleuths armed with class photos and rosters, hunting for a suspect. It’s an exercise in the ephemerality of justice, and it suffices to say that the case remains open, because you really can’t close a tragedy like this, not until the last person who remembers is dead and gone.
***
The Our Lady of the Angels fire is something I’ve known about forever.
Like my wife, I went to Catholic elementary school. Unlike my wife, my school never got a futuristic remodel. It was just like OLA, with the brick exterior, the ancient wooden interior covered in polish, the transom windows, and the genuine feel of a tinderbox.
Perhaps knowing this, my fifth grade teacher – following a clown-show fire drill – sat us down and gave us an admirably direct lecture about what happens when a fire breaks out in an aging structure. In doing so, she told us the story of Our Lady of the Angels. By this age, my friends and I already knew that bad things could happen to kids. What we hadn’t known – years before Columbine – was that they could happen to us at school. I’ve lost a billion memories in the years since that lecture, but I remember that day.
That’s what compelled me to read this book.
Obviously, this is not happy or uplifting. Two of the most awful things on earth are death by fire, and the death of innocent children. This combines the two. As with all disasters, it is filled with lessons, but those are rather grim indeed: life is precarious; regulations matter; safety features exist for a reason; and if you smell smoke, you should move directly toward the door, saving your prayers for later.
The fire had been burning for nearly a half-hour, and heat inside the classrooms had grown so intolerable that children were now plummeting out the windows two and three at a time. Old painting ladders had been thrown against the building, but most were too short. Students trying to reach them were dangling from the sills, hanging by their fingertips, dropping to the ground. The scene in the alley was now complete chaos, and only then did Wojnicki begin to comprehend the full extent of the disaster at hand…”
- David Cowan and John Kuenster, To Sleep With the Angels: The Story of a Fire
The Catholic grade school that my wife attended in St. Louis is a hideous eyesore of glass and metal and tiles of various shades of blue. It’s a vision of the future, as conceived by the 1960s. According to my mother-in-law, that has not always been the case. Once upon a time, that school had been a stately brick building that architecturally resembled the church to which it’s connected.
The reason – according to both my mother-in-law and to local lore – is that the stately old school was torn down in the wake of the Our Lady of the Angels School fire, which in 1958 killed 92 students and 3 nuns in a working-class Chicago neighborhood.
I don’t know if that story is true. I didn’t bother to verify it, for a couple reasons.
First, I don’t want facts getting in the way of a good neighborhood rumor. Second, even if it’s patently false, the existence of the legend says something stark about the memory of what happened to those kids sixty-five years ago.
***
The Our Lady of the Angels fire is nowhere near the deadliest in history. Somehow, though, it feels like the worst.
David Cowan and John Kuenster’s To Sleep With the Angels tells this horrifying story in comprehensive fashion, featuring a near minute-by-minute recounting of the blaze itself, and also giving ample space to the aftermath: the grieving; the healing; and the investigation – still unresolved – into the fire’s cause.
***
The fire started on December 1, 1958, in the basement of Our Lady of the Angels, a Catholic school serving some 1600 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. According to investigators, it began in a cardboard trash barrel beneath a stairwell. It smoldered for as long as 30 minutes, until its intense heat broke a window and supplied it with a breath of oxygen.
The brick exterior of the school exuded security – brick does not burn. The interior, however, was filled with flammable materials: desks, walls, floors, roof, and doors all made of wood; the floor cleaned with petroleum-based wax; classrooms filled with books; glass transoms over the classroom doors.
Because of a grandfather clause to Chicago’s building codes, the school did not have to be retrofitted to meet more-modern safety measures. The school lacked a direct alarm to the fire department. There was only one fire escape. There were no smoke detectors (not widely available at the time), heat detectors, or sprinkler system. There were also no fire doors, and no fire-resistant stairwells, and so the fire rampaged unchecked, cutting off escape routes.
As the fire moved upstairs, it got into the ceiling, tore through the cockloft above the classrooms, and filled the hallways with heat, smoke, and flame. Despite the evident courage of many of the nuns, their responses were often delayed, as they waited for instructions to evacuate, and instead had their students pray.
By the time they took action, the north-wing second-floor classrooms had no chance to escape, except by window, which were twenty-five feet above the ground. Neighbors tried to throw up ladders to help, and in a famous photograph, you can see how all the ladders are just a bit short.
The fire department arrived quickly, but were hampered by a faulty address and an iron picket fence that momentarily kept them from getting into a courtyard and putting up ladders to “pluck” the children from the windows.
The children were screaming, but still [Firefighter Charles Kamin] could hardly hear them. The heat was getting worse and the kids were changing color. Each time he turned to grab another child, Kamin could see their shirts turning from white to tan, darker and darker. He had been at the ladder for about a minute and a half and could sense that his time was just about up. When he looked in again he saw a flame. The room had finally reached its flash point. The air was igniting.
And then it blew. It just burst. One thunderous “poof.” The blast caught Kamin square in the face, searing off his eyebrows, burning his ears. He ducked his head and reached in one last time, managing to grab hold of a boy whose clothes were on fire, pulling him out.
He then saw the rest of the children in the window just wilt and turn dead, like a bunch of burning papers. It was the oddest thing. They didn't tumble or fall over. Instead their knees simply buckled, dropping them straight to the floor…
Like I said, this feels like the worst.
***
In a book just a shade beneath 300 pages, roughly one-third is devoted to the actual fire. The balance is given over to the long aftermath. Cowan and Kuenster describe the recovery of the bodies, the identifications at the morgue. In painful detail, they follow badly burned survivors as they are treated in late-50s burn wards. They also bore into the regret and recriminations that sundered the neighborhood and its close relationship to the Catholic Church, which was reticent to offer any kind of remembrance for the children. As a Catholic who has been consistently dismayed by the Church’s actions over the entirety of my lifetime, this did not come as a surprise.
***
Easily the most gripping parts of the post-fire chapters deal with the criminal inquiry. Controversy hounded the investigation from the beginning. Initially, many blamed janitor James Raymond for the school’s unsafe and cluttered condition.
Eventually, suspicion fell onto a 10 year-old boy, a fifth-grader from Room 206. This boy was involved in several subsequent arsons, and actually confessed to setting the OLA conflagration. The confession, given to polygraph expert John Reid – of the infamous Reid Technique – entails an entire chapter.
A juvenile court judge found that the boy was not responsible. Since Illinois law at that time protected his identity, he is unnamed in the book, and it’s unclear whether the authors actually know it or not. In any event, it’s ethically responsible – though intellectually frustrating – not to point fingers.
That said, I tried to find it on my own, and spent some dubiously-healthy hours on OLA message boards with dozens of amateur sleuths armed with class photos and rosters, hunting for a suspect. It’s an exercise in the ephemerality of justice, and it suffices to say that the case remains open, because you really can’t close a tragedy like this, not until the last person who remembers is dead and gone.
***
The Our Lady of the Angels fire is something I’ve known about forever.
Like my wife, I went to Catholic elementary school. Unlike my wife, my school never got a futuristic remodel. It was just like OLA, with the brick exterior, the ancient wooden interior covered in polish, the transom windows, and the genuine feel of a tinderbox.
Perhaps knowing this, my fifth grade teacher – following a clown-show fire drill – sat us down and gave us an admirably direct lecture about what happens when a fire breaks out in an aging structure. In doing so, she told us the story of Our Lady of the Angels. By this age, my friends and I already knew that bad things could happen to kids. What we hadn’t known – years before Columbine – was that they could happen to us at school. I’ve lost a billion memories in the years since that lecture, but I remember that day.
That’s what compelled me to read this book.
Obviously, this is not happy or uplifting. Two of the most awful things on earth are death by fire, and the death of innocent children. This combines the two. As with all disasters, it is filled with lessons, but those are rather grim indeed: life is precarious; regulations matter; safety features exist for a reason; and if you smell smoke, you should move directly toward the door, saving your prayers for later.
July 24, 2009
The devastating fire that occurred in early December 1958 at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago had a lasting impact on school construction. Almost before the 5-11 alarm was struck and more than eighty fire companies arrived on the scene, 92 children and 3 nuns died, most of them on the second floor of one wing.
The authors interviewed many survivors and have woven their searing recollections into a nightmarish tale of bravery, cupidity and foolishness.
The building was a typical parochial school of the fifties and had been reviewed by a fire inspector just days before the fire. It was old, had windows set high off the floor to discourage children from playing on them (many of the youngsters were too small to reach the window ledges to jump), and the building had several layers of tar on the roof after several reroofings. All this tar prevented the fire from going through the roof and venting the smoke that became deadly. Had each older layer been stripped, the interior of the building would not have become so hot and smoky so quickly, providing more time for the children to escape. The floors consisted of highly varnished, dry, and highly inflammable wood. The stairwells were open without doors at each end and they acted like chimneys, spreading the fire quickly and preventing exiting by the normal fire routes. Several rooms had two doors, but one was usually locked (the nuns had keys, but one teacher realized to her horror as she tried to shepherd children out of the room through a back door, that she had left her keys at home that day. Only the bravery of the janitor and a priest who ran back into the burning building and broke the door saved several of the children. Finally, the school was over-enrolled and the classes filled to beyond capacity (some classrooms had as many as sixty children.)
The Chicago fire code required that new construction stairwells be constructed of non-combustible materials, but the law was did not require existing building to retrofit the buildings. The school also did not have a sprinkler system.
Despite a massive investigation, authorities could only determine that the fire had most probably been set, but they could find no evidence who was responsible. Separate and independent investigations resulted in two confessions. Obviously, both could not be valid. The most likely scenario supported by what little evidence they could accumulate was the fire was probably set by a boy with a history of fire-setting who was sent to a juvenile home in Michigan for having set other fires. He admitted to setting the fire at Our Lady of the Angels where he had been a student, but he later recanted the confession. He later served a tour in Vietnam and again denied to the authors that he had set the fire at the school. To this day the fire is officially listed as "undetermined cause;" the church insists the cause was accidental.
Many students had been very seriously burned and their ordeal continues to this day. Numerous painful skin grafts could not eliminate the physical and psychological scarring. The Chicago Diocese paid $7,500 per dead child and awards up to $35,000 for those badly injured. They were anxious to put the whole matter to bed as quietly as possible. Gee, that sounds familiar. A fund set up to help defray medical expenses that continue to 1995, when the book was published, was legally closed out in 1994.
Many of the survivors suffered from "survivor's guilt," a condition made worse by the "literal canonization of victims by some nuns, who, fueled by their own repressed grief, explained to the children that `only the good ones were taken.' " Recalled one survivor," `It's funny how it plays on you, the message they were handing out to us. The ones who died were called the "lucky ones," the "chosen ones." They were the ones God wanted. `"
Many others were blamed following the fire. The school's janitor suffered in particular. He was wrongly accused of having set the fire or of not keeping the basement cleaned up. Neither charge was accurate, but he was pilloried by the neighborhood just the same. His life was ruined. The fire department was unjustly accused of delay. In reality, the call was placed to them very late because of some misunderstandings, and the fire alarm in the school building was not connected to ring in the fire department or at the call box. Once they received the alarm, the first engine company was on the scene in less than three minutes, and a 5-11 was called in almost immediately, bringing twenty-two engine companies, seven ladder companies and ten squad companies to the scene. They were able to rescue 200 children despite appalling conditions and no breathing apparatus (not used by fire companies until several years later). The church was unjustly accused of maintaining an unsafe environment for the children, yet it met all the fire codes in place at the time of its construction, and the building itself was well-maintained. A lot of what-if's.
We learn from our mistakes, and schools today are much safer relative to fire. It's unfortunate that so many children had to die for the changes to take effect.
The authors interviewed many survivors and have woven their searing recollections into a nightmarish tale of bravery, cupidity and foolishness.
The building was a typical parochial school of the fifties and had been reviewed by a fire inspector just days before the fire. It was old, had windows set high off the floor to discourage children from playing on them (many of the youngsters were too small to reach the window ledges to jump), and the building had several layers of tar on the roof after several reroofings. All this tar prevented the fire from going through the roof and venting the smoke that became deadly. Had each older layer been stripped, the interior of the building would not have become so hot and smoky so quickly, providing more time for the children to escape. The floors consisted of highly varnished, dry, and highly inflammable wood. The stairwells were open without doors at each end and they acted like chimneys, spreading the fire quickly and preventing exiting by the normal fire routes. Several rooms had two doors, but one was usually locked (the nuns had keys, but one teacher realized to her horror as she tried to shepherd children out of the room through a back door, that she had left her keys at home that day. Only the bravery of the janitor and a priest who ran back into the burning building and broke the door saved several of the children. Finally, the school was over-enrolled and the classes filled to beyond capacity (some classrooms had as many as sixty children.)
The Chicago fire code required that new construction stairwells be constructed of non-combustible materials, but the law was did not require existing building to retrofit the buildings. The school also did not have a sprinkler system.
Despite a massive investigation, authorities could only determine that the fire had most probably been set, but they could find no evidence who was responsible. Separate and independent investigations resulted in two confessions. Obviously, both could not be valid. The most likely scenario supported by what little evidence they could accumulate was the fire was probably set by a boy with a history of fire-setting who was sent to a juvenile home in Michigan for having set other fires. He admitted to setting the fire at Our Lady of the Angels where he had been a student, but he later recanted the confession. He later served a tour in Vietnam and again denied to the authors that he had set the fire at the school. To this day the fire is officially listed as "undetermined cause;" the church insists the cause was accidental.
Many students had been very seriously burned and their ordeal continues to this day. Numerous painful skin grafts could not eliminate the physical and psychological scarring. The Chicago Diocese paid $7,500 per dead child and awards up to $35,000 for those badly injured. They were anxious to put the whole matter to bed as quietly as possible. Gee, that sounds familiar. A fund set up to help defray medical expenses that continue to 1995, when the book was published, was legally closed out in 1994.
Many of the survivors suffered from "survivor's guilt," a condition made worse by the "literal canonization of victims by some nuns, who, fueled by their own repressed grief, explained to the children that `only the good ones were taken.' " Recalled one survivor," `It's funny how it plays on you, the message they were handing out to us. The ones who died were called the "lucky ones," the "chosen ones." They were the ones God wanted. `"
Many others were blamed following the fire. The school's janitor suffered in particular. He was wrongly accused of having set the fire or of not keeping the basement cleaned up. Neither charge was accurate, but he was pilloried by the neighborhood just the same. His life was ruined. The fire department was unjustly accused of delay. In reality, the call was placed to them very late because of some misunderstandings, and the fire alarm in the school building was not connected to ring in the fire department or at the call box. Once they received the alarm, the first engine company was on the scene in less than three minutes, and a 5-11 was called in almost immediately, bringing twenty-two engine companies, seven ladder companies and ten squad companies to the scene. They were able to rescue 200 children despite appalling conditions and no breathing apparatus (not used by fire companies until several years later). The church was unjustly accused of maintaining an unsafe environment for the children, yet it met all the fire codes in place at the time of its construction, and the building itself was well-maintained. A lot of what-if's.
We learn from our mistakes, and schools today are much safer relative to fire. It's unfortunate that so many children had to die for the changes to take effect.
August 5, 2018
I may remove my rating after thinking some more. The subject matter makes it hard to decide if I want to rate it or not. The writing is great and it is an interesting read, but the subject matter is horrific. The book is about the fire at Our Lady of Angels School in Chicago. The fire took place in 1958 and killed 92 children and 3 nuns, sadly this makes it come in at the 3rd worst school fire in history. I think the part the hit me the most other than hearing the stories of the children who survived, was the fact that instead of evacuating the children when they smelled smoke some of the nuns told the children to stay in their seats because no one had rung the fire alarm yet. By the time they realized how bad things were it was too late for them to try to leave. The only reason this is known is the fact some of the children in the upper stories leaped from the windows to get out in any way they could. Unfortunately, it took this tragedy to change some of the fire codes for schools, both public and private, around the world.
January 29, 2021
oh, boy! I had my review almost written when I saw that I was writing it for the paperback edition, except I was reading a hardcover. So, of course I had to change it right away.
Well written. It was a real tear-jerker for me because I remember the fire. We had just moved to a big suburb of Chicago from a small exurb (not many sidewalks) and we were still adjusting, at least I was. I was just 8, the same age as many of the dead children. It hit the third to fifth grades the worst. Partly because of their locations and some of the nuns seemed to think prayer would help. It was very smoky. But they did waste valuable time praying. They were probably afraid and thought they were too far from fire escapes or stairways. 92 children and three nuns perished. Many others were burned and badly injured when they jumped out the windows, sometimes firemen and others tried to catch them. Neighbors (mostly fathers) tried to put up ladders but their ladders were too short. The alarm to the fire department was delayed and then they received the wrong address. But once the big trucks got through and got their ladders up and got water on the fire, valuable time had been wasted.
One of the problems was that when the fire code was updated in the late '40s the Catholic schools were exempted. Politics! The Catholic lobby in Chicago (and probably most other large cities) was a powerful lobby. This fire was the price they paid, only it was the children who paid the price.
This was probably arson. There was a strong suspect, a troubled kid in the neighborhood who was known to set fires. He subsequently moved to a suburb where he was caught setting fires. He was sent to the Audy Home and subsequently somewhere else where he received psychiatric treatment. They determined not to prosecute him separately for the Our Lady of the Angels fire, he was already being prosecuted for three fires he set in his suburb. The goal was to make sure he received psychiatric help and to make a productive citizen out of him. Many were irked by this.
Well written. It was a real tear-jerker for me because I remember the fire. We had just moved to a big suburb of Chicago from a small exurb (not many sidewalks) and we were still adjusting, at least I was. I was just 8, the same age as many of the dead children. It hit the third to fifth grades the worst. Partly because of their locations and some of the nuns seemed to think prayer would help. It was very smoky. But they did waste valuable time praying. They were probably afraid and thought they were too far from fire escapes or stairways. 92 children and three nuns perished. Many others were burned and badly injured when they jumped out the windows, sometimes firemen and others tried to catch them. Neighbors (mostly fathers) tried to put up ladders but their ladders were too short. The alarm to the fire department was delayed and then they received the wrong address. But once the big trucks got through and got their ladders up and got water on the fire, valuable time had been wasted.
One of the problems was that when the fire code was updated in the late '40s the Catholic schools were exempted. Politics! The Catholic lobby in Chicago (and probably most other large cities) was a powerful lobby. This fire was the price they paid, only it was the children who paid the price.
This was probably arson. There was a strong suspect, a troubled kid in the neighborhood who was known to set fires. He subsequently moved to a suburb where he was caught setting fires. He was sent to the Audy Home and subsequently somewhere else where he received psychiatric treatment. They determined not to prosecute him separately for the Our Lady of the Angels fire, he was already being prosecuted for three fires he set in his suburb. The goal was to make sure he received psychiatric help and to make a productive citizen out of him. Many were irked by this.
November 10, 2014
Amazing book!! Very sad. Very tragic. This book is extremely well written. Easy to follow and very well researched. Even though there is a lot of information it is easily absorbed and it reads like you are watching a movie. The balance of pre-fire, the actual event and the aftermath is perfect. No unnecessary information or fading off the subject. And the search for the cause is almost as gripping as the fire itself. This is a horrific event!! If you are a very sensitive or soft hearted person... this book might be hard to read. The fire is painful to read. The author does such an amazing job describing the event you almost feel like you were there. I literally felt drained after reading about the events on that tragic day. With that said, this book is one of the best I've ever read.
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February 9, 2024
⤅ Non-Fiction Book of the Month: January 2024
After reading Columbine, I started looking into other school incidents and disasters. Fire immediately shot to the top of the list. Unlike school shootings, there hasn't been a major school fire in decades, but they're infinitely more destructive; 95 people were killed in 1958 when the Our Lady of the Angels school in Chicago caught fire. This is the subject of the book.
The authors retell the story of the fire, its aftermath and suspects with deftness and skill. For my part, it seems pretty obvious that the anonymous boy was indeed the culprit, but the cause of the fire remains officially undetermined.
After reading Columbine, I started looking into other school incidents and disasters. Fire immediately shot to the top of the list. Unlike school shootings, there hasn't been a major school fire in decades, but they're infinitely more destructive; 95 people were killed in 1958 when the Our Lady of the Angels school in Chicago caught fire. This is the subject of the book.
The authors retell the story of the fire, its aftermath and suspects with deftness and skill. For my part, it seems pretty obvious that the anonymous boy was indeed the culprit, but the cause of the fire remains officially undetermined.
March 22, 2015
This was a heartbreaking book which left me tearing up many times over. The authors present the story in a way which makes the human element very real; the terror of the children who were trapped by the fire, the anguish of the parents whose children were lost, the pain of those who survived with burns over as much as 80% of their bodies. It is one of those stories where as horrible as you expect it to be, you come to realize the reality of it is so much worse than that. The authors seemed to have done a great deal of research and present a comprehensive picture of this horrible tragedy without placing blame or taking sides, but simply recognizing the human tragedy of it. Very well done.
December 26, 2018
This book was absolutely absorbing, impossible to put down. I'm not kidding when I say I almost missed Christmas because I had to keep reading this one. Beautifully written story of a terrible disaster and its aftermath. But I warn you, this one is not for the faint of heart.
April 30, 2019
4.5 stars
On Dec. 1, 1958, a fire started in the basement of the overcrowded Our Lady of the Angels Catholic school in Chicago. The building was old and more recent fire regulations did not apply to the older buildings, as they were grandfathered in. The building had only one fire escape; it was two stories, but the only fire door was on the first floor. Because of that, the fire crept past the first floor, then exploded on to the 2nd floor. By the time the kids and nuns realized there was a fire, they couldn’t go out the hallways. Kids started jumping out the windows, while others – too scared to do so – waited and hoped to be helped to safety. Ninety-two kids, ages 8 to 14, died as a result of that fire, along with three nuns.
The book takes us through the lead-up to the end of the school day when the fire started, and some of the kids and families involved. It continues to describe the fire and the rescue efforts, and the aftermath, including those kids who got out alive, but had to recover in hospital. It continued still, with the investigation into what caused the fire and through the aftermath years later, as people remembered (or tried not to). The book also has a map of the school, and it shows the number of fatalities and injured in each room. There are also photos. Devastating story, but a fascinating read (and it always feels so weird to describe these real-life disaster books this way). But, they can be (and this one is) so compelling.
On Dec. 1, 1958, a fire started in the basement of the overcrowded Our Lady of the Angels Catholic school in Chicago. The building was old and more recent fire regulations did not apply to the older buildings, as they were grandfathered in. The building had only one fire escape; it was two stories, but the only fire door was on the first floor. Because of that, the fire crept past the first floor, then exploded on to the 2nd floor. By the time the kids and nuns realized there was a fire, they couldn’t go out the hallways. Kids started jumping out the windows, while others – too scared to do so – waited and hoped to be helped to safety. Ninety-two kids, ages 8 to 14, died as a result of that fire, along with three nuns.
The book takes us through the lead-up to the end of the school day when the fire started, and some of the kids and families involved. It continues to describe the fire and the rescue efforts, and the aftermath, including those kids who got out alive, but had to recover in hospital. It continued still, with the investigation into what caused the fire and through the aftermath years later, as people remembered (or tried not to). The book also has a map of the school, and it shows the number of fatalities and injured in each room. There are also photos. Devastating story, but a fascinating read (and it always feels so weird to describe these real-life disaster books this way). But, they can be (and this one is) so compelling.
December 31, 2015
The fire at Our Lady of Angels School on December 1, 1958, killed 92 children and 3 nuns, caused radical changes in the fire codes for schools, and remains unsolved. Cowan & Kuenster describe the course of the disaster, the horrible aftermath, and the efforts of the investigators (sometimes against pushback from the Catholic Church) to find the person responsible. There have been two confessions, both later recanted, and no way now, in all likelihood, that the mystery will ever be definitively solved.
There are any number of horrible things about this fire, beyond the fact that it happened at all: the fact that many of the victims probably died because, even though they were aware the school was on fire, school policy was that they could not leave their classrooms unless the fire alarm rang and the fire alarm (which had to be manually triggered) failed to ring until it was too late; the fact that the only fire escape was LOCKED (and even when it was unlocked, it was in the back of the smallest of the classrooms and thus in practice only available to the children in that room); the fact that after the fire, the surviving children were told that the ones who died were the good ones, and that's why God took them; the inevitable way in which the legacy of stricter, safer fire codes was undercut and subverted by human greed and laziness. But the thing that terrified me the most was how fast it happened. (Not that this is surprising--it's no secret that fire moves fast--but this book, like Young Men and Fire, lays out that speed so that you can look at it and understand what it means.) It's not entirely clear when the fire started, or when it was first noticed, but the first call to the Fire Department was received at 2:42, the first fire trucks arrived at 2:44, and although Cowan and Kuenster's timeline is not precise, my guess is that by 2:50, seven minutes before it was declared a five-alarm fire, it was already too late. Everyone who was going to make it out of the school already had, and everyone who hadn't was already dead (and some of those who made it out were dying--the last death from the fire was in August 1959).
This is, in fact, a very good book. Cowan & Kuenster tell the story clearly and with sympathy for both victims and survivors. They fall back on clichés occasionally, but their subject is one that pushes constantly toward the boundaries of the literally undescribable, and I commend them for writing about it as well as they do.
There is a website devoted to the fire, if you're looking for more information.
There are any number of horrible things about this fire, beyond the fact that it happened at all: the fact that many of the victims probably died because, even though they were aware the school was on fire, school policy was that they could not leave their classrooms unless the fire alarm rang and the fire alarm (which had to be manually triggered) failed to ring until it was too late; the fact that the only fire escape was LOCKED (and even when it was unlocked, it was in the back of the smallest of the classrooms and thus in practice only available to the children in that room); the fact that after the fire, the surviving children were told that the ones who died were the good ones, and that's why God took them; the inevitable way in which the legacy of stricter, safer fire codes was undercut and subverted by human greed and laziness. But the thing that terrified me the most was how fast it happened. (Not that this is surprising--it's no secret that fire moves fast--but this book, like Young Men and Fire, lays out that speed so that you can look at it and understand what it means.) It's not entirely clear when the fire started, or when it was first noticed, but the first call to the Fire Department was received at 2:42, the first fire trucks arrived at 2:44, and although Cowan and Kuenster's timeline is not precise, my guess is that by 2:50, seven minutes before it was declared a five-alarm fire, it was already too late. Everyone who was going to make it out of the school already had, and everyone who hadn't was already dead (and some of those who made it out were dying--the last death from the fire was in August 1959).
This is, in fact, a very good book. Cowan & Kuenster tell the story clearly and with sympathy for both victims and survivors. They fall back on clichés occasionally, but their subject is one that pushes constantly toward the boundaries of the literally undescribable, and I commend them for writing about it as well as they do.
There is a website devoted to the fire, if you're looking for more information.
June 4, 2022
After reading Jonathan Cain’s book (journey) I was touched hearing his experience with this fire when he was a boy. What a terrifying thing to happen in a school and a great telling in this book.
June 2, 2012
I finished this book a week ago and have not been able to add a review. It deserved five stars but was a very hard read. You know what it is about when you start the book, you know exactly how many die but I still wasn't prepared for what happened that day. I kept thinking about the families of the victims who are still alive today and wondering if they go through a single day without thinking about this tragedy. It was hard to shake reading this book over 50 years later. Well written book on a difficult subject.
September 6, 2019
This was a harrowing yet fascinating look at the third-worst school fire in American history. It occurred in early December 1958 in Chicago at Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) Catholic school just a few minutes before school should have let out for the day. A fire that had been smouldering in the basement suddenly took off up the stairwell and, due to a firedoor on the first floor, shot up to the second floor of the north wing of the school building. There several classrooms of children and their teachers were cut off from the main exit due to heat and smoke. Many of the classrooms had no other exit and ones that did found the fire exits locked. Other factors combined to delay getting the alarm sounded at the firehouse and firetrucks dispatched to the correct address. In many cases children as young as eight were forced to jump from windows twenty five feet from the ground or face death from fire flashing over their classroom. The authors paint a terrible picture of parents watching in horror from the ground as their child is swept from the window by fire or smoke. Firefighters were helpless to combat a raging 5-alarm fire that was exacerbated by things like a roof that held in the heat and smoke. When it was over, 3 nuns and 92 children lost their lives, some of the children after months of torturous burn treatments.
The authors examine not only the fire itself but also the aftermath, including some evidence pointing to a potential resolution of the cause. There is also discussion with survivors and the firefighters involved. Things that we take for granted now after such tragedies - counseling, victim assistance - were nonexistent in the late 50s and early 60s. But there were other things that are discussed that seem almost astounding viewed from a perspective of 50 years later - how the community rallied behind not only the victims, but the church and school as well; how the tragedy was handled by the church and community - no memorial was erected on the site, only a mass service was done for the victims, priests did not attend the other privately held funerals; how the inquest and later investigations into possible arson were handled; even the handling of victim compensation. It reminds us that it's a different America than we live in today - not altogether for the better or worse, just different.
Quote to remember:
A great legacy of the school fire therefore concerns its deep effect on a small and closely knit community. It is a story of ordinary people uprooted from the daily routines of working class life and forced to deal virtually by themselves with a terrible disaster. It is an acknowledgement of human fragility and a testament to the strength of human perseverance in the face of great personal tragedy.
The authors examine not only the fire itself but also the aftermath, including some evidence pointing to a potential resolution of the cause. There is also discussion with survivors and the firefighters involved. Things that we take for granted now after such tragedies - counseling, victim assistance - were nonexistent in the late 50s and early 60s. But there were other things that are discussed that seem almost astounding viewed from a perspective of 50 years later - how the community rallied behind not only the victims, but the church and school as well; how the tragedy was handled by the church and community - no memorial was erected on the site, only a mass service was done for the victims, priests did not attend the other privately held funerals; how the inquest and later investigations into possible arson were handled; even the handling of victim compensation. It reminds us that it's a different America than we live in today - not altogether for the better or worse, just different.
Quote to remember:
A great legacy of the school fire therefore concerns its deep effect on a small and closely knit community. It is a story of ordinary people uprooted from the daily routines of working class life and forced to deal virtually by themselves with a terrible disaster. It is an acknowledgement of human fragility and a testament to the strength of human perseverance in the face of great personal tragedy.
May 19, 2009
What I learned from this book is that human nature has myriad facets. This huge fire started in a Catholic school, Our Lady of the Angels in Chicago, on Dec. 1, 1958. It was huge before anyone realized that the school was even on fire. The school was massively overcrowded, 50 and 60 kids per classroom, yet had passed every inspection up to that point. It was built the way most schools were in that day: wood floors highly polished with flammable varnishes; wooden desks; transoms above the doors; tall iron fence with locked gate; no breakaway handle on the inside of the fire escape door; windows with high sills, plaster walls, etc. The roof had never been peeled and re-done, just layer upon layer of roofing, so the fire couldn't break through, causing the flames and heat to collect on the second floor; even the firemen couldn't break through the roof with axes. The teachers kept waiting for the principal nun to ring the fire alarm before they evacuated. No one else was supposed to ring it. The alarm was 6' off the ground and rang only in the school, not in the firehouse, too. Several of the nuns had their kids pray or say the rosary when they might have been able to evacuate. The fire extinguisher was above reach. The fire alarm box on a pole was a block and a half away. The first person who called in the fire gave the wrong address for the school. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
After the fire, no one would talk about it. It became a neighborhood of people with PTSD. The Bishop wouldn't even talk about it, and the priests didn't go to the children's funerals. They felt that if they ignored it, the ugliness would go away on its own.
The two men who wrote the book are both journalists in the Chicago area. The book was really well researched and written. The description of Chicago at the time of the fire was fascinating. They laid out the scene beautifully, describing all the major players (Mayor Daley, the Bishop, the fire commissioner, etc.), the political scene, the weather, the city).
I think that this book will stay with me a long time.
After the fire, no one would talk about it. It became a neighborhood of people with PTSD. The Bishop wouldn't even talk about it, and the priests didn't go to the children's funerals. They felt that if they ignored it, the ugliness would go away on its own.
The two men who wrote the book are both journalists in the Chicago area. The book was really well researched and written. The description of Chicago at the time of the fire was fascinating. They laid out the scene beautifully, describing all the major players (Mayor Daley, the Bishop, the fire commissioner, etc.), the political scene, the weather, the city).
I think that this book will stay with me a long time.
April 2, 2019
It was hard to read the facts about the deaths of all of those innocent children and some of the nuns who taught them but I kept going and I think it was a very well written and fair assessment of the events of that dreadful day in 1958. I had never heard about the fire at Our Lady of the Angels before and as I am interested in finding out more about American history I am trying to include more factual books on various events in the country’s past. As is often the case with history it is the tragic and saddest events that are recorded the most, I am sure that this tragedy would have been reported here in England but I was just a small child at the time and never heard about it.
I was really interested in the way that the story was told from the different perspectives of the people that were caught up in the events of that day. I could feel for the poor people who were asking themselves ‘could I have done more’ and ‘did I miss something’? I felt very sorry for the school caretaker who had so many different responsibilities at various other buildings and at one stage was suspected of negligence. I myself found the deaths of those children haunting even now fifty years later and to have been a parent living with the knowledge that your child was killed there must have been a lifelong grief and horror.
The extremely well documented details of the investigation were very interesting and I could not believe that after all the different conclusions that I had in my mind the answer was simple wickedness of one individual.
A very interesting read but not an easy one.
I was really interested in the way that the story was told from the different perspectives of the people that were caught up in the events of that day. I could feel for the poor people who were asking themselves ‘could I have done more’ and ‘did I miss something’? I felt very sorry for the school caretaker who had so many different responsibilities at various other buildings and at one stage was suspected of negligence. I myself found the deaths of those children haunting even now fifty years later and to have been a parent living with the knowledge that your child was killed there must have been a lifelong grief and horror.
The extremely well documented details of the investigation were very interesting and I could not believe that after all the different conclusions that I had in my mind the answer was simple wickedness of one individual.
A very interesting read but not an easy one.
April 25, 2015
This is a difficult book to read as it relates a terrible tragedy at a Catholic elementary school in Chicago in the 1950's. I chose to read this because I attended another Catholic elementary school in Chicago at the time of the fire that destroyed Our Lady of Angels school. Ninety-three children and three nuns lost their lives and innumerable children suffered terrible injuries. The adults in my life including my parents and the nuns at our school kept most of the details from those of us in school at the time, but I remember this event vividly. It must have been so very difficult for parents watch their children walk away to attend school that week. The fire changed the way schools were built and the way fire drills were conducted. We had monthly fire drills after this tragedy and I remember the nuns blocking exits and forcing us to find other paths of escape during these drills. As hard as this book is to read, there are also stories of great heroism and compassion, but it is still a heart-wrenching tale.
October 7, 2021
This is a fantastic account of the 1958 Chicago fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in which 92 students and 3 nuns died. It looks at the events of the fire, reaction of the Catholic church and surrounding community, why the cause remains "undetermined" (despite a confession from a student), and why the construction of the school was just an tragedy waiting to happen. The most touching are the recollections of the students (many of whom were burned and/or injured when jumping from windows), the nuns who taught at the school and helped to save students, and the families who lost children (2 of which lost 2 children). This fire is the reason that strict safety standards that we take for granted are now the norm in schools across our country. This book and "Rememberance of the Angels: 50th Anniversary Reminiscences of the Fire No One Can Forget" are fascinating, tragic, and unforgettable.
February 26, 2016
On December 1, 1958 a fire at Our Lady of the Angels Catholic grade school in Chicago killed 92 pupils and three nuns. This is their story. The authors write a page-turning account of the contributing causes of the blaze and of the deaths. Compelling storytelling. I could not put it down.
March 20, 2013
Incredibly moving. Beautifully written. A haunting book. Non-fiction that reads like fiction (and I wish it were).
November 29, 2016
Such an intense story. And so sad. I remember crying at times while I read it. It reminds me of the Collinwood School fire in Cleveland, Ohio. So many deaths preventable...Just heartbreaking.
May 30, 2018
The heartbreaking story of Chicago school fire that claimed the lives of over 90 children as well as of three nuns. I'd heard about this fire here and there over the years (I believe my fifth grade teacher might have somehow been at the school at the time--at least fifth grade is the first time I remember hearing about the fire), then this past summer visited the school and the memorial that is now there (but was not at the time this book was written).
This intense and well-written account covers all aspects of the tragedy --starting with a moment-by-moment description of the fire itself and then detailing all of its awful ramifications. Interviews with surviving children, nuns, priests, parents, relatives, firefighters and others who were present and affected by the fire bring humanity and heartache to the entire book.
A remarkable account of one of Chicago's most terrible disasters.
This intense and well-written account covers all aspects of the tragedy --starting with a moment-by-moment description of the fire itself and then detailing all of its awful ramifications. Interviews with surviving children, nuns, priests, parents, relatives, firefighters and others who were present and affected by the fire bring humanity and heartache to the entire book.
A remarkable account of one of Chicago's most terrible disasters.
January 3, 2020
In 1958, the Our Lady of Angels school on the west side of Chicago caught on fire. and quickly spread throughout the school killing 92 children and three nuns. It was not the biggest school disaster in America's history. That distinction belongs to the gas explosion of the Consolidated School in New London, Texas in 1937. However, the Our Lady of Angels fire had a profound effect on how schools were built, and how fire codes written and maintained all over the United States.
I was 10 years old when this fire occurred and I vividly remember the news footage of the event and the mass funeral afterwards. I remained terrified of fires for years afterwards.
Cowan and Kuenster did a great deal of research; not only searching the news archives, but also interviewing survivors, parents, firefighters and priests and nuns who were part of the rescue effort. The result is a riveting page turner that is hard to put down.
I was 10 years old when this fire occurred and I vividly remember the news footage of the event and the mass funeral afterwards. I remained terrified of fires for years afterwards.
Cowan and Kuenster did a great deal of research; not only searching the news archives, but also interviewing survivors, parents, firefighters and priests and nuns who were part of the rescue effort. The result is a riveting page turner that is hard to put down.
January 28, 2023
I just want to clarify that I don’t want to actually rate this book due to the circumstances I don’t think it’s appropriate. This was a horrific tragedy and was a very hard read. I can’t even imagine the pain those children and families feel.
I will say it the way the author portrays the events of that day, the aftermath and years down the line from multiple perspectives was well written.
I work for a fire department so it is interesting to see how awful the fire codes used to be.
I will say it the way the author portrays the events of that day, the aftermath and years down the line from multiple perspectives was well written.
I work for a fire department so it is interesting to see how awful the fire codes used to be.
June 10, 2024
This. was. BRUTAL.
I already knew the general story (and one of the kids is buried in the same cemetery as one set of my great-grandparents) but to hear all the testimony and descriptions of parents seeing their children and not being able to help them; my mother started crying when I was telling her about it and mom, trust me, reading it was way worse than the summary I gave.
I already knew the general story (and one of the kids is buried in the same cemetery as one set of my great-grandparents) but to hear all the testimony and descriptions of parents seeing their children and not being able to help them; my mother started crying when I was telling her about it and mom, trust me, reading it was way worse than the summary I gave.
October 6, 2018
Well written account of this horrific tragedy. It happened on my birth date so it is unlikely that I will forget about it even tho I no longer live in Chicago. This book made me cry and so angered me with the Catholic church’s stance in the whole situation. Read this book and see how it affects you. So so sad that it happened.....and why it did.
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January 8, 20233 DNFs in a row. Rough start to the year. This is probably good? But is written is such minute excruciating detail that it takes a good 10 minutes to read two pages and those are mostly unrelated to the fire. Just wasn't for me but maybe someone more invested in this history would find it useful.
December 28, 2025
I struggled to rate this one. The writing is careful, detailed, and deeply respectful of the events. It’s also shocking how recent it is. 1958 isn’t that long ago. Devastating and emotionally intense, but undeniably well written.
October 18, 2022
3.5 Stars
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November 27, 2022This was suggested to me, as I'd just heard of this terrible fire in 1958 just southeast of O'Hare airport near my home. Turns out my mom remembers news of it (when she was 15). It was terribly difficult to read, and I couldn't read it right before bed, or I'd have nightmares. Such a tragedy in so many respects. It makes you look for more exits and consider how short our lives could be cut so suddenly.
May 8, 2019
I grew up on the south side of Chicago, our house being on Sangamon Street two blocks from Garfield Boulevard, a close knit neighborhood similar to the one Our Lady of the Angels school and church was in. The school I was to attend in 1959 had a fire which started in a trash can in the basement. A two or three story brick building, which had enough damage that it had to be torn down and rebuilt. Fortunately, the fire burned late in the afternoon and evening when no students were in the building, so there were no causalities. Consequences of the fire meant I was to attend kindergarten in our church basement, and begin first grade at a different school until construction was complete. This school fire had a profound effect on me, and I talked about it constantly with my sister and parents. I don't directly remember the fire at Our Lady of the Angels school, but the tragedy was known through out our area and our family and friends; how could it not be? I remember riding in our car and my mother pointing the school out to me once it had been rebuilt. Starting school after the OLA fire meant I was able to attend a new school that was safe, and up to code. This book brought back a lot of school memories, and sadness. The book is an excellent recounting of the fire, its victims and the aftermath that the church, the parents and the neighborhood had to endure. Tragedies are dealt with much more compassion and understanding now, and how these students, teachers, nuns and pastors, and parents were able to endure their recoveries is a true testament to human strength. This book is written with gripping detail and describes the fear and panic that the students and parents felt, and the overwhelming grief that destroyed lives and neighborhoods. It explains the frustration felt when it was learned that the building was not safe, had no fire proof exits or alarm system that would notify the fire department. Whats more, it is a mystery that has never been solved. The church refused to prosecute the person who admitted to starting the fire, and he was never completely proven guilty. Survivors still live with the grief and anger which consumed them in 1958-59, and we can all hope that people have learned from this disaster, and that nothing like it will ever be repeated.
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