When The Angels Cried

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Thank you for posting this. I was just coming to the forum today, specifically, to ensure that it was commemorated here. This was one of the greatest tragedies in our city’s history and for the history of Catholicism and the Catholic school system in the United States. The continuing sadness of children, parents, and community not being assisted to cope with their pain, thus perpetuating this suffering for decades, is equally - if not even more - disturbing. Today is an important anniversary in the life of our society, of our Church. We should not allow it to pass unnoticed. The deaths and wounded lives of so many brothers and sisters must not be allowed to become forgotten, and should not be left abandoned in vain.
 
I was very small at the time, but I remember this started my parents arguing for years as to whether or not we would go to Catholic schools. Catholic schools did win out.

I would later briefly work with a woman whose parents were both in the fire. Her mother died of cancer as a direct result of the fire. The woman had a chip on her shoulder regarding Catholic schools. She could not get through a fire drill without panic. She now teaches in public schools.
 
Beau_Ouiville said:
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the tragic Our Lady of the Angels fire on Chicago’ west Side. 92 children and three nuns perished in a fire with still undetermined origin at a Catholic grammar school. Although I did not live in Chicago at that time, the enormity of the tradegy still moves me.

chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-our-lady-of-the-angels-fire-students-killed,0,6650568.story
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next to the Kennedy assasination, the Cuban missile crisis, and the first manned space launches, this is the news story that most sticks in my mind from childhood. Within three years of this event our parish built a new elementary school and razed the old 1890s building.
 
I was in a parochial school in NY at the time of the fire. We drilled and drilled.

On a different note, several years later a community center across the street from the hospital where I was born caught fire. The nurses at the hospital (Sisters of Charity) caught the children tossed out the windows, although 13 perished. This was a fire at the Jewish Community Center across the street from St. Joseph Hospital.

You gotta love nuns.
 
I grew up in Elkhart, IN, about 100 miles east. I remember it well.

May God grant them eternal rest.

DaveBj
 
Anyone who attended Catholic schools at the time of this tragedy or thereafter was in some way impacted by the deadly fire at Our Lady of the Angels. If you grew up in Chicago, especially, it was (and to some extent remains to this day) something which has particular impact. At some point, you will almost certainly be told the story about Our Lady of the Angels in relation to fire safety.
 
OutinChgoburbs said:
I was very small at the time, but I remember this started my parents arguing for years as to whether or not we would go to Catholic schools. Catholic schools did win out.

I would later briefly work with a woman whose parents were both in the fire. Her mother died of cancer as a direct result of the fire. The woman had a chip on her shoulder regarding Catholic schools. She could not get through a fire drill without panic. She now teaches in public schools.
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Your story sounds like my own…it wasn’t too many years after that my parents took us out of Catholic School…the building was old with lots of wood, a “fire trap” my mom used to call it. When I was a senior in high school, they finally built a new school (too little too late for me:( )
 
I don’t get it. If you added up the number of house fires in any given year in Chicago, I bet you’d see more child fatalities than happened in this school.

Any parents out there pull their kids out of wood framed houses and move them into concrete block ones? Look around your house: cabinets, carpets, wood floors, wood trim, furnishings… It’s a virtual tinder box - and no sprinklers for most of us.

I get the tragedy and understand the sorrow. What I don’t understand is the anger expressed by many of the survivors. Anger at who? Sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy.
 
I was in a Catholic grade school at the time and will never forget the news coverage of the fire on television that night. The nightmares and the fear are unforgettable. I remember praying in school for the children, those who survived and those who didn’t and for the sisters.
Our school, while smaller, was a 3 story, 4 counting the attic, old wooden structure that burned many years later in the summer when no students were around. A concrete school had already been in use for a few years by then.
Reminds us to hold our loved ones close and pray for those who have gone before us.
 
12/01/2009 - The 51st anniversary of the fire.

I requested that the Association of the Miraculous Medal offer a votive for the 95 victims of the fire.

This fire was before my time. But it’s still a devasting tragedy nonetheless, for the loss of the children who never made it to adulthood. And of course, the nuns who chose to stay with their students instead of escaping.

www.olafire.com
 
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