Slovenians in Cleveland by Alan F. Dutka

Author:Alan F. Dutka [Dutka, Alan F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Emigration & Immigration, History, United States, State & Local, Midwest (IA; IL; IN; KS; MI; MN; MO; ND; NE; OH; SD; WI)
ISBN: 9781439662755
Google: PzwvDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2017-10-02T15:58:33+00:00

A diagram depicting the rear of Lake View School portrays the school’s only fire escape. A cutout illustrates the deadly staircase. Courtesy of Cleveland Press.

The mass of children piled up at the rear steps prevented students from exiting the burning school. Courtesy of Cleveland Press.

Students in Laura Bodey’s fifth-grade class, located in the only classroom on the third floor, panicked when they realized obstructions blocked both the front and rear exits. Bodey had worked in the building for only five weeks; she had not yet received training in fire procedures. Yet she calmly directed her class out of the building by using a nearby fire escape. The only deaths in her class arose when a few students did not follow her instructions but, instead, raced to the rear exit. About 80 of the school’s 350 children escaped injury; most of the uninjured came from Bodey’s and Rose’s classes.

Had students in other classes not panicked, they probably would have been led to safety by their teachers. Previous fire drills demonstrated that the building could be evacuated in less than two minutes. Yet the fire claimed the lives of 172 children, 40 of them of Slovenian descent, along with two teachers and a rescuer.

As first-grade teacher Ruby Irwin opened her ground-floor classroom door, smoke and flames racing up the stairs confronted her students. Many unwisely scattered to the front and rear stairs. The children who followed Irwin’s instructions retreated into the classroom, where she dropped them from a window to safety. After failing to convince other students to follow her successful exit strategy, she jumped from the window to save herself.

Pearl Lynn, another first-grade teacher with a classroom on the first floor, traveled with her students through heavy black smoke to the blocked back stairway. Smaller children ahead of her had fallen; she stopped so they would have an opportunity to get back on their feet. But sprinting students behind Lynn pushed her down and fell upon her. A member of the school board dragged the unconscious teacher to safety. Without her supervision, all but three of Lynn’s students died.

Anna Moran, the school’s principal since its 1902 opening, taught sixth grade in a second-floor classroom. Blocked at the staircase by students descending from the third floor, she instructed her students to go back into her classroom and use the fire escape. Unable to open a window leading to a fire escape, she broke it by hurling a chair through the glass. Many of the children did not follow her advice and died attempting to exit from the first floor.

Mary Gollmar, a fourth-grade teacher with a classroom on the second floor, could not navigate her students to the rear stairs. Instead, she directed them to the library and out the fire escape. But very few students followed her instructions. Remaining inside the school, she tried to rescue other students and eventually jumped from a window.

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