Archives for January 2018

Nearly 50 Years Later: The Chicago Fire that Killed Two Deaf Students (Part 2)

January 26, 2018

By Trudy Suggs (Click here for my thoughts on this story in ASL and English).

PART 2 (Read Part 1 here)

Zee Beranek in 1970 on the phone in the aftermath of the fire.

Zeke Beranek was the sole chaperone, along with the school bus driver, for 40 boys. Many credit him for his calm demeanor during the crisis.

Zeke Beranek: The Unsung Hero
Zeke Beranek was the sole chaperone of 40 boys — something that would never happen today. “Well, how I did it was I set up a buddy system. I had the older boys be responsible for the younger students,” Beranek explained. “The boys who went on this trip had been allowed to go based on their grades and good behavior. But I had more faith in the dorm parents, who were with them all the time, than their teachers, so I trusted who the dorm parents said should go on the trip. It worked out well for the most part.”

Only 37 at the time of the fire, Beranek looked older than his age, although he was rarely without his sense of humor or smile. A well-respected gentleman from Nebraska, he was popular among the students. As a Boy Scouts leader and school teacher, Beranek often took the boys camping and on trips. “The way I saw it was that whenever the boys achieved the Eagle Scout rank or did good things, this was good publicity for ISD,” Beranek explained. “It helped bring awareness to the school.”

And then the fire happened. “I can’t remember how I knew there was a fire, but I woke up and opened the door. There was smoke, and I began trying to do what I could,” Beranek said. “I wanted to wake as many boys up as I could, but it wasn’t possible.”

He continued, “I opened Freeman Harper’s room, and I saw him talking with a few scared younger kids near an open window. One of them started to jump, and Freeman told the kid, ‘Don’t jump! Don’t forget about me!’ That was his way of convincing the kid to not jump.”

The boys learned later that after being rescued Beranek had gone above and beyond in his role as chaperone. “Mayor Daley provided a police escort when he learned who I was and what group I was with, and I instructed [junior] Pedro Medina to be in charge of the boys,” Beranek remembered.

Pictures of written notes between ISD students and newspaper reporters

Written notes between ISD students and newspaper reporters.

He saw a group of reporters clamoring to interview the boys at the hotel, and was disgusted. He told the reporters, “Leave the boys alone, they’ve already been through enough.” When they didn’t cooperate, Beranek immediately notified hotel security. “Someone from the Hilton hotel did physically have to pull the reporters away.”

The church service the group was supposed to attend that morning had secured an interpreter. Beranek said, “The church didn’t know yet about the fire, and they actually held off starting the service for about 20 or 25 minutes, waiting for us.”

As soon as the church learned of the fire, the interpreter went to help Beranek as much as possible. “In fact, when I left Chicago, the interpreter said he’d keep visiting the kids still in the hospitals until they were all gone,” Beranek recalled.

The Smoke Clears
After all the chaos eventually settled somewhat, Beranek also had to make arrangements for that evening’s lodging and transportation. The boys clearly could not attend the Bulls game, so some boys had been picked up by their parents, and the remaining boys relocated to the Palmer Hotel, also owned by the Hilton family. Reynolds wondered if his parents, who lived just over an hour away, would come. He had no way of contacting them; although they were Deaf, they didn’t own a TTY.

ISD boys surround entertainer Connie Stevens.

The ISD boys went to Connie Stevens’ performance the night after the fire. Reynolds is fourth from left in the front row; Albert Jones is second from left in the back. Robert Perry, who later drowned, is third from right in the back behind Connie Stevens.

Entertainer Connie Stevens was scheduled to perform at the Palmer Hotel that evening. When she learned of the tragedy, she invited the ISD boys to come to her performance. Saline remembered, “We were given free food on Mayor Daley’s tab. We were treated like royalty. We were also asked to fill out insurance forms to get reimbursed for our belongings and clothes.”

Yet most of the boys were too dazed and could not eat much. Reynolds’ throat hurt too much to eat, and he had lost his sense of taste. They tried to keep their spirits up despite the horrible tragedy. “She sang all evening, and when she spoke to the crowd, we were seated in the upper balcony and she made sure to look at us,” Reynolds said. “After her performance, she came to us and posed with us.”

That evening, the boys retired to their rooms. Five firemen, including a fire chief, stood guard by their doors overnight. Reynolds roomed with Jim Gurley, and as they got into bed, Gurley kept saying, “Look at the door. I see smoke. Do you?” Reynolds indeed could have sworn he saw smoke coming under the door, too.  They decided to leave the light on and try to get some sleep. They didn’t get much, of course.

Monday Morning
Beranek woke each of the boys up, telling them it was time to return to Jacksonville. They got early editions of the Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune, and there it was for all of the world to see: two “deaf-mutes” had died. It was a punch in the guts for the boys. Although they already knew Zanger and Kennedy had died, they now felt a mixture of sadness and survivor’s guilt.

The group gathered in a conference room, and Beranek told the group, “As I woke each of you up, I noticed that more than three-fourths of you left your lights on overnight.” When Reynolds learned this, he let out a sigh of relief. He had thought he was going crazy with the need to leave his light on. They all had suffered a horrible trauma that was intensified by the lack of communication access. Worst of all, they had no psychological support. There were no counselors, no trauma advocates, and no family nearby. Although some parents had already picked up their boys, many of the boys’ families lived too far away (some as much as eight hours away) and others had no idea what had happened. They only had each other.

Reynolds later learned that his parents didn’t know about the fire until Sunday evening, when his hearing brother told them to look at the TV. The news reported on the fire, and his parents began to worry. They made his brother call the school, but there was no information yet. When they saw the newspaper on Monday and Reynolds’ name was listed among those hospitalized, they panicked, thinking he had been badly burned. They couldn’t sleep all night, trying to figure out what they should do.

As the boys climbed silently back on the yellow bus, Reynolds looked up at the overhead bins and realized that Kennedy’s pillow, streaked with mud, was still there. He sadly remembered how Kennedy had thrown the pillow at his friends, laughing, as they rode to Chicago.

Beranek stood up as the bus rode along, and talked to the boys in his SimCom style of what had transpired over the weekend. He shared that he knew some students were in their rooms, but he didn’t realize that several, including Zanger and Kennedy, had gone into the hallways. He didn’t know until later about Bright’s jump, which continues to be a legend in the Illinois Deaf community even today.

Saline and Reynolds both remembered how Beranek shared the rumor that Zanger and Kennedy had been found near each other by the elevators, but that this hadn’t been confirmed. (Newspaper articles reported Chicago Fire Commander Robert J. Quinn as saying that the two boys’ bodies were found outside a room on the north end of the corridor; Quinn added that had the boys stayed in their rooms, they likely would have survived.) Beranek also told of how he had to go to the morgue to identify the boys’ bodies, which were badly covered in soot.  As Beranek spoke, every boy on that bus shed tears. The ride to Jacksonville was eerily quiet, with Kennedy’s pillow literally hanging over their heads.

The Aftermath
Reynolds remembers vividly how upon arrival, the school bus was swarmed by other ISD students, and the sense of dread he and the other boys felt. “We should’ve had trauma counselors on the ready for us, instead of kids wanting to know every detail about our experience,” Reynolds says. He saw many cars, mostly driven by hearing parents, waiting to pick up their boys. He walked to his dorm and as he put away his things, a houseparent notified him that his family had called.

Reynolds quickly went to pick up the phone and call his family. When his brother picked up, “It was at that moment that I realized I couldn’t speak. I had lost my voice, and could only speak a few words.” His brother asked, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” Crying, Reynolds responded that he was okay and that he loved them.

Meanwhile, Saline’s mother and niece drove down from Rio to see him that evening, and took him out for dinner at the local Hardee’s. They wrote back and forth, talking about what had happened.

The next morning, the survivors went to class on the second floor of the main building. Saline said, “So many people hugged me, and it was weird. It was really hard on me, knowing that Donald, who was my roommate at the hotel, and Bruce both had died. I wondered about them for a long time, and it took a while for that feeling to wear off.”

Soon after class began, Reynolds was thrilled to learn that his parents and brother were there to pick him up. As soon as he made his way to the first floor, his brother ran to him. Reynolds recalls bittersweetly, “I never had that hard of a hug from my own brother before that, and it was the best feeling.” He went home for a week.

Upon his return, Reynolds practiced with the school basketball team. On game day, on the court in uniform, he had one of many epiphanies. “I was warming up, and as I was dribbling, I looked around the gym. There were people in the bleachers, I was playing with my teammates, and I thought, I’m alive. I have another chance to play basketball. My view of the world changed at that moment, and I embraced my newfound maturity. I ran and did a lay-up, never forgetting the boys we lost in Chicago.”

Bright went home after seven days, where he had virtually been isolated from the world. After all, back in those days, TVs were inaccessible and no interpreters were provided. Newspapers reported that he would not return to school that year. After two weeks, though, Bright was going stir-crazy. He was the only deaf person in his family and town, and missed his friends. He begged his parents and ISD superintendent Dr. Kenneth Mangan — who wasn’t too fond of him, since he was somewhat of a troublemaker — to let him return.  Bright’s doctor felt he wasn’t ready, either, but Bright lied and told Mangan that the doctor had given approval.

Mangan still refused. Dean of Students Lawrence Huot spoke on Bright’s behalf, and finally convinced Mangan to let Bright return. Mangan finally agreed to let Bright return. Bright walked using specially fitted crutches for about a month, but was overjoyed to be back. Reynolds and others were stunned to see Bright back so soon after his near-death experience. “We all thought Bright would be crippled for life, and even today, I am astounded he survived,” Reynolds said.

Bright was thrilled to be back, and wasted no time in healing. He went on to have a noteworthy athletic career both in the last years of high school and in adulthood, and graduated with his classmates in June 1972.

Charles Bright, shown here with his mother and their family lawyer, had to return to Chicago for a medical follow-up visit. (Courtesy of Charles Bright)

Bright also remembers how a lawyer representing the Hilton corporation showed up at his house and convinced his parents to sign a $10,000 agreement, although today he isn’t sure what the agreement stipulated. When Bright returned to Chicago for further medical care, his family lawyer accompanied him — and his mother wouldn’t leave Bright’s side during an overnight stay at the hospital; she was too afraid something would happen again.

For decades, Bright refused, and still refuses, to stay overnight at the hotel where the fire took place, even when softball or basketball tournaments were headquartered there. In 2014, Reynolds and Bright returned to the hotel, now named the Hilton Chicago. Although they had been back to that hotel for various events, this time was different: they were going to confront their memories and visit the ninth floor. Bright says, “I had a sense of trepidation, and it was difficult to see that floor again. So much of the hotel looked the same, yet so different.” Reynolds echoes this, which is why he wants to create a film based on this experience.

“It’s the little things that jump out at you,” Reynolds said. “I still have my room key from that night.” For Bright, one of the small details was that he had borrowed his good friend Ronald Sipek’s suit for the weekend, which then was destroyed in the fire. 

Beranek, when asked how he recovered from the terrible events of that weekend, said, “It bothered me for so very long, yeah. It bothered me until that kid, what’s his name? Perry. Robert Perry drowned.” In August 1970, Perry, of East St. Louis, had gone swimming in a quarry with fellow survivor Frank Bazos of Aurora. Despite desperate efforts by Bazos, Perry drowned — just a day before he was to start a new job.

“When Perry died after having gone through the fire, I realized that when it’s your time to go, it’s your time,” Beranek continued. “There’s nothing I could have done.”

Kennedy and Zanger were the only two fatalities of the fire; the 14 injured ISD students included: Charles Bright, 17; Thomas Byrnes, 15; Michael Davis, 15; Freeman Harper, 16; Albert Jones, 18; David Newcum, 14; Scott Noyes, 14; Larry Peterson, 16; David Reynolds, 16; Danny Thomas, 18; Michael Tonner, 17; and Michael Ubowski, 14.

The cause of the fire was never confirmed; it was later revealed that there had been a fire on the same floor two years earlier.

Today

Beranek in 1970, with horn-rimmed glasses and in a suitA white man stands in front of kitchen cabinets. He is wearing a white t-shirt, and is smiling.

 

Zeke Beranek, who turns 86 in February, lives in Jacksonville, Ill., with his wife of 55 years. After 32 years, he retired from education and now works with H&R Block as a tax preparer when not walking his dogs.

 

Bright as a 17-year-old

A balding white man smiles as he wears a Superman t-shirt. To his right is a little girl, his granddaughter.

 

Charles Bright, 65, has worked for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for 40 years, and is considering retirement. He has two children and one grandchild, and makes his home with his wife Genevieve in Schaumburg, Ill.

 

Freeman Harper in 1970A brown-skinned man in a suit jacket and purple button-down shirt is smiling, his hair gray, in front of a blue cloud-filled sky and trees.

 

Freeman Harper, 64, retired from a career as an educator at the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf, and resides in Iowa City, Iowa.

 

 

David Reynolds in 1970A brown curly-haired man sits in front of a moving river.David Reynolds, 63, became an educator and worked for years at the Indiana School for the Deaf before moving west to Fremont, Calif. He has three sons, and has an acting career, most notably as Dr. Wonder on Dr. Wonder’s Workshop.  He and his wife, Alyce Slater Reynolds, recently relocated to Riverside, Calif., where he intends to create a movie about the Chicago fire, among other films.


A white man is in his car, looking at the camera. He has a blonde/grayish goatee, glasses, and a baseball cap on.


Dale Saline, 62, retired from the U.S. Postal Service after 20 years. He now works at his family’s pig farm in Rio, Ill. and lives with his wife.

 

 

Click here for my thoughts on this story in ASL and English.

All photographs are taken from the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Daily News, the Illinois Advance, and the interviewees unless otherwise indicated. Special thanks go to Joan Engelmann and Rosa Ramirez.

Filed Under: Blog, Childhood, Community resources, Culture, Deaf Community, Deaf education, Disempowerment, History, Humanity, Language, Media, Notable People

Reflections on “Nearly 50 Years Later: The Chicago Fire that Killed Two Deaf Students”

January 26, 2018

Video description: Trudy Suggs, a white woman with brown shoulder-length hair, is wearing a black cardigan over a black shirt with green and white dots.  She is seated in a corner with brown bookshelves on her right and a sea blue wall on her left.

Read the article here.

Earlier this month, my family and I went to the Great Wolf Lodge, a waterpark and hotel. That night, as I was about to go to bed, I realized that there was no accessible fire alarm in the room. I stood there for a second, wondering what I should do. My children were already out cold, so I didn’t want to wake them up and move them. My husband and I decided it would be okay since we had a balcony and sliding doors, and weren’t far up from the ground — we were on the third floor. But the irony of that experience didn’t escape me, because I was working on this article at that time.

This story was written based on firsthand accounts, interviews, and newspaper articles from 1970. My mother and stepfather both graduated from the Illinois School for the Deaf in 1970, so I grew up being told this story a thousand times. My stepdad didn’t go because he had been suspended from school, but he had grown up with almost every boy in the group who went to Chicago. My mother had attended school with many of them — namely Donald Zanger, who was from the same town as my mother. In fact, Donald’s sister Rosey was my mother’s best friend for many years. I grew up with Rosey almost as an aunt, and I remember always seeing a sadness in her eyes.  

When writing this story, I learned that the night before the fire, my mother and grandparents had stayed at the Zangers’ house until almost three in the morning playing cards. After only a few hours of sleep, my grandmother woke my mother up and made her get dressed. Mom didn’t understand why until they were in the car, when Grandmother broke the news of the fire and that Donald was one of the missing boys. It was later that day that the Zanger family learned Donald had indeed been fatally injured. Mom, who was as devastated as if Donald were her own brother, spent almost every minute at the Zanger household that week.

The newspaper articles printed on the days after the fire were also interesting to read. This was not the hotel’s first fire; another one had taken place two years and two days earlier, and also began on the ninth floor. The deaf boys had unknowingly been put on the service floor, which meant it was a high-traffic floor used by service personnel.

One article in the Chicago Sun Times reported that the hotel public relations director Alan Edelson said that ninth-floor occupants were informed of the fire by telephone and instructed to stay where they were. Obviously this didn’t work for the deaf boys. The words “deaf mute” and “handicapped” were repeatedly used. The language was very defective, portraying the deaf students as helpless, unintelligent, and pitiful. Times were different back then, indeed, but the challenges continue to this day.

I remember looking at the grainy photographs in the newspaper clippings when I was a little girl and being awed by the incredible difficulty of that experience. Even today, it’s hard for me to put together the Charles Bright I’ve known all of my life with the Charles Bright who fell from the ninth floor. You’d never know it by looking at him, because he’s such a cheerful person with a great sense of humor. He was always the person I ran to at community events when I was a child because he was just so much fun to talk with, and still is today.

As I began talking to the people featured in this story, and many others who I didn’t have the space to include here — many who I had grown up knowing — I was shocked at the details that emerged, details that never made it into the media: stories about the aftermath, stories about the survivors, and stories about how that made them hold onto their lives with so much more appreciation. As Dale Saline said, “Even today, many years later, that experience has made appreciate life, every minute, and I’ve cherished my time since then.”

This story has reminded me that each and every person really does have a story to tell.

Filed Under: Blog, Childhood, Culture, Deaf Community, History, Humanity, Language, Notable People

Nearly 50 Years Later: The Chicago Fire that Killed Two Deaf Students (Part 1)

January 25, 2018
Illinois School for the Deaf Main Building

Illinois School for the Deaf Main Building (Courtesy of 1969 Illinois Advance)

By Trudy Suggs

PART 1 (Click here for Part 2)

It was going to be a splendid trip. Forty boys from the Illinois School for the Deaf (ISD) were headed to Chicago to watch a Chicago Bulls game. In past years, they had gone to watch the St. Louis Hawks and visit the St. Louis Arch — both a mere 90-minute drive away — but the Hawks had moved to Atlanta, so Chicago it was.

The boys eagerly packed their suitcases. On Saturday, January 24, 1970, they climbed onto the school bus; it was nothing fancy, just your standard yellow school bus with green seats that bounced so hard at times you felt as if you might shoot through the roof.

The ride took nearly five hours up I-55. The boys joked and talked excitedly about what they would see. For some, it was their first time to the big city. They came from rural towns, and had only heard gangster stories about the city. For others, it was their hometown. Chaperoning the trip was Zeke Beranek, a teacher and coach who spoke crisply as he signed each word.

They arrived in blustery Chicago and checked into the Conrad Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue, a stately building overlooking Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan. The boys were abuzz with excitement as they explored their fancy surroundings, and went sightseeing. Beranek immediately chose older kids as leaders to help the younger kids. He collected each room’s key in the event of an emergency and so he could wake them up for church the next morning.

Four boys were assigned to each room on the ninth floor; Beranek roomed with the school bus driver. Most of the boys slept in one wing, with the remainder spilling over into another wing. Charles Bright, a 17-year-old sophomore, was with roommates Bruce Kennedy and Robert Perry as they flirted with hearing girls from Ohio in the fifth-floor lounge. When some hearing guys came up, unhappy with the unsolicited attention the girls were getting, the boys went back to their room and headed to bed.

David O. Reynolds, a 16-year-old sophomore from rural Kankakee, was having the time of his life fooling around with his friends in the hallways and elevators, as teenagers are apt to do. “I was a huge Chicago sports fan, and always read the newspaper every day,” he said, “and I was so excited for the game.” Reynolds decided to go to bed and get ready for the next day — but not before he read that day’s newspaper.

Bruce Kennedy

Bruce Kennedy (Courtesy of 1970 Illinois Advance)

The Beginning of a Nightmare
At 3:00 a.m., feeling unusually warm, Bright woke up. He walked to the window and opened it before walking to the door and propping it open. Even in the 1970s, this was still a bold move in the big city. The dangers of leaving the door wide open didn’t occur to Bright, a naïve small-town kid who was the sixth of eight kids from Moweaqua, 20 minutes south of Decatur. Bright noticed it was rather warm in the hallway as well, but climbed back into bed without a second thought.

Two hours later, the fire alarms finally went off. Back then, hotels weren’t required to provide visual fire alarms, so none of the deaf boys had any way of knowing unless someone woke them up or they smelled the smoke. Kennedy, who was hard of hearing, shook Bright awake, saying, “Fire! Fire!” Groggy from deep sleep, Bright saw the room filled with smoke. Seeing that Kennedy was ready to run from the room, Bright clutched Kennedy’s wrist and said, “Don’t go!” But Kennedy wriggled free and ran out, never to be seen again.

B+W photo of firemen looking at charred corridor

The ninth-floor corridor was the most damaged of all the hotel floors.

Bright, who had become deaf from spinal meningitis and had terrible balance as a result, began coughing and choking on the smoke. He later realized the room was so filled because he had his windows open, which sucked in smoke from the hallway. He saw Albert Jones, another roommate, running into the wall three times, desperately looking for the door. Although the sun had begun to rise, the room was pitch black.

Bright panicked. “I had never experienced a fire drill at school and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do,” he recalled. He ran to the bathroom to grab a wet towel, and crawled back to the window. He tied three bed sheets together to lower out of the window, thinking maybe he could climb down somehow. The sheets immediately dropped to the ground below, and Bright began to sob, fearing death was inevitable.

Room 909
Reynolds was soundly sleeping when roommate Mike Davis tapped him awake. Smoke had already seeped into the room. “I woke up coughing, and ran to the door to open it,” Reynolds remembered. “That was a big mistake, because there was a wall of blackness right there. I remember this clearly. There was just this black wall, and I was so confused. I stumbled backwards and fell down.”

Reynolds began crawling, recalling a movie he had watched at school about how to stay safe by crawling under the smoke. “I thought I could easily beat the smoke,” he said. “But even as I crawled, the smoke still came down on me.” He figured he would open the two windows, but they had been illegally sealed shut with insulation tape. After giving it a few tries, he knew it was futile.

“I fell back on the floor, and put a pillow over my face. I couldn’t breathe, and I could feel the smoke filling my lungs,” Reynolds said, lost in thought as he remembered the sensation. He had no idea where his roommates were, but became focused on saving himself. “I got up and went to the window again, and tried again to open it to no avail.” He desperately pulled down the curtain rod and tried to break the window with it. He succeeded, creating a baseball-sized hole. “I put my mouth to that hole, and it was the very first time I had ever given up. I remember thinking, Okay, God, it’s now my time. I have good parents and good faith. And then I passed out.”

Floor map of ninth floor where the fire started

Floor map

Donald Zanger

Donald Zanger (Courtesy of 1970 Illinois Advance)

The Second Fatality
In a corner room, eighth grader Dale Saline of Rio, near Iowa, was about to celebrate his birthday. He had gotten special permission from his parents to go on this trip, and roomed with high schoolers Donald Zanger, Michael Ubowski, and Dennis Lovstad. “At about 5:30 or 6:00, I woke Donald up,” Saline said. “Donald immediately ran out in a panic, and I woke Mike up as well. He did the same, and ran out.”

Saline, unsure of what to do next, put a wet towel by the door. Fortunately, Ubowski returned a short time later, and a lost Danny Thomas wandered into their room. “We weren’t that close to the elevators where the fire started, so it wasn’t as bad as in the other rooms,” he said. “We waited for the longest time and I was really scared. A fireman tried to get a ladder up to us, but it only went up to the seventh floor and we were on the ninth floor.”

Some time later, their door suddenly burst open. A fireman had arrived to lead them to safety. As they made their way through the hallway, Saline kept tripping over the many hoses on the floor. They took a service elevator to the kitchen where all the others had congregated.

B+W photograph of hotel with smoke coming out of the windows. At bottom is the concrete terrace that Bright jumped to.

Charles Bright jumped from his ninth floor room onto the concrete terrace, located at the top of the ladder in this photograph. Miraculously, he survived.

Jumping to His Future
Meanwhile, Freeman Harper, 17, of Quincy, was in another room with three other boys. Their room was near the elevator shaft where the fire originated, so their room filled with smoke quickly. “I suddenly woke up, terrified, and screamed in fright,” Harper said. Unlike Reynolds, he and his roommates opened two large windows and waited approximately 45 minutes until firemen rescued them.

When Harper was safely on the ground, he and the many others looked up at the hotel searching for survivors. He watched in horror as Bright climbed out of his window.

Bright, still sobbing, made a split decision. He scampered onto the ledge, and saw a woman on a lower floor waving, “No, no! No!” He lowered himself, his fingers tightly gripping the edge of the ledge, and hung on for dear life. He looked down and then back at his window that was emitting more smoke than ever. He could feel his fingers slipping, so he let go. “I blacked out and can’t remember anything after my fingers left the ledge,” he said. 

“I screamed, ‘Oh, my God!’ and watched his body fly down the four floors,” Harper recalled. “I remember his lifeless body on the balcony and fearing the worst.” Bright crashed into a fifth-floor concrete terrace and vaguely remembers waking up and trying to take a few steps before falling to the ground where he passed out for the final time.

Firemen eventually carried Bright into a fifth-floor room, where he waited for an ambulance to take him to the hospital.

A black and white photo of Charles Bright wrapped up in blankets on a hotel bed after his fall.

After Charles Bright fell four stories onto a concrete terrace, firemen carried him to a hotel bed. Miraculously, he survived the fall.

Fighting for Survival
Back in his room, Reynolds was regaining consciousness. He said, “I woke up, after I don’t know how long, because of the draft. I don’t think if I had stayed passed out for another minute, I would have survived.” The draft was coming from an opened window. Roommate Larry Peterson had ripped the tape off and then snapped open the window in a fit of super-strength. Reynolds scrambled to the window and leaned out. As he took deep, painful breaths, he looked in all directions, and saw others sticking their heads out of their windows as well. He also saw people making their way down fire escapes, and wondered if he could do that. He returned his eyes to his roommates, Davis and Peterson, and realized that their faces were completely covered in soot. He said, “There were lines going from inside their noses to their lips. It was surreal, and I knew I probably had them, too.”

The boys quickly talked about what to do. They also worried about where their other roommate, Mike Tonner, was. Tonner had cerebral palsy, and had run out into the hallway in a state of panic. Just then, the boys realized that the open door and open window created a cross-breeze that helped clear the smoke. The wind slammed the door shut, and Reynolds said, “Against all common sense, I ran to open the door. I could see that same wall of smoke, but the open door helped clear the room of smoke.”

Michael Tonner is shown in a hospital gurney surrounded by two nurses.

Michael Tonner, who had CP, was carried to safety by a fireman and taken to the hospital.

At that moment, Tonner returned, badly shaken up. The soot-covered boys grabbed him and brought him inside the room. The room was quickly becoming cold from the window, so Reynolds — at that point dressed only in his underwear — went to put on his clothes and his glasses. Since he could speak and hear a bit, Reynolds picked up the rotary phone and spoke to whoever was on the other end, “Please come get us, we’re trapped!” He had no idea if anyone was listening.

The boys stood at the window, screaming at people and waving to other people trying to get some help. By then, it was past 6:00 a.m., and daylight had almost fully arrived. Davis was confident that they would be safe by then, reasoning that Reynolds had called for help so people knew they were in that room. They waited for what seemed like a very long time when suddenly Peterson said, “I can feel footsteps!”

Sure enough, the door opened and a big, burly fireman came in, coughing. Reynolds immediately pointed to Tonner and said, “He has CP, he can’t walk.” The fireman easily swung Tonner over his shoulder, and told the boys to follow him. “As we went down the hallway, thinking everyone else had died, I noticed that the hallway carpet was frayed from the fire. There was smoke billowing everywhere,” Reynolds said. The floor was also covered in water from fire hoses.

They walked down the long hallway, and Reynolds saw a splintered exit door. Reynolds, Davis, and Peterson ran to the door as the fireman went in a different direction. “We never saw the fireman again,” Reynolds said. They ran down the fire escape to safety. Reynolds said the first thing he noticed when they got outside was how cold it was — this was Chicago in January after all — and then he thought, “I’m alive! I’m alive!” People were waving at them, and they had to jump a few feet from the bottom of the fire escape to the ground.

Fire trucks were parked everywhere they looked, their lights flashing like no tomorrow. Water hoses were blasting cold water in every direction. “It was like a movie, that’s the best way I can explain it,” Reynolds said. He stood there for a few minutes, taking in the stunning event he had just survived.

“We all had suddenly become men. And we weren’t ready for that.” – David O. Reynolds

Collecting Themselves
As Reynolds stood figuring out what to do next, he was directed to a mailroom where the other guests were. As he walked towards the ISD group sitting off to the side, he saw how every face looked exceptionally sorrowful and sad. Looking at each boy’s grim, shell-shocked face, Reynolds realized something startling. “We all had suddenly become men. And we weren’t ready for that.”

Word had already gotten out that there had been some fatalities, but nobody knew for sure. Many had been whisked off in ambulances to area hospitals, and the rest kept checking on each other, making sure they all were okay. Reynolds, still coughing up soot, declined a trip to the hospital.

Details began coming together. The boys began ticking off names, trying to figure out who was missing and who was accounted for. They wrote back and forth with emergency responders. Saline, who had roomed with one of the two missing ISD boys (Donald Zanger), was interviewed by emergency personnel with Beranek interpreting. Shortly after that, Beranek left.

Firemen examine the room where the fire is suspected to have started.

Firemen are shown examining the area where the fire supposedly started. Charred remains of furniture are visible in this photograph.

Information began trickling in. The fire had started in an elevator shaft on the ninth floor, and since that floor was undergoing renovations, there were furniture and other things piled up near the elevator, creating an extremely flammable area. Theories began piling up: Was it arson? Did the boys who got angry at Bright, Perry, and Kennedy throw a cigarette to start the fire? Or was it just an electrical failure?

“We were in deep shock, us boys. We couldn’t believe what was happening,” Saline said.

The boys sat there waiting for someone to tell them something and wondering what would happen next. Reynolds suddenly began to feel sick, and realized he probably should get some medical attention. He was quickly taken to an ambulance, where he put on an oxygen mask and was driven to a hospital.

There, Reynolds was told to put a tissue to his mouth and start coughing. He did, and was shocked to see piles of soot coming out of his mouth. His lungs had completely filled with soot, and his larynx had been burned by the smoke. He later would learn that he had blood in his lungs for several years because of this smoke inhalation, which caused him to have nosebleeds often for many years. After several hours sharing a hospital room with Albert Jones and Freeman Harper, a somber-faced Beranek appeared at their hospital room door.

Click here for Part 2. All photographs are taken from the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Daily News, the Illinois Advance, and the interviewees unless otherwise indicated. Special thanks go to Joan Engelmann and Rosa Ramirez.

Filed Under: Blog, Childhood, Culture, History, Humanity, Language, Media, Notable People

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