His father remarried in 1949 and Elizabeth was hardly ever mentioned after that, but her son never forgot. His father tossed the two boys to his friend on the ground and then shimmied down the rope himself, badly injuring his hands and arm. Joan started working her way through the crowd until she came to the animal cage that was holding everyone back. Mrs. Claire Arnold's statement to police. “My father said, ‘Don't worry. The girls were seated high on the bleachers when the fire broke out, and all prepared to jump except Maxine, who froze. He organized the Armory as a morgue.”. Norman Carter doesn't remember the name of the little girl – crying and separated from her aunt – whom he and his family met outside, after escaping the burning Big Top. Betty survived the Hartford Circus Fire by escaping down a guide rope of the burning tent while eight months pregnant with her first child. Lichtenbaum said he didn't realize the enormity of what had just happened, but when his mother came home from work, “she hugged me so hard.”. But a doctor who worked with his father gave them five tickets to the matinee show on July 6 because his wife was too sick to go. Image sourced from The Hartford Circus Fire. Attended circus with friends Maxine Huntington and Constance Carlton, who also survived the fire. Norman Carter shown in a photograph taken on his 14th birthday, one month after he survived the Hartford circus fire, and in 2019. He was not slim. Dolores is also pictured in 2019. Looking to buy a home in Hartford County’s tight housing market? I just turned and went out [the side] of the tent.”. When the girl said her name, Carter's aunt immediately recognized it as the name of a well-known doctor in that town. Krutt and his brother opted to take a different route. As LeVasseur and his mother tried to make their way to an exit on the north side of the tent, they and a large number of others attempting to escape the fire got jammed up by a four-foot-tall metal chute used to shuttle animals between the ring and their wagons just outside the tent. He, along with his mother, Ida; his aunt, Myrtle; and his 8-year-old sister, Joan, had seats almost right in the center of the big top. “She lost the baby. Went to the circus with her children Joy and Hans, and their grandmother Hansine Andersen. Verret remembers the fire was about a third of the way up the tent, and it was spreading quickly. Injured, at St. Francis Hospital, on the July 10, 1944 casualty list. My aunt didn't want to go with five kids,” Trinks said. Mary Bushnell said in an interview that one of her sisters had screaming nightmares for years after the fire. Believe me, I was busy.”. Bailardo is also shown in 2017. Mrs. McKechnie was awarded $1,500 by the arbitration board for her injuries received in the fire. The president was a hero.”. She is also pictured today, at age 82. Circus fire survivor Virginia Narkon appears in a photograph second from left with her siblings (from left to right) Helen, Oleksinski, Isabel Oleksinski and Bill Oleksinski. On July 6, 1944, fire erupted inside the big top at a Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. We wouldn't have to go to Japan. They were heading back up the tunnel right below his seat when he first saw the flames. Hartford circus fire is part of WikiProject Fire Service, which collaborates on fire service-related subjects on Wikipedia.If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. “It was only 30 days after D-Day, and people were kind of used to bad news and death.”. DiFazio remembers her mother spotting the fire first – it was just a small patch – and taking her hand to move toward the exits. “My mom carried me to one end of the tent and there was some cages that they let the wild animals across, and my uncle found us somehow and my mom handed me over to my uncle and turned around and went back in, speculating she was looking for my sister and never came out,” Verret said. Here are the names of some of the survivors, and also the names of those who helped or are otherwise associated with the Hartford Circus Fire, though they may not have been in attendance during the tragic performance. Edlund and his mother and friend crawled under the bleachers and got out. There was no freeway at the time, and the 30-mile drive was tedious, Mary recalled. “I heard someone yell ‘Fire!’ and the man in front of me stood up with his Coke and threw it over his head where it hit me and my brand new dress, which I was very proud of. Harold Hazen says he can almost still feel his mother's grip after 75 years. The impact of surviving the fire has stayed with her. Richard Epps was only 3 when he went to the circus with mother, big brother, aunt and cousin. Acquaviva, Charlotte (4); Beacon St, Hartford, Acquaviva, Joyce (Weaver) (30); Beacon St, Hartford, Addison, Oliver C. (adult); Middlefield, CT, Agata, Marce (12), 13 Village St; East Hartford, Allegretta, Dolores (minor); D137 Charter Oak Terrace, Hartford, Allegretta, Dorothy (36); D137 Charter Oak Terrace, Hartford, Allen, Barbara (3); 54 Woodbridge Ave, East Hartford, Allen, Raymond J. Attended the circus with her son, Thomas E. Adams, and an unnamed pregnant friend. The scars were a constant reminder of the tragedy. Once Bailardo and the two teenagers who brought him to the circus escaped the fire, they were thinking about what they should do next when they caught sight of the pachyderms. In this book, the lack of proper egress was the biggest culprit. Geoffrey Wilson was happy the lion act ended as he sat with his grandfather, Gustav Anderson, near the center ring, because although he loved the Ringling Bros. circus he was afraid of the animals. “We started going out, and people were climbing over seats. The thick black smoke billowed over the scene, staining people's faces. Some have never talked about the fire, even with their own families. David de le Vergne had always wanted to go to the circus, but his family was never able to get tickets. “I have a very vivid memory of those bodies.”. LeVasseur would go on to have a successful career as a certified public accountant, marry the girl he met in high school and raise a family. His mother and grandmother were badly burned on their arms and foreheads and spent weeks in the hospital. By Kathleen McWilliams. Narkon and her family tried to move, but the way was blocked by a big man. She didn't know what had happened to him until she realized he was in the room right next to her at Hartford Hospital. She said her brother never talked about the fire until about 15 years ago. Rather than go down the bleachers where people were already bottlenecking near the animal cages, they went up to the top of the grandstand. “It sounded like a windstorm. One hundred and sixty eight people, including 100 children, were killed. Mary Lou Weidl doesn't remember seeing the actual flames from her seat high atop the bleachers, but she won't forget hearing a man yell, “Fire!”. Went to the circus with her brother Hans, mother Cora, and grandmother Hansine. A man saw him walking alone and took him to a house on Barbour Street. They sat on the opposite side from where the fire started; they saw the first flames in the far right corner from where they were seated. Her 38-year-old mother, Ethel Scheon, was left behind in the stands. A man standing outside ran into the tent and grabbed her and brought her to a police car, where she sat with another lost boy until her father found her. Jane McGrath had never been to the circus. Nearly 7,000 circus fans attended the afternoon show on July 6, 1944, and many were fortunate enough to survive the blaze. Circus fire survivor Fred Verret is pictured with his sister, Joan Verret, and his father on the roof of Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford while being treated for his burns. The wedding ring that she wore when she died is now worn by his wife. “Once I got outside, I just ran to get away from the tent.”. It was so hot that day, I didn't need to be barbecued inside the tent,” Margolin said. Survivor of the 1944 Hartford circus fire. “I remember sitting outside the package store and my mother giving us ice to put on our burns,” Donn said. This project is a memorial to the victims, and to the survivors … Her second husband, Doug Weidl, also was a circus fire survivor. The Acquaviva's would also escape. “We didn't use the ropes. Now living in Fort Wayne, Ind., Hazen was 4 1/2 on July 6, 1944, and living in Hartford. “There was lively band music, colorful and funny clowns, vendors hawking their wares of pink cotton candy, peanuts and gaudy toys,” she wrote. “The smell didn't go away,” he said. Vinick and his friend, exhausted from their work setting up, decided to take tickets for the July 6 matinee instead of attending the evening show on July 5. Attended the circus with her two sons David (4 1/2) and George (3 1/2), and Barbara Tulman (14). His father woke him up the next morning and told him the bad news. “That didn't bother Mom at all. The tickets were for reserved seats in top row near the center ring, a huge problem for his mother who was afraid of heights. Harry Lichtenbaum's mother got him the tickets to see the circus. Some were physical; others changed the way they looked at the world. Epps said his brother, Billy, took him in one hand and his cousin, Muriel, 4, in the other and headed to escape. “We jumped,” Rice said. “They wanted to go back for their mothers, but she wouldn't let them,” Trinks said. I say you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.”. “I looked back, and the whole tent was on fire,” DiFazio said. I’d never heard of this tragedy before. If you fell, you were going to be trampled. Reilly and his friend were able to leap off the bleachers and escape without harm, but later in life, while filming a one-man autobiographical play, Reilly described in detail the horror of seeing children wandering the scene with burned, mutilated faces. Hartford circus fire survivor Jane McGrath pictured in 1945 (left) with her siblings, Marty and Ellen, and today. So Aunt Isabel ran up the bleacher. Injured, on Municipal Hospital casualty list, July 10, 1944 at 9am. Ethel is mentioned in Jeanette Burke's story, which can be read here: Hartford Police Department officer, helped with recovering lost articles on the circus grounds after the fire. He recalls the terrifying experience 75 years later. Outside, he remembered roads becoming choked with cars and fire trucks. “Then we all kind of scrambled, it was each to his own.”. The four were able to escape out a side of the tent that Alvin and other kids were holding up to create a makeshift opening. Calvin Vinick was 15 and and enjoyed being entertained. Closing. Elissa and her friend had first- and second-degree burns on their backs. Another circus‐goer had slit an opening in the tent, and DeMichele and his family emerged, safe. All survived. “It was almost like people getting ready for Christmas,” Lassow recalled, noting that everyone dressed up. Nobody else did. They were able to identify her by her wedding ring. Lassow said his father's only regret was that he didn't get the stubs back. She remembers being placed on a gurney and both of them going to the hospital in an Army ambulance. “It was so bad,” DeMichele said. Once inside the tent, Licthenbaum said he couldn't see all three rings from where they were sitting, so they moved from the north side of the tent to the south side, a move that would prove fateful as many of those who died trying to escape were in the area where Lichtenbaum was originally sitting. The two had planned to attend the matinee on July 5, but travel issues related to World War II delayed the trains, and the first show was canceled. The Wallendas were on their perches ready to start their high-wire act. They were given to her by circus officials because she let them put circus posters in the window of the sporting goods shop she worked in. Circus fire survivor William Cohen pictured then, on July 6, 1944, and now, on March 15, 2019. It had real big windows,” he said. “I couldn't move. All of them survived. Krutt said he was thankful to get out in one piece and thankful for the person who shoved him and caused him to stop. I knew where the crowds were. She eventually became an ombudsmen for the city of New York and now lives in Hawaii. Joan got her foot caught in a chair and got left behind. It seemed “like forever” to escape the flames. “He never forgave himself,” Verret said. “It seemed as though we just sat down and got settled in, and I looked across the tent and saw a small fire, thinking, ‘Now why would they do this today? “I carry scars, they are very defined,” he said. Constance delivered a hard slap to the face of Maxine, and they all jumped to safety. (14); 16 Eastview St, Hartford. “So, it's been a pretty good life,” said LeVasseur, who shares his story with incoming freshman track athletes. “I was certainly very apprehensive about going in a tent again,” Boyer said. Oliver rushed inside and phoned for police and fire departments, and when he came back out and tent was near gone. Jean Andrews, daughter of Mrs. Helen W. Andrews, had been reported missing, found to have escaped unscathed. His father would go on to use the money the circus paid the family for the loss of LeVasseur's mother and his injuries to put him through the Gunnery school and Lehigh University. For me, I didn't want this to be the focus of my life,” Murphy said. All I know is that it hurt,” Margolin said. “We all got out without being injured at all, which was very, very fortunate.”. Scott was separated from his friend and parent that he came to the circus with but they also somehow made it out of the tent. We don't know who. After a few years, his father coaxed him to go into a movie theater. Pastore dropped the kids off on Barbour Street, where they joined up with the commissioner, his Uncle Edward Hickey, who organized the family outing. "The Great Hartford Circus Fire: Creative Settlement of Mass Disasters," legal scholarship on the arbitrated settlement between the circus and survivors, by Henry S. Cohn and David Bollier, published in 1992 by the Yale University Press, New Haven. We only did it for him,’“ Narkon, who was then 14, recalls. So Joan Verret was not surprised to see they were sitting near center ring for the July 6 matinee in Hartford. Schlanck, who was 13, remembers running for the exits like many others when the fire broke out. “Even today, when I walk into a theater, into any kind of venue, I look for the exit sign, and I plan an escape route.”. “Your life depends on a very fragile moment in time,” she told the Courant. She was in hospital for nine months after the circus fire. Everyone in the family loved my mother Ida and he felt he was the cause of what happened to her.”. To mark the 75th anniversary, The Courant interviewed nearly 40 survivors about the scars they still bear, loved ones lost and how amid heroism and panic, the great calamity revealed the best and worst of people. “You are dealt different hands in life and you play the hands you are dealt. They'll put it out,' but they didn't,” he said. “He was more excited to see my mother than us,” she said. Finally, to the great joy and relief of all, Ralph was found at a school where kids without parents had been sent. So Lichtenbaum, 13, and his older sister Doris went on the hot afternoon of July 6 instead. “We walked up Vine Street to Barbour Street and the circus grounds,” Lichtenbaum said. That demeanor would come in handy when her mother noticed the fire on the big top. One hundred and sixty eight people, including 100 children, were killed. The fire occurred during an afternoon performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that was attended by 6,000 to 8,000 people. Another could not speak for two days. “We were fortunate that the tent parted and the flames went away from us … to the right and left,” he said. Jerry is also shown playing corn hole in his backyard during a party he hosts at the end of every academic year for seniors on the Bowdoin track team. But he was an authoritative leader. For years every November he would bring flowers to his mother's grave in Meriden, but now that he lives on Bainridge Island, Wash., he pays someone from a local church to do it for him. Flames shot high into the sky. They sat in the southwest bleachers, to the right of the main entrance, the area where the fire started. “It's something that I'll never forget,” she said. She was in the hospital for about two months. Bushnell said his father rushed to Hartford from Storrs and joined the search, including a visit to a hastily assembled morgue. one-shaped fire, and the flames were blown by the breeze which pushed them over the top of the Big Top. His wife, whose name was Sally Moulton at the time, said she and her family, also South Windsor residents, had been to the same circus in Hartford the year before. It was so hot on the morning of the circus fire that Jerry LeVasseur and his mother almost didn't make the trip from Bristol to Hartford. Then I looked up and saw the tent burning,” Trinks said. Narkon and her mother were burned by the radiated heat. The family would never attend another tent circus. She and Jim Bushnell began dating in high school (her view of the boy next door had changed) and now live in California. “My father, who had not heard from us and had heard reports of a fire, went to the armory thinking maybe we had succumbed and that he would find our bodies there,” Mark said. “My mother was up there afraid to jump and then somebody yelled ‘jump and I will catch you’ and she did,” Donn said. “I was screaming in pain as they tried to draw blood from my arm and finally they drew it out of my ankle,” she said. Circus fire survivor Arthur Lassow remembers escaping the flames, while talking to The Courant on March 29, 2019. Went to the circus with her grandchildren Joy and Hans Andersen, and their mother Cora. Here’s what we know. Raymond went back and helped a woman whose foot was caught in the bleachers and she was hanging upside down. Jim Bushnell's two brothers got caught up in the mob rushing out. Chairman of the Hartford Red Cross chapter, called one of the "key men in the mobilization of the state's disaster relief forces and their direction" by Governor Baldwin. “The best part of it was that my aunt was there to see her,” Carter said. Fred Verret was 5 years old when he found out his uncle Bill, who worked for Ringling Bros. as a large animal trainer, had left tickets for the family to see the circus in Hartford. The group sat in the Northwest Bleachers. “She yelled, ‘I'll take Freddie and you take Joan,' ” Joan Verret said. Gov. Attended the circus with her mother Mrs. Joyce Acquaviva and a neighbor's child, Barbara Kolb (5). We were kind of dazed.”. The push would be fortuitous as it caused Krutt to pause and see the options in front of him. “I understand her aunt did pass away in that fire.”. Verret said he knew his injuries were bad because he had a private room at the hospital and they gave him lots of penicillin. She made it out but realized pretty quickly that she wasn't okay. “We saw them carrying bodies across the street to a house they were using as a morgue,” Trinks said. Attended the circus with his wife Rita, their daughter Barbara, 3, and their niece Carol Ann Gay, 4. Even after surviving the fire, Murphy was the center of a battle between her grandparents over who would have custody of her and the $95,000 she got as a settlement. Boyer said he spent weeks in the hospital. 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