Big Top Burning

by Laura A. Woollett

  Emmett Kelly helps during the disaster.

  The Flying Wallendas (the little girl is probably Carla).

  Firefighters hosing down the burned remains of the big top discovered young Elliot Smith by the animal chutes. He had fallen in the crowd, and as people tripped and fell on top of him, he was crushed beneath the weight of their bodies—but also somewhat protected from the flames. When the firefighters reached Elliot, they carefully lifted him up and carried him to a car that would take him to the hospital.

  Donald Gale, another survivor, was found near the center ring, with his chameleon still in his pocket. The chameleon died in the intense heat of the fire, but Donald didn’t. Like Elliot, he was protected by the unfortunate people who had fallen on top of him.

  Brothers Guy and Jeff Cummings, fourteen and four years old the time of the fire, lived in a tight-knit community in East Hartford called Hillstown. Most folks there were farmers, and people looked after one another and each other’s kids. “It was an ideal time for kids growing up,” Guy recalled. “There wasn’t really anything to scare you or threaten you.” After the circus fire, five people from their small neighborhood never came home.

  With the destruction of the circus, many of the hired hands were out of a job, including the teenager who had run away from home, Robert Segee. At first, Robert hung around because he had no money and no place to go. Then a few days later, word made it to his parents that their son was in Hartford. They sent bus fare, and Robert headed home to Portland, Maine, leaving the circus behind him.

  Nicholas Zaccaro and Leo Goodman look at the wreckage of the big top.

  It would soon become clear that both the city of Hartford and the Ringling Bros. circus had not done enough to prevent the fire. But because of the war, Hartford was more than prepared to deal with the disaster. Fears of an invasion or bombing by the Germans had caused the city of Hartford, as well as many other cities across the United States, to make plans in case of an emergency. On July 6, auxiliary firefighters, police, and thousands of civilian defense volunteers were thrown into action. Trucks from local businesses were ready to help carry the wounded to hospitals. The Hartford Coca-Cola distributor, for example, sent seven trucks filled with stretchers.

  Police officers responded to the first sounding of the fire alarm. They directed traffic away from the scene and kept onlookers from the area. They helped injured people into trucks and ambulances. At headquarters downtown, officers made phone calls to area funeral homes and hospitals to alert them of the victims being brought in.

  “We were repairing a meter on the corner of Pearl and Ann Sts., when the fire alarm sounded,” Sergeant Weinstein, Officer Dooley, and Officer Donahue wrote in a witness statement. “We immediately drove to the circus grounds…. At once, we commenced to assist in the removing of the bodies from the afflicted area to a clearing. We then secured a large canvas bag from a nearby circus wagon and into it we placed all the articles we could salvage which might later be used for identification purposes.”

  Police officers and nurses were among those at the scene immediately following the fire.

  Units from the state national guard, the army, and the navy all came to the aid of the city. The Red Cross had recruited so many volunteer nurses that 150 who had reported for duty were sent home. Countless people from the surrounding neighborhoods and nearby towns helped the rescue efforts in any way they could. The governors of Massachusetts and Vermont also offered aid; they were graciously thanked, but their help was unneeded.

  Later, in a radio address, Connecticut Governor Raymond Baldwin mentioned by name and thanked the countless organizations that volunteered their help during the crisis. “We can be intensely proud of the spirit with which the people of Connecticut met the emergency,” said Governor Baldwin. “There are heroes, nameless and innumerable, in this tragedy.”

  The Red Cross had collected thousands of pints of blood during the war. Though the East Coast was never attacked, the blood was put to good use helping the hundreds of people who had been injured in the fire. When the supply seemed to be running out, a “request for Type O blood met with one hundred offers in just a few hours.” By the time the crisis was over, the Red Cross had spent $83,159 to help the circus fire victims. This included more than $40,000 collected by the Hartford Times and $16,000 contributed by the Ringling Bros. circus.

  One problem the city encountered was communication among police officers and others dealing with the disaster. According to the Hartford Courant, “Telephone service throughout Greater Hartford was disrupted by news of the fire as thousands of residents, office workers, and others near telephones rushed to spread the story or to find out if friends or relatives had escaped the flames.”

  There were no telephones on the circus grounds, but members of the Boy Scouts served as messengers between emergency personnel. Officers who needed to call headquarters had to use the phones in nearby homes. Some residents were anxious to help anyone in need. Survivors lined up on the porches of neighboring houses, hoping the owners would be kind enough to let them place a call. Harry Lichtenbaum, age 13, and his married sister, Doris, knocked on the door of a house on Barbour Street and were welcomed in to use the phone. They called their mother, who had no idea what was going on at the circus grounds. “Mom, we’re all right!” Doris said. “Of course you’re all right,” her mother responded. “What do you mean? What has happened? Has something gone wrong?”

  Others in the neighborhood saw an opportunity to make a profit. One house charged a quarter a call, and another requested as much as five dollars for people to call home. A woman in a nearby apartment put up a sign in her window saying TELEPHONE. She charged the long line of frightened survivors a dollar each to call their families.

  The radio was an important source of information for people anxiously wondering if someone they knew had been caught in the blaze. The comforting but firm voice of the announcer repeatedly told listeners that they should remain calm and that “hysteria will only add to the confusion.” Those with missing family members were urged to call the Connecticut War Council at phone number “Hartford 7-0181,” where someone would take down their information and help them locate their loved ones.

  There were three places people could look. Lost children had been rounded up by the police and led to the Brown School on Market Street. There, Officer Ella Brown and others played with the children on the playground and fed them cookies and lemonade. It was after midnight by the time all the children had finally been claimed by relatives or friends. Many of the kids didn’t realize how devastating the disaster had been.

  The next place to look was one of the local hospitals. The largest number of injured people were taken to Municipal Hospital because it was closest to the circus grounds. Other patients were sent to St. Francis Hospital or Hartford Hospital, some distance away.

  A girl is reunited with a family member at the Brown School.

  The last place anyone wanted to look for family was at the State Armory on Broad Street. This huge stone building housed weapons and ammunition and served as a training ground for soldiers preparing to leave for the war. On July 6, it became a morgue. There were more deaths than the hospitals could handle, so the bodies of people who had died were brought to the armory. There, people were let in to try to identify their kin among the rows of bodies laid out on cots.

  In all, 167 people died, and 487 people were hospitalized. Of those who perished, 59 were children under 10 years old.

  5

  MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL

  “We had two hands and did whatever we could to save steps for those whose experience and ability was most needed elsewhere.”

  —volunteer nurse’s aide Patricia Wakefield, Hartford Courant, July 7, 1944 (morning edition)

  The cries of burn victims echoed through the corridors of Municipal Hospital. Some patients lay on gurneys in the middle of the hallways, and others filled chairs in the waiting room. Hundreds of injured people and their relatives waited their
turn to see the doctors.

  Throughout the disaster, doctors and nurses at all three of Hartford’s hospitals did everything they could to care for their patients and, in many cases, they saved their lives. Volunteers played an important role too. They made beds, rolled bandages, applied dressings, passed out cups of juice, and comforted victims.

  When new patients arrived at Municipal Hospital, nurses rushed the worst cases into operating rooms to receive treatment. There, doctors cut off their charred clothes, covered them with cool, sterile sheets, and gave them a drug called morphine to dull the pain. Burns were covered with salve and then wrapped in gauze. Nurses hooked up an IV that sent healthy, new blood into the patients’ veins. Finally, patients were given penicillin to prevent infection. This was important because their immune systems were already busy working to repair the burned skin, making it difficult for their bodies to also fight off germs.

  One of the biggest problems for the hospitals was the sheer number of patients. There simply weren’t enough doctors and nurses to see everyone. A call for help went out to all medical professionals in the area, and it was answered almost immediately. Nurses from the city’s large insurance companies volunteered, and doctors from neighboring towns came too. Medical examiner William J. Brickley, a burn expert from Boston, came to help treat the victims. He brought a team of three men: a medical examiner and two mortuary assistants. These men had helped patients after a nightclub fire in Boston that had claimed 492 lives and left countless victims of severe burns. They used their experience from that disaster to help hospital workers give the circus fire patients the best possible treatment.

  Everyone worked into the night, fighting exhaustion as they treated patient after patient. Hartford Hospital, the largest in the city, saw 51 patients. Doctors and nurses at the smaller Municipal Hospital saw nearly triple that number. Within the first hours after the fire, they treated 143 patients for burns and other injuries, many of them critical. By eight o’clock that night, too tired to work anymore, the first shift of medical personnel was sent home to rest. Mary Sullivan, the hospital superintendent, begged volunteers to come back after they’d had some sleep. “Please all of you … all of you who can come back tonight, please do. I think we are going to need everybody we can get.”

  Fire victims bravely faced their injuries. “People as a whole were well behaved; there was no complaining even from those who were severely hurt. Small children, their skins charred with burns, tried to smile at us,” nurse’s aide Patricia Wakefield of Municipal Hospital told the Hartford Courant.

  It would have been nearly impossible for the hospitals to help as many people as they did without the generosity of the nurses, doctors, and others who volunteered their time and knowledge. Fifteen-year-old Shirley Lawton and her best friend Dot were “a couple of pinkies” (the nickname used for young hospital volunteers). The two had escaped the fire themselves, only to find the terrible sights in the halls of Hartford Hospital when they reported for duty. “We had a hard time getting off that day,” Shirley said. “The head nurse didn’t want to let us off. It was just a horror.”

  The mayor of Hartford gives a toy to five-year-old Robert Hopkins Jr., who had been burned in the fire. Beside him is Donald MacRae, age 12, who had escaped unhurt.

  Just a comforting word was enough to keep some patients going. Some of the children had lost siblings and parents, so nurses often played the roles of both caregiver and mother. It must have been incredibly frightening for the many small children being treated at the hospitals, including those who were unaware of the circus fire.

  Five-year-old Kenneth Sinkwitz hadn’t been to the circus, but he arrived at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford just a few days after the fire to have his tonsils removed. “I’ll never forget the children screaming,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on until I asked the nurse.” The hospital was crowded and noisy. Nurses and doctors hurried up and down the halls checking on their patients.

  After the fire had been put out, a rescue worker had found eight-year-old Jerry LeVasseur by one of the animal chutes. Jerry had suffered many injuries, and he needed help immediately. Unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, Jerry woke up to find himself enclosed in a kind of tent where machines pumped oxygen all around him. This made his blood carry more oxygen to his cells, helping him to recover. The doctors and nurses watched over him carefully, and eventually his body healed. In June 1945, after 11 months at Municipal Hospital, Jerry finally went home.

  Elliot Smith, who had also been found by one of the animal chutes, was with Jerry at Municipal Hospital. While he was recovering from his burns, Elliot developed pneumonia, a common complication for burn patients. Elliot never forgot undergoing skin grafts to cover the areas where he was most badly burned. “Those were the worst times,” he said in a Connecticut Public Television documentary. But he also has some happy memories, including the times when the kids at the hospital ran through the corridors playing hide-and-seek. The nurses had to chase them back into bed.

  Nurse Phyllis Willet takes care of Marie Ann Connors.

  While he was at the hospital, Elliot kept an autograph book where his friends and nurses signed their names and wrote messages. It’s easy to see from their cheerful notes that the kids still knew how to have a little fun.

  Barbara Smith wrote:

  Remember the girl from the city.

  Remember the girl from the town.

  Remember the Girl that spoiled this book by writing upside down.

  And Jimmie Sullivan wrote:

  Roses are red and

  violets are blue

  God made me beautiful

  but wha’ happen to you?

  Elliot spent his eighth birthday at the hospital and went home in late November.

  Donald Gale was admitted to Municipal Hospital with severe burns and, like Jerry LeVasseur, was immediately put into an oxygen tent. Like Elliot, he also developed pneumonia. Donald recovered from his injuries, but it took a long time for his body to heal. Almost a year after the fire Donald, Jerry, and six-year-old Patty Murphy were the last children to leave the hospital.

  Mildred and Edward Cook were carried from the scene of the fire and brought to Municipal Hospital. Both were severely burned. Doctors treated Mildred’s burns and wrapped her body in gauze. They wanted to move her to the less crowded Hartford Hospital; however, they didn’t want to separate her from her son. Edward was still breathing, but just barely.

  Hearing news of the fire, Mildred’s family in Southampton was worried. They hadn’t heard from Mildred, and they knew she had planned to take the children to the circus. Mildred’s brother, Ted Parsons, and her sister, Emily (Parsons) Gill, rushed to Hartford, fearing the worst.

  Of course no one was home when they arrived at Mildred’s apartment. Ted stayed behind in case the telephone rang, and Emily set off to find Mildred and her children. First, she went to the Brown School, where she learned that Mildred had been taken to Municipal Hospital. Emily raced to her sister’s side and discovered her nephew Edward was also there.

  Patty Murphy celebrates Christmas in the hospital.

  Meanwhile, Ted’s wife, Marion, arrived in Hartford accompanied by a family friend, the Reverend James Yee. They met Ted at the apartment and waited for news from Emily. Not long after, there was a knock on the door. It was Donald. The kind couple that had taken care of him after the tragedy had fed him dinner and brought him home. Ted and Marion must have felt tremendous relief when they hugged their nephew close and saw that he was unharmed.

  Later that evening, they all went to meet Emily at the hospital. Their visit with Mildred was short. She was groggy from medications, and her face was wrapped in gauze. In another room, they visited Edward. He was very weak, but he asked about his mother and sister. After a few minutes, it was time to go, and Donald said good-bye to his brother. They never saw each other again. Edward died the next night.

  Donald was safe in the comforting arms of his aunts and uncle. Doctor
s and nurses cared for Mildred at Municipal Hospital, and Edward had gone to a place where pain could no longer touch him. But where was Donald’s sister, Eleanor? This question would haunt the people of Hartford for nearly 50 years.

  6

  “WHO KNOWS THIS CHILD?”

  “Into the big drill shed, hastily established as a morgue for persons who died in the fire, filed a long line of silent men and women.”

  —Hartford Times, July 6, 1944 (extra edition)

  The line of people outside the State Armory snaked around the side of the huge stone edifice. The building included a cavernous drill shed—a giant room with three-story-high ceilings—where members of the National Guard practiced for combat. This room is where the makeshift morgue was set up for 145 bodies waiting to be identified after the fire.

  The faces of those in line were anxious. Some people cried quietly. Others stood in a kind of stupor. The Boston Globe reported that “some were so stricken by the sudden disaster they did not even turn their heads when asked questions. Some looked blankly at persons who addressed them as if they could not summon their senses to answer.” It was eerily quiet. But the Hartford Courant reported that there was also an air of hope. Though strangers, the people standing in line helped each other to stay positive. They reminded each other that there was still a chance that a wife, husband, or child was merely lost and not lying among the bodies inside. For many, it was a long night. Women from the War Council’s Rolling Kitchen brought sandwiches and coffee to the people in line. They offered consoling words to soothe aching hearts.