Our Lady of the Angels School fire
The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire broke out shortly before classes were to be dismissed on December 1, 1958, at the foot of a stairway in the Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, Illinois. The elementary and middle school was operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. A total of 92 pupils and 3 nuns lost their lives when smoke, heat, and fire cut off their normal means of escape through corridors and stairways. Many perished while jumping from second-floor windows (which were as high as a third floor would be on level ground). Another 100 were seriously injured.
The disaster was the lead headline story in American, Canadian, and European newspapers. Pope John XXIII sent his condolences from the Vatican in Rome. The severity of the fire shocked the nation and surprised educational administrators of both public and private schools. The disaster led to major improvements in standards for school design and fire safety codes.
The fire has been chronicled in two books and an Emmy-winning television documentary, Angels Too Soon, produced by WTTW Channel 11 Chicago. The History Channel also featured the disaster in the television documentary Hellfire, which was an episode in the cable network's "Wrath of God" series.
The building prior to fire
Our Lady of the Angels was an elementary school comprising kindergarten plus eight grades. It was located at 909 North Avers Avenue in the Humboldt Park area on the West Side of Chicago, at the intersection of West Iowa Street and North Avers Avenue (Some sources describe the school as "in Austin"). [1] The school was located in a mostly Italian-American middle class community; the community held several second and third generation immigrant groups, including Italian Americans, Polish Americans, Irish Americans, and German Americans. Most members of the community were Roman Catholic.
The facility was part of a large Roman Catholic parish which also consisted of a church, a rectory which was adjacent to the church, a convent of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary which was across the street from the school on Iowa Street and two buildings on Hamlin Avenue which housed kindergarten and first grade classes. The school was the educational home to approximately 1,600 students. The north wing was a two-story structure built in 1910, but remodeled several times later; the building originally consisted of a first-floor church and a second-floor school. The entire building became a school when a newer church facility opened in 1939. [2] A south wing dating from 1939 was connected in 1951 by an annex to the north wing. The two original buildings and the annex formed a U-shape, with a narrow fenced courtyard between.
The school legally complied with municipal and state fire codes of 1958, and was generally clean and well-maintained. Those codes did not address hazards present in the building which would not be tolerated today given a modern understanding of fire safety. Each classroom door had a glass transom above it, which provided ventilation into the corridor and also permitted flames and smoke to enter once heat broke the glass. The school had one fire escape. The building had no automatic fire alarm, no rate-of-rise heat detectors, no direct alarm connection to the fire department, no fire-resistant stairwells, and no heavy-duty fire doors from the stairwells to the second floor corridor. At the time, fire sprinklers were primarily found in factories or in newer schools, and the modern smoke detector had not yet become commercially available.
In keeping with city fire codes, the building had a brick exterior (to prevent fires from spreading from building-to-building as in the great fire of 1871). Its interior was made almost entirely of combustible wooden materials -- stairs, walls, floors, doors, and roof. Moreover, the floors had been coated many times with flammable petroleum-based waxes. The building also possessed acoustical tile ceilings. There were two unmarked fire alarm switches in the entire school, and they were in the south wing. There were four fire extinguishers in the north wing, each mounted seven feet off the floor, out of reach for many adults and virtually all of the children. The single fire escape was near one end of the north wing, but to reach it required passing through the main corridor, which in this case rapidly became filled with suffocating smoke and superheated gases. Students hung their flammable winter coats on hooks in the hallway, rather than in metal lockers. There were no limits to the numbers of children who could be educated in a single classroom, and this number sometimes reached as many as 64 students. The school did not have a fire alarm box outside on the sidewalk. With its 12-foot ceilings and an "English-style" basement that extended partially above ground level, the school's second floor windows were 25 feet above the ground, making jumping from the second floor risky.
The Fire
Ignition
The fire began in the basement of the older north wing between about 2:00 p.m. CST and 2:20 p.m. Classes were due to be dismissed at 3:00 p.m. Ignition took place in a cardboard trash barrel at the foot of the northeast stairwell. The fire smoldered undetected for an estimated 10 to 30 minutes, gradually heating the stairwell and filling it with a light grey smoke that eventually became thick and black [see Progression of the fire: Stage 1]. The smoke began to fill the second floor corridor, but remained unnoticed for a few minutes.
At approximately 2:25 p.m., three eighth grade girls, Janet Delaria, Frances J. Guzaldo, and Karen Hobik, returning from an errand came up a different staircase to return to their second floor classroom in the north wing. The girls encountered thick smoke, making them cough loudly. They hurriedly entered the rear door of Room 211 and promptly notified their teacher, Sister Helaine O'Neill, who was not yet aware of the smoke. O'Neill got up from her desk and began the process of lining up her students to evacuate the building. When she opened the front door of the classroom moments later to enter the hallway, the intensity of the smoke caused O'Neill to deem it too dangerous to attempt escape down the stairs leading to Avers Avenue on the west side of the building. She remained inside the classroom with her students, awaiting rescue. The fire continued to strengthen and several more minutes would elapse before the school's fire alarm would ring [see Stage 2].
It was about this same time that a window at the foot of the stairwell shattered due to the intense heat, giving the smoldering fire a new supply of oxygen. The wooden staircase burst into flames and, acting like a chimney, sent hot gases, fire, and black smoke swirling up the stairwell [see Stage 3]. It was approximately at this moment that the school’s janitor, James Raymond, saw a red glow through a window while walking by the building. After racing into the basement furnace room, he viewed the fire through a door which led into the stairwell. After warning two boys who were emptying trash baskets in the boiler room to depart the area, Raymond rushed to the rectory and alerted the housekeeper to call the fire department. He then immediately raced back to the school to begin evacuation via the fire escape. The two boys meanwhile had returned to their class and warned their lay teacher, which prompted her and another lay teacher to lead their students out of classrooms in the annex area of the second floor. The lay teachers had looked in vain for the school principal before deciding to act on their own to vacate the school. As they left the building, the teacher pulled the fire alarm but it did not ring. Several minutes later, after leaving her students in the church, she returned to the school and was able to activate the alarm on the second attempt. This alarm rang inside the school, but was not automatically connected to the fire department. By this time, however, the students and teachers in the north wing classrooms on the second floor were essentially trapped, whether they knew about the fire yet or not.
Despite Raymond's hasty visit to the rectory soon after 2:30 p.m. to spread the alert, there was an unexplained delay before the first telephone call from the rectory reached the fire department at 2:42 p.m. One minute later a second telephone call was received from Barbara Glowacki, the owner of a candy store on the alley along the north wing. Glowacki had noticed flames in the northeast stairwell after a passing motorist, Elmer Barkhaus, entered her store and asked if a public telephone was available to call the fire department. Police initially thought this 61-year-old man was a suspect in the blaze until Barkhaus came forward and explained himself. Glowacki used the private telephone in her apartment behind the store to notify authorities.
Fire spreads upstairs
The first floor landing was equipped with a heavy wooden door, which effectively blocked the fire and heat from entering the first floor hallways. However, the northeast stairwell landing on the second floor had no blocking fire door. As a result, there was no barrier to prevent the spread of fire, smoke, and heat through the second floor hallways. The western stairwell landing on the second floor had two substandard corridor doors with glass panes propped open (possibly by a teacher) at the time of the fire. This caused further drafts of air and an additional oxygen supply to feed the flames. Two other doors were chained open when they should have been closed; these doors were at the first and second floor levels leading into the annex. The upper door was quickly closed, but the lower one remained open throughout the conflagration.
As the fire consumed the northeast stairway, a pipe chase running from the basement to the cockloft above the second floor false ceiling gave the superheated gases a direct route to the attic. In the attic the temperature rapidly increased until it reached ignition point [see Stage 4]. The fire then swept down through ventilation grates in the second floor corridor and flashed through the cockloft above the classrooms [see Stage 5]. Glass transom windows above the doors of each classroom broke as the heat intensified, allowing flames in the hallway to enter the classrooms [see Stage 6]. By the time the students and their teachers in the second floor classrooms realized the danger, their sole escape route in the hallway was impassable.
For 329 children and 5 teaching nuns, the only remaining means of escape was to jump from their second floor windows to the concrete and crushed rock 25 feet below, or to pray for the fire department to arrive and rescue them. Recognizing the trap they were in, some of the nuns encouraged the children to sit at their desks or gather in a semi-circle and pray. Smoke, heat, and flames forced them to the windows. One nun, Sister Mary Davidis Devine, ordered her students in Room 209 to place books and furniture in front of her classroom doors, and this helped to slow the entry of smoke and flames. Out of the 55 students in Room 209, eight escaped with injuries, and two perished; Beverly Burda, the last student remaining in the room, died when the roof collapsed. Another student, Valerie Thoma, died at a hospital on March 10, 1959.
Rescue attempts
Fire department units arrived within four minutes of being called, but by then the fire had been smoldering unchecked for possibly 40 minutes. It was now fully out of control. The fire department was then hampered because they had been incorrectly directed to the rectory address around the corner on West Iowa Street; valuable minutes were lost repositioning fire trucks and hose lines once the true location of the fire was determined. Additional firefighting equipment was summoned rapidly. In 1959 the National Fire Protection Association’s report on the blaze exonerated the rapid response of the Chicago Fire Department and its initial priority to rescue pupils rather than merely fight the flames.
Locked gate delays rescue
The south windows of the north wing overlooked a small courtyard surrounded by the school on three sides, and a seven-foot iron picket fence on the fourth side facing Avers Avenue. The gate in the fence was routinely locked. Firemen could not get ladders to the children at the south windows without first breaking through the gate. They spent two anxious minutes battering the gate with sledgehammers and a ladder, before it finally gave way. The gate delayed the rescues of rooms 209 and 211.
Escape through windows
Firemen began rescuing children from the second floor windows, but nightmare conditions in some of the classrooms had already become unbearable. Children were stumbling, crawling, and fighting their way to the windows, trying to breathe and escape. Many jumped, fell, or were pushed out the windows before firemen on ladders could reach them. Children jumped with their hair and clothes on fire. Some were killed in the fall, and scores more were seriously injured. Many of the smaller children were trapped behind frantic students at the windows. Some younger students who managed to secure a spot at a window were then unable to climb over the high window sills, or were pulled back by others frantically trying to scramble out. Firemen struggled desperately to pull students and nuns from windows as classrooms partially filled with screaming children exploded. Firemen noticed that the white shirts of children in the windows changed color and turned brown. [3] A wide portion of the school's roof collapsed.
Neighbors give assistance
Glowacki took injured children into her candy store beside the school to escape the winter chill while they awaited medical attention. Neighbors and parents raced into the school to rescue students on the lower floor or erect ladders outside that proved to be too short for the second floor. 74-year-old Ed Klock suffered a stroke while attempting to assist the children. Residents of houses along Avers Avenue opened their doors to provide sanctuary and warmth for coatless children from the lower grades.
Nuns rush to offer help
Inside the burning school, a quick-thinking nun rolled petrified children down a stairwell when fear made them freeze. Injured students were rushed to five different hospitals, sometimes in the cars of strangers. Priests from the rectory raced to the scene, grabbing frightened students and escorting them through the smoke to the doors. One of the priests, Father Joseph Ognibene, along with the help of Sam Tortorice, a parent of one of the students, was able to rescue many students by passing them through a courtyard window on the second floor into the annex.
Death toll climbs
Local radio and television reports quickly transmitted the news across a stunned city. WGN-AM radio broadcast continuous updates of the fire with Chicago Police Officer Leonard Baldy providing observations from an overhead helicopter. Panicked mothers and fathers left their homes or work places and raced to the school. Mothers pleaded to enter the burning structure. An anxious crowd of more than 5,000 parents and onlookers had to be held back by police lines during the five-alarm fire. This number grew in the late afternoon as news of the disaster spread and bodies of victims were slowly and carefully removed by firemen. It was first hoped that fatalities might be relatively low, under the mistaken belief that the fire alarm had been sounded early enough. The toll climbed quickly once the blaze was partially extinguished and firemen were able to explore the building. National television networks interrupted their regular programming to announce details as the scope of the disaster widened.
Between the delayed discovery and reporting of the blaze and the misdirection of the response units to the wrong address, the firemen arrived too late, but this was not their fault. Although they rescued more than 160 children from the inferno, many of the students carried out were already dead. Some of the bodies were so badly charred that they broke into pieces while being picked up.
Hospitals
Children who initially survived the fire were taken to the following hospitals: [4]
- Franklin Boulevard Community Hospital (3240 West Franklin Boulevard)
- Garfield Park Community Hospital (3821 West Washington Boulevard)
- Norwegian American Hospital (1044 North Francisco Avenue)
- St. Anne's Hospital (4950 West Thomas Street)
- Walther Memorial Hospital (1116 North Kedzie Avenue)
Cause of fire
Arson suspected by male student
The cause of the fire was never officially determined. A boy, age 10 and a fifth grader, confessed in 1962 to setting the blaze and subsequently recanted his confession. He was more afraid of confessing to his mother and stepfather than to the police. He also confessed to setting numerous other fires in the neighborhood, mostly in apartment buildings. This boy had been excused from his classroom to go to the boys' toilet about 2:00 p.m. on the day of the fire. This was roughly the time that the fire began to smolder in the bin at the base of the stairwell. After the incident, a fire investigator found burned matches in the undamaged sacristy area of a chapel located in the basement of the north wing.
In his confession and lie-detector test, the boy related details of the fire's origin that had not been made public and that he should not have known. Neither he nor anyone else was ever prosecuted. He has since passed away. Officially, the cause of the fire remains unknown. An arson attempt on parish facilities in June, 1958, had burned itself out and nobody was injured.
The school's safety record
Our Lady of the Angels School passed a routine fire department safety inspection weeks before the disaster. The school was not legally bound to comply with all 1958 fire safety codes due to a grandfather clause in the 1949 standards. Existing older schools, such as Our Lady of the Angels, were not required to retrofit the safety devices that were required by code in all schools built after 1949.
In 1959 the National Fire Protection Association’s report on the blaze blamed civic authorities and the Archdiocese of Chicago for allowing "fire traps" -- in their words -- such as Our Lady of the Angels School to be legally operated despite having inadequate fire safety standards.
Funeral services for victims
The funeral for the three nuns took place first. Mass was said in Our Lady of the Angels Church after more than 2,000 parishioners paid their respects to the deceased teachers as the closed caskets lay in repose in the convent. A color guard of 100 policemen and firemen accompanied the coffins into the church. More than 100 nuns from the order of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary attended from across Illinois as well as from their main convent in Dubuque, Iowa. The funeral procession had several hundred vehicles. The three teachers were interred side by side in a grave next to other nuns of their religious order at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in suburban Hillside, Illinois.
For the young victims, a Solemn Requiem Mass and funeral service took place at the Illinois National Guard Armory abutting Humboldt Park, as the parish church was not large enough to accommodate the huge crowd. A leading church prelate from New York, Francis Cardinal Spellman, came to Chicago to lend his support. Many of the young students were buried in the "Shrine of the Holy Innocents" plot at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, which is adjacent to Mount Carmel Cemetery. A monument there lists the names of all 95 victims. Some of the students were buried in other cemeteries: 18 in St. Joseph Cemetery, 18 in St. Adalbert Cemetery, 12 in Mount Carmel Cemetery, 1 in St. Nicholas Cemetery, and 1 in Norway Cemetery, Norway, Michigan.
Local, national, and world reaction
Chicago mourns
A relief fund was set up to assist distraught families and to care for injured children in future years. The Chicago metropolitan area rallied to provide support. Hollywood stars such as Jack Benny visited injured children in hospitals. A city newspaper, The Chicago American, devoted its entire front page on December 5, 1958, to photographs of the deceased students under the headline, "Chicago Mourns". [5]
The Mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley, ordered all flags across the city lowered to half staff.
Pontiff wires his sympathy
In the Vatican City, Pope John XXIII sent a telegram to the Archbishop of Chicago. The cable read, in part, "We have been profoundly saddened to learn of the tragedy which has befallen the school of Our Lady of the Angels. We express from the heart our deepest sympathy with the parents. To the families thus sorely stricken we impart our apostolic benediction ......" Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Chicago, Albert Gregory Meyer, toured the school ruins with Mayor Daley and he nearly collapsed while visiting the hospital and morgue. Mayor Daley would later be an advocate of fire safety in schools across his city, whether public or private.
Life Magazine photograph of John Jajkowski, Jr.
The December 15, 1958 issue of Life Magazine printed a major article about the fire, containing many pictures and reconstructed drawings of the classrooms. The first page of the article featured an image of Richard Scheidt, a firefighter, carrying the body of 10-year old John Michael Jajkowski, Jr. from the building. The photograph of John, a fifth grader in Room 212, later served as a fire prevention safety poster nationwide. John, an accomplished musician, played the accordion and served as a church choir member. Before his death, John had expressed a desire to become a priest. [6]
Like 25 of his other classmates, John suffocated to death from black, oily smoke. [7] Steve Lasker took the photograph of Scheidt and John as the fire department was beginning to achieve control over the fire. [8]
Fire safety improvements
After the Our Lady of the Angels School fire, Percy Bugbee, the president of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) said in an interview, "There are no new lessons to be learned from this fire; only old lessons that tragically went unheeded."[9] Sweeping changes in school fire safety regulations were enacted nationwide. Some 16,500 older school buildings in the United States were brought up to code within one year of the disaster. Ordinances to strengthen Chicago's fire code and new amendments to the Illinois state fire code were passed. The National Fire Protection Association estimated that about 68% of all U.S. communities inaugurated and completed fire safety improvements after the Our Lady of the Angels fire, one of which being an increased number of law-mandated fire drills throughout the academic year. In addition, fire investigators came from as far away as London to study the lessons that could be learned. [citation needed]
Prior to the rebuilding
OLA students attended classes that were taught by their teachers in nearby public school facilities, including John Hay School, until the new Our Lady of the Angels School was finished in time for the school year beginning in September 1960. [10]
Rebuilding and eventual closure
The ruins were dismantled in 1959 and a new Our Lady of the Angels School, located at 3814 West Iowa Street, was constructed with the latest required fire safety standards, such as a sprinkler system. The modern three-story building with 32 classrooms plus a kindergarten opened in September, 1960. Donations from around the world helped to fund the new construction. As a result of declining numbers of students during the 1990s, the Archdiocese of Chicago closed the school once the Class of 1999 graduated. [11] The archdiocese had previously closed the other buildings of the parish in 1990 and merged it with another parish. The OLA building is currently leased to Galapagos Charter School.
List of deceased victims
All of the victims occupied a set of classrooms on the second floor of the school's north wing. All of the deceased victims resided in Chicago.
Room 208
Room 208, a room located in the northeast corner of the north wing housing Sister Mary St. Canice Lyng's 7th Grade Class, had twelve student deaths out of thirty-seven students. Sister Mary St. Canice also died. Several ladders were placed near Room 208's windows. Of them, the ladder placed by Mario Camerini, a janitor, successfully reached Room 208's windows and allowed several students, including all of the remaining boys, to escape. [12] The three deceased boys died while at their desks due to a spurt of heated gases. The conditions of 208 and the three dead boys are depicted in a black-and-white illustration by a Life magazine artist. [13]
Staff in Room 208
- Sister Mary St. Canice Lyng (born Mary Lyng) (44)
Students in Room 208
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Room 209
Room 209, a room housing Sister Mary Davidis Devine's 8th grade class, had two student deaths. Of all of the students, one, Beverly Burda, died in the classroom, while the second, Valerie Thoma, died in a hospital three months later. The survivors credit Devine's decision to stack books at the door to slow entry of the smoke and an awning that provided an easier jump for their survival. Sam Tortorice, a parent of a female Room 209 student named Rose Tortorice, climbed on the awning to assist the escapes of the Room 209 students. Father Joseph Ognibene joined Tortorice and rescued students. [14] Devine, mistakenly under the impression that all of the students were rescued from the room, agreed to be rescued. By the time Devine and the rescue crews noticed Burda lying in the classroom, conditions made her rescue impossible, and she was killed when the roof collapsed. [15]
Students in Room 209
- Beverly Ann Burda (13)
- Valerie Ann Thoma (14) - Died of her injuries on March 10, 1959.
Room 210
Room 210, housing Sister Mary Seraphica Kelley's 4th grade class, had 28 student deaths out of the 57 students inside at the time of the fire. Kelley also died. The smaller and weaker bodies of the fourth graders contributed to the high death toll, as many of the children were unable to scale the window ledge. The fire entered the room at a quicker rate since two boys attempted to open the door to the room. Upon discovery of the fire, the flames forced the boys away from the door, preventing closure of the door and allowing the fire to attack the children. [16]
Staff in Room 210
- Sister Mary Seraphica Kelley (born Anne Virginia Kelley) (43)
Students in Room 210
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Room 211
Room 211, housing Sister Mary Helaine O'Neill's 8th grade class, had 24 deaths out of the 48 students inside at the time of the fire. Normally 63 students occupied the room; at the time, 13 boys helped with a clothing drive at the church and 2 male students stayed away from the school due to illness. The existence of a picket fence blocked firefighters and hampered the rescue of the middle schoolers in 211. The firefighters could not save all of the students before the room flashed, dooming the remaining students. The circumstances of the rescue of O'Neill, who was hospitalized for burns after the incident, are not known.[15]
Students in Room 211
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Room 212
Room 212, housing Sister Mary Clare Therese Champagne's 5th grade class, had 26 deaths out of the 55 students. The deaths all were due to smoke inhalation. Champagne also died.
Staff in Room 212
- Sister Mary Clare Therese Champagne (born Eloise Champagne) (27)
Students in Room 212
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Fire in popular culture
Some scenes from the 2003 movie Finding John Christmas are based on the OLA fire. [19]
Other U.S. school disasters
The fire at Our Lady of the Angels School was the third highest death toll from a disaster in an American school building, with 95 lives lost. The greatest school disaster, the New London School explosion, occurred March 18, 1937, when at least 298 died in a natural gas explosion in New London, Texas. The other major school disaster claimed 175 lives in the Collinwood School Fire in what is now Cleveland, Ohio, on March 4, 1908.
The Tri-State Tornado of March 18, 1925, killed 69 students in several school buildings across three Midwest states; the highest single toll was the school in De Soto, Illinois, where 33 children perished as walls collapsed during the tornado.
The school explosion in Bath, Michigan on May 18, 1927 killed 38 students, three teachers, and three others after the mentally deranged school board treasurer wired dynamite under the school building, causing the explosion and killing himself.
See also
Further reading
- To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire, by David Cowan and John Kuenster(Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1996)
- The Fire That Will Not Die, by Michele McBride,(ETC Publications, Palm Springs, CA, 1979)
References
- ^ "Memories stay forever - Our Lady of Angels fire survivor," hosted by Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) School Fire, December 1, 1958
- ^ "90 PERISH IN CHICAGO SCHOOL FIRE; 3 NUNS ARE VICTIMS; SCORES HURT; PUPILS LEAP OUT WINDOWS IN PANIC," hosted by Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) School Fire, December 1, 1958
- ^ Groves, Adam. "OUR LADY OF THE ANGELS SCHOOL FIRE, CHICAGO: DECEMBER 1, 1958"
- ^ "OLA Fire FAQ," Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) School Fire, December 1, 1958
- ^ "Chicago Mourns," The Chicago American, hosted by Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) School Fire, December 1, 1958. December 5, 1958
- ^ "John Jajkowski age 10 - a victim of Our Lady of the Angels school fire Chicago Illinois December 1 1958," Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) School Fire, December 1, 1958.
- ^ "OLA Fire Survivors By Classroom Room 212," Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) School Fire, December 1, 1958.
- ^ "John Michael Jajkowski, Jr.," Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) School Fire, December 1, 1958.
- ^ Bruno, Hal, "Old Lessons Continue To Go Unheeded," Firehouse, Accessed August 17, 2007.
- ^ Our Lady of the Angels Chicago School Fire Photo gallery - December 1, 1958
- ^ 04-lent99.html
- ^ A listing of survivors of the Our Lady of the Angels Fire
- ^ http://www.olafire.com/Images/Gallery/LifeDrawing1.jpg
- ^ A listing of survivors of the Our Lady of the Angels Fire
- ^ a b OLAFire.com FAQ for Our Lady of the Angels School Fire, Chicago, Illinois, December 1, 1958
- ^ Our Lady of the Angels Chicago School Fire Photo gallery - December 1, 1958
- ^ JS Online: Saved by a brawny angel, man strives to say 'thanks'
- ^ John Jajkowski age 10 - a victim of Our Lady of the Angels school fire Chicago Illinois December 1 1958
- ^ "Ask Valerie," CBS
