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December 7, 2008
Standing room only at Mass to remember Our Lady of the Angels School fire victims
The people who packed Holy Family Church on Roosevelt Road Nov. 30 were in large part, older and graying. Their faces were often somber and teary, matching the dark rainy weather outside.
They came to remember the sunny, cold Dec. 1 of 1958, when 92 children and three Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary perished in a fire at Our Lady of the Angels School. The congregation included many survivors of the fire, as well as the loved ones of those who died, and firefighters and police and others who just thought it was important to remember.
But there were also young people and children in the congregation, those who weren’t alive the day the smoke and ashes rose over the school on the West Side and cast a pall over the entire city. There also were smiles and hugs as friends found each other and reconnected, remembering those who never grew up.
Auxiliary Bishop John Manz, who celebrated the 50th Anniversary Memorial Mass, said the fire at Our Lady of the Angels was, in a way, as defining an event for the city of Chicago as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was for the country.
“Those of us who lived in the Chicago area remember as well who we were with, what we were doing, when we heard the news there was a fire at Our Lady of the Angels School,” Bishop Manz said in his homily. “This event has captivated the hearts of so many people — survivors, relatives of survivors or relatives of people who lost their lives in that inferno, and people who were affected because they lived in the neighborhood or the parish or the city.”
To those who were closest to the tragedy, Bishop Manz said, “This is not only something you remember, but I could guess it’s an oft-repeated nightmare that you have.”
Such tragedies often lead people to ask “Where was God in all this?” the bishop said, an ancient and still unanswered question.
Asking ‘Why?’
The fire struck at a time when the Archdiocese of Chicago was growing, adding new parishes and schools in the suburbs even as schools like Our Lady of the Angels were crowded with 1,600 students. They were taught by thousands of religious sisters, who essentially volunteered their services and sacrificed their lives for the good of the church.
“It was a time of great growth, vitality and expansion, and in the midst of it all came the fire. Why?” the bishop said.
The answer lies in the Advent attitude of watchful waiting, of not knowing what will happen or when the Lord will come, he said.
In the meantime, “We’re here to pray for the healing that has to continue throughout our lives after something like this,” Bishop Manz said. “If we feel a tremendous sense of pain, we need to look for the face of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, in the faces around us, especially the poor, the sick and those without hope. It’s a difficult thing, but it’s a life-giving thing. How can we give thanks to God, even through our tears? This is what our faith is about.”
During the Mass, the names of all who died were read aloud, with loved ones of each victim coming forward to light a candle in his or her name. Candles also were lit in honor of the firefighters and others who tried to rescue the students — and who succeeded in saving many.
After the candles were lit, Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, who was in third grade at Our Lady of the Angels at the time of the fire, played and sang “The Day They Became Angels,” in honor of the victims.
Luck and the nuns
For Phil Abraham, a seventhgrader at Our Lady of the Angels School at the time of the fire, hearing the names reminded him again of how many people never got a chance to find out what they would become, to marry or have children.
But it also reminded him of how lucky he was to have survived by crawling out of his classroom, trying to keep his head low so he could breathe.
“I credit it to luck and the good teaching of the BVM nuns,” said Abraham, who made the trip from Wisconsin, where he now lives, to attend the memorial with his sisters, including Melody Davis, who was in third grade at the time. “We were in the basement,” she said. “We were among the first ones out.”
Abraham also met his former classmate Chuck Parisio, who said he had never been to one of the annual memorial Masses.
“I had to come today,” Parisio said. “It was beautiful, very touching.”
