© 2024 Ideastream Public Media

1375 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115
(216) 916-6100 | (877) 399-3307

WKSU is a public media service licensed to Kent State University and operated by Ideastream Public Media.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
News
To contact us with news tips, story ideas or other related information, e-mail newsstaff@ideastream.org.

Collinwood Fire Victims Remembered

It was March Fourth, exactly 100 years ago.
An Ash Wednesday.

Children, most of them offspring of European immigrants, were settled in for the start of their day at Lake View Elementary School.

The three story building, made almost entirely of Georgian pine, was among the largest structures in Collinwood, a village of 8,000 people; still years away from being annexed by neighboring Cleveland.

But just below the children that morning - overheated steam pipes in the basement were about to ignite the bottom of the main staircase; a wooden staircase; initiating what would become the largest school fire ever.

[EDWARD KERN]
"There was 175 people that was killed in that fire. It was the biggest school tragedy in the history of America."

Edward Kern is an author of articles and a book - and a student of the event.
Speaking to us at one of several recent commemorations of the fire, the 56 year old explained that his connection to the tragedy runs far deeper.

[KERN]
"In 1908 I lost four of my family."

Two them - brother and sister to his own dad.

[MARY LOUISE JESEK DALEY]
"They built that school `because' they were immigrants. They wanted their kids to have an education."

Mary Louise Jesek Daley is an historian - and a Collinwood resident. She and Kern are two members of a committee of people determined to honor the fire victims. Jesek-Daley says the centennial anniversary is a fitting time to reacquaint Cleveland with a piece of its past that has nearly vanished from our collective memory.

[JESEK DALEY]
"The Collinwood School fire is a great tragedy for the community and the country - and it has always been a part of us."

[JESEK DALEY]
"I have friends who are historians, and we said there's no way that this is going to come upon us without us doing something for it."

Subsequent studies have concluded the children died, partly as a result of their own panic, pulling on doors when they should have pushed - crowding onto each other so tightly that none could break free.

But Edward Kern says there's little point in trying to place blame for a tragedy that happened so long ago. He'd rather recognize the lessons learned, and the effort that ensued nationally to improve fire safety. Today, he says, we see the fruits of that effort across the country.

[KERN]
"…Better laws, better doors, and schools are made out of better materials. After that fire was the upswing - they really looked at the subject of what schools are made of. "

For 2008, the committee hopes to complete a long-forgotten work, identifying where each of the fire victims was laid to rest. Some cemeteries have markers referring to how and where the children died. Others do not.

[JESEK DALEY]
"We only had a rudimentary idea of where they were buried. The idea that most of them were buried at Lakeview Cemetery has been thrown to the wind. We know now of at least four or five cemeteries where these students were buried at. We want to identify where they were buried, so that we can map it out. So that they can be remembered."

In historic Lake View Cemetery stands a monument - dedicated to 19 children and one teacher. All are buried in a mass grave there, because the destroyed remains could not be identified.

Kern says perhaps the fire has become lost to history - because there wasn't much of an attempt to remember.

[KERN]
"One of the biggest things that I've noticed, from the people that did know about it, was that it wasn't talked about - it was such a tragedy at the time. People just hushed it up and the mothers would not talk about it and it was so devastating."
"Families left town - they left money in the bank, they just disappeared, it was such a tragedy. Everybody in Collinwood lost a child."

There is also an effort underway to restore a memorial garden on the site of the old school, built in the years just after the fire, and still used today. Mary Louise Jesek Daley people pass the garden each day, but don't recognize it for what it once was.

[JESEK DALEY]
"When I get people who have just moved into the neighborhood maybe ten years ago, or five years ago, who don't understand why that garden is there, - or all they see it as is as a place for the kids to hang out at. That's why we need to go back in and replant it, and put new plants in it, and keep adding to it again, like we used to."

Today there will be with commemorations at the School, neighborhood churches, and Lake View Cemetery.
Rick Jackson, 90.3

Rick Jackson is a senior host and producer at Ideastream Public Media. He hosts the "Sound of Ideas" on WKSU and "NewsDepth" on WVIZ.