The Circus Fire (37 page)

up with a plan. The circus would surrender $380,000 in cash, assign two fire insurance policies worth $125,000 each to the receiver, and devote their Lloyd's policy solely to paying claims. All afternoon, Weinstein and Ringling lawyers ironed out the final draft of the agreement. The court approved of the solution. By 7:30, razorbacks were lining up the wagons for the short haul to the runs. Mayor Mortensen's hand-picked liaison Deputy Chief Godfrey watched over them.

A little past 8:00, the sun dropping in the west, a heavy black sedan with Florida plates rolled over the dirt-covered sidewalk and onto the lot. Leonard Aylesworth stepped out and set to gathering his crew. Not long after, Commissioner Hickey's Cadillac pulled in, Adolph Pastore at the wheel. The circus attorneys were there too, and Dr. Burgdorf, all of them originally at cross purposes now working to ensure their concerns weren't lost in the rush to bug out. Hickey needed a guarantee that thirty-three employees both he and Coroner Healy had asked to testify would remain in the city. Burgdorf wanted the lot cleaned up. The circus was amenable to everything, their lawyers said.

Around midnight, trucks towed the first string of wagons over the sidewalk and up Barbour Street, headed for the Pleasant Street siding. By 3:00 that morning, the workers finished cleaning up, leaving nothing but the fallen poles and charred stands.

The first section left for Sarasota at 7:00 A.M. Saturday, seen off by Rogin himself, the trains accompanied by a deputy sheriff whom Rogin had appointed custodian in his stead. Knowing it was a once-in-a-lifetime assignment, the deputy brought his teenaged son along. They chatted with the performers as they rocked westward through the green hills. Just after lunch, the train crossed the Newburgh Bridge high above the wide Hudson and pulled into the junction town of Maybrook, New York. The deputy and his son got off. The circus went on.

July 15-July 31, 1944

A ten-year-old boy from Magnolia Street in the North End had escaped the fire. His best friend from the Vine Street School had died. The boy's father was a rabbi, and instructed his son to say the Birkat ha'Gomel, a prayer upon deliverance from peril, on the following Sabbath. So on Saturday, as the circus trains pulled for winter quarters, the boy went to Agudas Achim Synagogue on Greenfield Street and prayed: "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who vouchsafest benefits unto the undeserving, who has also vouchsafed all good unto me."

That morning, Commissioner Hickey sent a memo to all local fire marshals and police chiefs. Since the fire, his office had handled hundreds of inquiries concerning the licensing of traveling shows. It was the season, especially in the distant towns and down along the shore; every meadow seemed to sprout a carnival. In his memo, Hickey asked local inspectors to examine the seating arrangements. If patrons stood, officials could allow one per every five square feet; if sitting in fixed chairs, one per eight square feet; if in loose chairs, one per ten square feet. Shows should provide ample aisles and exits, shorten their rows, and limit capacity. Lastly, he suggested strict enforcement of all No Smoking laws, citing specific sections and fines.

In the early afternoon, WTIC presented a speech by Governor Baldwin. The day before, he'd suddenly announced that he'd reconsidered his position and would indeed run for a third term. Now he briefly recapped the fire and gave the most current death toll before outlining the state's response and the ongoing hearings. "In lives lost and in personal injury," he said, "this was the worst disaster in the history of Connecticut. A thorough investigation is being made to determine how and why this tragedy occurred. If any criminal negligence or neglect is involved, everything in the power of the state will be done to bring to justice those who may be responsible."

Like the mayor, he praised Hickey and the War Council, the Red Cross and the hospitals. "These volunteer forces were organized for protec-

tion against enemy attack ... a bombing raid which has never come. But a bomb attack could not have struck more swiftly, with less warning, or with more cruel force than this circus fire. The injuries, indeed, were much the same as could have been expected in any enemy raid with incendiary bombs—many severe burns and a smaller number of fracture cases. We regret the tragic event that called the emergency organization into action. We shall always be grateful that it was ready for the job."

Closing, he spoke of how a thousand volunteers had responded, putting in long hours of hard, sometimes impossible work. "The circus disaster has saddened the state. We shall not soon recover from this blow. But we can be intensely proud of the spirit with which the people of Connecticut met the emergency. There are heroes, nameless and innumerable, in this tragedy."

Unpublicized was the death of Mabel Epps's baby. She was eight months when she went into premature labor. The baby was stillborn, the result of a separation of the placenta, probably caused by her fall from the top of the bleachers. It would have been her first girl. Ten days after the fire, she was still crying hysterically and suffering from mysterious headaches. The doctor took X-rays but couldn't find an answer. He let her go home, red-eyed and sniffling into a tissue.

At St. Francis, a twenty-two-year-old West Hartford woman died. She'd received only first- and-second-degree burns, and as early as July 7th had been listed by hospital staff as "not serious."

That night in Denver, a fire destroyed the Old Mill ride at Elitch Gardens, killing six, including two attendants who ran into the tunnel of love to rescue patrons. Officials suspected either a short circuit or a lighted cigarette tossed into one of the niches of the winding tunnel. The owners insisted they'd sprayed all their scenery with liquid fireproofing and that electricians had just checked the wiring that spring.

Later that night in Port Chicago, California, a tragedy of much greater magnitude struck. Two docked munitions ships exploded, leveling the town and killing over three hundred fifty people, many of them instantly vaporized. The blasts came two seconds apart, rocking the state like

an earthquake. With the town's power out, the Spartan Bros. Circus cranked up their diesels and lighted the site. By midnight, searchers had recovered only four bodies. The navy declared martial law and shut Port Chicago down. Authorities said no death list would be made available and that an investigation was pending.

The next morning, Governor Baldwin wrote a note to Hickey about the Old Mill fire, saying Hickey should prompt local officials to inspect "all places of amusement." He also forwarded the commissioner a letter from the head of a chemical company whose firm had fireproofed canvas for both military and civilian use. The man asked that Baldwin use his influence to push through laws requiring all tents to be similarly treated.

That afternoon, both Hickey and Healy listened to witnesses. It was convenient for reporters; the two hearings were right across Washington Street from each other. As Chief Hallissey testified before the coroner, the circus train barreled down the Atlantic Coast line south of Richmond.

The first section pulled into Sarasota shortly after noon on Tuesday, the second and third not far behind. Several reporters and photographers who'd waited much of the night had left, called away to more pressing assignments. Only a small gathering of friends and relatives welcomed the circus, staring at the fire-blackened wagons as the flats and stocks and Pullmans rolled in. Razorbacks bandaged from rescue efforts grimly unloaded them.

"We are all dazed," Karl Wallenda said. "It was a nightmare. Those bodies piled high and that roar that I can never forget. ... I still cannot understand why so many had to die . . . but the show must and will go on. We want to go out again and we will."

Free on bond, their manslaughter trial continued till August, George W. Smith and James Haley would only say they'd held an executive conference on the train which included Robert Ringling.

In Hartford, Raymond Erickson's mother Sophie toured Municipal Hospital, looking for any trace of her son. A social worker there let her dig through a box containing effects taken from the victims. Mrs. Erickson found Raymond's brown sneakers, the knot she'd tied for him that morning still tucked inside the eyelet so it wouldn't show. Someone had removed his blue socks and carefully pushed them into the toes of his shoes so he wouldn't lose them.

Wednesday the fire department submitted a list of grass fires that had occurred on the Barbour Street grounds to Commissioner Hickey. Over the last five years the lot had seen more than fifteen, most of them in the spring, but just the year before there'd been one the afternoon of July 3rd.

Hickey's driver Adolph Pastore was in Portland, Maine, tracking down runaway Roy Tuttle. Allegedly Tuttle had passed remarks that he knew how the fire started. The night before, he'd been admitted to Maine General Hospital, where he was recovering from third-degree burns to his arms and legs.

According to the local police, Tuttle was the village idiot, a homeless, illiterate victim of apoplectic fits. He did odd jobs around town for pocket money.

At the hospital, Tuttle told Pastore that he'd signed on with the circus in Portland on June 30th, helping to erect the bleachers. On July 6th, he ate lunch at the cookhouse and took a walk down Barbour Street. While he was in front of a store, he heard women screaming that the big top was on fire. He ran back to the grounds and rushed into the tent just as the poles were falling. He was near the animal chute when he had one of his spells and fell down.

When he woke up, he found himself in an open lot. He slept the night there and the next day started hitchhiking back to Portland. It took him nine days. To relieve the pain of his burns, he sat in water wherever he could find some; now they were infected.

That was it. Pastore got nothing out of Tuttle about how the fire started, just this vague, implausible story. Perhaps he felt Tuttle was harmless, or that it was pointless to dig further into his recollections. In any case, he took his statement and left, hearing from the Portland police once more about the fire on the Spanish web.

The next day Hickey himself went to the lot and took as evidence a small piece of melted iron and a four-foot length of wood sheathed in steel. City police still guarded the interior of the tent, and would for months, but the rest of the grounds reverted to the neighborhood kids. The boys had tired of picking through the grass for coins and scraps of clothing; they went back to playing ball, aware of what had happened but drawn by force

of habit. One explained: "You go up there, you always think of that, but you still go up there."

In their winter quarters the circus retooled, scraping the blistered paint from the damaged wagons, redesigning lost props. The animals had been inactive so long that their trainers had to put them through a crash retraining program. The fliers needed all new trapeze rigging. Everyone pitched in, from bally girls to sideshow performers; sunburns and busted knuckles were the fashion, and beach parties at night.

Thursday, F. Beverly Kelley announced to the press that the circus would leave Sarasota without a big top and play in open air arenas and ballparks. It was probable they would use all-steel seats in the future, but that plan could not be realized this year. "We will never go out under a main tent of canvas until a suitable fireproofing process has been discovered and the cost is within the circus's reach," he pledged. The show already had a carload of flameproofing compound on its way. "It is planned to fireproof the sideshow tent which will be the only tent to which the public will be admitted, and all sidewalls to be used by the circus when the show resumes its tour." They would also treat the sidewalls of the dressing and horse tents, but not the tops themselves. "This fireproofing compound had not been available to the circus until this time," Kelley said, and "it has passed the board of underwriters' specifications and [is] recommended by the bureau of standards in Washington."

The show would include the same acts as before the fire, but there would be more headroom for the aerial acts. "The world-famed Torrence and Victoria team will present their act on a 135-foot pole, which has never been done in the circus's history."

Karl Wallenda was used to even greater heights; in Germany he'd made his name walking between church spires. "We're no longer limited by the big top. I can't tell just how much higher we'll go, but it will be a more thrilling act than ever. There is more danger under the new plan because of the wind. We'll get in as much practice as possible." He promised the act would "go higher than ever has been presented before circus audiences."

"What does your wife and the rest of the Wallenda family think of the plan?" a reporter asked.

"They don't ask questions," said Karl. "I tell them to do it and they do it."

Back in Hartford, a state policewoman took the Ericksons to see Stanley Kurneta in the hospital. Again, Stanley told his story of leaving the badly burned Raymond at Municipal—the elevator, the mattress, the ruddy priest with the straw hat. The shoes were proof he'd been there.

The policewoman escorted the Ericksons to Municipal one more time, where they talked with the superintendent. No one had been allowed out of the hospital unidentified unless they were dead, in which case any clothing had been tied to the body before it was taken to the armory. There was a possibility a disoriented patient may have wandered out in the confusion, but they'd preserved all the effects of the dead. The only priest fitting the description Stanley Kurneta had given was Father Thomas McMahon, but he remembered nothing of any boy.