The Circus Fire (43 page)

ing put on display. Relatives asked to see his scars, and he had to bear their curiosity in the fern-shaped grafts on his back. The other kids didn't care much; once when Elliott was wearing a bathing suit, another boy said his back looked like a checkerboard—but not cruelly, just a good-natured observation, and taken that way. He didn't have any nightmares.

Many did. Eleven-year-old Sarah Goodwin Austin had been at the fire and seen horrible things. "I learned so much that day. I learned that people die. That they stink when they die. That they can be burned up. That they can kill each other to survive." She'd seen people clawing each other, and the sight never left her. In '46 her father, A. Everett "Chick" Austin, then director of the Wadsworth Atheneum, became the curator of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. The owners of the circus regularly entertained the family. "He loved the circus," Sarah Austin said of her father. "Neither of my parents was able to understand what I had been through. I always felt set apart from them."

And then there were the parents of the dead, the wives and husbands and brothers. Mildred Cook went home to Southampton to recuperate, staying with Emily Gill and her daughter Carolyn Moon. She had only limited motion of her arms, and Carolyn had to help her get dressed in the morning. As she recovered, work became her salvation. She would work as hard as she could all day so she could sleep at night. Eleanor was still officially missing. Whenever Mildred and Emily left the house empty, they set a note on the kitchen counter telling Eleanor where they were. Just in case.

On the legal side, the change in circus leadership only increased the resentment between the corporation and its receiver. A circus attorney wrote to James Haley of Schatz and Rogin so far not discussing payment for their services, "I think they are beginning to lick their chops in anticipation of fat fees and expenses."

For his part, Rogin was tied up with literally hundreds of cases and their residual duties. The money attracted all kinds of people not related to the case, and Rogin found himself taking care of his claimants' personal finances. One man's creditors applied directly to the receiver for permission to garnishee his settlement to pay his bills. The arbitrators had awarded the man over $40,000 for the deaths of his wife and three children. Rogin told the creditors to get the money themselves.

A rougher battle engulfed the estate of Patty Murphy and her younger brother. The uncle they were living with died, and the court awarded custody of the children to another aunt and uncle. Even before their guardian died, their grandparents the Coughlans had challenged the original placement, taking the case to superior court. Now they instituted a new suit. The Murphys were Catholic and the Coughlans Protestant. Between them, Patty and her brother had received over $120,000 for her injuries and the deaths of their parents and their other brother. The case and its associated appeals would go back and forth for more than two years.

Meanwhile the circus made their first payment to the claimants, nearly a million dollars, exactly 25 percent of the total judgments. The second came in January of 1947, almost $1.5 million, or 37.5 percent. The show had done well under Haley and North, playing more dates and making more money than ever before.

The city government had been busy as well. They approved the city-manager concept, making communication between departments a priority, and established a formal civil service system. Cities around the country adopted Hartford's thorough new fire codes.

One survivor took his family to New York during the show's opening stand at Madison Square Garden. He hadn't planned on going; it was just a coincidence they were in town. He didn't have tickets, but since the fire he'd kept their stubs from July 6th in his wallet. The clerk at the box office said the show was sold out. The man produced his stubs. "Think these will get us in?" The clerk got on the phone. Minutes later, John Ringling North was escorting the family to his private box.

That same week, Katherine Martin, who'd received the largest settlement for her burns, gave birth to a daughter. Mrs. Martin was a tiny woman. She'd barely made it over the northeast chute and had been burned over most of her body. Her back still carried the thumbprints of the man who carried her to the circus bus and rode to Municipal with her, holding her up so her raw skin didn't touch anything. At first she couldn't move her arms, couldn't stand up, couldn't walk. It took her months until she could comb her hair and feed herself. She'd been facing another painful grafting operation when she told her surgeon she was going to have a baby. "That's the kind of miracle we need," he said. Pregnancy naturally stretched the tissues; she wouldn't need the operation. They did a caesarean. The baby was

healthy and perfect, and the mother healed easily. The Miracle Lady, the papers called her.

As the circus opened under canvas, the Delaware courts supported Edith Ringling's claim that Haley had illegally broken the Ladies' Agreement. The presidency reverted once again to Robert Ringling. Two weeks later, Haley and North staged another power play and took control again, with Haley as president.

Never robust, Robert Ringling's health failed that summer. He suffered a bad stroke, and couldn't pursue his mother's interests as he had for the last five years. It appeared Haley and North had won.

But the new president and his vice president did not get along. They quarreled on basic management issues, and, though technically subordinate, North would not give in to the less-experienced Haley. After prison, Haley trusted no one but himself. He was the president, and his wife controlled more of the show than North. They would do things his way.

While Haley ran the show, North worked the other members of the board. He'd just won an old dereliction of duty suit against Robert for five million dollars. He parlayed this into a compromise with his former enemy, offering to drop his litigation. By October he replaced Haley as president, giving Robert the mostly honorary roles of executive vice president and chairman of the board. The Haleys, understanding they'd been skunked, sold off their shares and quit the business. North now controlled 51 percent of the corporation. After six long years, the circus was his again.

North was a showman in the style of Barnum, bold, abrasive and shameless when it came to the bottom line. From now until the final payment of the arbitration settlement, the relationship between receiver Edward Rogin and the circus would be difficult at best.

A week after taking control, North announced that he intended to bring the big show back to Hartford in '48. It made great press. Chief Godfrey welcomed the idea, saying the new laws were in place for just such a reason. The citizens of Hartford were nowhere near as understanding. Despite new and ingenious seat wagons with fixed steel chairs, too many people remembered the fire.

One widower wrote to the
Times
that families who'd also lost loved ones in the fire had asked him to protest. "We absolutely do not want the circus here. We want no billboard signs or advertisements of our tragedies."

A mother who'd lost a daughter seconded his opinion: "It would be unnecessarily painful for myself and others like myself who lost two or more [to] see the day that the circus returns here."

Editorials were mixed. Eventually, they reasoned, the circus would have to come back. When would the proper time be?

As if to soften up the opposition, the show delivered its third payment against claims, 10 percent, in late April. At that point, North said he was still hoping to find a lot in Hartford for the big top—maybe Colt's Meadows, where they'd set up in the early thirties. The circus was ready to comply with all the new laws. They were already scheduled for Bridgeport, Waterbury, and New London. They'd have to deal with Commissioner Hickey anyway.

In the end, they didn't come back to Hartford. They'd tested the waters though, and when a circus fan from Plainville said he had a lot they could use anytime, they accepted his offer. June 17th the show rolled into the smallest town the big top ever played. Patty Murphy begged her aunt and uncle to take her to the matinee, which they did reluctantly. The show was sold out, and she had a fine time.

In the fall, James Haley ran for and won a seat in the Florida house of representatives. Earlier, the same house had passed a special bill restoring his civil rights, even though his felony conviction came from another state.

All this time, Thomas Barber and Ed Lowe had been going to Northwood. Three times a year they made the trek, carrying magnolias and carnations and sprays of pine branches at Christmas, the stories in the paper growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared altogether. The wire services no longer picked them up. They were stale—old news.

In '49 the circus returned to Plainville, playing just the one day. It was becoming a tradition. Maybe they'd try Hartford next year, people speculated. John Ringling North said nothing; like any good showman, he left them guessing.

That year the show paid two installments of 5 percent each through Edward Rogin. He also helped them negotiate the dramatic rights for Cecil B. De Mille's
The Greatest Show on Earth,
which began shooting that winter in Sarasota. While the circus was occupied with Hollywood, in Miami, Gargantua the gorilla died of pneumonia complicated by a kidney disorder and rotted wisdom teeth. Show folks called him a trouper to the end; he'd

gutted it out until the season was over. Even in death Gargantua remained an attraction. Henry Ringling North donated his bones to the Peabody Museum at his alma mater, Yale, and the picture of his reassembled skeleton ran worldwide.

Right after Christmas, May Kovar—now May Kovar Schafer—was rehearsing at a wild animal farm in California. She'd left Ringling and gone out on her own, but things hadn't panned out. She was developing a lion act, hoping it would solve her money troubles. Her three children were there, tagging after her on a slow day.

She stepped into the cage with her wand. Outside, her grown son slid a steel door open to let the first lion in. Sultan, his name was. It had been raining for three days, and he'd been locked up in his cage, missing his regular exercise.

He rushed May Kovar. He charged and knocked her to the ground with his paws, then closed his teeth around her throat and dragged her to a corner of the cage.

May's son ran in with his sister and beat at the lion with sticks, but couldn't get him away from his prey. Another trainer rushed over from the elephant barn with a pitchfork and an iron pipe. He speared the lion, and as it turned on him, bashed it between the eyes with the pipe. Sultan tipped back on his hind legs, stunned long enough for them to drag May Kovar out of the cage. It was too late. Her neck was broken, probably from the first blow. She died right there.

"I'd like to get out of this business," her son said, "but what can we do? This is all we know."

The day after New Year's, Robert Ringling collapsed of a massive stroke and died. He was fifty-two. Julius Schatz praised him for his help in securing the arbitration agreement. His obituary listed him as both the head of the show and an opera singer, but one line told the whole story: "His close associates said he never cared much for circus life." He was survived by his mother.

1950

In April, Officer George Sanford approached Julius Schatz and said his 8mm film was available. He wondered if the circus would be interested in purchasing it. Schatz wrote to John Ringling North and received a reply from his brother Henry. "We would be interested in getting these pictures of the fire, providing we were getting the original negative and not the prints."

Whether the deal went through, no one knows, but the film has never been seen again.

That month, near Columbus, Ohio, the state arson bureau picked up a young man named William Graham in connection with a fire at a local grain elevator. Graham admitted setting it. During questioning, police learned that a friend of his, Robert Dale Segee, had told Graham he once set a fire in Maine. Two weeks later, they arrested a cousin of Graham for another fire; after getting a confession from him, investigators decided to find out more about Segee. They talked to Segee's parents in Columbus, who told them he'd been with the circus at the time of the Hartford fire. Police spoke to Graham again, at the Circleville jail; this time Graham implicated Segee in several alley fires there.

Armed with extradition papers, the Ohio State Police arrested Segee in East St. Louis, Illinois, and brought him back to Columbus. On May 18th, Segee confessed to setting fires in Circleville and Columbus, and in Portland and Old Town, Maine.

"He stated that he was with the Ringling Brothers Circus June [sic] 6, 1944, when they had a large fire at Hartford, Conn. He stated that his starting of numerous fires was caused by his seeing a burning man which he called the 'Red Man' and the Red Man would tell him to start fires and that if he did not start fires he would himself be burned and that the first appearance of the Red Man was immediately prior to the Hartford, Conn., fire while he was with the Ringling Brothers Circus. He stated that the first recollection at the Hartford fire was that he was awakened and came to himself and he was then at a tent near the place where the horses were kept