Our Lady of the Angels firefighter dies

[sabra]

Source: Chicago Trib

Retired Chicago firefighter Richard Scheidt, a subject of one of the grimmest and most iconic newspaper photographs in Chicago history, has died. He was 81.

On Dec. 1, 1958, a helmeted Scheidt, his face drawn in sorrow, carried the wet, lifeless body of 10-year-old John Jajkowski Jr. from Our Lady of the Angels grade school on the West Side. The fire, one of the worst tragedies in Chicago annals, killed 92 children and three nuns.

Scheidt died Monday at his home in southwest suburban Oak Lawn, a day after he was brought home from the hospital following a minor stroke a month ago, according to relatives.

Scheidt, a member of Rescue Squad 1, carried the bodies of 20 children from the school. Jajkowski was the first. Scheidt was forever haunted by the memory.

In an interview with the Tribune in 1995, in the wake of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in which another image of a firefighter cradling a dying child went around the world, Scheidt described the horror of the Our Lady of the Angels School conflagration.

"It just broke my heart all over again for those poor people, having to pick up those babies," Scheidt said at the time. "There's nothing that prepares you for that. Thirty-some years later, I'm not over it yet."

Read more: http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/04/our-lady-of-the-angels-firefighter-dies.html

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Firefighter Richard Scheidt rushes out of Our Lady of the Angels grade school with John Jajkowski, 10, in his arms on Dec. 1, 1958. (Steve Lasker / Chicago American)

[Mari333]

1. the children will welcome him now

and surround him, believe me. he is now at peace.

[TwilightGardener]

2. What a good man, and a sad photo. Can't imagine having to go

back into that building 18 more times to carry out 18 more dead children. Terrible.

[Ken Burch]

21. The photo is almost a latter-day Pieta.

A good man doing a horribly sad job. May his rest be gentle and peaceful.

[BobRossi]

3. Rest easy Richard.

May the gates of heaven open wide to receive you.

[hlthe2b]

4. This is one man who has certainly earned his eternal peace

A toast to you, sir.

[JSK]

5. I can't believe

that I am 56 years old, Catholic-school educated, and I have never heard of this fire. OMG. I googled and found this site. Heart wrenching stories from people who were kids then, students at the school:

http://www.olafire.com/Home.asp

[Oak2004]

20. Our family plot is not far from the large memorial at Queen of Heaven

I grew up listening to my parents and older relatives speaking of the fire with fear and sorrow (I was only 1 at the time of the fire and don't remember it).

[AngryAmish]

24. I'm 40 and this was always talked about in my Catholic school

We had a lot of fire drills. Many west-side Irish in my parish and fire was no joking matter.

[eridani]

37. 62 and grew up in downstate Illinois

It was certainly the talk of our Catholic school for a long time. Lots more fire drills too.

[RamboLiberal]

6. For those interested in learning more on this terrible fire

There are 2 very good books on it. To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire by David Cowan (who weirdly went to prison several years later for arson).

And published near the 50th anniversary. Remembrances of the Angels: 50th Anniversary Reminiscences of the Fire No One Can Forget by John Kuenster

There was also a book by student survivor Michelle McBride who suffered severe injuries. The Fire That Will Not Die.

I wanted to read this because I was a Catholic school student in Pittsburgh, PA area at the time of the fire. I remember the Sisters telling us stories about it (some false like the kids praying at their desks). And I remember how our school built an enclosed fire escape tower because of that fire. Fire drills were also stepped up.

In the book it tells of the delay the firefighters went through cause they were initially sent to the church and not the school. They also found their access with ladders blocked by a locked iron gate. After battering open the gate there's the story of one firefighter who go on a ladder to a classroom and was forced to save kids by grabbing them by their belts and throwing them from a 2nd story window to the ground. He saved mostly boys because they of course were wearing belts he could latch on to.

RIP Firefighter Richard Scheidt - you served Chicago well.

[hedgehog]

7. Actually, some of the kids were praying at their desks because their

teachers saw no way out.

I brought this tragedy up when my parish was being merged and we had a choice between a modern, safe campus and one that is a fire trap. Guess which one the diocese chose? I guess some people did forget this fire!

Ironically, one of my fellow parishioners was from Chicago and worked for a sprinkler company. He told me that for three years after the fire, he never saw his family because they were installing so many sprinkler systems!

[RamboLiberal]

8. I read the 50th anniversary book which interviewed survivors

and from what I remember the kids were not praying at their desks. Most went for the windows. Some making the awful choice of staying in the rooms or jumping to the concrete below from the 2nd story (which in a school was higher than probably a house's 2nd story).

There might have been some initial orders to pray but it wasn't as our nuns told the tale that firemen found students still at their desk praying.

Did the nuns really tell the children to sit at their desks and pray, instead of trying to escape?

Yes and no. When they first realized a fire was burning in the school, the central corridor was already becoming hot and filled with suffocating black smoke. Fire and smoke had not yet penetrated the classrooms, however. The nuns immediately realized they had to choose between sending their students into a smoke-filled hallway, and jumping from a high window -- both of which would have risked injury or death for the children. They chose initially to avoid both of these dangerous alternatives in favor of waiting for the fire department, which seemed the most prudent choice at the time. In an effort to help keep the children calm (and of course to seek help from God), some of the nuns directed their students to pray. Once fire invaded the rooms, any organized prayer ceased as panicy children rushed for the windows.

http://www.olafire.com/FAQ.asp#12

[hedgehog]

9. This is the more detailed story, thank you.

What a horrible situation for those poor women!

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

10. i was 8 and living on the South Side when that happened.

i think that fire is one reason i don't believe in a supreme being.

[RamboLiberal]

11. What was sick at the time was some nuns & priests

Seemed to many of the young survivors to be saying that those who died were blessed by God, while those who survived weren't so blessed. Caused a lot of guilt feelings for the survivors. Hence the title of the one book I listed "To Sleep with the Angels".

[bottomtheweaver]

27. What's sick is that the author of that book was convicted of setting a Chicago church on fire

as an adult and a former fire fighter who was well aware of the possible consequences of his actions, as you yourself posted about here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1996825&mesg_id=1996825

So don't preach about nuns and priests when the real problem appears to be arsonist fire department. :mad:

[Tansy_Gold]

12. I remember when this happened.

I was 10, in fifth grade in a Chicago suburban public school. I was watching after-school tv when teh news broke in with the story. It has haunted me ever since.

Some years later, I learned that one of my high school classmates had been in the fire, which badly burned her arms and left permanent scars. Her parents were always warned ahead of time if the school planned any "surprise" fire alarms.

Just a few weeks ago, a friend here in Arizona who grew up in Chicago mentioned that her parents had considered enrolling her in Our Lady of Angels school. As soon as she said the name, the hairs on the back of my neck rose up. She's a few years older than I, so of course she knew what happened, too. Few of our friends did. When I asked her why her parents decided against that school and in favor of another Catholic school, she said "They just didn't like the looks of it." She'd have been a freshman in high school in 1958; all her younger brothers and sisters would have been in Our Lady of Angels.

Tragedies like this can leave a lasting mark. I always made sure my kids knew EXACTLY how to get out of their classroom in the event of a fire or other disaster.

RIP Mr. Scheidt.


TG

[Retrograde]

22. I attended a Catholic school built in the same style

it was condemned as a school and a new once built shortly after the fire (I remember reading about the fire's survivors about a year after the event: I didn't make the connection between the fire and the new school building until about a decade ago - I was only in first grade when it happened). It was a pretty grim place - the classrooms were on the top floor, above the church, and accessible by one wooden stairway. There were fire escapes outside, but they were rusty and rickety due to exposure to the elements.

[dflprincess]

29. I started in kindergarten in the fall of 1958

at the local Catholic school - a three story building probabaly dating back to the early 1900s with wooden floors. After Christman vacation I was moved to the shiney, new, one story public school that had a door that led outside in every classroom. My mom has always said it was because the public school was so much closer (which was true). I never heard of this fire and we were living in upstate New York at the time but I'm sure this story made national news. I think I'm going to ask mom to tell me again why I changed schools.

[bottomtheweaver]

13. "The cause of the fire was never officially determined, but all evidence points to arson."

Holy shit. Whoever started it knew what they were doing to from the info at the link -- lots of anomalies like locked doors and strange materials stashed in unaccustomed places. This part of the story I didn't know and it makes me want to vomit.

http://www.olafire.com/FAQ.asp#1

[RamboLiberal]

14. The diocese was involved in the coverup

A lot of detail in the book To Sleep with the Angels about the boy who may have been the arsonist and the evidence against him.

[bottomtheweaver]

15. It doesn't sound like a kid started it.

Locked door that's usually unlocked, twenty minute delay in reporting the fire, but the thing that gets me is the roll of asphalt in the stairwell. What kind of school keeps frickin asphalt in the stairwell. I don't think it was the janitor either although as these things go, it's possible he was someone's accomplice.

I've been hearing about this fire all my life but this is the first time I've ever looked into the details and by now I've seen enough of these too-perfect "perfect storms" to think this was the work of a disgruntled teenager or janitor. Call me suspicious but there are powerful people who don't mind sacrificing a dozen or a hundred school children to achieve a little terra when they want it.

[regnaD kciN]

18. If you read the accounts of students in the various websites about the fire...

...it seems pretty obvious that at least a few of the kids knew that the fire was set by one of the other students, and it isn't all that difficult to figure out who it was. Just check who was sent down to the basement on various errands from the different classrooms that afternoon, who they were with, and what they reported seeing. I don't think it will be too hard to narrow the suspects down to one individual, but naming that individual publicly would be likely exposing oneself to a lawsuit.

The notion that "powerful people" would kill off a bunch of kids to "achieve a little terra" is hard to swallow. Are you asserting that, for some reason, the Church in Chicago would want to create a situation where it would give itself one of the biggest black eyes possible, for no noticeable gain? If not someone within the Church, who? Organized crime? If so, you're going to have to show just why that school would be targeted.

All the evidence seems to point to a long chain of seemingly-careless mistakes, culminating in a dumb act by a kid who liked petty vandalism, but who never realized that his prank could wind up having a lethal result, let alone for so many.

[RamboLiberal]

25. I've read extensively about this fire

Possible arson by a kid that a lot suspected but for whatever reason (being that age of the late 50's/early 60's) where you didn't have 24/7 TV and talk radio it was covered up. Probably cause of the power of the Chicago diocese and the Catholic church in Chicago.

Or possibly caused by the boys smoking or just a fire that started accidentally. A fire can smolder for awhile in a basement especially in a building like a school of that era before breaking out.

Your :tinfoilhat: is on too tight.

[bottomtheweaver]

26. It doesn't trouble you that the definitive OLA book was written by an arsonist

and former fighter CONVICTED of setting a Chicago church on fire? Which you yourself posted about here three years ago?

"Firefighter-author sentenced for church arson(To Sleep with the Angels)," RamboLiberal, Mon Dec-19-05:

David Cowan . . . pleaded guilty to one count of arson. . . . Cowan was arrested in June and charged with setting fire to a storage building adjacent to St. Benedict Church, 2215 W. Irving Park Rd. . . .

The defendant was co-author of "To Sleep With the Angels: The Story of a Fire," considered the authoritative work on the Our Lady of the Angels blaze that killed 92 children and three nuns.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1996825&mesg_id=1996825

:wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow:

I wasn't going to prolong this thread out of respect for the dead, but seeing this emboldens me to say that based on what I read online yesterday, I very strongly suspect that the OLA arson was someone in the Chicago fire department, which had completed an inspection of the school just weeks before, and would have been freshly familiar with its vulnerabilities.

And please don't tell me about tight tinfoil or some kind of diocesan cover up. For pete's sake the kid story was put out by a convicted Chicago church arsonist.

:mad:

[RamboLiberal]

31. Doesn't mean his book wasn't well-researched

This isn't from his book and I still say your :tinfoilhat: is too tight on your head. I've read survivors accounts not from Cowan's book who suspect this kid was involved. Where the heck do you get your suspicions it was a firefighter. I think out of thin air. More likely with 1600+ kids in the school that it was a student who set the fire, maybe accidentally smoking, maybe deliberately to get out of school early or just because the student was fascinated with fire. Many juveniles are also in to setting fires you know. Or perhaps the fire was just a tragic accident. The OLA website started by OLA survivors think it was one of their fellow students.

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 died in 2004. 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_the_Angels_School_Fire

[bottomtheweaver]

35. Cowan is a former fire fighter arsonist fingering a dead ten year old.

If the boy had gone to the bathroom at 2:00 and lit a fire in the trash drum at the bottom of the stairs, the several other students who brought trash out of their classrooms to empty in the drum AFTER 2:00 would obviously have seen and reported the flames. None of them did. No one reported flames at all -- just smoke, around 2:20, to teacher Pearl Tristano, which means it wasn't the drum that was burning, but the roll of asphalt flooring inside the stair enclosure, which was incidentally covered in sheet metal.

The boy's admission was coerced two years later by an FBI interrogator famous for eliciting confessions, without the presence of his parents, which caused it to be tossed out. From a personal message posted by a "Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator" on the OLA site:

One of the courses I had taken in the 90's was called the Reed Technique of Interviewing. This is a course taught by the FBI that focus' on reading verbal and non-verbal information while interviewing a subject. I was sort of shocked to find that it was John Reed who obtained the admission from the boy who started the fire. Later John Reed developed the interview course I was taught, and by the way, the methods really do work.

How hard do you think it would be for a trained FBI interrogator to get a traumatized 13-year old to confess to just about anything? In any case, the fire clearly didn't start in the drum. That conclusion was put out by, you guessed it, a fire department arson investigator:

Several years ago I earned a national fire investigators certification from the National Association of Fire Investigators. This organization was founded by John Kennedy, no direct relationship to the President. Fire Investigator Kennedy was the bold investigator that placed the origin of the fire at the bottom of the stairwell and stood firm that the fire was lit intentionally.

http://www.olafire.com/Story.asp

Considering that 92 children and three teachers perished in that fire , I imagine fire investigators would have tried a little harder to officially determine the cause if they didn't know it was one of their own who'd set it.

[bottomtheweaver]

30. " anecdotal evidence suggests firefighter arson is more common than the public realizes."

From an article posted on Firehouse.com:

Firefighter arson often for the thrill
BY BILL GEROUX, TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER, Jan 28, 2006:

The vast majority of the nation's roughly 1 million firefighters would never think of starting fire, but a tiny percentage across the U.S. wage secret campaigns of arson in the communities they have sworn to protect, said Timothy G. Huff, a former FBI analyst who began tracking such cases for the bureau in the 1990s.

(snip)

There are no reliable statistics of firefighter arsons nationwide. Arson is difficult to detect and even harder to solve, and even when a case is solved, the suspect's profession does not figure into the statistics, said Allen Sapp, emeritus professor of criminology at Central Missouri State University. But the anecdotal evidence suggests firefighter arson is more common than the public realizes.

In the early 1990s, a series of arrests in South Carolina prompted Cade to poll fire chiefs across the state. He discovered that 40 firefighters per year were being arrested statewide for setting fires in woods, trash bins and vacant buildings - mainly for the experience of putting them out.

Around the same time, Huff, who traveled around the country giving talks, began asking fire officials in his audiences about any firefighter-arson cases in their departments. He quickly learned of 25 cases involving a total of 75 firefighters and 182 fires.

http://forums.firehouse.com/showthread.php?t=78133
.................

It looks like there may be more to the OLA story than firefighter-arsonist David Cowan has included in his book.

[RamboLiberal]

32. Yes firefighter arson is common unfortunately

But your the first I've ever read who suggested it for the OLA fire. Where's your proof? Where's your research? BTW, Cowan was born in 1963 so he couldn't be responsible for the fire. Oh and he had a co-author John Kuenster who wasn't as far as I know convicted of arson.

[bottomtheweaver]

33. The child's confession was improperly coerced and the fire didn't start in the trash drum.

It started beneath the stairwell where the roll of asphaltic flooring was stored. Several students talked about using those stairs to empty trash into the drum and other purposes -- after the fire had apparently started -- and reported nothing unusual. The first reports were of smoke, not flames. That indicates that the fire originated inside the stairwell, which strongly suggests that an incendiary device such as a simple matchbook that was used to ignite the roll of asphaltic material.

Now who would know enough about fires to know how to start that one? The firefighters who had just inspected the school the week before, that's who.

How hard was that to figure out?

[bottomtheweaver]

36. And the winner was . . . the asbestos industry:

from a publisher's review of Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival, by Jock McCulloch, Oxford, 2008:

"In the early twentieth century, asbestos had a reputation as a lifesaver. In 1960, however, it became known that even relatively brief exposure to asbestos can cause mesothelioma, a virulent and lethal cancer.

"Yet the bulk of the world's asbestos was mined after 1960. Asbestos usage in many countries continued unabated. . . . the asbestos industry and its allies in government, insurance, and medicine defended the product throughout the twentieth century. It {the book} explains how mining and manufacture could continue despite overwhelming medical evidence as to the risks.

"The argument advanced in this book is that asbestos has proved so enduring because the industry was able to mount a successful defense strategy for the mineral--a strategy that still operates in some parts of the world. This defence involved the shaping of the public debate by censoring, and sometimes corrupting, scientific research, nurturing scientific uncertainty, and using allies in government, insurance, and medicine.

http://books.google.com/books?id=CWTeH9GJsfgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Global+Asbestos+Industry
................................

Coincidence I'm sure.

[AyanEva]

16. Oh wow

I just spent literally hours reading about this after I Googled it. So sad. :(

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

17. Rest in Peace Brother.

[regnaD kciN]

19. Interesting bit of trivia...

The keyboardist for Journey and composer of "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Faithfully," Jonathan Cain, was a survivor of that fire.

[Bombero1956]

23. rest easy Brother

ln the Chicago Fire Department...
the alarm code 3-3-5 signifies...
that the company has returned home to quarters.
We will now ring out that code to welcome home...
Captain Richard Scheidt.

[Lars39]

28. Now I understand why my parents *really* hated my old elementry school,

and were so relieved when the new one was built...it had large windows down low. :(

[Aristus]

34. R.I.P. to a true hero!

God bless you, sir! :patriot: