At the age of 8, he was there at the time of a historic fire in Chicago…not the Great Fire of 1871 but the fire in December 1958 that made headlines worldwide when 92 children and 3 nuns died in the blaze at Our Lady of Angels School.

The story came to the attention of the Journal when firefighter Cassidy Martin made an inquiry about two old newspapers his father-in-law, Don Reading, has carefully saved for over 65 years.  Only a child at the time of the tragedy, Reading says he has no real recall of the event itself.  But his mother told him about it later when he was old enough to understand.  She had attended that Catholic school (grades K-8), leaving in the late 1940’s.  She likely studied under some of those teachers.

Fire broke out at the foot of a stairwell shortly before classes would have ended on that Monday afternoon on December 1.  Due to the size of the school (1,600 students), lack of reliable communications and fire hazard issues that could not be understood today, heat and smoke quickly shut off safe exits for children.  The fire had started around 2 p.m. but for various reasons, it was about 40 minutes before the first call to the Fire Department went through.  Fire trucks arrived within four minutes but the blaze was already out of control.

In addition to those who died, many more were injured by smoke and heat inhalation and from jumping from second story windows to the ground 25 feet below.  The disaster led to major improvements in standards for school design and fire safety codes.  Reading said his mother had considered becoming a nun herself but after going to a convent in Wisconsin for a time, decided that wasn’t for her.

Reading, now warden at Winn Detention Center on Thomas Mill Road, was a Chicago native who made his way to Winnfield because of his wife, Gail.  Her mother, Judy Head Whitaker, had Winn roots while her father, Curtis from south Louisiana, was a pipefitter who’d found a longterm work contract in Chicago.  After the Readings married, they moved here.  Her folks had retired here.

“We’ve been really blessed, moving down here,” he commented.  They have one child, Gretta.

The 1958 fire and the newspapers he’d saved had been nearly forgotten until Martin came across plastic-wrapped paper.  Just as Brown vs. Board of Education is a benchmark case in the study of journalism, so too is the Our Lady of Angels School in Chicago Fire in the study of firefighting, he said.  “It’s of major significance.”