ROBERTO & RICKY PLANE CRASHES

1972, 1985 - Apparently if in the entertainment business, you shouldn't be flying on New Year's Eve!  Thirteen years apart, the planes carrying future Hall-of-Fame Pittsburgh Pirates' outfielder, Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker, to Managua, Nicaragua with aid packages for earthquake survivors (a DC-7 cargo plane), and actor/musician, Eric Hilliard Nelson (better known to the world as Ozzie and Harriet's second son, Ricky) to a New Years Day concert in Dallas, Texas (a DC-3 passenger airliner), crash, taking the lives of both men.  Roberto exits at the age of only 38, while Ricky's departure takes place when he is just 45. 

Roberto & Ricky

Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker is born in Barrio San Anton, Carolina, Puerto Rico to Melchor Clemente (the foreman of sugar cane farm in the northeastern part of the island) and Luisa Walker on August 18, 1934.  He is the youngest of seven children and raised a devout Catholic.  Growing up, Clementa will work in the fields with his father and his brothers.  When he isn't working, Roberto is a track & field star with Olympic aspirations ... until he discovers baseball.  Attending Julio Vizcarrondo Coronado High School, while playing softball and baseball (he is a shortstop at first), his talents are so evident that at sixteen years old, he is playing for the town of Juncos in Puerto Rico's amateur baseball league, and two years later, on October 9, 1952, he signs his first professional contract to play for the Cangrejeros de Santurce ("The Crabbers").  He is starting by his second year with the team, and hits .288 as the team's leadoff batter.  His arm and batting abilities immediately noticed by major league scouts in the United States, he sets off a bidding war between the Brooklyn Dodger, the New York Giants, and the Milwaukee Braves, with the Dodgers finally getting the rights to the youth's athletic talents with a contract that guarantees Clemente $5,000 a year (along with a signing bonus of $10,000, the largest the Dodgers pay out since signing Jackie Robinson).  Though in love with his talents, the Dodgers decide that Clemente is not quite ready for the big time and send him off for seasoning with their minor league affiliate, the Triple-A Montreal Royals.

Crabber

As 19-Year-Old Royal

The Dodgers though have made a serious mistake in sending Clemente to the minors.  According to Rule 5 of Major League Baseball, any individual signing for a bonus of over $4,000, becomes available to be drafted again.  Too talented to be missed by American scouts, despite the Dodgers best efforts to hide him, Clemente is noticed by Pittsburgh Pirates pitching coach, Clyde Sukeforth (who is actually scouting major league pitching prospect, Joe Black).  Sure enough, on November 22, 1954, the Pirates draft Clemente #1 and the Dodgers lose the chance to have one of the greatest players in major league history, a future Hall-of-Famer, on their roster.  Wearing #13 for the first seven weeks of his career with the Pirates, Clemente becomes #21 (there are twenty-one letters in Roberto Clemente Walker) when outfielder Earl Smith is optioned to New Orleans of the Southern Association ... it is a number that Pittsburgh will retire in 1973.  Learning to deal with the colder climes of the United States, learning English as a second language, and the racial animus that is sent his way, Roberto plays 18 seasons for the Pirates (and during the winter months, can often be found lending his talents to the Crabbers, Criollos de Caguas, and the San Juan Senadores).  He also finds time to serve as a reserve in the United States Marine Corps from 1959 to 1964 (he will be a private first class, he will be inducted into the Corps Sports Hall-of-Fame in 2003), and to find the female love of his life, Vera Zabala (the pair will marry on November 16, 1964 and have three children, Roberto Jr., Luis Roberto, and Roberto Enrique).

Rookie

Private Clemente

The Clemente Family

A bad team for years, the presence of Clemente elevates baseball in Pittsburgh as he shapes eighteen years playing for the Pirates into a Hall-of-Fame resume that will include hitting the only documented walk-off, inside-the-ballpark grand slam in modern MLB history, being chosen as an MLB all-star 15 times, winning World Series championships twice (1960 and 1971), winning the National League MVP award in 1966 (by hitting .317 with 29 homeruns and 119 RBIs), being named the World Series MVP for 1971 (hitting .414 for the Series), being a Gold Glove winner for his defensive prowess in right field for twelve consecutive seasons (1961-1972, most hits in Pirates history in two consecutive games (ten) sharing the record for most wins with somebody named Willie Mays), being chosen as the National League Player-of-the-Month three times (May 1960, May 1967, and July 1969) taking the National League batting title four times (1961, 1964, 1965, and 1967), leding the National League in hits twice (1964, 1967), finishing his career batting .317, making the 3,000 hit club by hitting a double off John Matlock of the Mets on his final career at-bat, hitting 249 career homeruns, knocking in 1,305 runs, most triples in a Pirate's game (three) and tying Hall-of-Famer Honus Wagner for playing the most games as a Pirate (2,433).  Sustained brilliance for almost two decades!

At Bat

Running The Bases

Golden Glove

And in the off season, along with serving in the Marine Corps reserves and playing winter ball, Clemente becomes heavily involved in charity work.  When a 6.3 earthquake hits Managua, Nicaragua on December 23, 1972, devastating the country's capital city and killing approximately 5,000 individuals, Clemente uses his wealth and fame immediately to send relief supplies.  Three flights of supplies sent, Roberto hears that his largesse instead of going to those impacted by the earthquake has made its way into the pockets of Nicaragua politicians, he decides to oversee his charity sendings himself.  Spending $4,000 to rent a freighter converted four-engine Douglas DC-7 from the American Air Express Leasing Company of 27-year-old Puerto Rican, Arthur J. Rivera, unaware that the plane had a non-fatal taxiway accident just 29 days before, and has had inadequate inspections and fixes on its propellers and engines to repair the damages.  After loading up the plane with cargo (investigators will have the plane being over-loaded by 4,200 pounds), on a dark, moonless New Year's Eve night (Sunday, 12/31/1972), at about 9:11, the plane taxis to Runway 7 for its 9:20 scheduled takeoff from Puerto Rico's Isla Verde International (visibility is 10 miles).  Five people are aboard ... piloting the plane is seasoned flier Jerry Hill, in the co-pilot's seat is Arthur Rivera (though he is not certified to fly planes with Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone engines, such as the DC-7 he is in), mechanic Francisco Matias, moonlighting from another airline for the extra pocket change is the flight engineer (he will see the plane for the first time the day before the craft's last flight), with Clemente friend Angel Lozano (playing winter ball in Puerto Rico, Montreal Expos pitcher Tom Walker volunteers to also go on the flight, but Clemente tells him to go out News Year Eve partying instead) and Roberto in the back as passengers (despite Clemente's father, his wife, and his son, Roberto Jr. all having premonitions about the flight, as does Roberto himself who dreams a few nights before his journey that he is overlooking his own funeral).  A flight scheduled to reach Managua in about four hours, the DC-7 instead crashes into the sea only a few minutes later (just a couple miles out to sea in an area near Puerto Rico's Pinones State Forest), suffering the catastrophic loss of inboard engine #2 (and perhaps the #3 engine two), and killing all five people aboard (only Hill's body will ever be found and because of bad weather, it takes searchers until January 4, 1973 to find the crash site, with wreckage strewn over four acres of ocean floor at a depth of roughly 100 to 130 feet).  Clemente is only 38 at the time of his death.

DC-7

Pinones Beach

In death, Roberto's deeds in life seem to grow larger and larger year after year and as of 2022, he is the athlete that has more statues and monuments dedicated to him in the entire world, with dozens of tributes in several countries and numerous streets, schools, public parks, bridges, buildings, and sporting arenas named in honor of Pittsburgh's #21 (which will be retired by the Pirates on April 6, 1973), as of July 2018, there will even be an asteroid named in Clemente's honor.  In 2012, the Puerto Rico Professional Baseball League will rename itself the Liga de Beisbol Professional Roberto Clemente and #21 is retired for the entire league.  Major League Baseball will waive its waiting period and vote Clemente into it's Cooperstown Hall-of-Fame on March 20, 1973, with Roberto receiving 393 votes out of 420, 92.7% (hard to believe he didn't get all 420 of the votes that were available ... because the Hall uses Roberto Walker Clemente, instead of the proper Spanish format of Roberto Clemente Walker, as of 2000, Clemente actually has two plaques in the Hall-of-Fame, the original now graces the "sandlot kids clubhouse" area, while the corrected plaque is displayed alongside the other greats of the game the hall honors).  He also is inducted into the World Sports Humanitarian Hall in 1995.  And so far, the United States government has awarded Roberto it's Congressional Gold Medal, Presidential Citizens Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (along with giving the baseball player a spot on one of it's postage stamps on August 17, 1984).   There is even an initiative to have the Catholic Church canonize him in 2017, and in 2022, the Puerto Rican government officially declares Clemente a procer (National Hero).  But maybe baseball has the best honor (in 2022, on September 15th, MLB celebrates across the league, Roberto Clemente, and everyone wears #21 ... a movement to retire the number across baseball has thus far been shut down, with the Jackie Robinson Family only wanting the honor for Jackie's 42), renaming the Commissioner's Award for outstanding play married to community service, the annual Roberto Clemente Award (some of winners have been Willie Mays, Brooks Robinson, Al Kaline, Willie Stargell, Lou Brock, Pete Rose, Rod Carew, Steve Garvey, Garry Maddox, Dale Murphy, Gary Carter, Cal Ripken, Jr., Ozzie Smith, Kirby Puckett, Sammy Sosa, Tony Gwynn, Curt Schilling, John Smoltz, Craig Biggio, Albert Pujols, Derek Jeter, Clayton Kershaw, and Justin Turner).

Clemente Statue In Pittsburg

One of a kind both on the field and off ... and still missed.  But don't take the stats or my word for it.  Listen to what others have said about #21.  From Wikipedia:

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking on July 9, 1961 with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports editor Al Abrams, said "They are honoring a great one in Clemente. I have been watching his career ever since he joined the Pittsburgh club. Roberto should wind up as one of the all-time stars before he is through."
• Willie Mays, while fielding questions from reporters following the announcement of his election to the Hall of Fame on January 23, 1979, called Clemente the best player he ever saw, other than himself. Mays reiterated his assessment of Clemente on January 26, 1979, stating that, "He could do anything with a bat and in the field." Mays has repeatedly through the years stood by his statements regarding Clemente.
• Barry Bonds, speaking in 1992, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, "When I’m done, I want people to say, 'He’s the best.' Right field belongs to Roberto Clemente, center field belongs to Willie Mays. I want left field to belong to me."
• Sandy Koufax, interviewed shortly after the selection of MLB's All-Century Team (from which Clemente was conspicuously absent), was asked to assess fellow honorees. Dubbing Mays the greatest player he'd ever seen and Aaron the greatest hitter, Koufax said that this "raises the question of where you put Clemente; he's right there." This is consistent with Koufax's 1965 magazine article ranking Clemente just behind Aaron at the top of his "toughest batter" list, while also emphasizing the former's immense power. "The longest ball I ever saw hit to the opposite field was hit off me by Clemente at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1961. It was a fastball on the outside corner, and he drove it out of the park – not just over the fence, he knocked it way out. I didn’t think a right-handed batter could hit it out of the field just at that point but Clemente did." Moreover, it appears that, by his own estimation, the longest blast ever yielded by Koufax in any direction was launched by Clemente at Forbes Field on May 31, 1964.
• Duke Snider wrote that "Carl Furillo was the best right fielder I ever saw until Roberto Clemente came along, and Clemente was possibly the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen. And just think that we could have had Clemente in our outfield."
• Sparky Anderson, in his eponymous 1990 memoir, writes, "Walking away… Roberto Clemente is my premier outfielder – period. I saw more of Clemente than I wanted to when I managed against him. He could hit for power when he had to. When he wanted to slap it to right, he shot the ball like a bullet. Plus, he could fly. When he hit a ground ball to the infield, he was flying to first. That fielder better not be napping. Clemente was a remarkable man because at the ages of thirty-four and thirty-five, he played like he was twenty-one. I never saw anything like it. [...] That’s how I’ll always remember him – as a man who played with youthful energy."
• Dave Bristol (Anderson's predecessor as Reds' manager), speaking in May 1967, said "The best player in the game today. I’d have to take him over Aaron and all the rest. [...] I've only been in the league a little over a year and a half, but I don't think I've ever seen him make an easy out." Quoted in September 1969, Bristol reiterated, "Clemente is the best player I’ve ever seen. I said so when I first came into the league and I still say so."
• Paul Richards, taking part in a poll of MLB general managers at the 1967 winter meetings (speaking as the then-Atlanta Braves GM), said, "I don’t know how a man can be running away from the ball and hit it into the upper deck. I shudder to think what he would do if he stood at the plate on every pitch and defied the pitcher to pitch to him. Clemente’s a one-man show as far as I’m concerned. He’s not only the best today; he’s one of the best that’s ever played baseball. He’s got power, and he’s so fast that any bouncing ball is a potential base hit. He can hit the ball into the upper deck in anybody’s ballpark – right field or left field. He’s got one of the strongest and most accurate throwing arms I’ve ever seen. He can throw from the most awkward and seemingly impossible positions. He can throw people out at second base on balls that would be triples to any other right fielder. And the thing about this fellow is that he actually breaks many of the fundamental rules of hitting. Many times he sticks his fanny out – but he still manages to hit the ball with authority. To me he is one of the most amazing athletes of all time."
• Lou Boudreau, speaking in 1964, said that Clemente was "one of the worst-looking great hitters I’ve seen. Everything is a line drive. There isn’t one phase of baseball in which he doesn’t excel."
• Lou Brock, speaking with reporters in June 1967, explained, "I'm looking at the best hitter in baseball," in response to queries regarding the "rapt attention" he had given one of Clemente's at-bats. In July 1980, Brock told The New Pittsburgh Courier, "Willie Mays was the greatest player I ever saw. Clemente was second and Hank Aaron was the greatest slugger. But pound for pound, play-for-play, Willie Mays could do it all well. You can name four or five in what I call that elite category."
• Clete Boyer, circa 2002, said that Clemente was "by far the greatest defensive right fielder who ever lived, but because he played in Pittsburgh, he didn't get the credit he deserved. I played with Roger Maris and against Al Kaline, and they were both great right fielders. But they weren't in Clemente's class."
• Smoky Burgess, looking back in 1978 at his long MLB career, told former Pittsburgh Press sports editor Les Biederman, "The one player who impressed me the most was Roberto Clemente, both as a man and as an athlete. He was one of the nicest individuals and just tremendous as a ball player. I never saw a better player, although I always regarded Ted Williams as the best hitter."
• Tommy John considered Clemente one of the most difficult hitters he ever faced as a pitcher. "He hit the same way I pitched: with his head, outthinking you."
• Tom Seaver, speaking with Phil Pepe, circa 1997, said, "I had a kind of dual relationship with a Roberto Clemente, a Henry Aaron, a Willie Mays. You watch them and you appreciate their professional approach and their God-given expertise of the game. Then you're competing against them. [...] Clemente and Mays and Aaron. These are the guys who, when you weren’t pitching, you just sat there and watched them play, watched what they did. Anybody who watched the ball when Willie Mays was on the field was crazy. And Clemente was very much the same."
• Rusty Staub, speaking in April 1968, said, "Clemente has fantastic power, fantastic speed, a fantastic ability to hit the ball to the opposite field, a fantastic arm – he is the complete ballplayer. Roberto is not merely good at everything, but great at everything. He just beats you, and beats you at everything you can do in baseball. I know of no other player comparable to him." Interviewed in the fall of 1971, Staub added, "Clemente is the greatest defensive outfielder I've ever seen. I’ve never been on his ball club and I don’t know what he’s like as a team player, but this guy can do just everything to beat you – run, hit, throw, catch, and just kill you with power. He’s the best player I’ve seen in the big leagues."
• Coot Veal, one of Clemente's teammates on the 1960 Pirates, told Danny Peary, "There were many guys on the Pirates who had leadership qualities: Roberto Clemente, Dick Groat, Don Hoak, Vernon Law, even Smoky Burgess. Clemente led with his play. There wasn’t a better player than Roberto Clemente. Clemente, Mantle and Kaline were the best all-around players I ever saw, and I think Clemente was the best."
• Eddie Yost, baseball's onetime "Walking Man", when asked to name the best players of his era, replied, "Yogi... and all the Yankees, for that matter. But I saw Clemente when I was coaching for the Mets. I believe he was the best I saw."
• Dick Young, following Game 3 of the 1971 World Series, wrote, "The best damn ballplayer in the World Series – maybe in the whole world – is Roberto Clemente and, as far as I’m concerned, they can give him the automobile right now. Maybe some guys hit the ball farther, and some throw it harder, and one or two run faster, although I doubt that, but nobody puts it all together like Roberto. [...] Clemente is a 37-year-old roadrunner. He has spent 18 summers of those years playing baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He has batted over .300 thirteen times, and for the last three seasons, in his decrepitude, he has hit .345, .352, .341. But everybody has numbers. Don’t mind the numbers. Just watch how Roberto Clemente runs 90 feet the next time he hits the ball back to the pitcher and ask yourself if you work at your job that way. Every time I see Roberto Clemente play ball, I think of the times I’ve heard about how ‘they’ dog it, and I want to vomit."

Clemente Day

Roberto

ARTICLE WILL BE MODIFIED NEXT YEAR TO ALSO INCLUDE THE RICKY NELSON NEW YEAR'S EVE PLANE CRASH

      

    

         

FIRE AT THE IROQUOIS THEATER

12/30/1903 - For the third since it's incorporation in 1837, horrific, out-of-control fire brings tragedy to citizens of Chicago (the other two fires are the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, purportedly started by Mrs. O'Leary's cow, and The Little Big Fire of 1874) in a conflagration known as the Iroquois Theatre Fire, still the deadliest theater fire and deadliest single-building fire in United States history.

Inside, After The Fire

Located at 24-28 West Randolph Street, between Chicago's State Street and Dearborn Street, specifically at a site it is believed will attract women in the city on day trips because of it's proximity to the police-patrolled Loop shopping region (the syndicate that bankrolls the project gets the location absolutely right and after the fire the theater reopens as the Colonial Theatre in 1904, before being demolished and rebuilt as the Oriental Theatre in 1926, and in 2019, the Oriental Theatre morphs into its current entertainment venue, the James M. Neaderlander Theatre) the Iroquois Theater is one of the first commissions of 29-year-old architect Benjamin Henry Marshall and is meant to be a showpiece for the city, and opening on November 23, 1903, for just over a month, it is exactly that ... a structure that the drama critic of the New York Clipper (a predecessor of Variety magazine), Walter K. Hill, will describe as "most beautiful" and that "few theaters in America can rival its architectural.

Marshall

Marshall's design consists of a theater with a capacity for 1,602 theater-goers spread over three audience levels ... the Main Floor (the orchestra section) contained about 700 seats, along with two boxes on each side of the stage and was on the same level as the foyer and Grand Stair Hall, the second level contained over 400 seats, along with two more boxes and was known as the "dress circle" or "first balcony, while the third level of about 500 seats was called the "gallery."  For the public, there is only one entrance.  Off the foyer, a broad stairway allowing patrons to "see and be seen" led to the balcony section, and to the gallery section too, ignoring city fire ordinances requiring separate stairways and exits for each balcony ... a design made for tragedy in which the patrons exiting the gallery level will be blocked by the audience leaving the first balcony, and in turn, those folks will be blocked by orchestra level patrons making their way into the theater's foyer.  The backstage area of the theater was unusually large for the time and consisted of five levels of dressing rooms with an elevator available for transporting actors to the stage floor and a fly gallery where stage scenery was hung.  And of course the Fates are tempted by calling the theater "absolutely fireproof," though the location is lacking a stage draft shaft, wood trim is abundantly present on all levels, there are no sprinklers, no alarms or telephones linking the theater to any of the city's fire departments, and should they arrive, no water connections for the fire fighters to attach their hoses to, and on-site, there are only six "Kilfyre" fire extinguishers (2' by 24' tin tubes filled with three pounds of white powder, mostly sodium bicarbonate) meant to be hurled into the base of any conflagration ... deficiencies that are all duly noted by the Chicago Fire Department that expects the building's "fire warden" to rectify. 

The Iroquois Theater

Theater Layout

Main Foyer

Box office disappointing since its opening in November due to labor unrest, bad weather, and the busy of the holiday season, on a cold Wednesday afternoon, December 30, 1903, the theater presents a holiday matinee of the Drury Lane London hit musical, "Mr. Blue Beard," featuring actor Dan McAvoy as Bluebeard and comedian Eddie Foy in the role of Sister Anne.  Every seat and more sold out, about 2,200 patrons squeeze into the theater, occupying all the seats, the standing room only sections of the structure, and some even sitting in the aisles.  At about 3:15 in the afternoon, shortly after the second act of the musical begins, with a chorus line of eight men and eight women performing a number called "In The Pale Moonlight."  Blue-tinted spotlights illuminating the stage to suggest evening, in the flies above the stage, a spotlight short circuits, flinging sparks out into the air, several of which cause a muslin curtain to catch on fire.  Rushing to put out the conflagration, a stagehand tries to put out the fire with one of the Kilfyre cannisters, but fails as the flames jump to the fly gallery high above the stage, where it moves into an area containing several thousand square feet of highly flammable painted canvas scenery despite efforts to lower an asbestos curtain made of the fire retardant and wood pulp (rendering the safety feature worthless) ... but the curtain never gets it's chance to contain the fire when it can not be fully lowered and catches on light reflector sticking out from under the theater's proscenium arch.  About to go on stage, Foy realizes what is going on overhead, and as flaming debris starts to fall from above, the comedian puts his son in the hands of a stagehand and then tells the frightened audience not to panic, fruitlessly (the comedian stays on stage as long as is possible, and then, barely makes it through the dressing rooms and out a back door).

Foy - Normal And As Sister Anne

The Panic Begins

Seconds to minutes, total panic begins among the crowd as people discover escape after escape cut off ... fire exits hidden by drapes on the north side of the building can't be opened because they are kept closed by unfamiliar bascule locks (saving the lives of many, former Chicago Cubs player Frank Houseman ignores an usher and breaks open one of the locks and opens an exit, while nearby, his friend, outfielder Charlie Dexter, opens another), people a trapped in dead ends trying to open doors with windows in them that are actually just windows, trying to escape out the west stage door, people find their flight prevented by the door opening inward (a situation that a passing railroad agent rectifies by taking the door off its hinges with tools the man always carries), back door opened, the rush of oxygen sucked into the theater creates a giant fireball that heads for the open vents behind the dress circle and gallery 50 feet away (the vents above the stage are nailed or wired shut), incinerating anything flammable on the two levels, including patrons trapped there, and those that survive the fireball are prevented from using the foyer exits by the stairs being blocked by iron grates (closed during performances to prevent patrons from leaving their cheap seats for more expensive ones on levels below the areas will become death traps where hundreds of people pile up against the blockades and are trampled, crushed, or asphyxiated), and on the north side of the theater the flight of the patrons to safety forces them on to unfinished fire escapes over an alley known as Couch Place, that come off the walls or cause those fleeing to either fall from or jump (the bodies of the first jumpers will cushion the falls of some of the patrons that follow, and a few of the lucky are saved when a group of students from the Northwestern University building to the north of the theater, create a makeshift bridge of a ladder and several boards that crosses the the building gap to safety).

Foy Tries To Keep Everyone Calm

Panic!

Up In Flames

Above Couch Place

Escape

With the new theater having no fire alarm box or telephones, a stagehand is ordered to run to the nearest fire station, CFD Engine 13, to get help.  On the way to the fire, a member of the crew activates a fire alarm at 3:33 in the afternoon, and soon fire units from throughout the city are headed for the Iroquois.  Upon arrival, most of the firefighters' efforts go into getting to the people trapped on the fire escapes over Couch Place, but not much is achieved in the dark, narrow icy alley filled by clouds of smoke; the department's aerial ladders can't be used, and the darkness makes it impossible for trapped patrons to see the black nets that are stretched out for jumpers.  At the same time, members of the Chicago police force beginning arriving, drawn by an officer calling in the fire from a police box on Randolph Street, and the cacophony of cop whistles that begin calling from the area (thirty police matrons are soon on the scene to deal with the huge amount of female victims).  But for most, the help is already too late.  Though many make it to safety, hundreds do not.  Crushed to death or killed by fire, smoke, and gases, the disaster kills over 600 individuals (by contrast, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that lasted three days and burnt down 3.3 square miles of the city causes only 300 deaths) and injuries another 250 individuals; in front of some of the blocked exits, the crush of bodies reaches ten feet high (while their souls are seared forever from the experience, the employees of the Iroquois get off lucky ... of the over 300 actors, dancers, and stagehands at the theater on 12/30, only five perish, one actor with a bit part in the musical, two female attendants, an usher, and Nellie Reed, an aerialist about to fly out over the audience on trolley wire, showering the crowd with pink carnations ... trapped above the stage while awaiting her entrance, the 24-year-old falls to the stage and dies in a hospital three days later).  Normally a restaurant, on 12/30/1903, the diner next door to the Iroquois becomes a morgue and a hospital as bodies are taken out of the theater.     

Looking Down On The Destruction

Picking Through The Rubble

Death Seats

Nellie Reed

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the finger pointing, followed quickly by public outrage, begins almost immediately.  After the Chicago Tribune runs an article documenting safety regulations that had been flaunted by the theater (lack of adequate fire alarms, automatic sprinklers, marked exits, suitable fire extinguishers, and two large rooftop flues that could have vented heat and smoke being boarded over), the theater owners, the architect, and city officials all claim innocence as to what happened and claim other folks as the culprits in the disaster, with Will Davis & Harry Powers (the owners) and Benjamin Marshall (the architect) blaming the victims themselves for causing the horror with their own panic and not following directions.  As a result of no one accepting the blame, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., orders all of the city's theaters closed for six weeks while each establishment proves their fire prevention equipment and procedures are actually viable (and other theaters also take note of the holocaust, with many establishments in New York City and in Europe doing away with selling standing room only tickets) ... all theater exists must be clearly marked and access doors must be configured to open outward and inward.  Pound of flesh sought by politicians and the public, criminal charges are brought against the mayor himself, Chicago building commissioner George Williams, fire chief William H. Musham, building inspector Edward Loughlin, Iroquois fireman William Sallers, theater owner and manager Davis (co-owner Powers somehow escapes charges, as do usher supervisor George Dusenberry, and business manager Thomas Noonan), light operator William McMullen, and stage carpenter James Cummings.  Deep pockets used, the accused hire a cadre of highly successful attorneys, led by Levy Mayer, that use loopholes in the law, inadequacies in the city's building codes and safety ordinances, and three years of stall tactics to get numerous charges dropped, and when he actually is brought to trial, owner Davis' acquittal.  In the end, no one is ever found criminally liable for the fire and only a handful of payouts are ever made to the victim's families.

Light That Started The Fire

Next Day's Front Page Of The Dead

Mayor Harrison

Davis

As for the theater itself, work to restore the building begins before 1904 is more than a few days old, and nine months later the building opens up again as Hyde & Behman's Music Hall, a title it will enjoy for only a year, reopening as the Colonial Theater in October of 1905, with actress Fay Templeton is the George M. Cohan hit musical, "Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway."  The site will be The Colonial Theater for twenty more years.  Demolished in 1925, it is rebuilt and opens as a movie palace in 1926 and will screen movies, and the occasional play, for the Windy City for decades, finally closing in 1971.  While the theater goes dark, the structure's lobby is refitted as a retail television and radio store before the site gets another face lift in the 1990s, becoming a live theater venue again as the Oriental-Ford Center for the Arts, before being rechristened the James M. Nederlander Theatre on February 8, 2019.  Entertaining the citizens of Chicago for over a hundred years, among the actors and actresses to grace the boards at 24 West Randolph Street in the city's Loop District are The Gumm Sisters, featuring 12-year-old Frances (on her way to becoming the legendary Judy Garland), Duke Ellington and his orchestra, the Marx Brothers, Penn & Teller, the Three Stooges, Sophie Tucker, Henny Youngman, George Jessel, Ann-Margaret, Fanny Brice, George Benson, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Alice Faye, Ella Fitzgerald, Jean Harlow, Eddie Cantor, Billie Holiday, Eartha Kitt, Al Jolson, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra.  And sadly, sometimes those performers and their audiences have been joined by the shades of those that died on the long ago, cold and fiery afternoon of 12/30/1903.     

The Colonial

Inside The Nederlander

Iroquois Fire Memorial

Some Of The Dead

 

     

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DIAN FOSSEY'S MURDER

12/26/1985 - After years of growing tensions between gorilla poachers and primatologist researcher and conservationist, Dian Fossey, tragedy strikes in the mountains of Rwanda's Virunga National Park with the discovery of the 53-year-old scientist's machete bludgeoned body.

Fossey

The daughter of a fashion model (mother Hazel Kidd) and a real estate agent and businessman (George Edward Fossey III), Dian is born in Fairfax, California (a suburb of the city of San Francisco) on January 16, 1932 (she will be an "only" child).  Not brought up in a stable household, when Dian is still a youngster of only three her parents separate and then divorce due to George having drinking problems and troubles with the law.  When she is only six, her mother marries a wealthy local builder, Richard Price, and contact with her father, George, is discouraged by her mother and soon ends completely (though not by George's choosing).  Never accepted as her step-father's daughter, her upbringing in the Price household is vacant of love, but full of rules to follow that create a lonely and very insecure little girl ... she can not eat dinner with her mother or step-father (her companion for supper is either no-one, or the family's housekeeper until she is ten), there are rigorous schedules that need to adhered to, grades and friendships are closely monitored, and after her goldfish passes away when she is six, there are to be no more pets in her life with the Prices (even when a school pal offers the youngster a free pet hamster).  It is a childhood that leaves deep scars of insecurity.  Her overwhelming love of all types of animals though can't remain thwarted forever, and at six, as a means of getting her out from under foot, the Prices allow her to take riding lessons at the St. Francis Riding Academy, and as her love for horses grows (she becomes an excellent rider and will receive a equestrian letter from Lowell High School for being on the riding team and placing in a number of local and regional shows), she starts dreaming of becoming a veterinarian.

 

Young Fossey

Fossey And Friend

Supporting herself by working as a clerk at a White Front department store, doing laboratory work, and working as a machinist at a local factory, Fossey's vet dreams are done in by lack of aptitude for chemistry and physics, and in her second year at the University of California, Davis, she fails out of the school's pre-veterinary program.  Changing course, she transfers to San Jose State, becomes a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and changes her major to the study of occupational therapy, earning her bachelor's degree in 1954.  Following graduation, Fossey interns at various California hospitals working with tuberculosis patients.  Her love of horses draws her to Kentucky in 1955, and there, she takes a job as an occupational therapist working at the Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital of Louisville, while living on the farm (and doing daily chores) of her new co-workers and friends, Mary White Henry and her husband, Dr. Michael J. Henry.  Money still extremely tight, she passes on joining her buddies for a trip to Africa, but seed planted, in 1963, she borrows $8,000 from a local bank, pulls her life savings out of her account, and signs up for a seven week visit of the continent.  Arriving in Nairobi, Kenya, where she stays at actor William Holden's Treetops Hotel, she is introduced by the actor to man who will serve as her guide adventuring through Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), John Alexander.  Alexander's safari takes Fossey to Africa's largest national park, Tsavo, the flamingo viewing paradise of saltwater Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater (and it's vast abundance of wildlife), Olduvai Gorge, where the Louis and Mary Leakey are beginning to find early hominid fossils capable of giving scientists a new look at the ancient ancestors of man (her first meeting with the man who will change her life does not go well ... touring Leakey's dig site for fourteen shillings, Fossey becomes so excited to see the scientist's latest find, that she slips on a steep slope and falls into the giraffe fossil excavation, breaks the valuable find and her ankle, and from pain and embarrassment, vomits all over the place) and Mt. Mikeno in the Congo (where she will see wild mountain gorillas in their habitat for the first time).  Seven weeks in Africa over too quickly for Fossey's liking, she returns to her job in Louisville, where she writes three articles for the local Courier-Journal newspaper about her recent adventures.

Treetops Hotel, Kenya

The Leakeys

Mount Mikeno

Back in Louisville, three years after her African safari, Fossey takes in a local lecture by Leakey and reintroduces herself to the scientist.  Discussing her trip, Leakey hits on the idea of Fossey studying mountain gorillas like Jane Goodall is working in the wilds of Tanzania with chimpanzees, funded by money Leakey will set up from various benefactors, the chief of which is National Geographic Magazine.  Green light for a total change in her life, Fossey quits her job, studies Swahili and primatology for the eight months it takes to get her visa and the funding approved (including having her appendix removed after Leakey suggests the surgery to determine how much the young woman wants the job, never dreaming she will actually have the surgery he was only kidding about).  Returning to Africa in December of 1966, Fossey sets off from Nairobi for the Congo in a old canvas-topped Land Rover loaded with supplies she names "Lily" (first visiting Jane Goodall at her Gombe Stream Research Centre to observe her techniques studying chimps).  Setting up her first gorilla studying camp (with the help of photographer Alan Root, who will also teach Fossey how to track and identify the gorillas in the wild) at Kabara, in the shadow of Mount Mikeno.  Basically alone in a camp of tents (Fossey's abode is a 7-by-10 foot tent that serves as her bedroom, bathroom, clothes drying area, and office, with meals prepared out of a run-down nearby wooden building) and eating canned supplies (two locals are hired to help around the camp and she is also joined from time-to-time by Root's native guide, Senwekwe ... once a month she hikes down the mountain to where "Lily" is parked and then makes a two-hour drive to the village of Kikumba to restock her supplies), two days after Root leaves Fossey to her studies, ten minutes into hiking through the jungle, Fossey comes across a male gorilla sunning itself and her research begins in earnest (the various gorillas, living in three different groups, will be identified by the nose prints Fossey first sketches and then photographs).

Root & Hippo Pal

Setting Up Camp

Senwekwe

Fossey's study though barely starts before turmoil in the region (Lt. General Joseph-Desire Mobutu, commander-in-chief of the Congo army revolts against the national government and declares himself President) shuts it down.  In July of 1967, returning to camp from one of her jungle treks with Sanwekwe, Fossey finds herself the unwelcome guest of armed soldiers that escort her off the mountain and down to the military base of Rumangabo (2.2 miles north of the headquarters for Virunga National Park).  Captive for two weeks, Fossey gets out of her predicament by bribing her guards to take her to     Kisoro, Uganda so she can properly register her Land Rover.  Greed the key to her escape, arriving in Kisoro she immediately goes to the town's Travellers Rest Hotel and calls the Ugandan military, who arrest Fossey's escorts (though she only discusses the matter reluctantly, during her captivity she is sexually abused by her guards).  Interrogated in Kisoro and then at Kigali, the capital of Rawanda, Fossey meets with Leakey in Nairobi, and despite warnings by the U.S. Embassy not to return to the mountains, the decide to set up operations on the Rawanda side of the Virunga's.  Helped by American expatriate Rosamund Carr and Belgian transplant Alyette DeMunck, Fossey establishes the Karisoke ("Kari" for the first four letters of 14,787 foot Mt. Karisimbi <the 11th highest mountain in Africa>, which overlooks the camp from the south, and, "soke" for the last four letters of 12,175 foot Mt. Bisoke, which overlooks the site from the north) Research Center in a meadow saddle between two volcanos at and elevation of 9,800 feet (the study area will cover 9.7 square miles) in the Rawandan province of Ruhengeri.  Soon she is known to the locals as Nyiramacibiri, "the woman who lives alone on the mountain."

Mount Karisimbi

Mount Bisoke

And So It Begins!

Using techniques she developed working with autistic children in Kentucky and imitating the behaviors of the mountain gorillas. Fossey over time is allowed by the animals to observe them up close and personnel.  Thought at one time to be savage, man-killing beasts, Fossey discovers the gorillas are anything but that unless put upon and having their families threatened, observing the animals daily interactions, she makes discoveries about how female gorillas transfer from group to group over decades of time (with breaks for fund raising lectures and academic studies, Fossey will be among the gorillas for the next 18 years), some of the many meanings of gorilla vocalizations, the hierarchies and social relationships gorillas develop within their groups, the infanticide the gorillas sometimes resort to, the daily diets of the creatures and how they recycle the nutrients of the area.  Research and observations that are brought to the attention of the public through lectures (she will become an associate professor at Cornell University from 1981 to 1983) and public appearances, Fossey articles in National Geographic (Nat. Geo. photographer Bob Campbell will begin documenting her work for the magazine in 1968, the pair will have a romance, but it fails to be long lasting, as is the case with other relationships Fossey has with the men in her life), and Fossey's bestselling memoir of her time among the animals, "Gorillas in the Mist" (and the book's subsequent transformation into an Academy Award nominated movie starring Sigourney Weaver as Fossey).  Brought back from the edge of extinction by Fossey's efforts (from a population of about 250 gorillas when Fossey arrives, the gorilla population in the Virunga area is now in the neighborhood of 1,000, while the research center Fossey began grows from two tents into a million dollar destination for primate students, scientists, and interested tourists), by 1980, when she earns a PhD in zoology from Great Britain's Cambridge University (she studies under the direction of Dr. Robert Hinde, the same man who was Jane Goodall's advanced studies supervisor while she matriculated at the university), she will be recognized as the world's leading authority on the physiology and behavior of the mountain gorilla. 

Campbell

Fossey & Friends

Cover Story

There is a price to pay however for the closeness she is able to gain studying the mountain gorillas and keeping them from becoming extinct (thanks to Fossey's efforts, Rwanda remains the only country in the world where its population of mountain gorillas is actually increasing instead of declining).  Use to bonding with the primates, she has more trouble dealing with the human needs and personalities of the students and scientists that come and go over the years, retreating before her gruff personality (her flaring temper is legendary and she does not suffer those she believes are fools lightly, traits fueled by her alcohol intake).  And there are even worse problems dealing with the local natives, some of which, to make ends meet, are also animal poachers (hunting is not allowed in the national park, but takes place anyway, sometimes carried out by the same personnel that is suppose to be preventing it).  Practicing a type of tit-for-tat, fire-with-fire approach against her enemies that Fossey calls "active conservation," she and her small staff will set up poacher patrols, chase cattle away (or kill them) that are trespassing on the range of the mountain gorillas (cattle will also be held for ransom and sometimes decorated with spray paint), destroy traps (in one four-month period during 1979, Fossey's four-man patrols l979 will do away with 987 traps, while during the same period, their counterparts with the national park fail to destroy even one, and in a part of the park that Fossey doesn't patrol, several gorillas are killed and the elephant population is virtually eradicated for their ivory), burn hunting camps to the ground, capture, beat, and humiliate poachers (she will even write of torturing one captured poacher by whipping the man with nettles), and keep census counts of the animals in the region, all the while as she lobbies for expanded protected habitat for her gorillas and the Rwandan government enforcing its poacher laws better.  In one incident, when a baby gorilla is kidnapped for sale to a zoo, Fossey ends the upcoming transaction by luring away the young child of the Watusi tribesman responsible (and she will also stoke the fears of the locals by pretending to be a witch doctor ... wearing face masks during treks through the jungle and unnerving the locals with firecrackers, small toys, and magic tricks she buys in England and the United States.

The Banyarwanda Of Rwanda

Fossey And Friends

By 1977, Fossey is spending more time protecting the regions gorillas, rather than studying them, a situation which garners even more tension in the area with the death of 12-year-old Digit (a damaged finger on his right hand leads to his name), who dies defending his group (he is a member of Study Group Four) when a team of poachers stumbles on the primates while clearing their antelope trap lines in the region.  Fossey's favorite gorilla since their introduction to each other in 1967 when Digit is only five, the heroic gorilla dies from multiple spear stab wounds, but keeps the poachers and their dogs at bay (he will kill one dog before going down from his wounds) long enough to let the other thirteen members of his group to escape the area (the poachers show their disdain for Digit's defense of his fellow gorillas by cutting off his head (a trophy worth twenty United States dollars) and turning his dismembered hands into ashtrays, Fossey will say of the death as the, "saddest event in all my years of sharing the daily lives of mountain gorilla." (Famous by this time, Digit's death is reported by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Nightly News).  One of the poachers caught, with nettles at the ready he gives up the names of his associates and eventually three of the men will serve jail time for the killing.  Trying to create the semblance of a silver lining out of the death, Fossey uses Digit's death to create the Digit Fund (now the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International) in 1978, a charity organization for the prevention of further poaching of the Virunga gorillas and a source for monies to fund anti-poaching patrols.  Distraught at the death of Digit and other gorillas she is studying (two young gorillas named Coco and Pucker are grabbed by poachers working for Cologne, Germany's zoo, where they die nine months after going into captivity, the silverback leader of one group of gorillas, named Uncle Bert for Fossey's uncle is shot through the heart trying to protect his young son Kweli from capture, as is Kweli's mother Macho, and grazed by a bullet, Kweli dies a slow and painful death from gangrene caused by his wounding), in 1980, Fossey leaves Rawanda and moves to Ithaca, New York to teach at Cornell University (where she also spends time finishing her book, Gorillas In The Mist).  The highlands of Rwanda and her beloved gorillas though are calling out to her soul during the length of her absence, and in 1983, she returns to her research center ... and her wars start up all over again.

Digit And A Friend

Pushing Her Book

Confined to a quiet Christmas in camp due to health issues involving emphysema brought on by years of chain smoking and her continued drinking, Fossey is looking forward to being out with her gorillas in 1986 when she will turn 54, but 54 never comes for Nyiramacibiri.  In the early morning of December 27th, Fossey's longtime cook and houseman, a middle-aged Rwandan named Kanyaragana walks up the short trail to his boss' cabin to she if she would like breakfast.  Finding the front door surprisingly open, he pokes his head inside and discovers the area in disarray of disheveled floor matting, tipped over furniture, and open drawers everywhere.  Looking into the bedroom he discovers something even worse, the panga (the African version of a machete with a two-foot long blade) mutilated body of Fossey (still wearing her typical bedroom attire of long johns, a sweater, and slippers, the primatologist is face up on the floor next to double bed, dead from multiple blade strikes that have split her skull in two), with a pistol and an ammunition cartridge near her right hand and the murder weapon under the bed (because of the gruesomeness of the scene, no autopsy is performed by the doctor at Ruhengari's young French doctor, a friend of Fossey's, Dr. Philippe Bertrand).  Robbery ruled out as a motive for the crime almost immediately, within Fossey's cabin, which the killer has gained access to by cutting a hole through a wall, there are still unopened Christmas packages under a small tree, Fossey's two pet parrots, Dot and Dash, are unharmed in their birdcage, thirteen hundred dollars in U.S. currency is in a desk drawer, cameras, bottles of liquor, camping equipment, and valuable electronic equipment are undisturbed, as are a collection of masks and weapons.  The only thing that can be found missing is Fossey's passport.  Word of the killing relayed to the outside world over a camp radio by 34-year-old University of Oklahoma graduate student, American scientist Wayne McGuire, when the authorities arrive hours later in the form of two dozen armed Rwandan police, they arrest everyone in camp and do a marvelous job of trampling over the crime scene to the extent that no one will ever know what happened the night after Christmas.

Murder Site

Crime Scene

  .  

An unsolved mystery now decades old, McGuire will be tried in absentia for the killing of his mentor, found guilty (for lack of a better suspect, his motive is said to be wanting to steal Fossey's latest book) and sentenced to death by firing squad, but avoids being executed by flying back to the United States as Rwanda has no extradition treaty with the African nation (McGuire's mother provides the funds for his airline ticket home).  Back in America, McGuire will protest his innocence before vanishing from the public spotlight (though he resurfaces briefly in 2005, when a job with the Health and Human Services division of the state of Nebraska is rescinded because of his association with the death of Fossey).  The man that is suppose to do the actual killing on orders from McGuire, Emmanuel Rwelekana, a Rwandan tracker that has worked for Fossey for years, hangs himself in his cell before going on trial.  So take your pick as to what happened, the killing was the result of greed over a potential bestseller, because Fossey had been mean to her staff, as payback for her treatment of the local natives, as payback from angry poachers, a robbery to acquire her valuable gorilla research, performed by a local witchdoctor attempting to reclaim a magic pouch Fossey had confiscated days before, to silence Fossey from exposing members of the Rwandan government involved in trafficking gorillas to foreign zoos, to keep Fossey from exposing a local gold smuggling organization, the government looking to open up the area for the lucrative tourist trade, and from orders given by government official, Protais Zigiranyirazo, known to his countrymen as Mr. Z (he is also the brother-in-law of former Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana), the architect of the Rwandan geocide that will take the lives of over 800,000 members of the Tutsi and Hutu tribes in 1995, and a foe of Fossey's for years.  And if those theories of what is behind Fossey's death don't float your boat, feel free to Sherlock up a solution to the crime of your own.

McGuire

Mr. Z

Rwelekana

    A few short days later, Fossey goes to her rest in a simple wooden casket, buried in a makeshift cemetery the scientist has created for the deceased gorillas of her study (there will also be services held in her honor in New York City, Washington D.C., and California).  She resides beside her forever friend Digit, hopefully content in knowing her efforts have kept the mountain gorillas of Rwandan from becoming extinct.  The scientist's final entry in her diary states simply, "When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future." Amen to that Dr. Fossey, amen!

Fossey, Poacher Patrol, And Destroyed Trap Lines

In The Field

Into The Ground

Final Rest

Legacy - 2022 - Part Of The Ellen DeGeneres Campus

Of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund - Karisoke, Rwanda