- On April 13, 2018, the New York Times
published an article about an investigation into an event that took place 50 years ago at Cornell…the Res Club Fire… in which eight students and a faculty member died–soon after we got back from Spring break. I commend amateur sleuth Bill Fogle for his efforts to shed light on those terrible events…and hope that, at the very least, a memorial site will be established at the university.
published an article about an investigation
As a Cornell freshman, I attended the memorial service–and wrote a story about it…which is included in my 2016 book, Ithaca Diaries, and presented here. I’d welcome your comments and remembrances.
Anita M. Harris
April, 1967
My first day back, April 3, 1967, a grad student is charged with selling $30 worth of LSD. The next day, the Straight Board of Managers suspends its decision banning the solicitation of draft card burning. On April 5, there’s a picture of a monkey eating a banana on the front page of the Sun. It is captioned “Students Go Ape over new fad of banana peel smoking.” [i]
That night, eight students (including three freshmen) and a professor die in a horrific fire.
It’s at the Residential Club—a dorm housing mostly students in the new six-year PhD Program. Two boys and a girl who died were freshmen “Phuds”. The others were senior and graduate women and Professor of English John Finch.
The authorities don’t know what caused the fire. They do know that it started in the basement. That there were no sprinklers because the 15-year-old brick structure was supposed to be fireproof. That most of the damage and deaths were caused by smoke. That some kids made it out by climbing down from second-story windows down ropes made from sheets. And that a lot of kids who couldn’t get out through windows that had horizontal panes you had to crank open, and screens, were found dead. In bedrooms, the lobby and hallways.
A Phud freshman who escaped from the basement tells the Sun, “It started about 4:10 [in the morning.] I woke up. Heard a lot of noise. Someone was running around. It was John Finch. He yelled, ‘Get out. Get out!’ Then I heard someone yell ‘fire.’” The student turned on his light, woke his roommate. “The lights went out seconds later. We heard no alarm. There were a helluvalot of people screaming like mad, trying to wake people up.” Professor Finch ran out of the building, went back to arouse the occupants, but was trapped and never made it back out.
It’s horrible, terrible to believe. In the Straight, some kids are freaked out; others are playing the jukebox and acting like nothing happened. In a girls’ dorm, someone calls the fire “stupid and useless.” Eighty guys who live in the Founders Hall dorm sign a petition protesting the lack of regard for the safety of human lives. In my dorm, Dickson, women living on the basement level forcibly remove iron bars from the windows of their rooms. One of them says it took her and another girl 15 minutes to get the bars off four windows. I’m thinking that if there were a fire, they’d roast. Later, a residential advisor persuades them to replace the bars because “someone might try to get in.”
Ithaca Mayor Hunna Johns expresses deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the dead, and requests that all flags in the city be flown at half mast. Some professors cancel classes for the day, and many students skip classes that are held. A State Senate committee resolves to look into safety provisions at colleges throughout New York State. President Perkins returns from a meeting in Paris. [ii]
On Friday, April 7, they cancel 2 o’clock classes so that everyone can go to the memorial service. I didn’t know any of the people who died and I have never been to the Res Club so this is not registering with me. I feel numb and wonder if I am emotionally cold, when so many people are crying. Still, out of respect, I decide to go.
Later, I write for (Professor James McConkey’s writing class:
Circus
Large moist snowflakes feel like icy fingers tapping against my face; their coldness leaves a tingling imprint on my skin. I walk, scuffling my shoes against the gray pavement, and I feel the cold mist wrapping itself around my ankles. Water creeps up into my shoes, sneaking through the stitching of the soles and climbing up the absorbent cotton of my stockings.
As I near the chapel, I stop to look at the line of somber umbrellas that sways back and forth, up and down with the wind. One umbrella is improperly dressed for the occasion; it is loudly striped black and white and looks like a circus big top.
The line of mourners moves forward slowly. I link onto its end and feel emptiness behind me. More people join the line, then more; they are like waves slapping against a coastline, one always coming to cover the emptiness of the sand.
We walk with our heads bent. A large-stomached policeman whose shiny orange vinyl raincoat hangs from him like an overturned sand bucket stands and says something to the crowd; to me, he looks like a fireman clown.
Someone says there is no room left in the chapel, and the line dissipates. I walk up the chapel steps and try to look inside. From a tiptoe position I can glimpse part of a stained glass window; the light arc around it looks pinkish and warm.
The big clowny policeman mounts the chapel stairs and stands, with his feet planted apart, facing me from atop the landing.
“No more room in there,” he says, folding his arms across his chest.
A sad-looking boy with a pale face and drooping cheeks tries to pass by the policeman. The policeman reaches out and grabs the boy’s arm. The boy looks up and explains quickly, “I think they would have wanted me in there.”
The policeman lets go of the boy and shrugs his huge shoulders. “Well, nothing I can do…I don’t know how you think you’re gonna get through—it’s jammed.” The policeman swings his arms at his sides and rolls his weight from the balls of his feet to his heels as might a dancing bear. The boy turns and walks slowly down the stairs.
I follow the boy into another building to listen to the service over a public address system. Mourners, eyes downcast, sit cross-legged on the floor, staring down at the beige rug. A voice from on high booms forth.
It talks about God.
I pick at the rug.
“God is good, God is kind, God is everlasting…”
I smell the wet wool of my coat and touch it. The fibers are long and as I run my fingers over them they feel like the hair of [my high school boyfriend] Jerry’s arm.
A girl sitting near me is resting her hand on a boy’s knee and I resent her. You have no right to seek happiness, or even to seek sympathy for your sadness, I think. People have died. Be filled with sorrow, but do not try to share it. They died and you live and are glad. So you come and you sit here and some noble voice is telling you that God is good and you are to understand or accept.
God has so willed. God, God, God. My belief? Death happens. Life happens. When I live, do not tell me it is the will of God and it is good; when I die do not tell me it is the will of God and it is good. When I die, I die.
My foot falls asleep. I knead it, but it feels like a fat dead toad encased in a black cotton stocking. I scrape my finger nail against my instep and the tearing, kneading sensation reminds me of the time I stepped on a branch of rose thorns. I had been forbidden to go barefoot but my mother forgave me for disobeying and helped ease my suffering.
This is pain, I think. You deserve it; you are alive. Learn to love the pain, for you are guilty. You are alive and they are dead. The voice is still speaking of God. A girl plays with a button that reads, “Snoopy plays Rugby.” The girl with her hand on the boy’s knee bows her head; the boy fondles her neck. My foot tingles. Finally, the organ music begins.
As I walk home, I stop to look into a puddle of water left on the sidewalk. In it is reflected a black tree with long, knobby fingers of branches contrasted against a pale sky. The wind is blowing; ripples distort the image.
The water forms in the shape of an elephant drawn by a child: it has pointed ears and a huge, long trunk. I recall reading in my biology book: Were there no environmental factors limiting population growth, the number of living descendents of two elephants would, after one hundred thousand years, completely fill the visible universe. [iii]
Over the next few months, there are more fires, apparently set, in places the Phuds move into after leaving the Res Club. In May, a report finds that the university was noncompliant. A senior writes in the Sun that some Phuds have moved into his dorm; that there are six guards for them; that they are afraid all the time; that the Res Club fire was, perhaps, murder.
The investigation runs on for years. There are lawsuits, settlements—but it’s not clear what really happened. Some people think that one of the Phuds, who was mentally ill, set the fire. Some believe it was arson. But many years later, Michael Shinagel, a Dean at Harvard, tells me that, in 1967, when he was a junior faculty member at Cornell, John Finch was his office mate—and that the fire was caused, they found, by someone leaving a cigarette on a Naugahyde sofa. “The fumes get in your lungs and you die,” he says.[iv]
I ask the library for information about a final determination; they suggest that I go through President Perkin’s papers, which are in hundreds of boxes somewhere in the archives.
[i] Nb, “Justice Charges 11 with Drug Violations,” Sun, April 4, 1967, 1; Edward Zuckerman, UJB Postpones Cases of 19, Sun, April 5, 1967, 1 Nb “One Drug Charge Dropped, Sun, Monday, 1; Edward Zuckerman, “Hippies Bring Sudden Banana Sales Rise,” Sun, April 3, 1967, 1.
[ii] Nb, “Univ. Mourns Tragic Debacle,”, Extra edition, Ibid., Wednesday, April 5, 1967, 1, 2; Joseph K. Kies, “The Titanic: Res. Club Called Safest Building in the County,” Ibid., Thursday, April 6, 1967, 3; “Committee to Probe College Fire Safety,” Ibid., 1.
[iii] Anita M. Harris, “Circus: After the Res Club Fire,” unpublished story, Spring 1967.
[iv] Krisha Ramanuja, “Remembering a 40-year-old tragedy when eight students and a professor died in off-campus fire,” Cornell Chronicle, April 4, 2007. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2007/04/remembering-campus-fire-killed-nine-1967 ; Conversation with Michael Shinagel, April 2007.
