KYHARLAN-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: [KYHARLAN-L] Re: Article By Jack Nolan-National Enquirer
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 16:28:26 EDT

National Enquirer
Nov 4 1964.
Chicago, Ill
Written By: Jack Nolan

A mother and four children burned alive only a few feet from me. Now,
every time I close my eyes, I see them clawing at their bodies as they are
consumed by the flames and their shrill screams keep ringing through my
brain. Another heartbreaking sound comes back to plague my sleepless
nights-the sobbing of a grieving,striken-man. He was the father of those
kids, the husband and he stood beside me helpless, as we saw his family die.
It was the father, my friend Ted Stevens, 41, who first discovered the fire.
It was 1:30 on the morning of November 4, my wife and I had just turned in
after watching the election returns on television. I heard Ted shouting down
the hall, shouting into a pay phone for the police. Then I smelled the smoke.
I pulled my pants over my pajamas and woke up my wife. She grabbed our 2
month son, Tony Lee, and I scooped up our daughter, Jackie Diane, who was
four. I remember pushing them out the front door, then running back to Ted.
He was struggling to get back through the dense smoke to his apartment up
the hall. Then a door on the other side opened and a man, his hair in flames
ran out screaming. “My family,” Ted was screaming. “ My family. Oh, Doris!
Doris! Save the kids. But Ted couldn't get to them and I couldn't either. It
was to late.
“Quick,” I urged him. “ The windows.” I half pulled, half dragged him from
the building to the alley which ran alongside his apartment windows. The
alley was the service entrance to the building next door and we had to scale
a 7-foot-high fence to reach the windows of our own first floor apartments.
It was then that the full horror came to us. The bottom half of the
window, the only way for his family's escape, was blocked by heavy steel bars
embedded in the brick frame work. The top sections of all the ground floor
windows were nailed shut to prevent criminals from gaining entrance to the
building, located in a tough Chicago Neighborhood.
Ted's wife Doris, and his kids John, 16, Dennis 14, Eugene, 4 and Pamela,
2 were trapped. Ted and I leaped onto the window sill of one of his windows
and flung ourselves at the bars. We tried in vain to batter down the bars on
the window. Blood spurted from our hands as we pounded at the glass. We only
managed to crack the glass slightly because of the chicken wire set into the
panes. It was then I had the feeling of complete and utter hopelessness. We
could do nothing Ted's wife and four children perished in the fire.
Jack Nolan , 25, did all he could do to help rescue a
family from burning alive in a Chicago apartment house fire that claimed the
lives of 10 people. A mother and her four children perished in that fire
because steel bars across their ground floor windows blocked their only
escape route. Nolan stood outside those windows with the father of that
family, trying to tear down the bars. Here exclusively for Enquirer readers,
Nolan tells in his own words how they tried -but failed-to save the family.

Researcher: Elva Nolan Morgan

This thread:

• [KYHARLAN-L] Re: Article By Jack Nolan-National Enquirer by <>