Does anyone else remember the Our Lady of Angels School fire in Chicago on December 1, 1958? As a Catholic school child, this made a huge impact on my life in so many ways. I was attending a Catholic school that looked much like Our Lady of Angels in Dayton, Ohio. Our nuns, who were Franciscan, had us pray for the "best of the best angels that God took home" in that fire and we each required to pick a name to say prayers for. 92 children including 3 nuns burnt up in that firetrap of a school. Yet, we were not allowed to talk directly about what caused that inferno, but merely to pray for the departed as angels and to choose one name and pray to that child who would watch out for us to get us into Heaven. God took home the best of his little angels. Great....the rest of us sat in school, the same ages as those who were burned up...telling us that we should choose someone who was burned up as our chosen angel to pray to. Luckily for me, I attended a brand new Catholic school in Fairborn and didn't have to worry so much about those old Catholic schools. Yet, it made a huge impact on my life. First of all, I knew that good Catholic kids, including we Fitzgibbon kids, could die. I was 11 when it happened. Yet, I never, ever forgot that a ton of kids just like me...92 of them...died in that fire. About five or ten years ago, I stumbled across a book about that fire entitled... "To Sleep With the Angels" and I learned quite a bit about what caused the fire, including the negligence of the fire department and diocese. And, every so often, I recalled the "angel" I had chosen back then to pray to. Today, I was once again thinking about the "angel" I had chosen. And, I went to google to see if there was anything new since the last time I had looked it up. And, lo and behold, there is an entire site about this fire that killed so many. It is www.olafire.com. If you remember, this is a great site.
Orignal From: Does Anyone Remember the Our Lady of Angels Fire?
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