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December 7, 2008

Sisters mourn fallen colleagues, students

By Pam DeFiglio

CONTRIBUTOR

Sister Maureen Therese Thiel, BVM, remembers seeing black smoke pouring out of Our Lady of the Angels School 50 years ago. She could see it from Annunciation School, about four miles away, where she was teaching first grade at the time.

At 8 p.m., she learned from television reports that three of her fellow Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVMs), whom she knew personally from her close ties to Our Lady of the Angels Parish, had died, along with many children.

“It was a terrible tragedy. You just felt for all these parents that were waiting for word. Your heart was with all of them,” Thiel said as she waited for a 50th anniversary commemoration service to begin at the BVM gravesite at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside.

Thiel greeted many of the 60 or so other BVMs who had come from all over the Chicago area and from the mother house in Dubuque, Iowa.

The memorial service began with prayers and hymns at the BVM memorial, which serves as a gravesite for many BVM sisters. Three sisters symbolically lit candles in honor of those who died on the OLA fire in 1958: BVM Sisters Mary Claire Therese Champagne, 27; Sister Mary Seraphica Kelley, 43, and Mary St. Canice Lyng, 44.

Mourners then traveled by car to Queen of Heaven Mausoleum nearby, where they filed indoors for a prayer service in the chapel.

Bob Early, who was a seventhgrader in Our Lady of the Angels’ Classroom 208 on the day of the fire, was among those entering the chapel. He came from his home in McKinney, Texas, for the memorial service.

As the fire raged, he recalled, he debated with a friend whether to jump out the second-story windows. They decided it was their only option. Early broke a leg, suffered burns and spent about three weeks in the hospital. His friend broke both ankles. They survived, however, while some in their classroom of nearly 60 children did not.

Early decided several years ago to attend the 50th anniversary commemorations. “It was something I knew would probably be difficult, but it was something I had to do,” he said.

During the chapel service, BVM Sister Mary Alma Sullivan read “We gather all of these Angels in our hearts,” from the poem “Fifty Years of Heartbreak” which BVM Sister Jane McDonnell wrote for the anniversary. The poem also acknowledged the hundreds who suffered physically and psychologically from the tragedy.

“We come here today and engage in the sacred act of remembering,” said BVM Sister Mary Ann Zollman, president of the order. “Here in this community bound together by shared sorrow, we renew our faith in the precious presence of God.”

As Sister Dorothy Dwight, BVM, led a choir singing “Jesus, Remember Me,” other sisters solemnly read the names of the 92 children and three nuns who died.

After the chapel service ended, people regrouped a quarter-mile away at the Queen of Angels fire memorial in the cemetery for the final part of the ceremony, a wreath-laying.

One of those in the crowd was Joseph V. Murray, who graduated from Our Lady of the Angels in 1942 and, as a Chicago firefighter, was among the first to respond to the fire. “I’ve been coming to remembrances even when it wasn’t the thing to do,” he said.

Hope for the future at site of fire

Not many of the people who lived around Our Lady of the Angels at the time of the fire remain.

Once a neighborhood of European immigrants and their children, West Humboldt Park changed from mostly white to mostly black in the years after the fire, as white residents and their families moved to the Northwest and Southwest sides.

Many former residents say the blocks around Our Lady of the Angels Church changed faster than most, as families who lost children in the fire moved away.

West Humboldt Park remains one of the most economically disadvantaged areas of the city. The parish merged with nearby St. Francis of Assisi Parish in 1990. The former Our Lady of the Angels church is now used by a Protestant congregation although the archdiocese still owns the building; the school that was built to replace the one that burned is a public charter school.

But the former rectory, after a few years of falling into disrepair, is occupied by the new Our Lady of the Angels Mission, run by Father Bob Lombardo, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal. Last year, Cardinal George dedicated a new memorial to the fire victims that stands in front of the rectory and lists the names of everyone who died.

Kelly Hall, the former parish hall on Chicago and Hamlin avenues, is set to open Jan. 15 as the new Kelly Hall YMCA, a cooperative effort between Our Lady of the Angels Mission, the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago and the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

The facility will offer after-school programs for neighborhood children, activities for seniors, a new food pantry, a computer lab and fitness center for all residents. YMCA will also offer services for high-risk residents, like gang intervention, job training and substance abuse counseling.

Lombardo, who arrived in Chicago in 2005 to start the mission, has hosted a weekly food pantry and clothes closet from the former rectory, as well as monthly visits from the Greater Chicago Food Depository’s Mobile Food Pantry, which offers fresh meat and produce for 250 families.

Volunteers, including tradesmen-in-training, college students and groups from area parishes have renovated the former rectory to make it suitable for individual or group retreats or meetings.