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The Band Played as the Fire Burned: The Great Big Top Fire and Being Human

The Band Played as the Fire Burned: The Great Big Top Fire and Being Human

Last updated on: March 27, 2017 at 7:49 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

The Band Played as the Fire Burned: The Great Big Top Fire and Being Human 2017-03-27T07:49:29-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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167 people were burned alive at the circus and almost seven hundred were injured. Nothing tells us more about ourselves than how we react in a crisis. That moment always comes, if not dramatically, then at the hour of our death, when all that is left is what we have made ourselves to be.

No time for school.

When things are bad, you do not have time to learn. If your school failed you, kept you inside and taught you nothing about risk or danger, then it is too late to learn to run, jump, and show physical courage. If you never learned to say “no” to self, then panic and self-interest will be-clown you for all time, before you can react. However, if your life has built to that moment, then you can become a hero for all time, however simple you might be.

So it was for the people of Hartford Connecticut on July 6, 1944. The world was at war or the almost two hundred people who were burned alive at a Ringling Brothers Circus would be better remembered. As it was, people went to prison and the Circus paid the equivalent of tens of millions in restitution and Hartford still marks the date. Some still live who were there on the day the papers said “the clowns cried.”

Was it set by an arsonist? Maybe, but then if you cover your tent with wax and gas in an era where everyone smokes, there is going to be trouble. As usual, the big shots were negligent (White Star Line anyone?) and the people suffered. The government failed to do what it should have done and responded by passing more rules it would ignore before the next great disaster.

A disaster at a Ringling Brothers circus during World War II was hard, because people trusted the circus the way people today trust Disneyland. Imagine two hundred people dying at a theme park in a few minutes. . . people in 1944 could not even conceive of such a thing while it was happening:

Donalda LaVoie, age 15, grew worried when she saw the grapefruit-sized flame. “There’s a fire over there!” she told her uncle and pointed across the tent to an area just above the men’s restroom. “Don’t worry about it. Someone will put it out,” her uncle assured her. But no one did.

Woollett, Laura A. (2015-06-01). Big Top Burning: The True Story of an Arsonist, a Missing Girl, and The Greatest Show On Earth (Kindle Locations 203-206). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.

Of course, after the disaster is over, people realize that numerous things that should have been done were not done. You cannot regulate your way to safety:

Tragically, no fire extinguishers had been placed inside the tent. Instead, they were still packed inside a truck hundreds of yards away.

Woollett, Laura A. (Kindle Locations 209-210).

Fortunately, 1944 was a time when people had knives in their pockets, played outside, and knew how to take care of themselves physically.

Others also found alternate ways to escape. Thirteen-year-old Donald Anderson helped hundreds of people, including his older cousin, escape by using his pocket-knife to cut the ropes fastened to a stake that held the tent tight to the ground. He was then able to lift the canvas wall and escape by crawling underneath. “[ I] noticed a girl about five years old lying on the ground— her arm seemed injured. I picked her up and got her out safely,” Donald wrote in a letter to the governor of Connecticut. Donald’s story was widely reported in the newspapers. Though it always made him uncomfortable, Donald was seen as a hero, and people from all over sent letters congratulating him for his quick thinking.

Woollett, Laura A. (Kindle Locations 231-236).

This gave me pause. Are we so well equipped today? Have we made our venues safer (in theory), but made ourselves less capable? How many young people practice jumping, running, and know basic survival skills? Fortunately, the many scouts in the audience knew what to do in a fire. Others had jumped from many tree houses and knew how to land from twelve feet.

They were ready. We need never grow discouraged, however. Just as we found brave firefighters on 9/11 to rescue people while giving their own lives, so in an audience made up of those not fit to go to war, there were men and women who would give their lives for others:

After seeing his seven-year-old son David safely across a chute, William Curlee stayed inside the tent, pushing people over to the other side. William was 29 years old and a strong man. He refused to leave when he knew he could still help those who were too weak or scared to climb the bars of the chutes on their own. “People couldn’t get past, so he stood there and got his son, women, children, and others and pushed them over [the chutes],” William’s sister Barbara Rubenthaler told a reporter years later. As the tent began to give way, William braved falling burning ropes and canvas. He helped many people escape before a nearby tent pole gave way and fell on him. William Curlee died a hero.

Woollett, Laura A. (Kindle Locations 270-275).

The circus, like the White Star Line in the Titanic disaster, had taken safety for granted. They had cut corners and done less than they should. If the “business” was rotten, the people in the business were heroic.

For days after, survivors praised the quick thinking and kindness of the Ringling Bros. workers. “The circus people were wonderful,” Charles Comp told a Hartford Courant reporter. “The band played until the musicians had to jump to safety, the ushers stood at their sections assisting the panic-stricken crowd, and the performers did everything they could.”

Woollett, Laura (Kindle Locations 311-314).

In a better time, the right people paid the price:

Six circus officials were sent to jail because of the unsafe conditions inside the big top tent. On February 21, 1945, the men were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Woollett, Laura (Kindle Locations 650-651).

The image that sticks in my mind is the band playing while the tent burned. They did all they could to keep calm and then escaped to go outside the tent and keep playing some more. They equalled the bravery of the band on RMS Titanic by doing their duty:

“Jump!” Merle Evans directed, and the band bailed— like true musicians, taking their instruments with them. A flaming quarterpole toppled, dropped onto the stand like a hammer. Faces smudged, white uniforms scorched, they regrouped outside and serenaded the dazed crowd that stood there watching the drums and the organ burn.

O’Nan, Stewart (2008-12-10). The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy (p. 105). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The band is always brave, in part, because the discipline of music making helps them keep order in hard times. The teamwork of a band means that the panic that comes from the lonely individual never exists. Finally, the band plays on, because a strong leader commands them to do so.

Thank God.

Such disasters remind us that life is not promised to us. It can be gone in a moment, not because God is capricious, but because men are rotten. Hitler was busy taking million of lives in Europe, but corporate indolence would take hundreds of lives in Connecticut.

We can, however, decide how we will respond in the crisis of our times. We can run for the exit and be burned alive in any case or like the heroes, stay, do our duty, and play on.

I know what I hope to do!

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March 25, 2017

Yesterday I Went to the Circus and Here is What I Learned

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