After reading Fire Angels recently, I wanted to read more about the fire at Our Lady of the Angels School. This book is written by one of the children who survived the fire, and is an unflinching look at what happened, and also what it took for her to survive and recover.
It's one thing to read an account of the fire by researchers, and articles from the Chicago Tribune and other news sites, but to read the memoir of someone who survived the fire is pretty amazing. I found that while McBride's writing is sometimes very stiff, her honesty about her experiences is so deliberate that it brings the disaster into focus, and also explores what it meant to be both a survivor of that event, but also to be a burn victim in 1958. She is unflinching in how she writes about her medical treatment, recovery, and how family, friends and neighbors reacted to her, both in the hospital and once she was able to finally go home.
I was curious to know more about her, and discovered that Michele McBride died in 2001. Her obituary mentions that she was a survivor of the fire, and also mentioned that she had tried to start a foundation to help other burn victims. I had been wondering about this, since the book jacket mentioned that she had been working to establish a foundation, but couldn't find any information about it. However, I did find mention of her in a June 10, 1961 article from the Saturday Evening Post, which discusses the intricacies of treating burn victims, and also how the hospitals handled the flood of children from the disaster at Our Lady of Angels.
No comments:
Post a Comment