A
Visit to the Circus by
Mary Wallace Bushnell, 1994
July
6,1944 dawned a hot, humid day in Connecticut. My family and a close
neighbor were anticipating an excursion to the Ringling Brothers,
Barnum and Bailey Circus, which was playing in Hartford. This was a
special treat for us as World War II was still on. Gasoline, being in
limited supply, was reserved for necessary trips only. The thirty
mile drive to Hartford did not meet that criteria. Our neighbor had
bought a car from a draftee. Along with the car came gasoline ration
stamps. There was our ticket to go! Nine of us piled into their extra
car and headed for Hartford. We ranged in age from 5 to 47 years old.
My Mother had four of her children along, and the neighbor had three
of hers. My 16 year old sister was working for the "War
Effort" in the tobacco fields in the Connecticut River Valley
that summer and did not accompany us. The motto was, "Lucky
Strike Goes To War". The neighbor's baby did not go either. He
was at home tended by a war refugee, who was stranded in the states
when the war in Europe broke out. She spoke no English.
I
was a skinny, pigtailed school girl dressed in my pink, party dress.
We parked in the parking lot at the "G. Fox and Co Department
Store'' at Hartford and rode a city bus out to the circus grounds.
Even that was exciting to me as I had never been on a city bus or
used bus tokens. The temperature that day hovered in the nineties,
and the circus grounds were stifling. The area smelled of hot canvas,
hay and animals. There were circus vendors milling in among the lines
of ticket buyers. They were selling balloons of all colors and little
fake monkeys made of brightly dyed pink and blue rabbit fur. I wanted
one, but there was no extra cash for such frivolous things in my
family, and I knew not to ask
As
we waited in line to purchase our tickets, my vision suddenly
started to blacken. I had fainted from the heat. My Mother half
dragged me to a shaded area outside, and I lay down next to an
auxiliary tent on the grass amid the tent ropes. Mother went for
lemonade for me. After I was feeling better we strolled around
outside. I saw Gargantua, the famous gorilla. I felt very special
with all this attention.
Some
time later we went inside the main tent to join the rest of our
group. They were already seated high in the bleachers. My Mother
suggested that we sit down lower in case I were to faint again. We
moved down to a row closer to the front. At last the show started. It
was wonderful. One did not know where to look, there was so much
going on. There was lively band music, colorful, funny clowns,
vendors hawking their wares of pink cotton candy, peanuts, and gaudy
toys, which all held a special attraction to me. The tigers were in
one ring going through their act. "The Wallendas," were up
on their perches ready to start their high wire act. It was
incredibly exciting in the eyes of a young girl.
Suddenly,
about 20 minutes into the start of the circus, there was a
collective cry, and people were pointing down towards the other end
of the tent. A lick of flames could be seen racing up towards the top
of the tent. I thought it was a part of the show and was absolutely
mesmerized watching it spread further. I was unaware of it at the
time, but the band switched tunes to the, "Stars and Stripes
Forever," the traditional call to alarm in circus jargon. I was
totally unaware of my immediate surroundings, when I felt someone
tugging on my foot from below. I looked around and saw that our group
was not in sight. They had jumped down through the bleachers, six
feet to the ground, and my Mother was calling for me to jump as well.
I did, and we all walked out through an opening where a man was
slitting a hole in the side of the tent with a knife.
The
scene outside the tent was total bedlam. People were screaming,
crying and running from the tent to escape the inferno. The fire
intensified and made a tremendous whooshing sound. Flames shot high
above into the sky. The thick black smoke billowed over the scene,
staining peoples' faces. Flaming bits of canvas wafted over the
panicked crowd. We felt the intense heat on our backs.
In
the immediate seconds after the start of the fire, our neighbor's
two young sons, aged 5 and 7, shirtless because of the hot, weather,
slipped out of their mother's reach and disappeared into the crowd
that was attempting to leave the tent through one of the main exits.
We regrouped outside, a safe distance from the tent. Our neighbor was
crying and her remaining son, Jimmy was trying to comfort her. The
mothers held a hurried conference. It was decided that our neighbor
and Jimmy would search in the area for the two missing boys. My
Mother would attempt to contact the husbands. They would meet back at
the lot where we had parked the car.
My
family started to leave the area. The circus elephants were close by
and frightened me badly, as I had always heard that elephants
stampeded when they saw fire. Their trainers were lining them up
trunk to tail and walking them off down the street. As we were
crossing to the other side of the street, I looked back in time to
see some supporting tent poles fall to the ground. The circus grounds
were adjacent to a residential area, and people were on their porches
watching the fire. My Mother asked a man if she could use his
telephone. She was lucky to be connected to our home phone as on a
follow up attempt, the telephone circuits were jammed with calls. We
were on a party line of seven. Incredibly, the local grocery store
shared the line. Conrad, the clerk answered our ring, and told my
Mother that the Wallaces had gone to the circus. My Mother, Mrs.
Wallace, told him the terrible news and asked him to contact the
husbands who were teaching summer school at the University of
Connecticut. We then took a bus back to the department store and went
inside where our minor scratches and cuts were kindly ministered to
by some employees there.
After
searching for some time, our neighbor and Jimmy found the older of
the missing boys. He was with a young girl who lived in the area. She
took him to her home, where Jimmy remembers being on the porch. There
was no sign of the other son. The husbands arrived after what seemed
an eternity, and by then our neighbor with Jimmy and his brother had
arrived back at the parking lot. Jimmy's Father went through the
temporary morgue looking for a body that could be that of his younger
son, but there was no match. Seven hours after the start of the fire
they found him in one of the many shelters which had been set up for
lost children. The shelter had been trying to contact them at home.
The child did not know his last name but knew their car license
number, and they had been able to obtain the home phone number
through the Motor Vehicle Department. That was of no help since the
baby sitter did not speak any English. There was a happy reunion at
the parking lot and we all headed for home at last.
There
had been over seven thousand people at the circus that day, and most
of them were women with their children. One hundred and sixty-eight
were never to see the end of that day. Many were burned beyond
recognition. Others were trampled. Several family friends were
killed. In this era, no one had psychological consoling for such an
experience. One of my sisters had screaming nightmares for months; my
other sister was mute for two days. I showed off my leg scar, where I
had had a deep scratch, for years. Life went on and the war came to
an end with great celebration in our town.
In
March of 1991, the media aired home movies of the fire taken by a
bystander. Their existence was previously unknown to us. It was
indeed shocking to view these graphic shots of the fire at its
height. Time does not diminish the horror. New findings have shown
the fire to have been the work of an arsonist. Also it was revealed
that a young girl killed in the fire, whose body was never claimed,
though it was unburned, and whose photograph had been circulated
world wide at the time of the fire, has finally been identified these
forty-seven later. This new data has brought the fire into focus once
again for us. I say us, after all these years, because my husband of
nearly thirty-six years is Jimmy, the neighbor's son who was with us
that day at the circus.
--
published by the “Hartford Courant” on the Op Ed page
at the time of the 50th Anniversary of the fire.