The Circus Fire (6 page)

The Wallendas got the biggest hand, according to the morning
Courant,
wowing the crowd with their three-level pyramid—Karl Wallenda and Joe Geiger riding bicycles across the wire, a pole between them on which Herman Wallenda stood on a teetering chair, and atop his shoulders, arms out wide, Karl's wife Helen. The clown firehouse, an old favorite, garnered the most laughs, Emmett Kelly standing by dolefully while Lou Jacobs and his crew of buffoons squeezed out of a miniature red convertible and ran around frantically, menacing the front rows with hoses and buckets full of—it turned out—confetti.

The show ended with the big spec—The Changing of the Guard— the elephants, their handlers and the bally girls done up in plaid like Highlanders. The crowd jostled their way down the stands and out into the midway again, satisfied, then back to Barbour Street to wait for the bus or, if they were lucky, to retrieve their cars from whatever lots they could find. It was still the war, their headlights just eyelike slits in layers of blackout paint as they crawled along the dark streets. Soon the midway emptied of customers, the PA speakers clicked off, the lights died. From the air, enemy bombers would see nothing more than what had been there this morning—an empty field.

Anna Cote would go to the circus the next day with her sister Iva. That night the two of them were sleeping when Anna woke up and saw a man standing on the steps to their parents' room. She huddled closer to Iva. The man looked at her and said, "Don't be afraid," then disappeared. When she described the man, her father knew who it was—his father, long dead.

July 6, 1944

Circus day

A month after D-day, the city woke to the radio: WTIC, property of the Travelers, broadcasting from "the Insurance Capital of the World"; WTHT, owned by the
Hartford Times;
and WDRC, the Doolittle Radio Corporation, which had ties to the
Courant.
Among the war news and ball scores, spots for the circus greeted first-shift workers heading off to Colt's and Royal Underwood Typewriters and Fuller Brush, and to Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Standard and Sikorsky, all part of United Aircraft in East Hartford.

There were so many people working at the Aircraft that the city's population had grown beyond its housing capacity. Residents were renting out sheds and garages and getting good money for them. Relatives doubled up; lodgers on different shifts split the cost of a single room. The new population was unattached and making good wages, and social workers worried about the rise in prostitution and syphilis. With so many fathers and brothers and husbands off at the war, more women were working, leaving their older children alone or in the care of aunts and grandmothers.

The government discouraged absenteeism, a growing problem, especially now when the country was so close to victory. Most people with war work didn't give the circus a second thought. And it was going to be scorching; at 8:30 Thursday morning it was already seventy-six degrees, the humidity even worse than yesterday. People coming off graveyard shift would have trouble sleeping, the sheets sticking to their skin.

The kids who'd seen the posters around town didn't care about the heat. Today was the last day. For months their parents had been promising to take them, and now they called them on it.

On the lot, a water truck chugged up the midway, sprinkling the matted, dusty grass. The concessionaires had eaten breakfast and were tending their Kewpie dolls and fake lion-tamer whips. Even as they readied the front yard for the crowd, the roughnecks were counting the hours till tear-

down. Already, department heads were preparing for the next stand. Leonard Aylesworth, the boss canvasman, gathered a stake crew and headed for Springfield to start laying out tomorrow's lot.

In Middletown, the four Norris and Smith girls piled into the back of the Norrises' big black Oldsmobile sedan. It was
a'41,
one of the last made before the war. Michael Norris drove, his wife Eva beside him, Mae Smith against the door. The families had lived up and down in a duplex together, but a year or so ago the Norrises had moved out after a fire on their sun-porch. Michael Norris, a circus fan, had been planning the trip since the dates were announced; he'd taken a half day from his job as proprietor of the Russell Company's company store to take everyone to the show.

In back, the Smith girls were dressed for the weather—twelve-year-old Barbara in shorts and a sleeveless top, six-year-old Mary Kay in a sun-suit. People often mistook Mary Kay for Judy Norris, with their dark brown hair the same length; even their faces looked the same straight on. Agnes Norris was slightly older, and still sickly from an early kidney condition. The drive was about an hour. They rolled the windows open for some air.

At the same time the Norrises and Smiths were coming up Route 9, an even larger group from Middletown was getting ready. The Kurneta and Erickson clans were related through marriage but close as blood. Eight of them were supposed to go, but Joann Erickson had a summer cold and her mother stayed home to take care of her. Nineteen-year-old Mary Kurneta took a day off to go—as did her older brother Stanley, to see the circus with his son Tony, their mother Mrs. Frances Kurneta, niece Betsy Kurneta and nephew Raymond Erickson, six. Before they left, Raymond broke his shoelace. His mother tied a knot in it and tucked the knot inside his sneaker so it looked right. She waved them away, then went back inside to tend to Joann.

By 10:00 A.M. the temperature in Hartford had reached the eighties. People who'd been mulling over going now decided maybe an air-conditioned movie was a better choice. One grandmother declared it was simply too warm for walking.

On Grandview Terrace, six nephews and nieces of State Police commissioner Edward J. Hickey waited impatiently for the big black Cadillac of his driver Sgt. Adolph Pastore to pick them up. Sergeant Pastore and

Commissioner Hickey had been together many years, and the children considered the sergeant another uncle. They loved the stately car, always polished, and secretly nicknamed the commissioner "185," after the Caddy's license plate number. The press called the former detective "Bull" Hickey, for his stocky build and legendary tenacity. A perfectionist, he'd worked his way from mailman to Pinkerton detective to naval intelligence officer to state trooper, county detective and finally state police commissioner, solving hundreds of cases from petty theft to capital murder, sending cop-killer Gerald Chapman to the gallows and blowing the Waterbury Conspiracy wide open. For the children it was enough to know Old 185 would be waiting for them at their aunt Isabel and cousin Billy Hickey's house on Barbour Street, close by the circus grounds.

In East Hartford, ten-year-old Donald Gale was kicking around Mayberry Village when Hulda Grant, a friend of his mother's, asked if he wanted to come along to the circus with her boyfriend and her daughter Caroline. Sure, Donald said, but first he needed to check with his parents. His father worked third shift at Pratt & Whitney, and Donald had to wake him up and then beg him, please. It worked.

At Fafnir Bearing Company in New Britain, one woman received a call from her mother. She and her father had just been invited to the circus by their neighbor, whose daughter was an aerialist with the show. Did she want to come too? In minutes the woman had contracted a mysterious illness and was given permission to leave work.

Bill Curlee was originally from Hartford but was working in Cleveland as an inspector for one of Pratt & Whitney's vendors. He'd saved his gas ration stamps to come back east and visit his family. He and his brother-in-law were going to take their children and some neighborhood kids to the circus. He was a big fellow, always joking around. He was lounging precariously on the porch rail that morning, making his mother nervous. "You don't get off of that thing," she scolded, "I'll send you home in a coffin."

The sun was high now and the humidity didn't seem to be dropping. The streets baked, tar gone soft. Shortly before noon Hartford Hospital received its first case of heat prostration, a thirty-seven-year-old man overcome on the job. On the lot, the water truck was supposed to sprinkle the midway one last time around noon, but things were running late so they skipped it.

In the backyard, fourteen-year-old John Stewart of Barbour Street supervised a crew of North End boys hauling hay for the horses and elephants. It was dirty work but fun once a year, and they'd promised him six passes. John Stewart made the most of the job. He lorded his authority over his employees, a real straw boss.

Doors would open at 1:00, giving seven-year-old Elliott Smith and his mother and sister Joan time to shop at Brown Thomson downtown. Grace Smith bought two pieces of summer-weight material for dresses she could have never found out in Vernon and was so pleased she treated the children to lunch at Sage-Allen's cafeteria. Elliott was a fussy eater, and the menu didn't include peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, so his mother suggested English muffins. It was the first time either he or Joan had had them. They finished in time to catch the North Main Street bus up to Barbour Street.

Some survivors remember taking trolleys that day, possibly because Hartford had only recently gotten rid of them, the last one running in July of 1941. By '44 all traces of them were gone. The city tore up the tracks, took the overhead wires down and shipped the iron poles to Baltimore and other cities that needed them. They stripped and then torched the old cars,

salvaging the steel. Private citizens bought a few lucky ones and turned them into chicken coops, hauled them across the city to be used as diners or down to the shore for beach cottages.

It was all new buses now. People coming from out of town had to change at the Isle of Safety at State and Main by the Old State House. Nine-year-old Edward Garrison and his grandmother, aunt and two cousins boarded a bus on Burnside Avenue in East Hartford with two sailors. When they changed at the Isle of Safety, the sailors followed them on.

Eighteen-year-old Spencer Torell also worked for Fafnir Bearing, on graveyard, as a parts-in-process inspector. He and his friend Wally Carlson took the bus in from New Britain. At the Isle of Safety they transferred to a trailer coach, a wartime invention. Since industry had stopped making new cars for the duration, car carriers were obsolete. The Connecticut Company modified them, enclosing the trailers and adding benches for seats, even pot-bellied stoves for heat in winter. The one flaw was that, being a two-piece combination of a cab and a trailer, a trailer coach required two workers: a driver to drive and a conductor to collect fares. Today they were running expresses up to the circus grounds without conductors.

The aisles were full, and people waiting at stops farther up Main watched as bus after bus passed them by. There was still time though, and it really was much too hot to walk.

Mildred Cook and her children finally caught a bus and were lucky enough to get seats. Don hung his elbow out the window and watched the unfamiliar three-deckers of the North End slide by. Southampton was a quiet little New England village, and just the sheer number of people—the sprawl and chaos of the city—intimidated him. Everyone was sweating, the air ripe, a real body to it. It was sweltering, and the breeze stopped dead every time they missed a light.

Mabel Epps from Bellevue Square had to convince her sister Maurice Goff to go. Mabel was seven months pregnant and needed help looking after her boys, William, seven, and Richard, three. And Maurices daughter Muriel wanted to go, so the five of them went. It would be the children's first visit to the circus.

Despite gas rationing, many people drove. From the street you could see the sideshow tent with its three flags flapping on high, and behind it the massive big top. The sidewalks overflowed, kids scampering off the curb to

slip ahead. Neighborhood teenagers guided cars into the yards, collecting 50 cents for the afternoon, $1 for all day. Mrs. Dewey Howrigan at 386 Barbour Street had a full lot in her long backyard, thirty at least. Some people parked their cars at McGovern's, joking about the nameless gravestones. The Norrises chose the closest lot, a house right near the grounds. The girls piled out of the backseat, squealing, all but Barbara Smith, the oldest, who'd had to cut short a Girl Scout outing. She wasn't thrilled with going and quietly let everyone know it.

The orangeade and frankfurt stands on the sidewalk were doing a land-office business, underselling the official versions inside, but enough people bellied up to the Midway Diner and the other grease and grab joints to keep the circus happy. The midway was mobbed with mothers in linen print dresses, girls in pinafores, boys in knickers, even a few elderly gentlemen with their jackets folded over their arms, hats in hand. Lines ran deep at the white, yellow and red ticket wagons.

Robert Onorato from Plainville was a shutterbug. He had one reel of 16mm color film left, and his son's birthday was coming up, but he decided he'd only have one chance to shoot the circus. He took a long shot of the big top and then wandered about the crowd, catching the wagons and the hot-dog stands and people milling in front of the marquee.