Sometimes We Find Something That Works

Chicago, December 1, 1958 

It was my birthday.  It was also the day of my Confirmation.  I was selected to give a welcoming speech to the Bishop. With the help of the nuns at St. Stan’s, I wrote something. I practiced it and was ready. 

Around 2:30 that day a fire broke out in the basement of Our Lady of Angels school on the West side, just about three miles from our parish.  

92 children and three nuns died in the fire.

The news spread rapidly in the city and across the nation. It reached our parish before the Confirmation service that evening, and the nuns hurriedly had me insert something in my speech about those lost souls.  

I got confirmed, and some birthday wishes, but the pall in the Church that evening was evident.

The result of that fire was almost immediate. New fire codes, more fire alarms, new building codes. New regulations, both local and federal were enacted, without hesitation.  It was estimated that almost 70 percent of school buildings needed upgrades.  No one questioned the need for any of this. No cries of government interference or overreach.  

Among the many new regulations was a mandatory increase of fire drills.

The result cannot be denied.

Since 1958, there have been school fires, but none have involved anywhere near the horrific toll of Our Lady of Angels.  The number of school fires that have resulted in more that 10 deaths is zero.  According to the National Fire Protection Association:

From 2009-2013, US fire departments responded to an estimated average of 5,100 structure fires in educational properties, annually, which accounts for 1% of all structure fires. These fires caused an annual average of one civilian death, 79 civilian fire injuries and $88 million in direct property damage. 

Read that again: an annual average of ONE death.

When I taught and we had a fire drill, whether it was mandated or the spurious prank of some nincompoop, my high school students would diligently march to their designated exit and wait outside until the all clear was given.  Some of them complained, some didn't.

When we got back to the classroom, usually after the first such drill of the year, I made a point of telling the story of Our Lady of Angels.  I usually told them that since 1958, because of fire drills, we haven't lost anybody in school fires.  All right, I admit I exaggerated. 

We have lost people to school fires.  That's not the point.  The point is that sometimes regulations are implemented with good reason and they work.  Remember. ONE death, not 95.

I like to think that my students remember that lesson.  

The country as a whole was shocked by that school fire and worked together to come up with practical and sensible laws and regulations. Nobody bitched about it, nobody whined, nobody even hinted they had a problem.  The nation came together and accepted that enough was enough, that something needed to be done. They didn't want more images like this appearing in national publications: 

Of course, you might have guessed where I'm going with this.  

Nothing can or will prevent all school shootings or mass murderers any more that we can prevent all school fires.  

But we can attempt to staunch the bloodshed and we can limit the toll. Will everything work? How the hell do I know?  But we have to try something.  How many more have to die?  

Me, Dad, and Ali. A Moment in time

Newspapers, magazines, and web sites ad infinitum have published thousands, maybe hundred of thousands words about Muhammed Ali.

All of those words, the praise, and in some cases the condemnation, about Ali discuss his history, his radicalism, his brashness, his courage, his faith, and of course his skill at boxing.

People recall meeting him, his doodling on table cloths and napkins at fancy soirees, the general feeling of kindness and goodness he generated just by walking into a room.

Countless stories, countless words.  All about a man who, at one time, was the most recognized person on the face of the Earth.  

Ali certainly had his flaws.  Married several times and had several mistresses.  Ali certainly had his greatness, too.  Standing by his faith's beliefs and refusing to enter the military.  Those fights against Frazier.

I could, I suppose, add to those hundreds of thousands of words, about Ali, but I didn't know him.  I never met him.  My knowledge of him is limited to the same hundreds of thousands of words written about him during his lifetime, pretty much the same visceral knowledge of him that everyone of people my age had.

I don't remember him winning an Olympic gold medal.  I was still at St. Stan's grade school in Chicago, playing summer pickup baseball games at Hanson Park or standing in line waiting to to get into the pool at Blackhawk Park.  I knew who Floyd Patterson was and cheered when he regained the heavyweight championship from Ingemar Johansson.  I never liked Sonny Liston because he beat Patterson.

Then came Cassius Clay.  I was in high school by the time he fought Liston.  My classmates thought Liston would get kick Clay's ass handily.  I confess, I thought so as well.  Shows how much I know about pugilism then and now.  Then Clay converted to Islam, changed his name to Ali, and kicked Liston's ass a second time, and this black rhyming boxer who predicted the rounds of his victories became a household word and fixated himself in our collective mind.

Off all the boxers of that time, I thought Patterson was one who could beat Ali.  He didn't, and although I had rooted for Patterson, there was something about Ali that stuck with me.  The simple fact is that I admired him.  

He was fast, so fast he could, like Cool Papa Bell of the Negro Leagues, turn off the lights and get in bed before it got dark.  He danced, shuffled, and jabbed his way around the ring like no heavyweight before or, frankly, since.  More importantly, when he stood up and refused military service, he became a focal point of the war in Vietnam and the draft.

We all know the history of how the boxing world stripped him of his title because of his stand.  Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that Ali indeed was a conscientious objector.  To his credit, Ali never blamed his detractors nor those who tried to stifle him.   They took three years of his athletic prime from him.  “[…] They only did what they thought was right at the time. I did what I thought was right. That was all. I can’t condemn them for doing what they think was right,” he said.

I think it was then that I, a conscientious objector myself, truly began to admire the man.  

My dad knew this, too.  

He still watched boxing albeit with a somewhat dispassionate attention.  Boxing wasn’t in the Floyd Merriweather era of pay per view ripoffs then.  It was no longer the Gillette Friday Nights at the Fights weekly broadcast, but the big fights, particularly the heavyweight championships were broadcast live on the radio and occasionally on television.  If it wasn’t available on live television, one would just have to wait a week or two to see all the action on ABC’s Wide World or Sports.  

I watched them all.  His defeat against Ken Norton because he couldn’t really figure out a southpaw.  Those two fights against Frazier were brutal.  The rope a dope victory against George Forman.  The thriller in Manilla where Ali remarked afterwards, “I now know what death is like.”

When he lost to Leon Spinks, Ali was overweight and out of shape, a tribute to the adage of never underestimate your opponent.  Six months later, at the New Orleans Superdome, Ali and Spinks fought a second time.  I watched both those fights.  So did my dad.

That second Spinks fight was effectively his last.  He fought two more times and lost to Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick.  But that last fight with Spinks, he danced, he shuffled, he jabbed.  He looked like, well, Ali.  He won the unanimous 15 round decision.  

ABC, in a well planned moment played, Bob Dylan singing “Forever Young.”

And then the phone rang.  It was my dad.  My dad never really liked talking to people on the phone.  Whenever I called home, he would answer.  I’d ask him how he was doing.  He’d always say, “Fine.  Here’s your mother.”  But this time he called me.  

He knew I was watching.  He knew why Ali was important to me.  He said, “Ali looked good tonight.  He looked really good.”  I half expected him to say, “Here’s your mother,” but he didn’t.  There was a moment of silence and he said, “I just wanted you to know that.”  Then he hung up.

In that one moment I knew that my Dad understood me and I understood him.  

I never met Ali, never had to.  But he was important to me in the very real sense of helping a young man connect with his father in the only way fathers and sons really can.