Ex-Arlington Hts. man out to save memory of Lady of the Angels fire

Though long since retired from the Chicago Fire Department, Bill Kugelman hasn't stopped attempting rescues.

Kugelman, formerly of Arlington Heights, is leading a charge to get the city of Chicago to donate a vacant firehouse to be used in part as an Our Lady of the Angels fire museum.

It's his latest effort to help survivors and relatives of victims of the school fire that claimed 92 children and three nuns on Dec. 1, 1958.

With the old Humboldt Park school site being used as a charter school and the old convent and parish center serving as a mission for poor residents, Kugelman says the firehouse across the street from the fire statue at Holy Family Church is one of the only viable locations for a museum.

Kugelman is president of the Fire Museum of Greater Chicago and former president of the Chicago firefighters union. Hundreds of people affected by the fire are behind Kugelman's campaign.

But the city of Chicago has yet to be convinced.

"We've received many letters and e-mails from all over," said Andy Pierce, chief of staff for 2nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti. "They're well intentioned. But we'd like to see them get behind a project with a plan and resources."

Kugelman was a Chicago firefighter at the time of the Our Lady of the Angels blaze, but in the Army stationed overseas in France.

"It was the only fire that I was glad I didn't fight," he said.

As both a firefighter and a Catholic, Kugelman knew colleagues who were profoundly affected by the tragedy.

"I knew people. A lot of these guys. And my company was there. It was always in the back of my head," he said.

The images of injured children and their distraught parents never left him.

Later, as an Arlington Heights resident and parishioner at St. Colette's in Rolling Meadows, Kugelman became close with the Rev. Joseph Ognibene.

As a young priest in the 1950s, Ognibene was assigned to Our Lady of the Angels as an associate pastor. When the fire broke out, Ognibene, together with parent Sam Tortorice, rescued dozens of students trapped on the second floor by grabbing their arms and legs and dragging them from their classroom windows to the first floor annex's canopy roof.

After the 1958 fire, a steel and brick school was built on the same site. Inside was placed a black marble statue, topped with a stone figure of the Virgin Mary, with the names of fire victims etched into it.

Shortly before he died in 2003, Ognibene called for help, Kugelman said. The school was being rented by the Chicago Public Schools and students were marring the statue with graffiti. It reeked of urine.

"You gotta get it out of there for me," Kugelman remembers Ognibene telling him.

Kugelman acted on his own, contacting a moving company, which arrived at the school one morning, picked up the statue, and moved it to a spot toward the back of Holy Family Church, the exact spot where it now sits.

Holy Family, which survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, has several pews dedicated to the Chicago Fire Department.

The Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the order that ran Our Lady of the Angels school and lost three nuns in the fire, has served the church for 140 years.

"I couldn't think of a better place. It was convenient, coming right off the expressway, so that's how it got there," Kugelman said.

He never talked much about what he did.

After all, he had never asked permission of Holy Family's priests or the Chicago Archdiocese.

Now, Kugelman says, there is no available space to put the crosses from the old school's classrooms, a model of the burning school that was specially built, along with other pictures and memorabilia.

As president of the fire museum, he believes the city should turn over the old Engine Company 18 fire house to be used as a fire memorial, with space dedicated specifically for Our Lady of the Angels. He met with Fioretti's office at the end of September. But Pierce says a more comprehensive business plan needs to be developed.

In the meantime, Holy Family Church is also vying for the vacant firehouse.

"We've sent out a proposal to the city that we're looking for consideration for taking the firehouse and turning it into a food pantry, soup kitchen, and literacy center," Holy Family Pastor Jeremiah Boland said. "If the city was to go for a nonprofit use for that space, I'd hope we'd be a serious contender."

With a number of government subsidized housing units near the building, "there's a lot of people in need," Boland said. With minimal parking space around the firehouse, he said, Kugelman's plan "isn't practical."

But survivors of the fire say they hope the vacant firehouse will be used as the museum.

"I haven't been back in a while," survivor John Raymond of Mount Prospect said of the area surrounding Our Lady of the Angels. "It's a (rough) neighborhood now. ... When I grew up, you could walk around, kids could walk to the candy store. It's not that way anymore."

After Kugelman sent out a mass e-mail to individuals on the Our Lady of Angels fire mailing list, Raymond was one of the hundreds who wrote a letter to Fioretti.

John's late father, James, the school janitor who, like Ognibene, rescued dozens of students from the burning school building, recently received an honorary fire chief's hat.

John Raymond accepted it in his father's honor.

"I told my brother the other day, 30 years from now, some little kid is going to be wearing this for Halloween," he said. "Unless we put this in a prominent place, it's not going to mean anything. That's where we'd like it to go."