The Circus Fire (47 page)

Officially Thomas Barber stopped his search for 1565s identity the next year, retiring from the force in March. He'd investigated more than two hundred murders, but none stuck with him the way she did. His friends in the department threw a big retirement bash for him at the Statler. His former fellow detective Paul Beckwith—now chief—chaired the committee and gave a brief speech, as did Michael J. Godfrey, now retired. Barber took the podium and said he was leaving the force with mixed feelings. He'd loved the job. He concluded with a few remarks in Italian for his friends who used to live on the Old East Side, recently razed to make way for Constitution Plaza. Everyone lifted a glass.

As Barber retired, Richard Epps—little Richie at the time of the fire—joined the Hartford Fire Department. He didn't think his being at the circus that day had any bearing on his choice of profession. "But, maybe in my subconscious, I don't know." Eventually he would be assistant chief under John Stewart.

In May Barber was back at Northwood. Nothing had changed. In the mail he'd received a packet of seeds from Australia—forget-me-nots a woman wanted him to plant at the grave. The next month
Life
magazine did a spread on him, and the letters piled in again.

Unknown to Barber, the state police were checking into the case of Little Miss 1565—and also 1503. Anna DeMatteo and another trooper had gathered materials on Eleanor Cook and Judy Norris, hoping to identify both. Because the Norrises had all died in the fire, the officers spoke with Barbara and Mary Kay Smith's mother. She could only give them a general description.

They had more luck with Don Cook. At first he'd believed an odd but widespread rumor that a Jewish family from New Jersey had mistakenly claimed her body, having to bury it by sundown that day. He never discussed this with his mother. In the beginning, he felt, she wanted to believe that Eleanor—like Grace Fifield—had amnesia and had gone off with another family; then she favored the idea of the bodies being mixed up.

Don was unsure. He examined the morgue photograph; he'd never seen it before. The teeth looked different, but maybe that was discoloration from the fire. She had the same hair, and the face looked like her, except

Eleanor's cheeks seemed rounder. He was visibly shaken. It could be her, he told Anna DeMatteo. They should have his aunt Marion look at the picture.

Marion Parsons didn't think she needed to look at the picture. If it was just the girl she'd seen at the morgue, she knew for a fact that wasn't Eleanor. That girl had the wrong teeth, the wrong hair, and the wrong clothes. Finally she agreed to look at the picture.

It wasn't the girl she'd seen. She hadn't seen this body, she said, and wanted to know why not. Where was she? This wasn't the same little girl she saw.

She was tearful, but regained her composure. She didn't want to make any hasty judgments, but she thought this was her niece, considering her face had been distorted by the trampling and the heat.

Don's aunt Dorothy also took a look. At first she thought the girl resembled Eleanor, then decided that no, she didn't.

Later, after DeMatteo left, Marion Parsons changed her mind. No, it couldn't be Eleanor. Dorothy already fell into the no camp, so only Don was left saying yes, and he'd been nine at the time and still had qualms about the teeth. Changing their answer now would upset Aunt Emily and Mildred; they weren't strong enough to go through all that again. Right or wrong, Don and Marion and Dorothy would have to protect the family.

With the decision, DeMatteo's second investigation ended—at least on the issue of 1565. The policewoman continued to follow the possibility that Eleanor Cook might be 1503. At eight, her age matched that body, while Judy Norris and 1565 were both six. DeMatteo found out that Talarski's had handled 1503, but came up with no record of clothing or effects. She hoped to secure both a dental and a height and weight chart for Eleanor from the Sheldon Academy. No record exists of her attempt or whether she was successful.

The memory of the fire, like the circus itself, hit the doldrums in the mid-sixties. Local papers noted the twentieth anniversary, but with meager coverage. The show played New Haven every year, an anachronism, just a whisper beneath the constant roar of the mass media. In 1967, Irving Feld purchased the show for $8 million from an ailing, discouraged John Ringling North.

The next year Ed Lowe died of cancer. His widow Judith placed gera-

niums on 1565s grave. She and Thomas Barber hardly spoke, so he was puzzled when these mysterious flowers showed up. Barber himself was well into his seventies but still made it three times a year. "It's like going to the grave of an adopted daughter."

In 1969, the courts settled the last claim from the fire—the estate of Charles Tomalonis. In '44, Rogin had not been able to locate Tomalonis' next of kin, going so far as to take out ads in Lithuanian papers both in the States and back in his home country. No relative ever claimed him, making him, in a way, a missing person. Probate judge James Kinsella—the same Marine detailed to police the bodies—declared Tomalonis' estate forfeit to Connecticut. His settlement, gaining interest since its award, disappeared into the state coffers.

The twenty-fifth anniversary saw a brief resurgence of interest. WTIC-TV tracked down Robert Onorato's footage of the big top and got permission from his daughter to use it. The documentary "The Day the Clowns Cried" opened and closed with Thomas Barber making his Christmas visit to Northwood. Between these neat bookends, a variety of survivors and officials spoke, including ex-mayor Mortensen, Edward Rogin and Barber himself, shaking his head and saying, "Someone picked up the wrong body." He and Lowe had gone to Middletown in '44 and poked around but came up with nothing, he said, never mentioning Judy Norris by name.

Other than the interviews and Onorato's film, the program was maudlin and awful. The city had built the Fred D. Wish School on the Barbour Street site, fulfilling the plot's original purpose after forty years, and the contrast between today's children running around the playground and what had happened on the spot was too blatant, as was the documentary's ponderous narration—as if the events themselves lacked gravity. There was a nostalgia about the show, and no wonder; the gap between 1944 and 1969 seemed far larger than twenty-five years. The city the fire had shocked—that world—was gone.

So were any objections to the circus returning. In April of 1971, the show's superstar Gunther Gebel-Williams and a baby elephant attended the groundbreaking of the new Civic Center downtown. Four years later, the night of May 6th, the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus played Hartford for the first time since the fire.

One man and his father had gone back in 1944. In 75, he bought the best seats in the house and treated his father. The show was completely retooled; like John Ringling North in his heyday, Kenneth Feld had tracked down and acquired new and spectacular acts from around the world. The man's father was unimpressed. Leaving, he shrugged. "It's just not the same."

In 76, James Haley retired from politics. He'd won distinction in Congress for his work in veterans and Indian affairs. Mo Udall succeeded him as chairman of both the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Veterans' Affairs Committee. Haley also fought for water conservation. A friend said, "As a politician he was an environmentalist and anything but a liberal." As a tribute, the VA named their hospital complex in Tampa after him.

In October, the
Times
folded, leaving the Old Gray Lady of State Street a widow.

The next summer, Thomas Barber visited the grave of 1565 for the ninety-ninth and final time. He was eighty-one and needed a cane because of a leg operation. It was a hot, humid day, and his daughter Gloria didn't

want him to go. He was determined; he knew this would be the last time. She drove him, bringing along some damp washcloths and a little brandy, in case. He set a basket of pink carnations by the marker and stood back to say a silent prayer.

"When I'm through," he told a reporter there, "that's it." At home, when another called, he said, "It ends with me."

He died in November. His funeral was on the news. The Bloomfield police had men at every corner, saluting the cortege. Pat Sheehan, the anchor for Channel 3, said, "Well, Lieutenant Barber, now you know who she is."

That Christmas, the Florists Association delivered a holiday wreath to Gloria Vieth's door. She hadn't expected it, but she and Orville and their son got in the car and took it to Northwood, "because I knew he would want me to do it." The weather was bitter and blowing. They had to scrape the snow from her stone.

The circus was supposed to come back to Hartford—the dates were scheduled—but in January the roof of the Civic Center collapsed under tons of ice. Ringling sued the city for $1 million for breach of contract.

In March, Karl Wallenda was walking a wire strung between two resort hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when a gust of wind knocked him off balance. He hung on to the wire for a second, then fell ten stories, still holding his pole, striking a taxicab parked in the hotel driveway and bouncing to the ground, his head and body badly crushed. His last words were: "I'm going to make it." Helen and Herman Wallenda presided over his funeral, with Joe Geiger, Emmett Kelly and Merle Evans honorary pallbearers. Kelly followed him the next year.

A week after the anniversary in 1981, Judith Lowe sent a letter to the
Courant
claiming her husband had found out who 1565 was. "The family asked not to be identified, because of the heartache and agony they had already been through. This is all on record at the Hartford Police Station. My husband gave the information to the then Chief of Police Paul Beckwith."

Though the
Courant
printed it, no reporter ever checked with her until three years later. The reporter was collecting background for his fortieth-anniversary piece when he visited her in Westbrook. Judy Lowe told him the Judith Berman story. He went straight to the Berman family, who denied it angrily, confirming that Judith had been identified by dental

records. Later, the reporter repeated the story to Mildred Cook in Southampton. He felt that Eleanor was 1565. Mildred said if he wrote that it would kill her sister Emily. His published story ultimately contained none of it.

WPOP's fortieth anniversary radio documentary "Someone Yelled Fire!" aired at 2:35 that afternoon, to duplicate the timetable of the day. It was during interviews for the piece that Mayor Mortensen's dissatisfaction with Chief Hallissey came to light, as well as the
Times
reporter's mistake concerning the three dead performers.

That year, Hartford finally allowed a tent show to play within the city limits—the Big Apple Circus, in Bushnell Park, right around the corner from fire headquarters on Pearl Street. Chief John Stewart himself signed the authorization papers.

For several years, things were quiet. The circus played the Civic Center every spring, and people hardly noticed. The survivors of the fire had grown older, and the city had other problems. Articles on the fire were rare.

In late July of 1987, a neighbor couple taking their evening walk through Northwood Cemetery discovered near the Allied Florists' latest offering to Little Miss 1565 six mysterious notes. The stem of an artificial flower anchored each piece of paper to the ground; on the one by 1565s grave, a woman had scrawled in fine red pen: "Sarah Graham is her name!"

The notes described a single, large party—one of the more common hypotheses.

1503 was "Michael Graham, twin, 6 yrs, 7/6/38."

1510: "Michael, Sarah's mother."

2200: "Michael + Sarah's stepsister or friend, somehow related, 4512's

daughter."

4512: "Michael + Sarah's stepfather."

2109: "Michael + Sarah's step-grandmother Ann Fox-Smith."

The case went to Hartford police lieutenant James Looby—an excellent choice. The department's self-appointed historian, for years he'd fielded calls from all over the world about the circus fire. He immediately dug into the official records at the Connecticut State Library. They'd just

been made public, attorney Henry Cohn the first civilian to leaf through them, researching a book on Edward Rogin's receivership.

From the beginning, Looby doubted the notes' credibility, but just a glance at the record of the unidentified dead proved them a hoax. Michael and Sarah's stepfather, 4512, was a woman; their stepsister or friend, 2200, an old man; their mother, 1510, a boy. Looby went back to the office, convinced.

But the fact that the notes were wrong didn't answer the question: Who were these people? Looby read deeper into the state library archives, poring over old reports, trying to fit things together. He began making calls. He talked with Judy Lowe and heard the Judith Berman story.