On the morning of July 6, 1944, Theresa Fulco woke up not feeling well. The heat in her apartment on Pleasant Street in Hartford was already rising and it was forecast to be a sweltering day.
Her physical illness was compounded by what was on her mind: American soldiers had landed in Normandy, France a month before and her eldest son, 21-year-old Salvatore “Nick” Fulco, was part of the Third Army under the command of General George S. Patton. Little did she know that Patton’s Third Army had arrived in Normandy on July 5. Theresa told her husband Dominick Sr. that she was not well enough to accompany their youngest children, Dominic Jr., 11, and Frank, 9, to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus that had arrived in Hartford the day before, July 5.
Dominick Sr. put his two boys in his Chevrolet and drove them up to the circus grounds on Barbour Street about two miles north for the show that was to begin just after 2 p.m. As he had work commitments that afternoon, Dominick Sr. dropped off the boys and gave them tickets and a couple of dollars for food at the circus and bus fare for the trip home.
Dominic Jr. and Frank entered the massive, paraffin coated 550-foot-long, 200-foot-wide “big top” tent, which could seat 9,000 persons. They climbed up into the bleachers taking a place behind two other young children who were seated with a man and a woman, presumably their father and mother.
Within minutes, the Fulco boys heard commotion and spotted flames from across the tent. The man seated in front of them told the woman and two children he was with to jump down from the bleachers. They did and he followed. Dominic Jr. nudged Frank and they both jumped down to the ground. Dominic Jr. saw the man lift up a part of the heavy canvas tent for the two children and woman and yelled “hey mister, hold that for us.” The man obliged and the Fulco boys escaped the flames and smoke engulfing the tent.
Many others were not so fortunate as they were trapped under the big top by animal cages blocking the exits or caught up in the pandemonium. At least 168 persons perished and nearly another 700 were injured. The Fulco boys lived to tell about surviving one of the worst fire disasters in United States history.
From August 1944 through early 1945, Nick battled the fires of the Nazi war machine as part of the Third Army that fought across France from Normandy east to Germany. Nick fought and was wounded in what Winston Churchill called “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war”, the Battle of the Bulge, in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg. Beginning just before
Christmas, it was a bloody battle fought in intolerable, frigid conditions.
The victory by the Americans in repelling Adolf Hitler’s last major offensive led to Germany’s surrender five months later. Nick lived to tell about his war experience but, like many other veterans from the Greatest Generation, he did not discuss it. The Purple Heart he was awarded, the scars he wore on his legs from enemy fire, and Celestine, his bride that he liberated from the Alsace Lorraine region of France, told the story for him.
Epilogue: Dominic Jr. married Celestine’s sister Marie in 1958. He returned to the Barbour Street circus grounds on July 6, 2019 with his sons (one of them this author) for a remembrance ceremony held to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the infamous Hartford circus fire.
Dominic Fulco III, born in the north end neighborhood of Hartford and raised in East Hartford, has practiced law in the Hartford area for 40 years.
