I was almost four years old, but I still have vivid mental images of that day. My grandmother, my mother, my aunt Janet, my brother, and I had just sat down a couple of platform levels above the ground relatively near the tent’s main entrance on the left side of the tent as you walked in.
The animal cages were at the other end of the tent. A small van had just dumped out a bunch of clowns in the ring near us. The ringmaster yelled, “Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages.”
To my left and behind me someone screamed. I turned my head and could see flames going up the inside corner of the far end of the tent. The screams got louder. My mother turned to my aunt and said, “You get the boys out of here, and I will help grandma.”
My aunt grabbed me in her right hand and my brother in her left. We stumbled down the platforms next to us. When we hit the ground, we ran toward the entrance. When we were outside, we kept on running. I remember looking over my left shoulder past my aunt’s right hip and saw that the tent was engulfed in flames. Pieces of canvas about the size of sheets of plywood were rising inside the plumes of flames. We ran down a path through the woods to where my father had dropped us off earlier. We could see the massive cloud of smoke above the woods.
It seemed like only a few minutes later, my dad arrived. He had heard about the fire on his car radio. He immediately asked where my mother was. We told him that she stayed behind to rescue my grandmother. He ran up the path toward the fire.
Later we learned that when the rows of people who were sitting behind us pushed their way forward down the wooden platforms, they knocked over the folding wooden chairs on top of my grandmother. My mother stayed behind and removed the chairs until she could lift my grandmother to her feet and help her out of the tent. Although our seats were far from where the fire started, it was so hot that it raised blisters down my mother’s left arm while she was saving my grandmother. My mother spent time in the hospital recovering from those burns.
To their credit, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey contacted my mother and offered to pay my mother for the injuries and pain she had suffered. They said they had limited assets but would keep paying in future years until their debt was fully paid. My mother received checks from them for many years and received the full amount. This was quite impressive to me because this occurred long before lawyers entered that scene.
To this day, whenever I tell that story, I get tears in my eyes even though it was 80 years ago.
There is another part of the circus fire story that I remember well. A Boy Scout from West Hartford went to the far side of the tent across from our seats, took out his pocket knife, and cut a long opening in that yet to burn side of the tent. Later, I was told that boy received an award and was remembered for saving literally thousands of lives. He was a very level-headed, brave young boy.
John D. Pearse lives in Madison
