Kettle River news

The next city council meeting is 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 15. Please note the change in day.

Ma & Pa Kettle Days bingo is 1 p.m. Sunday, March 19 at the Senior Center.

On Dec. 1, 1958, while I was a student nurse living in Chicago, at the Presbyterian-St. Luke’s School of Nursing dorm. There was a fire at Our Lady of Angels Catholic School in Chicago. In that fire, 92 students and three nuns died.

Our dorm was across the street from Cook County Hospital. The injured children, some who were burned and some who were injured from jumping out of the windows, were taken to five hospitals in Chicago, but all those who died were taken to the Cook County morgue to be identified.

We watched from our dorm windows as many ambulances went by to the morgue. After this fire, many new laws regarding fire safety in schools were passed. Over 16,500 older schools were upgraded in the first year after the fire. The story of this fire is found in several books.

“The Fire that Will Not Die” by Michele McBride, “To Sleep with the Angels” by David Cowen and John Kuenster, and “Remembrances of the Angels” by John Kuenster are a few of the books. One of the survivors is Jonathan Cain, who became a member of the rock band Journey. As students, my classmates and I took care of some of the injured and burn victims from that fire.