Single Entity

I generally consider myself a bad feminist. Biased language? Get over it. Offended when someone holds a door open for you? That's just common courtesy. I only really care about things like equal pay and equal opportunity laws, but still with the healthy understanding that men and women have different bodies and different abilities. Some professions are significantly male because they need (usually) upper body strength that most women don't have. And you know what, I'm okay with the fact that women don't drafted. When you figure that many countries don't consider women prisoners of war, and that a hell of a lot of horrible things are likely to happen to those women before they die, I'm okay with some gender bias in the military. (Mind you, I am *not* okay with a sexuality bias. There've been gay people in the military as long as there's been a military. Get your panties out of a twist and relax.) Mostly, I believe that people are people, regardless of gender, sexuality, color, any of that.

However, there does come a point when I get mad. When I cannot stand to see what some people on this world do.

I recently was introduced to the story of a Turkish girl whose body was found earlier this year. She was 16. Her father had buried her -- alive -- because she had male friends. How is it possible that there exists a place where it is right and good to kill your child because of her friends? I try to be understanding to the world at large, but this is beyond me. It makes me feel like a helpless idealist again, instead of a somewhat cynical devil's advocate. This is one place where I cannot see the other side of the picture.

To quote the blog where I found this,

According to this moral code, it is more honorable to torture and kill your own child than to allow your adolescent female child to talk to boys. More honorable to tie her up, put her in hole, and pile dirt over her head while she pleads and weeps.

It makes me sad for the world.

I have a growing desire to watch or read all the tragic romantic movies and books that didn't affect me as a young girl. Though it seems somewhat ironic to write this just before my birthday, I have found that with age and experience (mostly experience) comes a connection of emotion that I never expected. As someone who almost never cried as a child, and only rarely as a teenager, it's been a shock, the things that can make me cry now, especially when I know that they wouldn't have caused me to cry only a few years ago.

I thought of this today because I was reading a pretty damn bad romance novel that involved the killing of a dog (it was chasing sheep), and I had to put it down for a while, practically in tears. This made an impression because for years and years, the only book that had made me cry was James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small, and the passing of an old and well-loved dog. I think it touched me then, and now, because I've had that experience. I held my dog as she died, and I've been there when my cats were put to sleep -- that was a pain that I understood.

What I didn't understand so much was the fear and knowledge that someday, I will say goodbye to everyone for the last time. It might not be years and years from now, but there is always a last goodbye, whether you know at the time that it is or not, and that is a painful and terrifying thing to process. I don't think I was exposed to it until high school, and I'm not sure it was real to me until I was practically in college, so that's almost 19 years of media that I may not have felt to the fullest.

It's a strange desire, because I don't particularly like to cry, and I have no desire to think about the future in the terms of last goodbyes, but I can't help but wonder what I might get out of things, what might make me cry, and what that might tell me about myself.

Fact: I just got done reorganizing my bookshelf, and I was extremely close to giving all you readers a list of what was on said bookshelf. Be glad I didn't. There are about 15 books per shelf, six shelves.

Instead, I'm going to ramble about something that I meant to ramble about a long time ago.

On February 27th, 1949, a spark in a fireplace in the oldest building on my campus turned into an inferno, killing nine students and becoming the worst tragedy in the campus' history. Years worth of accumulated dust in an old, boarded up chimney allowed the fire to spread quickly between the ceiling of one story and the floor of the next, in a building that housed almost one-quarter of the students. It was the wee hours of a Sunday morning, after a dance; all the girls had returned to the lent rooms of faculty and other chaperones. None were reported missing, though campus legend says that there were girls illicitly in the building, who died that night, and that the college denies their existence to keep down the scandal.


The 1827 building, Old Kenyon, was truly gutted, but it was rebuilt in just over a year -- completed for the opening of the '50-'51 school year, fully modernized, of course. The original stones from the building were so thick that the contractor numbered each stone, cut it in half, and used each half to rebuild the north and south walls! (The photo above is looking at the north wall -- note the figures silhouetted against the flames at the bottom edge.)

There are reports of selfless bravery that night, of students going into the building repeatedly to find and rescue incapacitated comrades, exposing themselves to third degree burns to pull one more person out of the flames. One student on the third floor hung onto the iron fire ladder, four feet from the window, and caught fellow students as they leapt toward him, so they could then descend the ladder in safety. The president of the college himself went into the building to search for his students.

After the fire, six students were missing. Two had died leaping from the third floor, with all stairwells full of flame, and the last victim died at the local hospital from his burns. The nearby woods were combed for evidence of the six missing boys, in the hopes that they had survived the jump from the third floor. Fragments of bone were found in the rubble of the building, corresponding to where each had lived. It is believed that they died of smoke inhalation before even waking up. Most of the victims lived on the second or third floor of center section of the building, where they had the least warning and were trapped the soonest, asthe fire started in a first floor lounge of the center section. One set of parents refused to believe that the remains found belonged to their son, and refused to take them. He is now buried in the campus cemetary.

There are reports of ghosts in the building, only seen from the knees up, as the foundation was raised 18 inches during rebuilding (from the floor below you can see thier feet dangling from the ceiling). Some have reported being shaken awake, with voices yelling about a fire.

This year marked the 60th anniversary of the tragedy, which seemed to go woefully unnoticed by the student population, though the alumni bulliten and other publications commemerated it, which is why I have gathered all these reports to file here.

In Memory:
Ernest Ahwajee
Edward Hyman Brout
Albert John Lewis
Martin Elliott Mangel
Jack Boland McDonald
Marc Spencer Peck
George Leon Pincus
Stephen Mahlon Shepard
Colin Macrae Woodworth

Sources:
The Special Collections Page: there is usually a video of the fire on this page, though it seems to not be working right now.
Student Documentary: This was chilling, and touching. Be warned, the editing is occassionally heavy, and the video begins to play when the page is opened. The volume is rather variable as well. Watch it anyway.
Alumni Bulliten: A look back, after 60 years.
Alumni Bulliten: Another look back.
Ghost Stories: Scroll down about half way.
More Ghosts
Memories of the Fire
A Nurse's Tale: an account by a girl who visited for the dance that night, and served as a nurse to many of the injured, including one of the boys who died at the hospital
The Victims