By Joan Giangrasse Kates
The Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Joe Murray was a 30-year-old Chicago firefighter with a wife and several young children at home when his engine company responded to a call at his former grade school on the West Side.
“It was toward the end of the school day, and all he kept thinking was how many teachers and kids he knew were in that building,” said his daughter, Mary Murray Marchlewski.
In the end, the devastating blaze on Dec. 1, 1958, at Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Grade School, at 909 N. Avers Ave., took the lives of 92 pupils and three nuns — most of whom died when smoke, heat, fire and toxic gases cut off their means of escape through corridors and stairways.
Dozens more children were injured, some severely, after trying to jump to safety from second-floor windows. The cause of the deadly fire was never officially determined.
Murray and the crew of Engine 43, Squad 6, were among the first on the scene. He was close to the families of many of the dead and injured children. Sister Mary St. Canice Lyng, who died in the fire, had been his third-grade teacher.
“After that, he couldn’t bring himself to talk about the fire, not until many, many years later,” his daughter said.
Murray, 88, of Chicago, who served with the Chicago Fire Department for nearly four decades before retiring in 1992 as chief of Battalion No. 11 on the Northwest Side, died March 24 at Resurrection Hospital in Chicago of complications related to surgery, his family said.
“Joe taught me a lot,” said retired CFD Lt. Tim Mulcahy, who met Murray in 1968 while serving under him. “He was a great boss. When he gave an order, he did it in a way that made you want to do it. I never questioned his judgment.”
The Our Lady of the Angels fire, which eventually led to improvements in national standards for school design and fire safety codes, was one of hundreds that Murray battled throughout his years with the department while based out of firehouses across the city.
During a career that began in 1954, he received several awards for saving lives, including those of fellow firefighters from a building ready to collapse. He also aided in the rescue of a 2-year-old child who had a screw partially embedded in her lower skull after she had struck her head on a radiator handle.
With the help of his crew, Murray carefully sawed off the end of the screw, which along with the shaft was attached to the radiator. That allowed the child, with the screw intact, to be transported to the hospital, where she had surgery and survived.
“There aren’t many firefighters that could have done what Joe did that day,” Mulcahy said.
A resident of Norwood Park since 1963, Murray never spoke of the Our Lady of the Angels fire while raising his family.
“It wasn’t that he wouldn’t talk about it, it was that he couldn’t; it was that difficult,” his daughter said.
But Murray finally opened up in the early 2000s, after being approached by the author of a book on the fire and during the making of the television documentary “Angels Too Soon.” He, along with other first responders, appeared in the film, which won an Emmy in 2003.
During those interviews, he recalled arriving at the burning school and seeing injured children on the ground, some of the bodies lifeless. Others were jumping from windows as he and other firefighters frantically tried to catch them.
At one point, he climbed a ladder to a second-floor window and began pulling children out. Then he climbed through the window and continued shoving children onto the ladder as thick black smoke poured through the transom above the classroom door.
According to an account of that day that appears on the Our Lady of the Angels Fire Memorial website, Murray dove onto the ladder just as “the room flashed over, sending flames shooting out all the windows with a roar.”
He was part of the firefighting team that after the blaze was extinguished gained access to the classrooms where dozens of children had perished, some still seated at their desks.
“What Joe saw that day must have given him a whole lot to think about for the rest of his life,” Mulcahy said.
The son of a Chicago division fire marshal, Murray was born and raised on the West Side, one of eight children and a graduate of St. Philip Catholic High School. He met his future wife, Rosella, at a roller-skating rink The couple were married in 1948.
Over the years, Murray supported his growing family by working two jobs. A sheet metal worker since 1946, he was a lifelong member of the Sheet Metal Workers’ Local 73.
“It made him a better firefighter,” Mulcahy said. “Knowing how buildings are constructed — what materials are used and what leads where — gave him a real edge in putting out fires.”
Murray always found time for his family.
“Even on the days he had to work and couldn’t make it to one of my brothers’ football games, he’d still find a way to be there,” his daughter said. “We’d look up, and there would be dad, driving past the field on his firetruck with his crew, waving and honking the horn.”
Murray’s wife died in 1999. Two sons, Joseph and John, also preceded him in death.
Other survivors include three sons, Michael, Timothy and James; four daughters, Susan, Kathleen, Jayne, Patti Jo and Charlene; 39 grandchildren; 30 great-grandchildren.
Services were held.
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