Soon after 21 firefighters perished in the 1910 South Side stockyards blaze, there was a public outcry for a statue to commemorate the disaster.
Ninety-two years later, we’re still waiting.
Chicago, which was leveled by flames in 1871 and has a history of tragic fires that is unrivaled among U.S. cities, has never had a monument to its firefighters as there are in cities such as Boston, St. Louis, Seattle and many others.
It is an oversight that is about to be rectified — by what some might consider overkill: Two independent efforts are now under way to build separate memorials to Chicago firefighters.
There is, of course, the stockyards project, which has recently been revitalized. Then there is the initiative of the Gold Badge Society, a support group for the survivors of fallen firefighters and paramedics. The society is deep into the planning for a lakefront memorial park to honor the 563 Chicago Fire Department members who have died on the job in the city’s nearly 170-year history. The society’s goal is to plant a tree on parkland near McCormick Place for each one of the deceased.
If the efforts seem redundant to some people, they make perfect sense to those involved.
“What happened is that, about a year ago, we were meeting with some McCormick Place people and they told us what the Gold Badge Society was doing with the city,” said Bill Cattorini, a retired CFD captain and member of the executive committee for the stockyards project. “Our thinking is, the more the merrier.”
Eileen Coglianese, of the Gold Badge Society, says the two groups have been mutually supportive since becoming aware of each other. [The stockyards] project really should get done,” she said. “Until 9/11, that was the greatest, single loss of life, as I understand it, in fire- fighting in the country.”
The Chicago Stockyards Fire Memorial committee and the Gold Badge Society have received important commitments from the city, but are still in need of funds. Thus, they are busy hitting up private sources and organizing benefits to raise money. America’s new appreciation for firefighters appears to be adding momentum to their cause.
Chicago Fire Commissioner James Joyce said the only memorials to firefighters in the city that he’s aware of are in the Chicago Fire Academy, 558 W. DeKoven St., where the badges of the fallen are displayed along with a few firehouse plaques. There is also a tombstone in Rosehill Cemetery dedicated to firemen. He favors a more prominent, public tribute.
“This is real important to the department and should be to citizens,” said Joyce of the dual efforts. “We help publicize everything they do in the firehouses, but there’s no budgetary room for the department to really donate anything.”
Joyce — his grandfather was a firefighter who died as a result of another disastrous stockyards fire in 1934 — cannot explain why the city has been lax for so long.
He does think the timing is good now, however, and added: “You have to capitalize on 9/11 or, as they say, this, too, will be forgotten.”
In New York, numerous, unofficial memorials have sprung up in the vicinity of the World Trade Center.
The city plans a civic sculpture as a memorial, but that project is awaiting a final design for the statue to be displayed.
Coglianese said the inspiration for the Gold Badge project came from the Chicago Park District’s dedication of a lakefront memorial park between Soldier Field and Burnham Harbor for fallen Chicago police officers in September 2000. This memorial also features one tree for each officer who died.
The Park District has committed $110,000 for the Gold Badge project for landscaping and other related work, according to district spokeswoman Angelynne Amores. The names of the fallen firefighters will be listed on a bricked walkway and there will be 563 trees. Park District project manager Barry Burton said the plan also calls for a patiolike area featuring flags, a limestone monument, a plaque and flowers as a focal point. About 120 trees already are in place in the parkland, which runs along the lakefront from 18th Street to 24th Street on the east side of McCormick Place.
A dedication has been scheduled for Sept. 11, but the overall project is expected to take “two or three years” before it’s fully completed, according to Kimberly Costello, of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. The society must raise $100,000 for its end of the project.
When Paul McCartney appeared recently in Chicago, the ex-Beatle gave his support to the fundraising effort by the Gold Badge Society that helped net $8,600, collected by volunteers seeking donations at the United Center doors. The workers then were invited inside for McCartney’s concert.
The society’s Maureen Lydon arranged this coup, slipping a note to McCartney’s security people at a party attended by the music legend several days before the show. During the performance, Bill Kugelman, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 2 for city firefighters, stood outside the arena with a bullhorn to alert concertgoers of the drive.
Cattorini traces his interest in the 1910 fire to when he was named a captain and assigned to Engine 39 in the mid-1990s. This was the same engine company to which Capt. Dennis Doyle belonged — one of the 21 firefighters who died when a Nelson-Morris Meatpacking Co. canopy collapsed on them.
As Cattorini researched the disaster, the only memorial to it that he could find was a plaque in the commissioner’s office. In fact, nearly all traces of the stockyards historic past have been obliterated because the district is now an industrial park. The memorial will be located just inside the stone entrance to the stockyards, which is a landmark and still stands at Exchange Avenueand Peoria Streets a block west of Halsted Street.
The stockyards effort became energized about a year ago when an executive committee headed by Cattorini was formed, according to project coordinator Bill Cosgrove, another former Chicago firefighter. An honorary committee also was established with such civic heavyweights as Cook County Commissioner John Daley and Ald. James A. Balcer (11th) on it. Joyce also signed on to the project.
The long-sought commemorative statue has been designed and approved by the city, and the intention is to list the names of the 563 firefighters who died on the job. The Chicago Park District and Chicago Department of Transportation have, meanwhile, made the necessary commitments for a parkway garden to be established in the middle of Exchange Avenue — several blocks from the site of the fire that took place in the 1400 block of 43rd Street.
“I think 9/11 has really gotten us all going,” Cosgrove said. “I was in Tinley Park the other day and saw a statue there of a fireman. If a suburb like that can have something, Chicago certainly ought to too.”
Cosgrove has donated proceeds from three books he has written about the CFD — “Robert DeNiro and the Fireman” (based on his experience as a consultant for the film “Backdraft”), “The Noble Breed” and “Accident or Arson” — and the fund now contains approximately $20,000. The goal, Cosgrove said, is to raise at least $185,000, which would be used for a wall of honor and the 18-foot bronze and aluminum statue.
Last year, a two-day ribfest failed to generate expected revenue when it rained heavily both days. This year, the committee plans another event for later in the summer.
Cosgrove, now a private investigator, left the CFD in 1996, but his passion for the memorial is unflagging. His books are self-published and he doggedly maintains a regular schedule of signings. The best response, he notes, comes in local stores such as the Borders in the Beverly neighborhood, where firefighters live in great numbers. The son of a Chicago firefighter, Cosgrove also has two brothers and a son of his own in the department. He can barely talk about the memorial without sounding like he’s racing to a four-alarm blaze.
“For 160 years in Chicago, the bell rings and firemen have been answering the call,” he said. “Those who died deserve to have their names on a wall. There can’t be enough memorials to firemen as far as I’m concerned, whether it’s for the guy who just died or somebody who got killed 30 or 40 years ago. “I just know that when the smoke clears, the memories do, too, for a lot of people.”
It remains to be seen whether there is enough support for two memorials, but according to Cosgrove, “If our project were suddenly gone, we’d be the first to toss ourselves into the other one.”
