Cocoanut Grove Fire: An Unlikely Encounter

1. On this date in 1942, eighty years ago, the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston killed 492 poor souls in a night of horror and devastation, the deadliest nightclub fire in American history. The swanky club was filled with more than 1,000 people, over twice capacity.

The nightmare scenario and loss of life could have been avoided, but for the fact that the only available exit was a revolving door at the front of the building where the panicked crowds became trapped and the door jammed. Other exit doors were locked to stop patrons from skipping out on their checks. Eventually, a firefighter broke down a rear door, but not before many had been badly injured or burned to death in the fast-moving flames and gases. Half of the survivors required extensive medical treatment.

This disastrous event became the basis for modern day fire codes throughout the country. Sadly, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City in 1911 only resulted in protections in industrial settings and did not safeguard commercial or entertainment establishments.

THE FAMILY STORY:

Fast forward to the early 1990s, when my mom Rose traveled from New Jersey to spend a week with my mother-in-law in Revere, adjacent to the City of Boston. While eating breakfast in the coffee shop of the senior citizens housing complex, my mom was approached by a courteous elderly resident named Eli who asked her if she would kindly proofread an important letter he was sending to his estranged brother. Eli and Rose personally delivered the letter to the brother’s house in New Hampshire and then went out for lunch.

That evening, I received a telephone call from my mom announcing that she was getting married! I contained my surprise as best as I could while I absorbed the shocking information, even though I feared my mom had gone far off her rocker.

Eli and Rose moved in together and experienced three years of bliss until Eli passed away in 1995. It turns out that Eli had a younger cousin, Shirley Friedman-Harris, who was a survivor of the Cocoanut Grove fire, and he told Shirley’s story to my mother.

SHIRLEY’S STORY:

In a Boston Globe interview in 1994, Shirley explained that she was accompanied to the club by a young gentleman friend. She became separated from him in the crush of the crowd. She said she would not have survived the burns over her arms and legs had it not been for Dr. Bradford Cannon, a plastic surgeon assigned to her at Massachusetts General Hospital, later to be known in medical journals as Case No.13. Shirley was twenty years old at the time, in a coma for three weeks and underwent nine surgeries during her five months at the hospital, then five more surgeries afterwards.

The young man did not survive.

When Dr. Cannon was abruptly re-assigned to a military hospital, she became deeply depressed, as he had been kind and attentive to her, in addition to exercising his considerable skills. Years later, she named her only son Bradford, in honor of the doctor that saved her life.

A WING AND A PRAYER REUNION:

In the early 1990s, two United Airlines pilots had just landed in Chicago after their second flight together. Chatting in the hotel van, they discovered that they had both grown up near Boston.

Captain Laurent Cannon then mentioned that his dad had worked at Mass General. Co-pilot Jeffrey Bradford Harris was stunned, “Your father isn’t Dr. Brad Cannon, is he?”

Then it was Captain Cannon’s turn to gasp with surprise. Harris had not only heard of Cannon’s father, he was named after him!

That chance meeting of their two sons reunited the fire victim, now age 72, and her doctor, 52 years after those dark days in 1942.

Dr. Cannon, now 87, responded, “When my son called and told me about his meeting with Shirley’s son and that they had flown together, I was absolutely dumb-founded.”

At the time, United Airlines employed 8,000 pilots. What were the chances that these two pilots would ever meet? Actually, the first time they flew together, their small-talk in the cockpit did not lead to clues of their connection. As it turned out, they had both left the Boston area and lived out West, less than fifty miles apart, another coincidence.

(Internet stock photo)

Shirley wrote to Dr. Cannon and was finally able to thank him. He responded immediately and most graciously, affirming her recollections and promising to form a close relationship with the pilot son named after him.

NOVEMBER 28, 2022:

The unimaginable tragedy of the Cocoanut Grove fire is being commemorated in Boston today, with plans announced to build a memorial nearby. When I saw today’s article in the news, I recalled the story that Eli had told us and that I had saved a newspaper clipping, A Wing and a Prayer Reunion, allowing me to share this amazing story with you.