Worst in 125 Years

At 4 a.m. one day last week, sleeping students in the Gothic-style men's dormitory at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio awoke to hoarse shouts of "Fire!" By then, the 120-year-old building was doomed. Smoke billowed through corridors, and flames (which had started in a defective flue) were rolling up the old-fashioned stair well in the center of the building. As men jumped from their beds and opened doors that were already warm, the fire tore through the roof, rushed crackling along the eaves to the wings. Some students dashed out before it was too late. Some jumped from windows, others tried to climb down the ivy that covered the stone outside. Still others never got out at all. When dawn came, there was nothing left of "Old Kenyon" but its smoke-blackened outer walls.

Next day the college recounted the fire's toll: first, two who had been killed in jumps, then another who died of a head injury in the hospital. Six more were missing and for them hope soon died. When the count was completed, nine were listed as dead, 25 injured. For Kenyon College it was the most tragic week in its 125-year history.

"Old Kenyon," where 120 students lived, was the first permanent building that Kenyon College had ever had. Rutherford B. Hayes (Class of 1842) was among the undergraduates who had roomed there. Over the years, Kenyon had grown up around it, a distinguished small men's college (700 students) with an Episcopal and literary tradition (its best-known professor nowadays: Critic John Crowe Ransom).

Would the college be able to build a new "Old Kenyon"? President Gordon Keith Chalmers thought so. As bandaged students went back to class, alumni and friends across the U.S. were writing and wiring offers to help. At week's end, Kenyon trustees voted to conduct a million-dollar drive to duplicate the old building, using the old stones, with a modern, fireproof interior.

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