Spotlight is on 100^th Anniversary of Chicago’s Iroquois Theater Fire Disaster

            Do you like to talk to dead people?  If you do, then join The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest for its annual cemetery walk, The Tale of the Tombstones, a two-hour tour on Sunday, October 19 which highlights the history of Oak Park, River Forest and the Chicago area.  It features costumed interpreters who will bring local history to life by recreating the inspiring stories of fascinating citizens who have made significant contributions to area and world history.

            The tours begin at 1 p.m. and additional groups leave at ten-minute intervals until 2 p.m. at Forest Home Cemetery, 863 Desplaines in Forest Park, Illinois. (The rain date is set for Sunday, October 26).  Cost is $10; $5 for  members of the Historical Society.  The walk is underwritten by Drechsler, Brown and Williams, Oak Park’s pioneer funeral home.  

            This year’s walk, the 12^th annual, will commemorate the 100^th anniversary of a tragedy that changed the fire code laws for the United States: the Iroquois Theater Fire.  The tragedy killed 602 people, mostly women and children, who were attending an afternoon performance in the brand-new and allegedly fireproof Chicago theater on Dec. 30, 1903.  The stage curtains were ignited by the stage lights and when back doors were opened to let the smoke out, inrushing air fueled the fire. When people tried to exit the building, some doors were found to be locked and others opened inward trapping those trying to flee the smoke and flames.  Women and children were trampled and overcome from the smoke and perished needlessly during that tragic holiday season.   Telling the story of the fire will be William Lancaster McLaughlin, who was in town visiting friends and became a victim of the fire; Samuel Fallows, the presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, who was passing the Iroquois Theater and helped fire victims; and Charles Drechsler, an early area resident and undertaker, who helped bury victims in Forest Home Cemetery. 

     Other characters featured in the 2003 walk are Billy Sunday, the charismatic baseball player turned evangelist who popularized the tent revival; The Gravedigger, who will talk about burial customs and the important social role cemeteries served for Victorians as an outing destination;  the Balls, Madame Elizabeth and Judge Farlin, who will discuss the women’s suffrage movement;  the Humbrock Brothers, who will talk about World War II and share their thoughts on country and patriotism; and Morton Schaffner, who stood up for individual rights and the first amendment.

Forest Home Cemetery is the premier non-sectarian burial ground of Chicago’s west suburban area, known internationally as a shrine to organized labor because of the landmark Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument.  Before being opened as a cemetery in the 1870s, the land was used successively as an Indian village and burial ground, a dairy farm, and a popular picnic grove for Chicago’s German community.