I attended the Malcolm Public Schools, located 12 miles northwest of Lincoln between 1965 and 1967.
At age eight, I began attending Valparaiso Elementary School, a few miles to the north of Malcolm, in early January 1968.
As a Malcolm student, my teachers had not begun to teach me cursive writing.
The Valparaiso kids had already learned how to do so when I arrive on scene.
While I struggled to learn cursive writing and make new friends, a tragedy occurred during those first few weeks I lived near Valparaiso.
The Paul Blair family had their Valparaiso home destroyed by fire the night of Monday, February 5, 1968.
Mr. Blair was using propane to kill bees that were nesting in a wall, and somehow the propane fumes ignited, causing an explosion and a fire. His four young daughters were killed, including 10-year-old Meril; eight-year-old Laura; six-year-old-Jeanette; and one-year-old Yevette. The parents and two sons, nine-year-old Terry and four-year-old Patrick escaped the flames.
Only part of the porch and another outer wall remained after firefighters had fought the blaze for over three hours.
The fire-gutted home, which was located across the street from Valparaiso’s elementary school, stood as a painful, horrifying fatalities reminder for several weeks. It was a relief to see its charred remains finally bulldozed to the ground. I had a lot of trouble sleeping the nights following the fire, as I worried that our home would burn down, and we would all be killed.
56 years ago, when children lost classmates — or in this case, schoolmates — the conventional thinking was: The less said about it, the better. The school did not employ counselors, which certainly led to a lot of pent-up anxiety on my part. There were some issues I should have talked to a counselor about — including a crush I’d had on one of the girls.
The Blair family had only lived in their Valparaiso home for two weeks. Prior to their move into town, they occupied a house two miles west of Valparaiso on State Route 66, a poorly maintained mud hole that Saunders and Butler County officials had the audacity to claim was a gravel road.
The Blair children rode our school bus until the family of eight moved into town.
Laura was a year younger than me, and puppy love was on the rise, at least on my part. Laura was a quiet, pretty girl who sat by me on the bus a few times, and I talked to her as often as I could.
Laura soon moved into town and was no longer on my bus, and two weeks after that, she was dead.
I was tossing and turning while trying to go to sleep two nights after the fire. Each time I heard the furnace kick on, I was terrified it was going to explode and our house would be the next to burn to the ground.
Reading the Lincoln Journal-Star accounts of the fire and seeing the film of the charred house on Channel 10 Television on Tuesday and Wednesday had taken its toll on my young psyche, and sleep was not promising.
About 10 o’clock that night, I walked down the bedroom stairs and heard music coming from the living room. My older brother was still awake and was listening to his Beach Boys album. Since I was fearful of going back to bed, I sat down on a dining room chair and listened to some of the music. The phonograph needle had migrated to the song, “In My Room,” which was the last place I wanted to be. To this day, whenever I hear a recording of The Beach Boys’ “In My Room,” I think of Laura Blair.
Laura’s father, Paul Blair, has joined his daughters. He passed away in May 2007. Paul was cremated, and his ashes were spread on his daughters’ grave marker, situated on the northwest side of the Valparaiso Cemetery. The cemetery is located about a mile west of Valparaiso on State Route 66, which is now a paved two-lane highway.
I experienced death for the first time when I was only eight years old, and it was an ugly, hideous death.
As an adult in the radio business, I had reported on dozens of house fires for several radio stations, and none of them have had the impact on me as did the 1968 fire that took the lives of four attractive Valparaiso girls who I had only known a month.
You’ll be happy to know that through my grieving process, I did learn how to write in cursive.
Which today, I only use when I sign checks and court documents.