Date posted online: Sunday, December 16, 2007
40 years ago this month, Hammond High was set ablaze

BY LAURI HARVEY KEAGLE
lkeagle@nwitimes.com
219.852.4311

HAMMOND | Bernie Krueger was sharing a little Christmas cheer with other athletic directors over dinner at Al Knapp's restaurant in Robertsdale when he heard the news.

"Maurey Zlotnik, my old grade school coach, was with us and his wife called and told us Hammond High was on fire," Krueger said.

It was Dec. 13, 1967 -- 40 years ago this past week.

Video: Memories of the fire

Krueger, a 1944 Hammond High grad himself, was the football coach and athletic director at the school. He got in his car and rushed to the high school.

"I hauled out several loads in my trunk of things from my office that were wet and cold," Krueger said. "We did lose a lot of records, movies of games, playbooks."

Word quickly spread throughout the community and many gathered by their radios for updates on WJOB. Students and other onlookers flocked to the Wildcats' football field, held hands and sang the school fight song.

"There were people crying," Krueger said. "They thought it was gone."

Hammond City Councilman Robert Markovich, D-At Large, was a student at Hammond Technical Vocational High School.

"I remember the kids lining up to try to save the instruments from the band room," Markovich said. "There were kids from Clark, Tech, everyone lined up to help out and pass the instruments out the windows."

Firefighters from Calumet City, South Holland, Lansing, Gary, Munster and Whiting assisted Hammond in battling the five-alarm blaze for more than four hours.

By the time it was over, the school sustained $750,000 in damage, more than $4.5 million by today's standards. The fire blackened the gym, auditorium and 45 classrooms.

Leo Sartoris, now 91, was the lead investigator on the case for the Hammond Fire Department and was called to the scene about an hour after the fire started and called the state fire marshal's office for help.

"By that time, all the floor joists had fallen," he said. "There was no way to get to the actual origin of the fire."

Sartoris had been called to the school six months before, on June 1, when someone threw Molotov cocktails through the windows of two classrooms, causing minimal damage.

Sartoris thought about that as he watched Hammond High burning in December.

"During the fire, I sent one of the inspectors into the crowd out of uniform," Sartoris said. "Many times, the person who starts the fire will be in the crowd and that’s what we did with this fire. I told him, ‘Just work the crowd.’ "

Gregory Maman of Highland was the night custodian and showed up for his shift at 10 p.m., but couldn't do anything to help.

"I went in at night and the civil patrol was there, so I stayed with them because there was no heat in the building," Maman said.

Maman said he never had any doubts the building would survive the blaze.

"That thing was built like a fort," he said.

Amy "A.J." LeJeune of Griffith was a freshman at the time and remembers going into the school the following day to retrieve her belongings.

"I opened my locker and water poured out," LeJeune said. "My history book swelled up to about 10 times its size and, oh, the smell. What an atrocious smell."

While Sartoris tried to figure out who started the fire and how, school officials scrambled to figure out how they were going to educate students. They decided to cancel classes through the holiday break while they came up with a plan.

The end result was "The Adjusted Program." Beginning on Jan. 2, 1968, 1,735 Hammond Tech students attended school with shorter classes from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The Tech kids cleared out and 1,320 Hammond High students attended abbreviated classes there from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

LeJeune said her strongest memories are of walking home in the cold and dark after 6 p.m.

"I had it better than a lot of the other kids because I lived downtown, so I didn't have to go as far," said LeJeune, now a Realtor with her own local firm.

"We always had to carry everything, all of our books, because they didn't have lockers for us at Tech and I remember slipping on black ice and landing flat on my back and my books going everywhere."

While academic classes took place at Hammond Tech, all athletics were moved to the Civic Center.

"They gave us a big room in the basement," Krueger said. "The following year, we had to stay there and use it for football because our athletic room wasn’t done yet."

Richard Kitchell of Munster was a freshman athlete at Hammond High when the fire hit.

"I can remember not being able to have our home wrestling matches at home and having to go to the Civic Center," Kitchell said. "We shared a room with the elephants (when the circus was in town), and I can still remember that smell."

In the end, no arrests were ever made in connection with the fire.

Sartoris said even now, 40 years later, he still would like to know who was responsible for the blaze.

"As far as I’m concerned, it’s never closed," he said. "I’m always hoping that someone will come forward, maybe on their deathbed."