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Weekly Updates"Once out of the building, we all stumbled in the night air across Shawmut Street," says Gray. "Then we realized the lady from Newton wasn't with us."
The four men started to fight their way back through the outpouring crowd when all of a sudden the missing woman was swept into their midst. She quickly explained that she somehow got separated and found herself going "down a staircase." Without hesitation, she had turned around and now, was out. All eight in their group were safe and reunited on Shawmut Street, allowing the four men to return to the service door entrance as people stumbled out of the burning club.
"Now, people were collapsing as they came out, having had been exposed to the smoke and flames. They were dropping all around, even some that looked okay, but some had soot around their faces. They were lying everywhere." Gray says
In almost no time at all Shawmut Street had become a seething mass of humanity. In addition to the people coming out of the Grove, firefighters and police officers were arriving on the scene in growing numbers as well as volunteers from many other facets of the community. People were also coming from the other nearby clubs and hotels. In all the commotion, the four men did what they could to help the people get out of the club. It was now readily apparent to Gray and the other three with him that many people had not escaped and the smoke and flames within the building were now unbearable.
After helping all they could, the four men returned to find that the four women were gone from the other side of Shawmut Street. The men knew they were out but they still worried. They searched the outside crowds for almost three-quarters of an hour, then finally came across them sitting in a restaurant at the corner of Shawmut and Broadway having coffee. It turns out that a lady had come by and taken them to her home to give them warm clothes as their coats had been left inside the Grove. The temperature had dropped and was now below freezing, causing numerous ice patches to appear from the water being put on the fire. To control the crowds, the police started blocking off the streets. The four women went to the lady's house, got the warm overcoats they now wore, and then snuck back through the police lines. They finally ended up in the restaurant in a further attempt to stay warm. The party of eight, now reunited, was directed to a nearby hotel that was set up as a base for the Red Cross.
"As we walked up to the hotel a cop in the front was talking to a civilian and said to him 'They were all drunk--that's why they died.' We were furious, all of us, and we gave him hell!" says Gray.
Their hats and coats weren't the only possessions lost in the fire. They also lost their car keys. The Red Cross arranged for rides, and Hewson and Hilda Gray were driven home about an hour after they had left the scene at the Cocoanut Grove. The next day Gray got a ride down to pick his car up on Berkeley Street using a spare set of keys. A number of cars were still there, and he paused for a moment and thought about their owners if they had survived. About one week after the fire, while at home, Gray received a call from the Boston Police Department. His keys, which had an ID tag on them, had been found.
The Employee
On the evening of November 28, 1942, Daniel Weiss was working the cash register on one side of the bar in the Melody Lounge.
"The evening started, at least, just like any other Saturday at work in the Grove, " says Weiss.
The Melody Lounge was directly below the main lobby of the Cocoanut Grove. A single stairway descended into the lounge, which was comprised entirely of a bar in the center with seating around the bar and throughout the room. With a tropical motif of palm trees, greenery and cocoanut husks, the dimly lit lounge could accommodate up to about one hundred customers without discomfort, but this evening, people were four deep around the bar bringing the total in the basement lounge to probably twice that number.
Daniel Weiss was 24 years old at the time. In his fourth year as a medical student at Boston University he had worked weekends at the Grove for the past three years for his uncle Barney Welansky, owner of the Cocoanut Grove. He was just a few months away from beginning his career in medicine.
About 10:15 p.m., some of the crowd started to sing along with the lounge piano player as she hammered out a popular wartime tune. Despite the overcrowding and the difficulty keeping track of patrons, there was a stir in the corner to the right of the stairs that caught Weiss's attention. He had noticed moments earlier that one of the white-jacketed bar boys had been conferring with the head bartender, John Bradley, about turning a light back on in the corner. Apparently, a patron had unscrewed the light to place himself and his girlfriend in a veil of solitude in the already dimly lit lounge.
After the bar boy had turned the corner light back on and returned to the bar, a sudden flurry of movement occurred in the corner. While some who were only a few seats away concentrated on the singing and were oblivious to the commotion, several in the immediate vicinity had jumped to their feet, some backing off and peering up. And there it was--a small flicker of blue light dancing about the top of the palm tree where it met the lowered ceiling.
In the next instant, the blue spurt of energy became a ring of orange outlining an ever-widening black hole in the fabric, with little jets of flame jumping up and down on the imitation bamboo.
"Get water quick. There's a fire!" someone shouted.
The anxious pause that followed was as if the hearts of those who could see what was happening skipped a beat.
Weiss guarded his register as was expected of him during any type of commotion while John Bradley and several other employees made a frantic but feeble attack on the flames. Water from a pitcher and a siphon bottle of seltzer were ineffective. A bar boy swiped at the flames with a towel, but the orange and blue flames continued their ever-widening circle across the ceiling decorations. Another employee returned from the kitchen with an extinguisher, but the flames had advanced to a point beyond any appreciable service that the device could offer. The music had stopped, but even so, the noise of the crowd continued and many seemed to be unaware of the growing concern.
Few people made any effort to leave, as if hypnotized with fascination and disbelief. John Bradley, and a busboy struggled to yank the palm tree, now ablaze like a torch, down off of its wall mooring. With a mighty yank and a shower of sparks, the tree finally came down, glancing off the howling Bradley and dragging a piece of flaming satin ceiling decorations onto the arms of the busboy. Unfortunately, their efforts were to no avail. The fire was now well involved in the ceiling fabric, and as if signaled by the falling tree, it suddenly flashed across the satin ceiling decorations with terrifying speed.
At that moment the spellbound crowd panicked. Screaming and shouting, the mob rushed madly to the stairs, the only obvious exit. Fortunately for some, John Bradley had flung open the camouflaged service door and a small group was shepherded into the kitchen. But most were unaware and scrambled towards the stairway, which had now become a chimney. A few lucky ones made it out before the flames, but without hesitation a wall of bodies appeared as quickly as the panic, blocking the only exit and trapping the mob in the now-searing inferno.
During the panic, "I hesitated, staying at my post despite being terrified," Weiss says.
By instinct, the cashiers were entrusted with safeguarding the bank during a disturbance, which normally would include such comparatively mundane occurrences like a fight. But this situation was very different. The other cashier had already scrambled into the kitchen, and as Daniel Weiss watched in horror as people were being burned alive on the stairs and were falling victim to the ever-thickening smoke and fumes fed by the blowtorch over their heads, he knew he had to get out. Just as he sprang for the gate underneath the bar, the lights went out.
Dropping to his hands and knees, he scrambled in the darkness to the bar gate and pushed, but it was blocked. Remembering the sight of those being asphyxiated, he stayed low. It was becoming difficult to breath, so he maintained his crouch, reaching into one of the sinks and soaked a bar towel in the dishwater. With a seething maelstrom all around him, he placed the cloth over his mouth and nose and lay face down on the floor.
"The closer I was to the floor, the easier it was to breathe," Weiss says.
The smoke was thick and choking, but for the moment this quick-thinking tactic was working. Weiss then realized that the screaming and crying that filled the lounge had subsided into only moaning and scratching, and this in turn was followed by an eerie foreboding silence. What was happening? Even the fire seemed to be gone.
In the darkness and in the silence, Weiss did the only thing he could do--he waited. As the seconds slowly ticked away, he desperately wanted to get out, and crawled to the bar gate, but again it wouldn't budge. Terrified at the thought of dying with the rest, Weiss took a deep breath, rose, and lunged over the counter. But instead of the floor, he landed on bodies.
Scrambling in horror and somehow still holding his breath, he fumbled through the service door into the welcomed chill of the smokeless passageway to the kitchen. Weiss believes he was probably the last person to leave the Melody Lounge alive.
Feeling his way through the dark passageway, Weiss found his way into the spacious basement kitchen. Under the light of a single bulb he was astonished to find several dozen people, most of them patrons, huddled around in an anxious daze. Some of the kitchen help were there, including the club's food cashier, an older lady named Katherine Swett.
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