Last dance at the Cocoanut Grove: the Cocoanut Grove was one of the most popular nightspots in Boston. Massachusetts before and

To those unfamiliar with the Cocoanut Grove, the name itself brings to mind palm trees, laughing crowds, coconuts, dancing and just a good place to go and enjoy oneself with friends. The Grove had all of this. But, this is not how it's remembered. In Boston, the Cocoanut Grove is etched forever in history as a city's worst nightmare, with piercing screams, wild-eyed panic, and terrible heartbreak.

On the chilly New England Saturday evening of November 28, 1942, the Cocoanut Grove was packed beyond capacity with upwards of 1,000 people. Just after 10 p.m. in the Melody Lounge located in the basement, a small fire broke out in a fake palm tree, and then quickly spread across the ceiling decorations.

In the official Boston Fire Department report released after the fire, Fire Commissioner William Arthur Reilly estimated that the fire took only two to four minutes to develop momentum and cross approximately 40 feet of the Melody Lounge to the only public stairway out of the room. In seconds it had flashed passed the first floor foyer and the main entrance, and into the main dining room. From the first appearance of flame until it had explosively traversed the main dining room and passed, almost 225 feet away, to the entrance of the Broadway Lounge, the commissioner estimated at total time of an incredible five minutes at most. At this point in time, all exits normally open to the public, of which each had something functionally wrong, were useless for a safe escape.

In minutes, the Cocoanut Grove was an inferno from one end to the other. Some escaped untouched but most did not. Rescuers pulled out trapped survivors and victims as quickly as possible, so that by midnight, the once bustling Cocoanut Grove was a blackened, soaking, but now empty hulk of a building. Just like the fire itself, the entire incident was but an instantaneous flash in its history, but the ramifications of this inferno are felt to this day.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This story is an update of my original story that appeared in the NFPA Journal in 1991. I have included additional information that relates to our codes and standards that was not available when the story first ran.

In addition, of the five individuals who were interviewed for this article in 1991, I am aware that Messrs. Graney, Collins, and Moore have passed away. On this basis I've revised the conclusion of each of their personal accounts to be independent of time.

While interviewing the people included in this article, they at times referred back to earlier testimony and interviews. Any similarity to other published material on this subject is based on the interviewee's own reflections on such material.

Sixty-five years have passed since that fateful evening. Many who were in the Grove and escaped, or were involved in some other way, are now gone. But some remain, and nobody knows the Cocoanut Grove's final moments better. Here are their stories.

The Patron

"We went to watch Boston College beat Holy Cross, and instead it was one of the greatest upsets in college football history," says Hewson Gray of Waltham, Massachusetts. That afternoon's big football game was the first in a series of events that would lead Gray, along with his wife and their companions, face to face with destiny.

Hewson Gray and his wife, Hilda, went to the game at Fenway Park that afternoon with Hilda's sister Josephine Driscoll, and her husband, Francis. Later that evening, they would meet two other couples at the Cocoanut Grove for dinner.

The Boston College Eagles were better than six to one favorites over Holy Cross. They were undefeated with a very tough schedule, and they looked forward to pounding Holy Cross in the traditional end-of-the-season football rivalry. In contrast to the BC strength, Holy Cross had a balance of wins and losses in accordance with a rather mediocre schedule. Sugar Bowl representatives were in attendance on behalf of Boston College, and the only question before game time was by what margin BC would win.

"I was, and still am, a Boston College fan, but what a sad afternoon it was for the Eagles. We were stunned," says Gray.

The final score was an incredible 55-12 upset, which remarkably were the same numbers of the two BC co-captains shown on the cover of the game program. Yet, even more remarkable is how delicate the balance of fate really is, since BC planned to hold the team's victory party that evening at the Cocoanut Grove. Major Tobin himself would have led the revelry. Of course, all thoughts of a formal party were cancelled because of the magnitude of the defeat, but that loss kept them from an event in which the odds were a mere one to one between life and death.

But some of the BC contingent would carry on with the evening's plans despite that afternoon's debacle. Among these were the Grays and the Driscolls, who were obligated to meet up with the other two couples.

Their reservation at the Grove was for late evening, and in the meantime, they journeyed to several other clubs in the South End and Back Bay districts of Boston. About 8:30 p.m., Gray parked his car on Berkeley Street so that the group could cap the evening off with dinner and a show at the Cocoanut Grove.

The other two couples met them at the Cocoanut Grove. They were friends of Josephine Driscoll, one couple being from Dorchester and the other from Newton. The Grays had never met those other two couples, but they fondly noted that the wife from Dorchester was eight months pregnant. Hewson and Hilda Gray had been married almost ten years, and despite trying to have children, it would be another two years before their first child was born.

After leaving their hats and coats at the coat room, the party of eight waited momentarily in the lobby while their table was located.

"It was so crowded that you had to turn sideways to get through the tables in the dining room," explains Gray. "They were having trouble getting us a table despite our reservation. We had to go all the way across to the far corner of the dining room, over to the other side of the stage. O'Brien was the name reservation on the table that they finally gave us."

Even though this excursion to the far corner was not a big deal, it was somewhat annoying. Yet here fate was kind, since there were four O'Briens killed in the fire.

"We always wondered where the O'Brien's sat; that is, where we should have been. We were lucky," he said.

With their table in the corner, Hilda Gray had her back to one wall and remarked at one point that "the wall felt hot." To satisfy their own curiosity, they each took a turn touching the wall and found it warm to the touch. This novelty provided an item of discussion, and since the outside temperature was near freezing, the men joked that if the women felt cold they should just lean against the walls.

"We can't imagine why the walls were noticeably warm like they were" adds Gray, "But after the fire we had to wonder if this somehow contributed to its violent spread. It was so fast."

The nightclub's show was scheduled to begin about 10 p.m. Gray went to the men's room located at the opposite corner of the dining room, just off the lobby at the top of the stairway that led down to the Melody Lounge. Because he had to push through the crowd, this journey was more arduous than usual.

Just as Gray had returned to his table and had sat down, they heard a commotion from over by the lobby where Gray had just come back from. Initially it sounded like people were shouting, "fight," with some of the people bumping each other in an attempt to clear out of the lobby area. Then they saw a blue and yellow sliver of flame flash up to the ceiling.

With the realization that a fire was the cause of the activity over on the far side of the dining hall, the instantaneous reaction of those on the other side of the room was--nothing. They weren't sure the fire was bad and it was far across the other side of a very crowded room. One of the waiters immediately rushed across the dance floor and began fumbling through the drapery on the Shawmut Street wall of the dining room, and it became evident that there was a door behind these drapes and he was trying to open it. Then almost as quickly as the commotion had started, the small flame became a fireball, racing toward the center of the dining room, igniting tablecloths and anything else it could touch, and a solid wave of humanity jumped and started running away from it, toward Hewson Gray and his party of eight.

The Grays, the Driscolls and the other two couples in their group jumped to their feet and were pushed toward a service door behind them leading to rooms behind the stage. A mass of people was coming toward them and there was nowhere to go but through the service door and beyond. As they were being swept towards this service door, the waiter and the others with him got the Shawmut Street door open, and people in the dining room started to flood out this open door with fire over their heads. Although Gray and his party were relatively close to this now-opened door, they were being swept away from it and toward the service door in the corner by the crowd of terrified dining room patrons. And then, just as Gray entered the service room off of the dining room, the lights went out.

In the darkness, they followed the person in front of them, not sure where they were going.

"We took a couple of corners and went up some stairs. There were some more stairs that went down, but we didn't take them. We followed a wall, and took some more turns--it was very confusing in the darkness," says Gray.

Hewson and Hilda Gray and the others were still all together, but a minute or two had passed and the smoke was starting to build in the little back rooms now jammed solid with people. Being at the corner table allowed them to be at the front of the tide of humanity, and they could feel in the darkness that they had come to still another door. But it was locked. Several men near the front teamed up to try and break it down. Just when this seemed hopeless, with a loud crash, the door flung open and there were firemen with axes. Outside the club became just as chaotic as the people in the small service rooms poured out into the street into the strikingly cold air. This was one of the first doors opened by the fire department, which by tremendous good fortune happened upon the scene after responding to a nearby car fire.