The Vendome test
"THE FIRST ACT of bravery for a fighter," one Boston Fire Department veteran is fond of saying, "is when, as a recruit, you sign the papers to join." These days, when new recruits show up for their first day of training, they are taken to the intersection of Commonwealth Avenue and Dartmouth Street. There, they are shown the brilliant black memorial sculpture of the Vendome Memorial, dedicated to the nine men who lost their lives fighting a blaze at the old Vendome Hotel on June 17, 1972.
The names of the men are starkly etched -- Paul Murphy, Joseph Saniuk, Thomas Carroll, Richard Magee, John Jameson, Charles Dolan, John Hanbury, Joseph Boucher, and Thomas Beckwith. Recruits are told that while the odds of surviving a career with the Fire Department are good, the memorial is a reminder that there are no guarantees. T fare back home is offered to those who are not ready to make that sacrifice.
That no recruit has yet to take the subway home is a tribute to the nine.
First built in 1872 on Dartmouth Street, the Vendome was called by its owners "one of the most palatial and most elaborately furnished hotels in the world," a claim backed up by five dining rooms, a 320-seat mirrored banquet hall, and, in a nod to the social mores of the late 19th century, "an entrance for ladies on Dartmouth Street." Thomas Edison himself supervised the installation of an electrical system that ran lights and a passenger elevator. The glittering hotel quickly became a Boston favorite, hosting a sitting president (Grover Cleveland) along with many other dignitaries. Things were going so well that in 1880 the hotel expanded onto Commonwealth Avenue.
The popularity of the hotel led to the fateful decision, around 1890, to carve a new ballroom out of several rooms on the first floor. To create the larger space, the main load-bearing wall that ran across the first floor of the building was removed, which left only a single cast iron column to support the weight of the four floors above. Nobody could have possibly imagined the sequence of events that would doom the building and nine of the men whose job it was to save it from a fire 80 years later.
By the late 1960s the Vendome was long past its glory days, and it was sold to a developer who would convert the hotel into condominiums. On June 17, 1972, about a year after conversion work began, workers were busy sandblasting the exterior when inside, on the first floor, someone noticed smoke drifting down from the stairwell. A workman ran to the corner of Newbury and Dartmouth and pulled Fire Box 1571. It was 2:35 pm. The first responders arrived to find heavy smoke filling the upper floors, and they quickly called for a second alarm. Within an hour and a half, four alarms were struck and more than 100 firefighters were working to contain the blaze.
Looking back, many of the men say there was nothing spectacular about the fire at the Vendome. Stubborn, the way fires in century-old buildings can be. And smoky, too. The Fire Department switchboard was deluged with calls from people watching the Red Sox game on television who saw smoke rising from the Back Bay. But firefighters did their jobs with their usual efficiency and pluck. At one point men from Ladder 15, who were above the fire on the fifth floor, got caught in a maelstrom of heat and smoke so thick from the fire below that had to escape through a window and down an aerial ladder. Then, as District Fire Chief Leo Fahey wrote in his report , the men took "a short breather out on the street and back into the building they go."
By late afternoon the fire at the Vendome had been contained, and the chief ordered that the Canteen, a mobile refreshment stand, be opened, signaling a symbolic end to the fire. That didn't mean the job was done, though. Up on the fifth floor, on the Dartmouth Street portion of the hotel, tired firefighters were busy "raking" the ceiling to expose the last remnants of the blaze. It was tough work, and they were glad to see Richard Magee, John Hanbury, Tom Carroll and other men from the night shift showing up early to relieve them. Equipment and jokes passed between the men as they switched places.
Another early arrival, 14-year veteran Jim McCabe, had just stepped into the back section of the hotel when he saw Carroll raking the ceiling. McCabe made a joke to Carroll, who had recently been promoted to lieutenant, about not getting his hands dirty. Carroll never had the chance to reply. Without warning, at 5:28 pm, the rear section of the Hotel Vendome collapsed with a roar that shook the Back Bay.
The next thing Jim McCabe knew, he was buried under a pile of rubble two stories high. He didn't know it yet, but he was one of 17 firefighters who had gone down with the building. The dust had barely begun to settle when the remaining firefighters swarmed over the pile, many digging with their bare hands to reach trapped comrades. Some, like McCabe, lived to tell of their ordeal. Nine men would receive last rites and their relatives a visit from a department chaplain. Father Dan Mahoney would go to the Arlington home of Tom Carroll and tell his wife, "he's in God's hands now."
"Yes," she replied, "but I need him, too."
David Kruh is a writer and playwright. 
