November 28, 1942: The Cocoanut Grove Fire

November 28, 1942: One of the worst fires in American history struck the Cocoanut Grove in Boston.

The Grove was located at 17 Piedmont Street, a few blocks south of Boston Common, and was one of the Hub City's most popular nightspots. It hosted Big Band music, and was basically Boston's version of New York's Copacabana Club. Mayor Maurice Tobin was a frequent visitor.

Maurice J. Tobin

The downside was that it was Mobbed up. Barney Welansky, a lawyer who inherited ownership of the club from a former client, bootlegger Charlie "King" Solomon, used his connections, both with the law (he and Tobin were friends) and outside the law to stay open. He was breaking fire laws left-and-right: Some exit doors were locked to prevent unpaid entry (or leaving without paying your tab), the palm-tree decor was flammable, and, with freon rationed for the war effort, the air-conditioning used flammable methyl chloride gas.

November 28 was the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, and a lot of servicemen who hadn't yet gone overseas had passes and had gone home. The Grove's headliner that night was Arthur Blake, a popular comedian known for his impersonations, especially of women. (Actress Bette Davis, singer Carmen Miranda, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt were specialties.) It was a barely-kept secret that he was gay, and he was so good a performer that nobody who watched him seemed to care. Basically, he was a drag queen who still wore a tuxedo.

"To Stuart and the Great dancers, great people,

great guys, great wardrobe, great guns

& all a haul Love -- Arthur Blake"

So the capacity of 460 people was easily surpassed, possibly even doubled to more than 1,000. Ironically, Welansky was not among them: He was recovering from a heart attack at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he would be joined by some of the surviving victims.

The fire started at 10:15 PM. The official cause was never determined: The Boston Fire Department decided that the leading theory, that a busboy lighting a match to give himself more light to replace a light bulb, and insufficiently extinguishing it, was probably not the cause. Nevertheless, a drape caught fire, and with all the flammable material in the place, the fire spread very quickly.

Being an Atlantic port city, and thus considered a possible target for Nazi sabotage, Boston had been heavily preparing for what would now be called a "mass casualty event," repeatedly rehearsing emergency drills. A city of many renowned hospitals, including Massachusetts General, had its ambulances, blood banks and burn treatment centers on alert, which probably saved some lives and made some recoveries quicker.

But there were 492 deaths. It was the 2nd-deadliest single-building fire in American history. In 1903, the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago burned and killed 602. Technically, those are still the 2 worst: More of the victims of the World Trade Center attack died as a result of the buildings collapsing than from the fires inside.

One of the Cocoanut Grove victims was Buck Jones, an actor known for his Western movie roles, who allegedly pulled someone out of the burning building, rushed back in to see if he could save anyone else, did save a second person, went back in to see if he could save a third, and never made it out. He died from his burns 2 days later, at the age of 50.

The story that Jones went back to save someone was spread by John Wayne, who called Jones his role model for Western acting, but it has never been proven. One legend that is true is that, in his last film, Dawn on the Great Divide, he sang the hymn "Rock of Ages" over an open grave, providing some unintentional foreshadowing.

The tragedy could have been far worse. Boston College began the day as the Number 1-ranked football team in the country. Coached by Denny Myers, led by running back Mike Holovak, who finished 4th in the voting for the Heisman Trophy, and playing all their games at Fenway Park, they were 8-2.

Mike Holovak

They played the team that was then their arch-rival, The College of the Holy Cross, of nearby Worcester, Massachusetts, at Fenway. They were expecting to be invited to the Sugar Bowl to play for the National Championship. And BC had scheduled a victory party at the Grove.

But Holy Cross crushed the Eagles, 55-12. Mayor Tobin, a BC graduate, canceled the party, so the BC players didn't show up. He was so disgusted, he didn't even go himself. Had he gone, he might have been among the victims.

BC dropped to Number 8 in the next poll, but were still invited to the Orange Bowl in Miami. They lost to Alabama, 37-21. After winning their 1st 8 games by an average score of 32-3, they lost their last 2 by an average of 46-16. They would be a college football afterthought for the next 40 years, until Doug Flutie arrived.

The Suffolk County District Attorney randomly selected 19 victims, and charged Welansky with 19 counts of manslaughter. He was convicted on all counts the next year, and was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. Tobin, who had been elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1944, learned in 1946 that Welansky was dying of cancer, and commuted his sentence, so his old friend could die as a free man. Welansky told reporters, "I wish I'd died with the others in the fire." He joined the victims a few weeks later.

The remnants of the Cocoanut Grove were torn down in 1944. Urban renewal has changed the former Bay Village neighborhood tremendously. Part of the footprint of the Grove is now under the Revere Hotel. The rest is covered by condominiums, with an address of 25 Piedmont Street.

Maurice Tobin served as U.S. Secretary of Labor in President Harry Truman's 2nd term. He died in 1953, just 6 months after leaving office. In 1967, the Mystic River Bridge, connecting Charlestown with downtown Boston, was renamed the Maurice J. Tobin Memorial Bridge.

Arthur Blake lived until 1985, having outlived his stardom, but still had a successful nightclub act until the end.

Denny Myers remained head coach at Boston College until 1950, and died in 1957. Mike Holovak went off to World War II, then played for the Los Angeles Rams in 1946, and the Chicago Bears in 1947 and '48. He succeeded Myers as BC's head coach, leading them from 1951 to 1959. When the American Football League was founded in 1960, he was named running backs coach for the Boston Patriots under head coach Lou Saban, father of Nick Saban. Lou left in the middle of the next season, and Holovak served as the Patriots' head coach until 1968, getting them into the 1963 AFL Championship Game.

He continued to work in the NFL, including serving as the New York Jets' interim head coach at the end of the 1976 season, after the disastrous hiring of Lou Holtz. From 1981 onward, he worked in the front office of the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans franchise, building the "House of Pain" Playoff team of the late 1980s and early '90s, and the team that won the 1999 AFC Championship. He died in 2008.

Only 2 people who were inside the Grove that day, 80 years ago, are known to still be alive. Both are now 98 years old: Joyce Spector, then attending a secretarial school; and Robert Shumway, then a student at a nearby prep school. Shumway had gone to the BC-Holy Cross game at Fenway Park.

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November 28, 1942 was a Saturday. Eric Shinseki, a 4-star General in the U.S. Army who served as Secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Barack Obama, was born on this day.

Most college football teams had already finished their seasons, but not all:

* Number 5 Georgia beat Number 2 Georgia Tech, 34-0 at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia.

* Number 10 Tennessee beat Vanderbilt, 19-7 at Dudley Field (now FirstBank Stadium) in Nashville.

* Number 16 Mississippi State beat Mississippi (Ole Miss), 34-13 at Scott Field in Starkville, Mississippi.

* Number 17 Auburn beat Clemson, 41-13 at Auburn Stadium (later renamed Jordan-Hare Stadium) in Auburn, Alabama.

* Michigan State played Oregon State to a 7-7 tie, at Macklin Field (later Spartan Stadium) in East Lansing, Michigan.

* Kansas State beat Nebraska, 19-0 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.

* Rice beat Baylor, 20-0 at Municipal Stadium in Waco, Texas.

* Washington and Washington State played to a 0-0 tie at Husky Stadium in Seattle.

* And Navy beat Army, 14-0 at Thompson Stadium on the campus of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Ohio State went 9-1, but, until the 1946 season, the Big Ten Conference Champion was not guaranteed a place in the Rose Bowl, or any other bowl game. Georgia won the Southeastern Conference Championship, and won the Rose Bowl to complete an undefeated season. The national polls were divided between Ohio State and Georgia for the National Championship.

Baseball was out of season. There was no NBA yet. But there were 2 games played in the NHL that day. The New York Rangers lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 8-6 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. And the Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 6-2 at the Montreal Forum.

Also, Arsenal defeated Charlton Athletic, 3-0 at White Hart Lane. During World War II, Highbury, Arsenal's stadium in North London, was appropriated for the war effort, so they played their home games at The Lane, home of their arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur.

November 26, 1947: Boston's Jailbird Mayor Comes Home

November 26, 1947: Jim Curley is released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, his prison sentence commuted by President Harry S Truman. Upon his return to his hometown that day, the quintessential Boston politician is met with an adoring crowd.

James Michael Curley was born on November 20, 1874 in Roxbury, then a mostly-Irish neighborhood south of downtown Boston. His immigrant father died when James was 10 years old, and he went to work at menial jobs.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Boston politics were marked by growing Irish political power in opposition to traditional Yankee Protestantism. Curley involved himself in the local Roman Catholic Church and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal benefit society that assisted Irish immigrants.

He acquired a reputation as a hustler who was willing to help others get ahead. Curley gained experience in the traditional practices of ward politics such as knocking on doors, drumming up votes, and taking complaints. He ran for a seat on the Boston Common Council in 1897 and 1898, and finally won in 1899. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1901, and to the upper house of the city legislature, the Board of Aldermen, in 1904.

He won that last election while he was in prison. He and Thomas Curley, no relation, had each impersonated an applicant for postal service jobs by taking the civil service examinations for them. The Boston Irish saw him as a man who stepped up for his own people. In baseball terms, he took one for the team. Everybody else in Boston saw him as a crook.

In 1909, he wanted to run for Mayor. So did a former Mayor and former Congressman named John F. Fitzgerald. And "Honey Fitz" had more political I.O.U.s than Curley. Fitzgerald struck a deal with Curley: He promised not to run for re-election as Mayor, and would support Curley for the U.S. House of Representatives. Each man won his respective election.

But Fitzgerald did run for re-election in 1913, and in Irish-American politics, breaking your word was simply not accepted. Curley wasn't having it. Thanks to a campaign aide, he found out that Honey Fitz had fooled around with a cigarette girl known as "Toodles," and threatened to reveal it. Fitzgerald dropped out, and Curley won election as Mayor for the 1st time. It wasn't all a bad year for Fitzgerald: His daughter, Rose -- at 24, the same age as the cigarette girl -- married the ambitious son of a behind-the-scenes Boston political figure: Joseph P. Kennedy.

Curley ran things like many big-city political "bosses" did: Doing favors for those neighborhoods, or even streets, that voted for him, and not for those who didn't. If your block voted for him, you got your garbage picked up, your potholes filled, and your snowy street plowed, all on time. If not, not. He became known as "the Mayor of the Poor" for how he got jobs for them.

But an older Irish politico and the State's Republican Protestant establishment teamed up, and another Irish Catholic politician opposed him in the 1917 election, and they split the vote, and a Republican won. Then the State legislature passed a law saying no Mayor of Boston could succeed himself. So when Curley won a 2nd term in 1921, he couldn't seek a 3rd in 1925. He could in 1929, and took office just as the Great Depression took hold, and his underhanded dealings were a godsend for Boston's poor.

In 1934, he ran for Governor of Massachusetts. He won. The idea was that he would not only use the office to teach the State's Republican Yankee Protestants a lesson, but also that it would be a springboard for a Senate run in 1936, and that would be a springboard to make him, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt would no doubt be leaving office after 2 terms, to become the 1st Irish Catholic to be elected President in 1940.

Of course, Joe Kennedy had the same idea for himself. And as a local boy who made good with the establishment, a North Ender who became a Harvard graduate, and the 1st Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, he thought he could work his way into the 1940 nomination.

But while he was every bit the able administrator that Curley was, Kennedy -- unlike his father-in-law, and, as it turned out, like his sons -- was no politician. Curley was much better organized, and had the common touch that Kennedy simply didn't have. At the 1936 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, Curley led the Massachusetts delegation in a parade, with signs for his Senate campaign, and some signs saying, "WATCH 1940." (At this point, the idea of FDR running for a 3rd term had occurred to no one, not even to FDR.)

But while Curley's political skills made him ideal for the office of Mayor of Boston, or a Congressman for a Boston-based District, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a whole was a very different constituency, and his skills were not a match for the Governorship. His tenure was a disaster, and even Massachusetts Democrats knew it.

Despite FDR being re-elected with a record 61 percent of the vote, Curley got just 41 percent in the Senate vote against Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., grandson of a famed Republican Senator. Of the State's 14 Counties, he won only Suffolk, which includes Boston. He almost cost the Democratic nominee to succeed him as Governor, State Treasurer Charles F. Hurley, the election: He won by only 28,000 votes, compared to Curley's 109,000-vote win 2 years earlier.

Still, for the rest of his life, while everyone called him "Mayor Curley," he was entitled to be called "Governor." An aide named William Kelly became known as "Up-Up Kelly," because, at every rally, he would take the stage, and tell the audience, "Up, up, for the Governor!"

He ran for Mayor again in 1937, but lost to Maurice Tobin. He ran for Governor again in 1938, defeating Hurley in the Primary, but lost the general election to future Senator Leverett Saltonstall. In 1940, with Nazi Germany posing an existential threat to democracy all over the world, FDR ran for a 3rd term, and, due to various circumstances, it was clear that, if there was ever going to be a Catholic President, it wasn't going to be either Jim Curley or Joe Kennedy. With the City Charter having been changed again, allowing Mayors to succeed themselves, Tobin ran for re-election in 1941, and Curley ran him, but lost.

In 1942, Curley ran for Congress again, and won. He was re-elected in 1944. In 1945, he and Kennedy made peace: Kennedy agreed to support Curley in yet another bid for a 4th term as Mayor, and pay off some of his debt, if Curley would refuse to run for re-election to Congress in 1946, opening the House seat for Joe's son, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Curley's race came first, so Joe didn't have a chance to double-cross him the way his father-in-law, John F. Fitzgerald, did 32 years earlier.

Running on a campaign of "Curley Gets Things Done," 67-year-old Jim Curley won his race in November 1945. Running on a campaign of "The New Generation Offers a Leader," 29-year-old Jack Kennedy won his primary in June 1946, and his general election in November 1946 -- while Maurice Tobin was elected Governor.

In June 1947, Curley was accused of accepting $60,000 from the Engineers Group, a firm Curley headed which was under investigation for war profiteering. He was found guilty of mail fraud and sentenced to 6 to 18 months in federal prison. Under current conditions, the American media and the Republican Party would have demanded his resignation. Curley did not resign: He remained Mayor while in prison.

Under pressure from the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, and in consideration of Curley's poor health, Truman commuted his sentence after only 5 months, and he came home to a hero's welcome. He had beaten the system once again -- if not fully.

City Clerk John B. Hynes served as acting Mayor during Curley's time in prison. Hynes ran against Curley in 1949, saying, "We cannot afford the city bosses anymore," and won. A new city charter was passed, moving the mayoral elections to the year before a Presidential election, instead of the year after. Hynes was re-elected in 1951, beating Curley again. Curley had first run for public office at the age of 24; he last did so just short of turning 77. He died on November 12, 1958, 8 days short of his 84th birthday.

He outlived his 1st wife and 7 of his 9 children, 2 of them dying on the same day. And that wasn't due to childhood illnesses, either, because these 2 weren't children anymore: Leo became so distraught at the death of Mary from a stroke that he had one, too. Curley had groomed his son James Jr. as a successor, but, while a student at Harvard Law, in the days before antibiotics, he died from a postsurgical infection. Two sons, George and Francis, survived him, but neither had children of their own. Francis couldn't: He was a priest. When he died in 1992, the Curley bloodline ran out.

But the Curley legacy did not. Much of what he built, including the expanded City Hospital, remains. In 1956, Edwin O'Connor published a novel titled The Last Hurrah, about Frank Skeffington, an old big-city Mayor and Governor running for Mayor one last time, and dying shortly after his defeat.

The novel was widely presumed to be about Curley, who told O'Connor he enjoyed the book, especially "The part where I die." It featured a priest telling the Skeffington family that the old man had made his peace with God, and that, if he had it to do over again, he would do things differently. And the old man opens his eyes, and says his last words: "The hell I would!" A film version, starring Spencer Tracy, premiered on October 22, 1958, a few days before the real Curley died.

There are not one, but two statues of Curley outside Faneuil Hall, across Congress Street from the new City Hall that Curley did not live to see. One shows him standing up, the other has him sitting on a bench.

Mayor Fitzgerald got an expressway named after him; Mayor Hynes, the city's Convention Center; Mayor/Governor Tobin, a bridge. Kevin White, the 2nd man to be elected to 4 terms as Mayor of Boston, and the 1st one allowed to do so consecutively, has a much taller statue a few feet away from Curley's. Yet he seems to be looking over his shoulder at Curley and Curley.

Aside from Fiorello La Guardia in New York, few big-city Mayors from as far back as the 1940s are fondly remembered by their cities today. But then, that's Curley's 4th term. His 1st began in 1910. And yet those statues are there, to remind everyone that, while they aren't very tall, they represent a giant of the city.

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November 26, 1947 was a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Roger Wehrli, a Hall of Fame cornerback for the football version of the St. Louis Cardinals was born on this day.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Two games were played in the Basketball Association of America, the league that became the NBA 2 years later. The New York Knicks beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 81-59 at the Philadelphia Arena. And the Baltimore Bullets beat the Providence Steam Rollers, 76-61 at the Rhode Island Arena in Providence.

And there was 1 game in the NHL: The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Boston Bruins, 5-3 at the Chicago Stadium.