A Family Treasure

I recently discovered this quilt carefully stored away at my mother’s house. This quilt has a story to tell. You will notice that on each square block is the name of a lady embroidered. As I opened up the quilt, the first name I saw was "Ivah Klinefelter." I remember her! She was a good friend of Grandma Gompf when I was a little girl. She was a sweet little old lady in my grandparents' community, and a member of the Salem EUB Church Ladies Aid. Then I read the other names! All were Salem Ladies Aid ladies, most of whom I had known when I was a little girl. I would sometimes attend the Aid meetings with my mother and grandmother, who joined in the quilting and potluck lunch at the different ladies’ homes. Then I saw the date on the quilt--February 1940. I knew then that this quilt was made by these ladies for my mother and dad after their fire!

I was not born yet. My brother was just a baby. Mom and Dad lived in a rented house just down the road from my grandparents. The following is the account from the Morrow County Independent newspaper of February 8, 1940:

RESCUE BABE, FLEE BURNING FARM HOME
Mr. and Mrs. Alva McClenathan of Near Salem Church, Escape Death in Fire

Barefooted and clad in nightclothes, Mr. and Mrs. Alva McClenathan fled their burning home, just west of Salem Church, Friday night, Mr. McClenathan carrying their 7-month-old son he had rescued after a series of dramatic events that threatened the lives of the family and rivaled those produced in Hollywood.

The baby, John, had been put in his crib in his bedroom at the foot of the stairs and Mr. and Mrs. McClenathan were ready to retire in their downstairs bedroom, when, following a nightly custom, Mrs. McClenathan went upstairs to see that an oil stove in a fruit room was burning properly.

Her screams at the sight of smoke rolling from the room brought her husband running up the stairs. He dashed into the room, which was at the head of the stairs, grabbed the stove and tried to shove it through a window. The stove was too large and so he grappled with it and the three burners rolled out and the kerosene tank broke.

The stairs became a flaming path as the burners rolled down it, igniting the kerosene that had poured from the tank, and into the baby’s bedroom.

Trapped upstairs and panic-stricken, Mr. McClenathan broke a window and he and his wife leaped, barefooted, into the snow. Their home had been locked for the night and to reach their baby in his room, which was aflame, Mr. McClenathan had to break the window of the front door, reach inside and unlock it.

He ran to the baby’s room, grabbed him from his crib and dashed out of the house. The family got into their automobile and drove to the home of Mrs. McClenathan’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. D. A. Gompf, about three-quarters of a mile away.

The baby’s forehead was burned and his nose was blistered. The father’s face was singed by flames while he was in the baby’s room. The baby’s burns were treated by a Cardington physician.

The home was reduced to ashes. The nightclothes in which they escaped are all the family salvaged.

The family will remain at the Gompf home for the present.

The house was owned by George Fiant of near Cardington.

Mr. McClenathan is a son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank McClenathan of northwest of Cardington.

(end of newspaper article)

And here is another picture of an item from Mom’s house which I brought home with me this trip. It is the little black stool which I sat on at mealtime as a child. It has been sitting beside the stove in my parents’ kitchen all these years since. (Even the electric range, purchased from Sears and Roebuck in 1947, is still there and it still works!)

Contrary to the information in the foregoing article, there was one item saved from the fire—this stool. My mother recently told me that a neighbor, Gerald Klinefelter, was able to reach through a window and pull out this stool. She says it was the only thing saved from the fire. So it has more history to it than I thought!