A Once in a Lifetime Test of Courage

Grover C. Williams 1939

Friday night in Atlanta, the war was over and a festive atmosphere pervaded the city. After a night on the town, 35-year-old Grover Williams and a buddy were looking for a room. They stopped by the 15-story Winecoff Hotel but were told it was already full for the night. No vacancy. So they walked a short distance to the corner of Houston and Pryor Streets and checked into the Avon Hotel. 

When silence finally descended on the city, the men were safe in the Avon. Then came the commotion on Peachtree Street: a cacophony of screams and sirens. One man said it sounded like the crowd at a football game. 

Out of the Army and back on the job with Atlanta's Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Williams and his buddy went to investigate. What they saw shocked Williams into a life of silence on the subject. 

The Winecoff Hotel December 7, 1946

A scene of horror played out before a growing crowd on Peachtree Street. Fire was working its way up the Winecoff, forcing guests out of their windows. They saw a shower of window screens, suitcases, broken glass - and bodies - falling from the hulking brick structure. 

A once in a lifetime test of courage lay before the two men. His buddy peeled off, done for the night, but Grover Williams stepped up. He helped Atlanta firefighters with a net on the Peachtree Street side of the building. Suddenly, Dr. Bob Cox, 33, and his three-year-old son struck the net from high above. Dr. Cox's head struck the net's rim, killing him,  but his son, little Bob, landed on the net and was scooped up by Williams, who took him to an ambulance bound for Grady Hospital.  

Williams worked 36 years for the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. in Atlanta.

 

Whatever else Williams saw and did that night died with him in 1996. He never spoke about the Winecoff fire. He only revealed the story of the net rescue forty-eight years later when he met the one person whose right-to-know outweighed his own need to repress the whole experience: little Bob Cox, all grown up, and a physician like his father. The two men met in 1994 when a historical marker was dedicated at the site of the Winecoff, honoring the fire's 119 victims and the firefighters who saved the rest.

 To Bob Cox, Grover Williams told his story. Cox wrote in 2021, "he (Williams) was emotionally touched when he met a person he had helped survive. It was a special time for both of us." 

(Photo by Sheryl Cox)

George Goodwin Dies at 97

Winecoff fire eyewitness, Atlanta Journal reporter George Goodwin, died peacefully at his Atlanta home early this morning. At his side was his beloved grandson, Warren Goodwin. Biography here. George Goodwin remembered here.

Firefighter Jim Smith Passes

Jim Smith

Winecoff Hotel firefighter James Smith passed away today.

Smith was born in Atlanta in 1920. In the early hours of December 7, 1946 he was on duty at Atlanta's fire station number twelve, on DeKalb Avenue on the city's east side when the first alarm was sounded.

Station twelve's engine company was first dispatched to station six and immediately from there to the Winecoff fire scene. "You could see it when you came across Edgewood Bridge. Coming up Edgewood you could see the fire, it was coming out the windows then," Smith said in 2011.

Upon arrival, Smith was ordered to evacuate the hotel's guests from the lower floors, down a darkened stairway which was partially obstructed by fire hoses and cascading water. "They were scared," he remembered. Once the guests who could be evacuated were downstairs, Smith joined the fire fight on the Peachtree Street side.

Additional equipment was needed there. Smith did the heavy lifting. "We'd had to park down there at the Lowes Grand Theater," said Smith. "I mostly remember running back and forth."

James Smith's brother, Charlie Smith from fire station four also fought the fire. In 2011, on the fire's sixty-fifth anniversary, James Smith returned to the scene of the fire. There he was honored by Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran.

Jim Smith, may he rest in peace.

The Fortunate Ones

.             John, Betty Jean and Virginia Miller

Army Air Corps pilot Lt. Col. John Miller had planned a fun weekend in Atlanta. He'd be reunited with his family and stay in a first-class hotel suite downtown. But his plan was interrupted – just in time.

While his wife and daughter were in flight to Atlanta from Louisiana, Miller slept alone in suite 310-12 during the hours before the fire. The wake-up call he'd left with the front desk never came, but he woke up anyway in time to get to the Atlanta airport – and to leave the Winecoff Hotel.

Miller traveled to Candler Air Field. There, he picked up his wife, Virginia, and their three week old daughter, Betty Jean, who had just landed. They never made it back to the hotel. As they approached, they saw that the streets surrounding the Winecoff were blocked with fire trucks and the hotel was ablaze. They were fortunate. The airport rendezvous had saved Miller from being trapped in the burning hotel.

Later in the day John Miller responded to Grady Hospital's emergency call for blood donors. Six months later his shaving kit and partial bottle of scotch from room 310-12 were returned to him. The shaving kit still smelled of smoke.

Truett Gannon

The phone was ringing. Sixteen year old Truett Gannon awoke in a strange bed in a strange city. His bed in Atlanta's Henry Grady Hotel was only a block up Peachtree Street from the Winecoff Hotel. The loud mayhem already underway there hadn't disturbed him but the phone call did.

Groggy, he answered to hear his sister's voice describe a situation he could hardly believe: a fire, a friend injured, others unaccounted for. His help was needed. His sister urged him to pull himself together and get down Peachtree Street.

Young Gannon walked up on the fire scene and became an eyewitness to America's deadliest hotel fire. Shaken, he made his way to nearby St. Joseph's Infirmary on Courtland Street. There he found his injured friend, Ed Kiker Williams. Ed told him of his narrow escape from the fire.

He also told Gannon that he was certain his mother, Boisclair, and little sister, Clair, had already died before he'd fallen out the window and miraculously landed on a horizontal ladder stretched across the back alley behind the hotel. Together, through Ed's hospital room window, they watched the Winecoff Hotel continue to burn.

When Gannon's sister arrived, she told him to go look for Ed's father, John, who was on his way from Cordele, Georgia, the hometown of both the Williams and the Gannons. She told him to take her car.

Gannon found John Williams near the State Capitol and flagged him down to pull over. He faced the desperate father and said, "Mr. Williams, Ed is in St. Joseph's Hospital. It's on the left just up the street." Then came the question he couldn't find the heart to truthfully answer: John Williams asked, "What about my wife and daughter?" Gannon responded meekly, "Mr. Williams, I don't know." He knew from the look on Williams' face he'd failed the man. He felt also that he'd failed one of life's tests, that he'd been weak and self-absorbed when the moment called for strength and compassion.

The ride home to Cordele with his sister was a quiet one. The trauma of what he'd seen at the fire scene, the enormity of the tragedy and the personal angst he felt weighed on him heavily. That night peace descended on Truett Gannon in an epiphany. He would make it up to John Williams, prove himself capable and worthy of guiding others through times of grief. He committed himself that night to becoming a minister. The next day in church he announced his intentions.

Truett Gannon became an ordained minister in June of 1948.

For the next four decades he served Baptist churches throughout Georgia. His strength became ministering to those grieving the loss of a loved one. But he rarely spoke of the roots of his calling to the ministry, and never publicly. Then in 1986, at the 40th anniversary of the fire, he explained in a sermon the impact of Dec. 7, 1946 on his life. 

Then in 1996, on the 50th anniversary of the Winecoff fire, Gannon told his story in a lengthy interview in the Christian Index, a statewide Baptist newspaper. And in 2007, when the Winecoff reopened as the Ellis Hotel, Gannon was there, blessing the building and offering a prayer for the survivors and victims' families, who had gathered there that evening.

Today Truett Gannon, 80, is a retired Baptist minister and Mercer University theology professor.

The Winecoff fire affected every eyewitness for the rest of their lives but few as powerfully as Truett Gannon.

George Goodwin Honored

In the foreground of this 1946 front page photo
is Atlanta Journal reporter George Goodwin.

George Goodwin, now 93, was honored on March 15, 2011 by Central Atlanta Progress, the city's downtown business development association. He received the Dan Sweat Award for his lifetime of civic involvement at the association's annual meeting held on the property of the World of Coca-Cola.

As an Atlanta Journal reporter in 1946, Goodwin covered the Winecoff fire. He was never convinced the fire's origin had been properly investigated by city officials.

Two years later he won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Local Reporting for his series of Journal stories that exposed a voting fraud conspiricy in Georgia.

His career as a newspaper reporter and later as a public relations executive gave him many oppotunities to assist Atlanta's growth. He spoke to a large and grateful crowd upon recieving the award. Georgia's governor and the city's mayor also spoke at the event.

George Goodwin is the father of Winecoff Fire co-author Allen B. Goodwin.

A Lasting Impression

The aftermath of the Winecoff fire left a lasting impression on six year old Bill Stewart. It was many years before Bill fully understood what had occured but the images of the days-long clean-up process remained with him. Bill shared some of his memories in a letter to Winecoff Fire co-author Allen B. Goodwin. His letter is here.

A Voice is Silenced

Winecoff fire reporter Aubrey Morris has died. He was 88. The young Atlanta Journal writer was called to the fire scene well before dawn. Like many reporters who covered the fire, he suspected arson. He was especially suspicious of the gamblers in room 330 who avoided all questions. His vivid memories were vital to the creation of The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire.
After thirteen years with the newspaper Morris joined WSB Radio in Atlanta where he became a giant among Georgia journalists.
He was a welcome guest at several Winecoff fire remembrance events and brought comfort to those affected by the fire. In 2007 he appeared in the TBS StoryLine video documentary of the fire.
To read Aubrey Morris: Legacy of a friend and mentor by Hatcher Hurd click here.

Winecoff Reporter Honored

Winecoff fire eyewitness Celestine Sibley was added today to the roster of Georgia Women of Achievement in a ceremony at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. The author of over 10,000 newspaper columns and nearly thirty books worked for The Atlanta Constitution from 1941 until her death in 1999.
She was called to the fire scene before dawn and then wrote about what she had seen. Like everyone else there, she carried the disturbing memories with her for the rest of her life. In 1993 she wrote The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's book review of The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire. Click here for that review.

Grady Hospital Interns Join the Fight

Two Grady Memorial Hospital doctors dug deep for courage as they joined the dangerous rescue efforts along the Winecoff Hotel's back side. Doctors Bithel Wall and Joseph Hooper were pictured in this Atlanta Constitution article published two days after the fire. Ladder rescues across the smoky alleyway were treacherous undertakings for these two interns and others like C. E. Burton (photo) who assisted dozens to safety. The interns' story is told beginning on page 113 of The Winecoff Fire.

Awestruck

Atlanta Journal photographer Bill Wilson captured this photo on Sunday December 8th, 1946 - one day after the fire. (Click on photo to enlarge it.)

Medical College of Georgia Magazine Article

The Medical College of Georgia has published in its quarterly magazine an article on the extraordinary life of Grady Hospital Nurse Betty Jane Tarrant including her vital role in the emergency response to the Winecoff fire. The article was written by by Christine Hurley Deriso.

Sworn Statement Discovered

An original 1946 copy of a sworn statement given by Winecoff fire survivor Paul Lankford has been discovered. Lankford, 26, of Birmingham, Alabama was an Army Air Force veteran of World War II and was in Atlanta working for the Southern Natural Gas Co. He was asleep in room 324 of the hotel when the fire broke out and was one the first to discover it.
In the weeks that followed, he was one of many asked to give sworn statements to insurance investigators.
His son Wayne recently made the find: his dad's carbon copy of the statement. Paul Lankford's story is told beginning on page 21 of The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire.

Grady Hospital Nurse Faces Grim Duty

Winecoff Fire reader Rusty Tanton has discovered that his own great aunt played an important role in the emergency response to the Winecoff Hotel fire. Betty Jane Tarrant was a night supervisor at Atlanta's Grady Hospital when the alert was sounded, "be prepared - the Winecoff Hotel is on fire." She tells her story to Rusty in this explicit five minute video interview. Click here for the interview.

A Pulitzer Prize Winner Passes

Pulitzer Prize winning amateur photographer Arnold Hardy has died. He was the Georgia Tech student who brought the most memorable image of the Winecoff Hotel fire to the world.
Hardy passed away December 5th from complications following hip surgery. His funeral was held, fittingly, on December 7th, the sixty-first anniversary of the fire that brought him a Pulitzer Prize -- and a sense of consternation that it was earned in the midst of tragedy.

For more than forty years the woman in the famous photo remained unidentified and was presumed to have died from her fall. In 1993 the book The Winecoff Fire suggested that she was a badly injured survivor, Daisy McCumber.

Hardy was a mechanical engineer and founder of Hardy Manufacturing, which still makes medical X-Ray equipment.
He was proud of his photo. He was most proud, however, of the important role it played in shaping public opinion to improve fire safety codes worldwide. He was 85.
Arnold Hardy: A useful life - defined by a moment that mattered.

To read the Associated Press obituary click here

To Have And To Hold

The re-development of the old Winecoff Hotel necessitated the removal of some of the original bricks from the 1913 structure. Always alert, Atlanta Fire Department Captain Bill May managed to recover a few of them before they were removed from the re-construction site. He made sure one of them went to a very special person. Here is that man's thank you note to Captain May:

Captain Bill May,
Thank you for sharing a brick from the Winecoff Hotel. The Winecoff fire is that moment in history that totally turned my life. It was a powerful moment to hold a memento from the structure. I appreciate the effort you and Allen have given to make this happen.

In 1946 I was a three year old child and was staying with my parents in the Winecoff the night it burned. My parents did not survive but I was able to land on a fire net as I fell with my dad. An Atlanta fireman, Rick Roberts was one of the men holding the net. I have met and visited with Mr. Roberts a couple of times and it has been a rich experience. We were on the 10th floor and I understand that height meets or exceeds the fall distance that is compatible with survival.

I have no memory of the fire but have gathered many, many stories over the years. In the past few years even more details have come to light. We have photos, videos, the "Winecoff Fire" book, personal conversation and visits to the site. A brick from the structure is a tangible object. It is a powerful visual of a moment in history.

I have recently started to relate the story of the Winecoff to various groups in Kansas, including fire protection engineers and civic groups. It is amazing that people so far from Atlanta are so interested in an event that happened so long ago. The brick is a powerful image for the audience. Thank you again for this piece of history.

Please feel free to share this note and my appreciation with the Atlanta Fire Department.

Sincerely yours,
Robert Cox, M.D.

Captain Bill May is the host of Firefighter 411. http://www.firefighter411.com/

Front Page News !!!

All students of the Winecoff fire are urged to pick up a copy of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution from Monday December 4th to see a fantastic front page story on the remembrance ceremony & reception hosted by the Atlanta Fire Department.

In this front page photo are former Atlanta firefighter Rick Roberts and Connie Foster, the woman he rescued as an infant. They are bracketed by George Goodwin (left) and Aubery Morris (right), two newspaper men who covered the fire.

Another Unsung Hero of the Winecoff Hotel Fire Has Been Discovered!

Angie and John McKuhen visit her parents' farm near Tifton, Georgia. -- c. 1946

John McKuhen, 80 years old and now living in Florida, was a 20-year-old military policeman stationed at Ft. McPherson in Atlanta when he and five other MPs were called to the Winecoff well before daybreak on Saturday December 7, 1946. They were assigned to recover victims from the still smoldering rooms of the hotel.
Working in pairs, McKuhen and the MPs made trip after trip up the winding stairway – at times, through knee deep water coming down the stairs. He recalls firefighters lining the stairway assisting people up and down the treacherous stairway.
“I guess we started from the third floor – they may have had the third floor cleared – from the fourth floor up, I remember,” he said.
“We’d go into a room ... of course we couldn’t go in until the firemen had put the fire out down that particular hallway, and as they would get the fire out and give us a signal, then we’d go in and start bringing the people out and that’s the way it worked all the way up.”
“I remember one instance, I think it was the tenth floor. I went up with a fireman on that trip. It was down the hall, I don’t remember what the room number was but I remember the room was on the right-hand side of the hall. We went into this room, and a man and his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, probably in their early teens, and the children were laying on the bed on their stomach with their heads laying toward their parents and had their hands in the position of prayer. The parents were knelt by the bed with their hands in the position of prayer. I assume that's the way that they perished,” said McKuhen.
“That's the one thing that really stood with me. It was an experience that you never forget.”

John McKuhen (right) at the fire scene

Following the Winecoff fire, building codes around the world were modernized and upgraded to enhance fire safety. Each victim recovered had a silent message for the world: "This needn't happen to you." Because there were so many of them, 119, their silent messages were heard: in Congress, State Legislatures and Parliaments.
John McKuhen was discharged from the Army ten days after the fire. He re-enlisted ten months later, again as a military policeman, and served another twenty years.
“Being in the military police, you see plane crashes and car crashes and so forth, but I've never seen nothing that would affect you like the Winecoff fire.”

After 60 Years: A New Eyewitness Steps Forward

Dear Mr. Goodwin,

I read your book on the Winecoff fire when it first came out and have wondered how to get in touch with you ever since. I was present on the street on that terrible night. I had been to a high school dance and afterward had driven downtown to meet some friends at an all-night restaurant for a late night breakfast. On my way home, as I drove up the street beside the hotel, I heard horrifying screams coming from the alley behind the hotel. A small crowd was gathering and I parked the car to see what was happening. At that moment I heard the sirens of the approaching fire trucks.

As the firefighters were getting organized it became apparent that they did not have the manpower to handle the nets and they asked for volunteers from bystanders. I was one who did volunteer and was there throughout the night and even assisted in carrying out bodies the next morning.

At sixty years removed my recollections are just a confused blur highlighted by a few snapshot memories. I cannot reconstruct a time line of where I was or how long I spent in any given activity or how much as just a spectator. I did identify several incidents in which I was actively involved, particularly the net jump of the man I now know was named Alvin Millman. I don't know how many men are supposed to man those nets but I do know we didn't have enough. The net did break Mr. Millman's fall but he hit the ground pretty hard. I was surprised and gratified that he got up and walked away apparently uninjured.

From my recollection your account of the events on the street was stunningly accurate, so much so that I almost wished I had not read your book. I found it most unsettling as you can imagine.

Reliving the events of that awful night is something that I approach reluctantly. As an eight year old child I was rescued from a house fire by a neighbor who caught me as I jumped from a second story window. That fire took the lives of my mother and my younger brother. I do believe that was the cause of my eagerness to give assistance when asked and of my staying through the night. I believe it also contributed to the deep depression that enveloped me for several days following the Winecoff tragedy. But, thanks be, the seventeen year old psyche is resilient.
Jonathan Phelps

Large Crowd Attends Winecoff Program

Allen B. Goodwin and Sam Heys gave a lecture on The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire on Sunday March 5, 2006 as part of a special program at the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum in Atlanta.


The event also included a book signing and began with a reception at 3 p.m. The lecture followed at 4.

The program was part of the Fourth Annual Phoenix Files: A Citywide Celebration of Living Landmarks, sponsored by the Atlanta Preservation Center and 19 Preservation Partners. The award-winning, weeklong event -- March 4-12 -- spotlighted Atlanta's historic sites with 56 events at 30 venues. The Winecoff Hotel building, built in 1913, still stands at the corner of Peachtree and Ellis streets in downtown Atlanta.

The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire, published in 1993 by Longstreet Press, was critically acclaimed by a dozen Southern newspapers and went into three printings. It is the story of the victims and survivors of the 1946 Winecoff Hotel fire and of the botched investigation that followed the fire, which remains the worst hotel fire in U.S. history with 119 deaths. In the aftermath of the fire, fire codes were changed throughout America.

The program drew a crowd of more than 140 people. Following the comments of the authors, those in attendance with a connection to the fire introduced themselves and spoke briefly..

Among those attending were two Pulitzer Prize winners: Arnold Hardy, who took the famous photo of a woman leaping from the burning hotel, and George Goodwin, an Atlanta Journal reporter who witnessed and covered the fire. Also on hand were two Winecoff survivors - Bob Cox of Hays, Kansas, and Bob Irvin of Atlanta.

Family members of the following Winecoff victims attended - Patsy Uphold, Christy Hinson, Mary Minor, Earnest Weatherly, Mary Stinespring, and Fleming and Grace Winecoff.

Family members of the following survivors were also in attendance - Dorothy Moen Cox, Nelson Thatch, Mildred Johnson, Reid and Cary Horne, and Michael Conners. The daughter of Winecoff firefighter Boots Pittman was present as well.

The program was videotaped and may soon be available at nominal cost from winecoff.org.