Bulletin, Reunion Extra - #115

              Memories of the Fire of '48
by Herbert Standing and Wilmer Tjossem
On a January evening in 1948,
at about 7:00 p.m., the Penn com-munity
was shaken by a thun-derous
blast at the "Nagler
House," opposite the southwest
corner of the campus. The house
had been blown apart, and the
flames were already beginning
to leap up from the center of the
ruins.
Two of the Penn faculty had
rooms there, including Cecilia
Sheppard, Professor of Religion
and Philosophy.
When the Penn people reached
the scene of the explosion, there
was much confusion as to the
status of those who had been in
the house at the time of the
blast.
The community later learned
that the gas company had been
called earlier in the day to re-pair
a suspected gas leak. The
company workers had been
there, but had evidently not
dealt adequately with the prob-lem.
When the residents of the house
smelled gas that evening, Ernest
Weed, Superintendent of Build-ings
and Grounds at the College,
had been called to come over and
investigate.
At the time of the explosion, Ern-est
Weed had been at the top of
the stairs. His hands were se-verely
burned. The sixteen year
old daughter of the family who
lived in the house was the most
seriously burned. Although she
was able to escape from the ru-ins,
she died a few hours later.
It soon became apparent that
the only person left in the house
was Cecilia Shepherd. She was
trapped in a corner of the base-ment
underneath the first floor
which was held up by the outer
foundation. This floor was tilting
toward the center of the house
where the explosion had blown
away the center floor supports.
The explosion had lifted the
house from its foundation so
that there was a fairly large
crawl space just above where
Cecilia was trapped. However,
there seemed to be no way to get
to her. Quickly, someone
brought an ax, and Richard Sten-house
began chopping away at
the floor.
The fire in the center of the ru-ins
became hotter and hotter.
Soon Dick Stenhouse and Her-bert
Standing were the only
ones remaining in the crawl
space. The crowd outside could
see the firemen down at the fire
hydrant on the corner pulling on
their rubber boots. All that Her-bert
could do was to yell for
water and thus reassure Cecilia
that attempts were still being
made to save her from the on-rushing
fire.
Just in time, the stream from
the firehose began to play upon
the students in the crawl space,
and the fire was quenched so
that Cecilia could be released
from her entrapment.
Neither Dick Stenhouse nor Her-bert
Standing was injured in
any way, except to become thor-oughly
drenched. Herbert accom-panied
Cecilia in the car to the
Mahaska County Hospital
where he was kept overnight. Al-though
Cecilia had multiple
burns and was hospitalized
longer, she suffered much more
from the long term effects of the
emotional trauma of the fire.
On the next afternoon, the Col-lege
community had a workday
to help clear up the debris of
what had once been the Nagler
house.
Several months later, two Penn
students, Dick and Herbert,
were honored by the State of
Iowa for heroism.
24 The Great Penn Reunion