Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 10, 1991 TAG: 9103100173
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNNE TUOHY THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: HARTFORD, CONN. LENGTH: Long
She lost her life in the catastrophic Hartford circus fire of 1944. She also lost her identity.
For the past 47 years, the 8-year-old who was partial to hair ribbons, cats and dresses has been known worldwide as Little Miss 1565.
Her battered but recognizable face and presumed abandonment came to epitomize the tragedy and devastation of the blaze that killed 168 people and injured more than 500.
Today she represents how easily the line between truth and myth can blur and the danger of making assumptions.
Her name was Eleanor Cook.
The same investigation that resulted in a beloved little girl's being buried as the most famous of seven unidentified victims concluded that the fire was started by a carelessly discarded cigarette.
Hartford Fire Lt. Rick Davey, who has spent much of the past nine years of his life reconstructing a fire that happened before he was born - has concluded that the circus fire was deliberately set. The state's worst disaster may also have been its worst crime.
The wartime fire at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was publicized worldwide. The victims were mostly women and children, as were most of the estimated 7,000 in attendance.
The fire might have faded from memory sooner had it not been for the almost yearly specter of a little girl whose body had never been claimed, although her facial features were barely marred. Her plight engendered sympathy and sadness. Her memory was invoked each anniversary of the circus fire, when two Hartford detectives would take flowers to her grave.
Davey, a tenacious investigator and history buff, first had to cope with an overwhelming distraction in his study of the fire. It was the sweet face of a child, beautiful even in death, whose only name was the morgue number she had been randomly assigned: 1565.
"That face is haunting to most people who come in contact with her," Davey said this month. "She demands attention. And she got it."
Davey dispelled every rumor that surfaced in connection with her identity - that she was a waif traveling with the circus, that her whole family had died in the fire and there was no one to claim her, that her family had claimed and buried the wrong body, leaving her behind.
It meant bringing the horror of the circus fire back to life for several families who had to be interviewed, including the family of Eleanor Cook. They supplied photographs, background information and answers to questions that had fed the mystery for years.
Davey took his evidence and photographs to Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, the state's chief medical examiner, and his deputy chief, Dr. Edward T. McDonough. On Friday, they issued an amended death certificate. The little girl known for 46 years as 1565 is now, officially, Eleanor Cook.
\ In her living room in Easthampton, Mass., 85-year-old Mildred Cook last week opened a scrapbook of letters and photographs, report cards and spelling tests taken in the second grade by her daughter.
The little girl's handwriting is exceptionally good; her grades are flawless. Teachers had put little stickers over the columns of perfectly spelled words - flags and bunnies and stars - and wrote in Eleanor's report card that she showed great promise.
When Mildred Cook, a claims adjuster and training supervisor at Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., left for the circus that warm July 6, she had her three children in tow: 9-year-old Donald; 8-year-old Eleanor and 6-year-old Edward. They sat near the top of the bleacher seats in the southwest corner.
Twenty-four hours later, Mildred Cook lay in what was then Municipal Hospital in Hartford, her burned body entirely bandaged except for a slit allowing her to see. She recalls holding Edward's hand until staff at the hospital separated them.
She heard, rather than saw, the doctor making his way through the ward, telling other burn and trauma victims in a low and somber voice that their loved ones had not survived. Finally he reached Mildred Cook. "I could tell by the way he spoke what he was going to tell me," she recalled.
Edward had died the day after the fire.
Eleanor was missing and presumed dead. Donald, who became separated from his family, had crawled under the tent and escaped. Unable to locate the rest of his family, he went home with another family who had a boy about his age. From there he called relatives. For a while, it was hoped that Eleanor, too, had been taken home by another family.
Eleanor had suffered only minor burns, but she had been trampled nearly to death in the mad rush of the crowd to escape the burning big top. Records indicate she lived for nearly three hours. An arm was bandaged and she was given transfusions at Municipal Hospital. Lifesaving efforts were in vain; so were subsequent efforts to identify her.
Mildred Cook remained hospitalized for nearly six months. She could not attend Edward's funeral and burial in Center Cemetery in Southampton, Mass. His grave is identified by a white granite marker with the simple inscription "Edward Parsons Cook Feb. 26, 1938 - July 7, 1944."
Beside it is an identical white marker, placed at the same time. Its inscription: "Eleanor Emily Cook. March 17, 1936 - July 6, 1944." The ground beneath it contains no body, but Mildred Cook would plant flowers there to remember her daughter.
She said she has come to accept the contention of her son Donald, now living in Iowa, that "Little Miss 1565" is Eleanor. It was Donald who initialed the photographs - living and dead - of Eleanor that secured the amended death certificate.
Eleanor is one of three children and three adults buried July 10, 1944, in Northwood Cemetery in Windsor, Conn. - all unidentified victims of the fire. A seventh unidentified victim - a dismembered infant - was cremated at Hartford Hospital.
Mildred Cook would like to bring her daughter's body home and bury her beside her little brother. "I'd like them to be together," their mother said in a soft voice. "And maybe have a little service and a hymn, maybe `Jesus Loves Me, That I Know' - something that Eleanor would like."
\ Two weeks ago Mildred Cook opened a suitcase that has remained closed for decades. In it were the scrapbooks and letters and report cards and snapshots. It also contains some of the children's clothing, and a little brown stuffed rabbit. It is chock full of memories of a happier day.
"Once I put these things away, I don't think I'll be opening that again very soon," said their mother, as she closed a small photo book on a picture of the three children riding toward the camera on their bicycles. Eleanor's head is thrown back in laughter.
Mildred Cook said her faith and her friends helped carry her through the trauma of 1944 and its lingering heartache, although the spry woman who still works two days a week gives no impression of needing help. She was asked if she had the strength to bury her daughter a second time.
"I feel as though I could stand anything now," she replied simply.
Meanwhile, if she had lived, Eleanor Cook would have been 55 on March 17. Her gift is the same one she received 55 years ago: her name.
by CNB