The Year of the Fire

Jabez Van Cleef arrived at Cornell in June of 1966 as a member of an experimental program, funded by the Ford Foundation, which was intended to provide 48 liberal arts students a path to earning PhD's within six years. The first summer the group lived near Clara Dickson hall in a building called Phillips house. Then in the fall they moved into the Cornell Heights Residential Club on the fringe of the campus in Cayuga Heights.In spite of the inherent stress of this collective competitive enterprise, the special students established a kind of enforced mutual solidarity because of their relatively isolated location, dedicated on-site dining hall, and a shared sense of responsibility to be the best and brightest students in the United States. They also felt an acute sense of differences amongst themselves. Jabez came from an isolated farm and felt socially disadvantaged in comparison with other program members, many of whom came from professional and academic families. By and large, they learned to like each other and, under the softening influence of time, to love each other. Early in the morning on April 5th,1967, somebody set a fire in the Res Club building. Smoke and poisonous gas from the fire flowed into the lobby of the building, which was the main entrance and exit point. Jabez awoke about five minutes after four o'clock and saw the smoke as a dim haze under the hall lights, which were still on at that point. He climbed out the window of his room, which was at ground level, instead of attempting to go out through the lobby. This action proved to be prescient because Peter Cooch, who lived across the hall, attempted to leave through the lobby and was overcome by the gas, and died there. In all, nine people died in that fire, the largest loss of life in such an incident in the history of Cornell.This novelistic memoir recounts the year leading up to the night of the fire, and the following year, with some commentary on the effect of this arson crime on the subsequent life of the author.