The Shadow
BY BUCK RUMPF
Staff Writer
SELMA – On Nov. l3, 1935, the Selma Elementary School was destroyed by fire after classes had started in the morning and 35 children in the fourth grade were saved by a teacher dropping them from a second floor window.
When a reporter is asked to cover a story, the story sometimes provides a tip to another story. A couple of weeks ago, the Virginian Review editor asked me to write a story about the Christmas Star high on the hill above Clifton Forge, known as Frazier’s Hill.
The star is placed there each Christmas season by the Noel family and has been seen by residents and travelers for many years.
I was interviewing Nora Noel Webb, daughter of Benjamin Harrison Noel who came from Rockbridge County in 1920 and purchased land to build a house from John Frazier. That is the reason the hill is known as Frazier’s Hill. The Noel family children included six daughters and one son.
While she was talking about her family and the two other families that lived on the hill, Nora mentioned that the children, including herself, would walk around the mountain two miles to Selma School and two miles back for a round trip of four miles a day to attend the grade school in Selma.
Later, when the Noel children attended Central High School in Low Moor, they would walk down the hill to Verge Street and then three blocks to the wood covered bridge across Jackson River where they caught the bus that had been to Iron Gate to pick up students there.
One morning, while walking around the mountain to the Selma School, the youngsters looked up and could see their school building on fire. It was the morning of Nov. 13, 1935. That was 77 years ago and there are still some residents in the Highlands that remember the fire.
The headlines in one local newspaper read “Selma Schoolhouse Destroyed By Fire. Save Children By Dropping Them From Window.” The story received front page coverage in both the Clifton Forge Daily Review and the Covington Virginian.
The two story brick school had 133 students and four teachers in the building at the time the fire occurred and many of them were on the second floor. Those on the second floor had to leave the building through a window to reach partial safety.
The story in one newspaper reported that eight small children were badly injured and numerous others received minor injuries. The fire is believed to have started from a furnace explosion, or through some other means in the basement of the building.
By noon, all the children had been accounted for and although injuries were many, no fatalities were reported.
The injured were being treated at the Chesapeake and Ohio Hospital in Clifton Forge about a mile away.
At 12 noon, the following were listed as being in the hospital: Mary Kidd, Lillian Jones, James Apperson, Milton Craft, Thomas Agnor, Ruth Van Horn, Norma Hayslett, and a young girl whose name was Jones.
These children were suffering from broken bones, shock and flesh wounds. Twenty others had received first aid at the hospital before being released.
Several Clifton Forge physicians were at the fire location giving first aid to the children that had minor injuries.
All the students and teachers on the first floor got out without any trouble, but the flames blocked the stairways to the second floor. Those on the second floor were saved by teachers dropping them out of the second floor window.
According to Milton Craft, who was nine at the time and one that was on the second floor, when he leaped out of the second story window, he broke his left leg in three places.
He said that when he was taken to the C&O Hospital, they refused to admit him because he was a minor and had to have someone sign for permission to treat him. He said officials could not find his father, so they went down to the C&O shops just over the hill from the hospital and got his grandfather to sign for him.
He was in the C&O Hospital for about five days with his broken leg. When interviewed for this story, although it happened 77 years ago, he remembered it quite well.
He noted that the fire could have taken many lives including his, but for a Mrs. Lawler going to the school board for several months and complaining about bars on the windows on the second floor. About a month before the fire, the bars were removed from the windows.
Another person that was interviewed who was caught by the fire on the second floor was Nelly Jean Kimberlin who is now married to Dr. Guy Merritt, a dentist in Roanoke where the couple lives.
She remembered the fire quite well this week. She said she remembers jumping out the window and as she passed the first floor window she fainted. The first thing she remembered after the fall was being carried across the street where rescuers were placing the children that were believed to be injured and who would be taken to the hospital.
She said her hip was not broken but even today, 77 years after it happened, it sometimes hurts. She was nine years old when the fire occurred and is now 86.
She said that after the fire, the Selma Methodist Church and the Brethren Church let the school board use their facilities until a new school was built several blocks west up the hill in Selma.
The rebuilt school is not used today by the school system and was sold to a private party years ago. Currently an individual lives in part of the former brick school.
The Clifton Forge Fire Department was a little late getting to the fire because when someone called the fire department, they said the school was on fire and before the dispatcher could ask which school, the person hung up the telephone. So the Clifton Forge Fire Department first went to the Moody School, then Clifton Forge High School and finally to the Robert E. Lee School that was located where the Wood Chevrolet car dealership later operated. It was near today’s Hardees Restaurant on the corner of 5th and Ridgeway streets. The school in the west end of Clifton Forge had been built in 1912 and was used until 1940. It was torn down a few years later.
From the west end school, firemen could see the smoke from the burning school and went across the bridge to the building in Selma.
The C&O Railroad played a big part in the fire. The fire- men were handicapped by a lack of water and Paul Cole placed a call to L. A. Grubbs, the C&O Division Superintendent, and asked for help.
Grubbs ordered that two locomotives be taken with their tenders to the area just below where the school was burning. The two locomotives arrived too late to help save the school, but they did furnish 50,000 gallons of water from the two tenders that helped save nearby buildings.
In a disaster like the Selma fire, there are many who step forward to volunteer their help.
Miss Dell Jackson, fourth grade teacher, refused to leave the upstairs until all the children were accounted for. She dropped her entire class of 35 students to safety and then leaped herself and received a bruised face and sprained leg.
Stewart Paitsell was saved by the gallant efforts of Carter Entsminger who climbed a ladder and went into the blazing building and found Stewart who had been overcome by the smoke. He was taken to the hospital but did not neet additional assistance after he arrived there.
Dr. Louis Houff was the first doctor on the scene and treated many of the children who had minor injures. He was the father of Clifton Forge’s current mayor, Jimmie Houff.
W. B. Maitland, a Petersburg salesman, was another one of the heroes. Passing by on U. S. Route 60 and 220, today’s Selma-Low Moor Road, he saw the fire and stopped. He caught several of the children who were dropped from the second floor. He and Carl Maydian of Selma were reported as being the first on the scene and both aided in the rescue work.
Nelly Merritt noted that someone brought out a mattress but for some reason they did not use it to break the fall of the children.
Ellis Barr, chairman of the Alleghany County School Board, and S. T. Godbey, superintendent of Alleghany Schools, arrived at the fire scene at 11:30 a.m. Godbey reported that the school was insured for $13,000 and would be rebuilt.
It was pointed out by one of the students that had to jump out of a window, that the floors had been treated with a compound to keep down dust and it contained oil.
Over the years, the liquid had penetrated the wood and when the fire broke out of the basement, it caused the floors to burn quicker than they normally would have.
Many of the schools in the area, public buildings and stores used the same compound for years but because of the fire hazard, it is no longer used.
As a result of the fire, residents in Selma got together and organized the Selma Volunteer Fire Department which was chartered June 26, 1936. It was active until World War II when there were not a sufficient number of young men in the community to continue operation.
The department was inactive for a few years and was rechartered on May 26, 1958, and has been serving the community and surrounding area since then.
A fire station was built in 1958 after the reorganization and is located on the Selma-Low Moor Road about a block from where the burned school had been.
Today a private residence is located on the former school lot.
The Selma Fire Department added additional space to the original building in 1973 and 1990.
The department’s service area includes from the Clifton Forge town limits to Island Ford Bridge including Interstate 64 and into the Rich Patch area.
Members also assist other volunteer fire departments in the Highlands.
