(During the Depression, as the two Wake Forest banks failed and people lost their homes to foreclosure, an arsonist prowled the Wake Forest College campus and town streets at night. Incredibly no lives were lost, but two historic college buildings and the just-completed Wake Forest High School were destroyed as was the clubhouse at what is now Paschal Golf Course. The high school, which was fully insured, was rebuilt immediately and is the R.H. Forrest Building at Wake Forest Elementary.
(The arsonist – it appears it was all the work of one college student – tried to destroy all the buildings on campus. In 1982 Tom Arrington, the son of the first Wake Forest Fire Department chief, said more than 70 fires were set over a two-year period, 1933 and 1934, and 17 buildings were burned. Every building on the campus had a fire set in it though only Wait Hall (Old Main) and Wingate Hall with the portraits of every college president were destroyed.
(In the archives of the Wake Forest Historical Museum are five pages from of a memoir by a man who was a student during those two years. It may have been published in the Wake Forest College Alumni News. The first page or pages are missing; the account picks up as students are rushing from that first fire in Old Main in the early morning hours of May 5, 1933, and there is no way to know the name of the writer or the year in which it was published. It is, however, an interesting and first person account – along with a chase around campus of the suspected arsonist.
(In 1933, some students roomed in Old Main in the third-floor rooms set aside for two debating societies, Philomathesian and Euzalian, and others roomed on the lower floors.)
The account begins: “The college had provided ropes in each room to be used as emergency exits from the top floor. The sturdy vines of ivy were more attractive to third-floor students than the ropes and many used the vines to climb down to safety. There was no chance to salvage much in the way of personal property. Any boy from the top floor of Phi Dorm was luck if he could grab a pair of pants. Many from the second floor were standing around outside in their pajamas or robes; those from the first floor, a bit luckier, were able to salvage a substantial amount of their personal property.
Not all were so lucky or so aware what was important. In their excitement, many students raced out the door to safety with completely worthless objects, leaving their clothing and other important items to the flames. In particular I noted a first-floor student who owned two foot lockers. He raced out the doorway with one of them and it was not until several minutes later that he discovered the foot locker he had carried out contained only one pair of dirty socks; the other had all his clothing. By then it was too late to return. The lower floor was also in flames. Many boys from the top floor of Phi Dorm were half naked with no clothing except what they wore when they reached the ground. The students in Eu Dorm were a bit luckier. An east-northeast breeze of five to ten miles per hour slowed the crossover from the center section (of the building) for a minute or two, just enough for the students to salvage most of their possessions before the fire engulfed that section of the building.
After we were certain that everyone was safely out of the burning building, we began to be aware that the breeze was carrying large burning embers over, onto, and around the houses of Coach Phil Utley, Mrs. Whims (who ran a boarding house in what was probably the Calvin Jones house which then stood on North Wingate) and Professor James G. Carroll. Others had noticed this potential danger, and my roommate and I joined them in a scramble to the roofs of the three houses to sweep and rake the burning embers to the ground where other volunteers with buckets of water doused the fires. Garden hoses would have been welcome, but none were available.
By the time we returned to the Administration Building (another name for Old Main), units of the Raleigh and Louisburg fire departments, both some seventeen miles distant, had arrived on the scene. But they were much too late to slow or prevent the loss of the entire building. The fire had been discovered shortly after 2 a.m. and was said to have been started on the second floor at the front of the building. The years of oil saturation on the wooden floors and stairways made the fire flash quickly to the first and upper floors, and it was burning out of control when discovered.
Several years earlier the school trustees had the foresight to have a large vault of concrete and steel constructed in the office of the registrar for the storage and preservation of essential records of the college. The vault was equipped with a steel fireproof door, and while nothing could be done to save the building, officials directed firemen to maintain a steady stream of water at the vault door. Even so, the heat from the fire was so terrific the door buckled slightly, allowing some smoke to penetrate the vaul. Fortunately, damage to records was minor.
As daylight came, it was obvious that perhaps the entire faculty was in the group of spectators. Several members were already past age seventy-five, and these grand old men made no attempt to hide their grief at seeing the Old College Building die in its ninety-ninth year. Unashamed tears rolled down many faces. One faculty member in particular attracted my attention. He was Professor Carroll, easily the most popular professor on the campus and the kindest and most gentle person I have ever known. He had a very personal regret at seeing the Old College Building burn. His office was in that building, and in his office were his nearly completed efforts in the preparation of his doctoral dissertation. He was 47 at the time, and although he taught at Wake Forest for twenty-two more years until his death in 1955, he never again seemed to have the heart or time to make another try.
In his “History of Wake Forest College,” Professor G.W. Paschal states: “Perhaps the greatest emotion was aroused by the loss of the bell, the molten ruins of which were found in the ashes the next day. Many thought it had the sweetest and at the same time the strongest and most commanding tone of all the bells in the world.”
Nothing can improve on those words which certainly express the sentiments of anyone who had ever heard the bell ring to summon students to class and to church on Sunday. It had a deep, beautiful tone, and the sound carried so far that to people in the surrounding countryside it was as much a landmarks as the college itself. The bell weighed over four hundred pounds, and it has been said under ideal weather conditions it could be heard in Raleigh, seventeen miles away.
After the tragic and demoralizing events we had suffered through in the early morning hours, it was not surprising that the loss of the major campus building with most of its contents resulted in endless confusion as the new school day started.” (Classes were suspended for a day, decisions were made to house the students who lost their rooms and where to hold the classes for the burned classrooms, and how to grade students so they could complete the semester and graduate.)
Then the arsonist struck again. “On the night of May 31, 1933, a brand new “fireproof” high school in the Town of Wake Forest was completely destroyed by fire. The time of the fire, significantly, was just after 2 a.m., and by then, as with the first, it was burning out of control.
On February 14, 1934, tragedy again struck the Wake Forest campus, and as before came in the early morning hours after 2 a.m. This time it was Wingate Memorial Hall, the second oldest and the second most important building on the campus. Although a two-story building, its high-ceilinged chapel on the second floor made it appear much larger. On the first floor were the physics laboratory, the band room and several classrooms.
Chapel attendance was compulsory for first- and second-year students, and many other students attended because it was usually an entertaining and enjoyable affair. The program was usually started by Daniel B. Bryan, dean of students, with announcements of interest and importance. The remainder of the 50 minutes allotted covered a wide range of subjects and activities. Distinguished visitors to campus sometimes appeared. On one such occasion a personal friend of our band director made a surprise appearance. He was Rudy Vallee, complete with his famous see-through megaphone, and he entertained us with several songs.
Along the west, east and north walls of the chapel were hung beautiful life-size oil paintings of every president of the college from the day it was founded. These enormous paintings completely dominated the chapel and commanded the awesome respect of both faculty and students. We all realized that these were the men who made Wake Forest into the school it was and is.
Like the fire in the Administration Building nearly ten months earlier, the fire in Wingate Hall was already burning out of control when it was discovered and was said to have been started in the stairway at the rear of the chapel.
As before, my roommate and I were awakened by the unusual sound and glare through our front window around 2:45. In my excitement I managed to get my pants and shirt on, but I made no less than three trips out the door of our room before I could calm down enough to put on my shoes and socks. We raced to the scene some two hundred yards away.
Dean Bryan arrived about the same time. Before anyone could stop him, overwrought at the loss of those irreplaceable paintings, he darted into the entrance of the burning building and up the broad stairway to the second floor, which was by then a mass of flames. Four or five of us immediately followed and had to forcibly restrain and drag him back down the steps to safety. His intentions were noble, but if he had reached the chapel we probably would have lost a dean along with the paintings and the building.
As with the Administration Building fire, the small fire department of the Town of Wake Forest was totally inadequate to cope with a blaze of that magnitude. Their single fire truck was not equipped with a high-pressure pumping system and they had to rely entirely on the water pressure as it came from fire hydrants. Help had been summoned from Raleigh but it arrived much too late to be of real assistance. The building was already too far gone. There was nothing students and faculty members could do except stand around helpless.
As we made our way around the burning building, someone in our group noticed something that had the potential of turning the fire into a major disaster. This was a metal cabinet which was locked but contained two fifty-five gallon drums of gasoline just outside the west entrance to the physics laboratory. Why they needed so much gasoline in the physics laboratory I never knew, but we did know that burning embers falling on and around the metal cabinet presented an explosive situation that could be deadly to hundreds of spectators as well as damaging other buildings.
I have never pretended to be the hero type, but for reasons I cannot explain I found myself in a group of four students who gingerly approached the cabinet and its contents. The four of us pick up the cabinet and carried it about one hundred yards away from the burning building. The next day the four of us tried to pick up the container we had carried so easily the night before. Strain as we might, we couldn’t budge it.
Apparently the arsonist was enjoying his efforts. Exactly one week later, on February 21, 1934, he started a fire in a washroom under the stairway of the center section of Hunter Dormitory. Fortunately, this fire was discovered in time to prevent extensive damage, though the stairway had to be rebuilt.
Frustrated by this failure, he turned his attention to the golf clubhouse nearly half a mile from the western edge of the campus on the Durham highway. It was a small frame structure not much larger than a modern two-car garage. But on March 2, 1934, it was burned to the ground; nothing remained except ashes and charred bits of wood. The loss of this small building attracted little attention, but the timing again proved significant since the fire was discovered after 2 a.m.
The arsonist became bolder. Attempts were made to set fire to two residences of faculty members, both fortunately failures. On April 26, 134, he made an attempt to set fire to the Alumni Building, using rubbish accumulated for that purpose. This attempt was also a failure since he departed from his usual schedule and the fire was discovered and extinguished before midnight with no damage done.
Meanwhile, college officials had not been blind to the very great possibility of further destructive damage to other buildings, both on and off the campus. Outside investigators were called in, but they were unable to produce any clues of value.
Plans were made for the formation of student patrols to make regular rounds and building inspections during the night. The patrols worked on a volunteer basis, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and were paid at the rate of twenty-five cents per hour. Each patrol group was limited to one tour every seven days. We received our instructions from the superintendent of buildings and grounds. In addition to the campus buildings, the homes of Professor Carroll and Dean Bryan were included in our regular rounds. The houses were given only outside surveillance, but the buildings on the campus, which were not kept locked, were inspected room by room several times during the night. We were instructed to give special attention to the chemistry and alumni buildings.
There were three juniors and three sophomores in my group. One of them, a pre-med student (Wake Forest College at that time had a two-year medical college), insisted on including the new medical building on our rounds because it was next to the chemistry building. Both of these buildings gave me the creeps. We used only flashlights on our inspections, trying to attract as little attention as possible; wandering through the medical building with its cadavers on slabs was enough to make anyone edgy. Our pre-med student knew this and took a fiendish delight in leading the way through both buildings.
We never traveled alone but in pairs or more, depending on which area we were in. Everyone on and off the campus was a little jittery and we were no better. After all, we were not policemen, just a group of student volunteers trying to help out.
Usually we saw no one on the campus after midnight, and there was no place on or off thecampus where we could stop for a quick snack or cup of coffee. The only drinking fountain was in front of the new Wait Hall. These little details of temporary discomfort did not seem important at the time but later they led us into the climax of this story.
On my third night on patrol, things happened. We had earlier made our regular room-by-room inspection of the Alumni Building as a group without incident, but on our next round two members of the patrol who were a little ahead of the rest of us entered the building alone.
In a moment they came out and one whispered that he had heard someone moving around inside. The two patrol members went back in. The time was after 2 a.m.
Arsonists are not usually stupid, and the one at Wake Forest certainly knew what was going on. He knew that the patrol had discovered his presence in the building in what may have been a second attempt to burn it down. He also knew, or thought he knew, that the patrol did not know his identity.
He waited until the two members of the patrol had passed his place of concealment, then darted out the open door, around the corner of the building, and passed through the south entrance to the campus down U.S. #1. (The highway was moved to the west in 1951.)
Two members of the patrol followed him as he ran down the highway, changed directions and ran across the railroad onto the main street of Wake Forest (South White Street), went north on this street for two short bocks, then west across the highway and railroad through the main campus entrance, across the campus and into Hunter Dormitory.
Meanwhile the four remaining members of the patrol made an immediate and through search of the Alumni Building for anything that suggested another arson attempt. We found nothing.
But as we were leaving the building, our fugitive suspect passed the front of the building with the two patrol members not far behind. The rest of us followed the chase into Hunter Dorm.
Perhaps we made a tactical blunder in not going into the Alumni Building as a group and in not turning on the lights inside. But, as I have pointed out, we were students, not policemen, and untrained for such emergency situations.
However, fortunately, in their chase the two patrol members had been able to recognize their quarry as he passed under the streetlights. All that remained was locating him in his dormitory, and that was easy too. Arsonists, however smart, can’t think of everything. His was the only room with a light burning at that time in the morning. His heavy breathing, his clothes and the wild look in his eyes told us that we had found our man.
He was a senior, not well liked on the campus – a “loner.” We asked him why he was in the darkened Alumni Building at that hour of the night and why he ran. The only answer he would give was that he had been on his way into town to get something to eat.
Now anyone who knew Wake Forest then would immediately see this as a lie. At that time Wake Forest was a small town with a population under a thousand. There were no restaurants, cafes, snack bars, no service stations or taverns, and the one grocery store on the main street had long since been closed for the night. When the last movie was over at 11 p.m., everything in town was closed as the movie crowd left the streets. “Doc” Hardwick’s drug store across the highway and railroad (In 1933 the underpass had not been built.) from the main campus entrance and “Shorty” Joyner’s poolroom-bowling alley next to the theater both sold a few soft drinks and packaged crackers, but like everyone else they closed before midnight.
Under the circumstances, there was no point in further questioning by the patrol. All we could do was to report our findings to the superintendent of buildings and grounds when our tour ended at 7.
The boy was promptly brought in for questioning by skilled investigators and college officials, but they were unable to break his story or obtain any sort of admission of involvement in the fires. Professor Paschal, in his remarks on the origin of the fires, was precluded from anything more than mild speculation and somewhat vague comment.
College officials the next day were confronted by a serious dilemma. On the one hand they had to consider the loss of two major buildings on the campus, two others off the campus and damage or attempted damage to four other campus buildings and faculty dwellings. In addition to material loss, four of these fires came under of the North Carolina statute of first degree arson, one of four major crimes which at that time carried the death penalty.
On the other hand, the officials had no positive proof of guilt. They had only circumstantial evidence and even that may have been questionable. I feel certain that Needham Y. Gulley, dean of the law school and perhaps one of the most brilliant legal minds in the South, had a strong influence on other college officials in advising them of their legal situation.
With no firm basis for prosecution, any action they might take against the suspected arsonist could result in acute embarrassment to the school. Under the circumstances and for the same reasons they could not formally expel the boy.
So they were forced to take the only course of action left to them. They “invited” him to leave school for his own safety and the good of the college. This he did the next day without benefit of school credits for his last semester as a senior and without a diploma.
