This was a quiet and serene little village, but not without its Achilles’s heel, that being the U.S. Highway 42 routed though the center of town with the clamor of heavy trucks and busses at all hours of the day and night.
On the evening just before Easter Sunday, as it was getting dark, a huge moving van lumbered down the hill leading into the village and exploded into flames, then came to a stop in front of the Post Office. See Photo 1(Click on photos to enlarge)
A great ball of fire illuminated not only the Post Office but the entire business section (which was only a block long, including Arch Copsey Grocery, Badgely Chevolet, SV Bank, Cline’s Barbershop, Kyne’s Restaurant, the Township building and a few others).
The Volunteer Fire Department, which was located back in an alley across the street responded with the pumper which pulled up in the street beside the Post Office. (Terrace Av). However, they could not get t
he pumper to produce more than a small spray of water.As noted in the accompanying Photo 1, the heat of the fire was dangerously close to the Post Office building so one of the fire crew rushed over to the chevolet agency to fetch their fire extinquishers, but – for some unknown reason- Mr. Badgely would not loan out his extinquishers.
Meanwhile, Lee Spahr, as the story goes, single handedly moved the Post Office safe out the back door. Next day, we are told, it took 5 men to return it.
While all of this was going on, Janet Queary (we know her today as Janet Lesher) was in nearby Xenia, delivering items for her father (Copsey’s Grocery) and had her two pre-school boys with her. Janet and her husband, Bob, lived in the building which also housed the Post Office (Red arrow in Photo 2 indicates their entrance).
When Janet returned, she was confornted with quite a scary scene. Fred Null was the fire chief at the time and she thinks that to be him in the Photo 2, silhouetted in the lower right. He appears to have a water hose with only a weak stream and may be only trying to wet down the building to protect it from igniting. Des
pite all the difficulties, the building survived.The cause of the fire seem to be lost in the sands of time; possibly, the brakes burned up and started the fire as the heavily loaded truck tried to slow down coming down the steep grade into the village. Janet, who contributed much to this story, said that one of the larger items on the van was a grand piano- that & all contents a total loss as evidenced by Photo 3.
The photos are from the collection of Dorothy Willenburg and I suspect the camera shots were taken by Leo (Dutch) Willenburg, Dorothy’s husband.
Photos 4 & 5 are my attempts to show the scene as it looks today from the spots that the fire scene photos were t
aken. Compare Photo 4 with Photo 1 and Photo 5 with Photo 2. Note that the two buildings indicated in Photo 3 by by vertical arrows are no longer there- making way for the Bledsoe village park and Thompson Parvillion.Today there is no federal highway running though the village. In the 1950’s, a by-pass was built around Spring Valley and Main Street is now the peaceful little street it should be. The Post Office has moved twice since that close encounter and is now located in it’s own building a couple hundred feet away across the street.
