Elliott Kauback "Boots" Beauman died in Claremont, NH on April 11, 1967. He was born on January 24, 1909 in Claremont; the son of Clair and Ida (Kaulback) Beauman.
He married Madeline Smith on November 26, 1932 in Whitehall, NY.
He played a small, but very dangerous, part in helping extinguish the 1941 Marlow-Stoddard fire as evidenced by the newpaper clipping below.
He is survived by his wife and children Robert and Betty.
Burial is in Mtn View Cemetery.
Source; NH death record, NY marriage record, census records
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the Keene Sentinel, Keene, NH, April 27, 2016
MARLOW — Anniversary reflections of seminal events invariably prompt us to ponder: Could it happen it again?
One answer, ironically, came a week early.
Last week's brush fire that swept through the parched woods of Stoddard shared many characteristics of the Great Marlow-Stoddard Forest Fire of 1941 that broke out 75 years ago this Thursday.
Similar to 1941, temperatures this spring have been warm and rain scarce. Plant life has yet to bud. Trees felled by storms in recent years — the ice storm of 2008 is still taking its toll — became tinder on the forest floor.
Similar to 1941, last week hundreds of firefighters from across the state, and state lines, trudged deep into the woods with rakes and shovels to stomp out the blaze. They emerged many hours later, weary, soot-stained, unharmed.
And yet, in perspective, there's no comparison between 1941 and 2016. Everything about 1941 was much bigger, badder, more destructive.
Last week's brush fire in Stoddard burned nearly 200 acres. The Great Marlow Forest Fire of 1941 was 120 times larger, consuming 24,000 acres. It encompassed four towns, engulfed 20 buildings, burned 48 percent of the total area in Marlow, 42 percent of Stoddard, 9 percent of Washington and 1 percent of Gilsum.
That there were no deaths or injuries has been oft-described as miraculous.
"It's mind-boggling how big it was," says Tracy Messer of Peterborough, producer of the documentary "Four Days of Fury," about the 1941 fire.
Messer has thrown himself into researching the fire over the past 25 years. He collaborated on the film with Charlie Strickland, 90, of Marlow, who fought the fire as a 15-year-old and dedicated his life to firefighting and forestry. They have been collecting material, namely stories and photographs, for 25 years and will screen the documentary Thursday at 7 p.m. at Keene State College's Putnam Theater.
"Charlie has been keeping this story going and I'm just one of his ambassadors," Messer says. "And there's always new material that emerges every time I give these talks."
The film, first shown on the fire's 65th anniversary to an overflow audience at the Historical Society of Cheshire County, is still in the first-cut stage and Messer will provide the narration Thursday. The documentary is sponsored by Patricia Gallup, co-founder of PC Connection, which opened in Marlow in 1982. Messer's goal is to eventually remaster it so it can be widely shown, perhaps on PBS.
It recounts personal stories that are fast becoming entombed in history as the years sweep by. It keeps alive legendary tales such as Elliott "Boots" Beauman's daring dash through the flames with a truck full of fuel to replenish supplies, and police Officer Leslie Menzies' yeoman efforts to protect people and property, at one point wielding a fire extinguisher to save a house.
The affable Strickland has been talking about the fire for eight decades. He was a Marlow firefighter for more than 40 years, former fire chief and fire warden for Marlow, and a special deputy warden for the state and at the Pitcher Mountain fire tower, which was a major player — and eventual casualty — of the 1941 blaze.
Last week Strickland listened intently on his scanner from home as the Stoddard fire unfolded. "I still listen to the monitor because I want to know what they're doing wrong, what they're doing right," he says with a laugh.
Tanker trunks and helicopters helped fight last week's fire. Dozens of out-of-town departments responded in a flash. Had those resources been available 75 years ago, perhaps the fire would have been extinguished on the first day, Strickland says. Then again, conditions were so arid, and dead wood so plentiful in 1941, maybe not.
"The first night the fire went 7 miles. If they could have had the tankers back then, maybe we would have stopped it on the first day," Strickland says.
Volunteers wearing their everyday clothes — it's estimated 2,000 people fought the blaze, many of them high school students — carried rakes and shovels into the fire zone.
"Now they've got those yellow jackets and flame retardants," Strickland says. Of course, 15-year-olds weren't allowed anywhere near the fire last week. But 75 years ago, Boy Scouts and students from Keene High School were right there on support lines.
"I was a high school student at that time and I saw it on the way home," Strickland recounted in an interview 32 years ago. "That first day, April 28, no one in town knew how bad it was until it was too late. I was scared when Marlow got encircled by flames and we couldn't get out of town. We were isolated. For two or three days there, the fire was completely out of control. Only a snowstorm stopped it."
Day 1, April 28
The ingredients were in place for a major conflagration as April 28 dawned in 1941. There hadn't been a warmer or drier April since 1871, with some days pushing 90 degrees and precipitation at under half an inch. The woods were entangled in downed trees, blown over in the Hurricane of 1938 just 2½ years earlier. Strickland recalls firefighters talked in advance of the woods being a tinderbox. His father was a firefighter, and Strickland used to accompany him to fires.
Col. Charles Lindbergh's resignation as reserve officer in the Air Corps was the big national story of the day. War updates from Europe were prominent, the U.S. trying to keep its distance, some eight months before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Locally, Dr. Zenus Lamb died at age 78, Mary A. Grube was named valedictorian of Keene High and "Buck Privates" starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello was playing at the Latchis. The Sentinel's Henry David Nadig, who wrote under the moniker of "The Cheshire Cat," questioned President Franklin Roosevelt's leadership.
Up on Pitcher Mountain, Fred Jennings was in the lookout tower and reported winds of 18 mph, blowing toward the southwest. A cloud on the horizon caught his eye … only it wasn't a cloud.
The fire started at Potwin's portable sawmill near Gustin Pond at 3:20 p.m. Although Marlow's population was about 200, sawmills were abundant as crews took advantage of trees blown down by the hurricane. It was dangerous work. Four years earlier, Earl Hurd, his wife Rena and 5-year-old son had perished in a lumber camp fire.
Today, Strickland explains in detail how the record-setting warm weather caused vapor lock in the saw engine's fuel pump. When the engine backfired, it caused a spark that ignited. The same thing had happened the day before, only the workers were able to douse the flames.
This time the fire quickly got out of hand, racing southward and burning the full length of Marlow. Jennings kept watch on Pitcher Mountain, describing its progress as the fire nudged into Gilsum.
Day 2, April 29
"Flames Threaten Marlow," was the screaming headline in The Sentinel April 29. Indeed, 10 local fire departments raced to the downtown area. Fire surrounded the village and while it consumed several homes, firefighters saved the village center itself.
Selectman Jim McPhail described their futile efforts to save the Baine place on the outskirts of town, only to see flames roaring through the treetops so quickly that he hid in a nearby well to save himself.
Radio station WKNE broadcast a plea from police to stay away from Marlow; instead, the town quickly filled with spectators. Police officers Menzies, who died in 2013, and partner Chet Hartwell were among the heroes credited with saving more than one house in Marlow.
"Curious onlookers were a constant challenge for Officer Menzies," went one newspaper account. "He turned away a carload of 'young fellas' twice in the same day. When they showed up again the next morning, he was not amused and put them to work. Officer Menzies spotted them the next day in their charred clothes and burnt sneakers, much to his own amusement. They never came back."
Then there was the story of Elliott "Boots" Beauman of Claremont, who owned a gasoline station. He volunteered to drive a gasoline tank truck through the burning woodlands to a gasoline station in Marlow Village, whose underground tank was empty. Even after his daring dash, the lack of electricity made the pumps inoperable.
Using Yankee ingenuity, station owner Bert Strickland activated the pump by rigging a pulley contraption strapped to the wheel rim of his pickup truck and safely unloaded the fuel from the tanker into the underground storage tank.
The Corey family wasn't so fortunate. The Bellows Falls Times reported that when it appeared the fire would destroy Marlow's village, the family moved many of its possessions to a home they owned on Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard. The house they abandoned in Marlow was spared; the house in Stoddard burned down.
The winds on the second day shifted from east to west, pushing the fire into Stoddard.
Day 3, April 30
Fred Jennings had watched the fire's progress from his perch on Pitcher Mountain throughout the blaze. Jennings's observations were carefully logged by Susie Holland, the district fire chief's secretary, whose precise notes became a vital part in chronicling the fire. She made her first notations 13 minutes after the fire first started:
3:30 p.m. — Jennings called up. Fire toward Gustin Pond (Marlow) near Potwin mill …
3:42 p.m. — Jennings called up. Gustin Pond Fire is a real one. Looks to be in pine … Marlow alarm has been sounded."
Her entire log is many pages long, typed single-spaced.
On the third day Jennings called in his last report at 2:45 p.m., and after that the line went dead, Holland wrote. Later, Jennings would say he climbed down to trouble-shoot the dead line. He barely escaped with his life.
"Fred Jennings kept fire headquarters informed of the fire spread until the very last moment when he fled through sparks and smoke so hastily that he left $20 behind in a wallet in his pants," reads an account from Stoddard's town history records. "The tower cab burned like a torch in the sky before the main fire swept through early in the morning."
The Sentinel printed several articles April 30, with headlines such as "14 Stoddard cottages burn, situation called terrible." Nadig, "The Cheshire Cat," wrote about the danger sawmills posed in the dry woods.
Boxing, the upcoming Kentucky Derby and Keene High's baseball opener were the top sports stories of the day. And an advertisement for live wrestling in North Swanzey promised, "Everything goes, nothing barred except strangleholds."
Day 4, May 1
A cold front moved in through the night, bringing a combination of rain and snow not unlike Tuesday's weather here. Strickland says higher elevations were covered white in snow, and The Sentinel reported, "Rain of night subdues forest fires in Marlow, Stoddard and Washington."
Meanwhile, two other fires in the region had also broken out — one in the Nelson area and one in Hinsdale that burned 10,000 acres. The Sentinel reported on its front page that, in fighting the Hinsdale fire, high school senior Channing Rouillard was bitten on his hand by a rattlesnake.
The fires were out by the fifth day, "whipped," reported The Sentinel.
He married Madeline Smith on November 26, 1932 in Whitehall, NY.
He played a small, but very dangerous, part in helping extinguish the 1941 Marlow-Stoddard fire as evidenced by the newpaper clipping below.
He is survived by his wife and children Robert and Betty.
Burial is in Mtn View Cemetery.
Source; NH death record, NY marriage record, census records
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the Keene Sentinel, Keene, NH, April 27, 2016
MARLOW — Anniversary reflections of seminal events invariably prompt us to ponder: Could it happen it again?
One answer, ironically, came a week early.
Last week's brush fire that swept through the parched woods of Stoddard shared many characteristics of the Great Marlow-Stoddard Forest Fire of 1941 that broke out 75 years ago this Thursday.
Similar to 1941, temperatures this spring have been warm and rain scarce. Plant life has yet to bud. Trees felled by storms in recent years — the ice storm of 2008 is still taking its toll — became tinder on the forest floor.
Similar to 1941, last week hundreds of firefighters from across the state, and state lines, trudged deep into the woods with rakes and shovels to stomp out the blaze. They emerged many hours later, weary, soot-stained, unharmed.
And yet, in perspective, there's no comparison between 1941 and 2016. Everything about 1941 was much bigger, badder, more destructive.
Last week's brush fire in Stoddard burned nearly 200 acres. The Great Marlow Forest Fire of 1941 was 120 times larger, consuming 24,000 acres. It encompassed four towns, engulfed 20 buildings, burned 48 percent of the total area in Marlow, 42 percent of Stoddard, 9 percent of Washington and 1 percent of Gilsum.
That there were no deaths or injuries has been oft-described as miraculous.
"It's mind-boggling how big it was," says Tracy Messer of Peterborough, producer of the documentary "Four Days of Fury," about the 1941 fire.
Messer has thrown himself into researching the fire over the past 25 years. He collaborated on the film with Charlie Strickland, 90, of Marlow, who fought the fire as a 15-year-old and dedicated his life to firefighting and forestry. They have been collecting material, namely stories and photographs, for 25 years and will screen the documentary Thursday at 7 p.m. at Keene State College's Putnam Theater.
"Charlie has been keeping this story going and I'm just one of his ambassadors," Messer says. "And there's always new material that emerges every time I give these talks."
The film, first shown on the fire's 65th anniversary to an overflow audience at the Historical Society of Cheshire County, is still in the first-cut stage and Messer will provide the narration Thursday. The documentary is sponsored by Patricia Gallup, co-founder of PC Connection, which opened in Marlow in 1982. Messer's goal is to eventually remaster it so it can be widely shown, perhaps on PBS.
It recounts personal stories that are fast becoming entombed in history as the years sweep by. It keeps alive legendary tales such as Elliott "Boots" Beauman's daring dash through the flames with a truck full of fuel to replenish supplies, and police Officer Leslie Menzies' yeoman efforts to protect people and property, at one point wielding a fire extinguisher to save a house.
The affable Strickland has been talking about the fire for eight decades. He was a Marlow firefighter for more than 40 years, former fire chief and fire warden for Marlow, and a special deputy warden for the state and at the Pitcher Mountain fire tower, which was a major player — and eventual casualty — of the 1941 blaze.
Last week Strickland listened intently on his scanner from home as the Stoddard fire unfolded. "I still listen to the monitor because I want to know what they're doing wrong, what they're doing right," he says with a laugh.
Tanker trunks and helicopters helped fight last week's fire. Dozens of out-of-town departments responded in a flash. Had those resources been available 75 years ago, perhaps the fire would have been extinguished on the first day, Strickland says. Then again, conditions were so arid, and dead wood so plentiful in 1941, maybe not.
"The first night the fire went 7 miles. If they could have had the tankers back then, maybe we would have stopped it on the first day," Strickland says.
Volunteers wearing their everyday clothes — it's estimated 2,000 people fought the blaze, many of them high school students — carried rakes and shovels into the fire zone.
"Now they've got those yellow jackets and flame retardants," Strickland says. Of course, 15-year-olds weren't allowed anywhere near the fire last week. But 75 years ago, Boy Scouts and students from Keene High School were right there on support lines.
"I was a high school student at that time and I saw it on the way home," Strickland recounted in an interview 32 years ago. "That first day, April 28, no one in town knew how bad it was until it was too late. I was scared when Marlow got encircled by flames and we couldn't get out of town. We were isolated. For two or three days there, the fire was completely out of control. Only a snowstorm stopped it."
Day 1, April 28
The ingredients were in place for a major conflagration as April 28 dawned in 1941. There hadn't been a warmer or drier April since 1871, with some days pushing 90 degrees and precipitation at under half an inch. The woods were entangled in downed trees, blown over in the Hurricane of 1938 just 2½ years earlier. Strickland recalls firefighters talked in advance of the woods being a tinderbox. His father was a firefighter, and Strickland used to accompany him to fires.
Col. Charles Lindbergh's resignation as reserve officer in the Air Corps was the big national story of the day. War updates from Europe were prominent, the U.S. trying to keep its distance, some eight months before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Locally, Dr. Zenus Lamb died at age 78, Mary A. Grube was named valedictorian of Keene High and "Buck Privates" starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello was playing at the Latchis. The Sentinel's Henry David Nadig, who wrote under the moniker of "The Cheshire Cat," questioned President Franklin Roosevelt's leadership.
Up on Pitcher Mountain, Fred Jennings was in the lookout tower and reported winds of 18 mph, blowing toward the southwest. A cloud on the horizon caught his eye … only it wasn't a cloud.
The fire started at Potwin's portable sawmill near Gustin Pond at 3:20 p.m. Although Marlow's population was about 200, sawmills were abundant as crews took advantage of trees blown down by the hurricane. It was dangerous work. Four years earlier, Earl Hurd, his wife Rena and 5-year-old son had perished in a lumber camp fire.
Today, Strickland explains in detail how the record-setting warm weather caused vapor lock in the saw engine's fuel pump. When the engine backfired, it caused a spark that ignited. The same thing had happened the day before, only the workers were able to douse the flames.
This time the fire quickly got out of hand, racing southward and burning the full length of Marlow. Jennings kept watch on Pitcher Mountain, describing its progress as the fire nudged into Gilsum.
Day 2, April 29
"Flames Threaten Marlow," was the screaming headline in The Sentinel April 29. Indeed, 10 local fire departments raced to the downtown area. Fire surrounded the village and while it consumed several homes, firefighters saved the village center itself.
Selectman Jim McPhail described their futile efforts to save the Baine place on the outskirts of town, only to see flames roaring through the treetops so quickly that he hid in a nearby well to save himself.
Radio station WKNE broadcast a plea from police to stay away from Marlow; instead, the town quickly filled with spectators. Police officers Menzies, who died in 2013, and partner Chet Hartwell were among the heroes credited with saving more than one house in Marlow.
"Curious onlookers were a constant challenge for Officer Menzies," went one newspaper account. "He turned away a carload of 'young fellas' twice in the same day. When they showed up again the next morning, he was not amused and put them to work. Officer Menzies spotted them the next day in their charred clothes and burnt sneakers, much to his own amusement. They never came back."
Then there was the story of Elliott "Boots" Beauman of Claremont, who owned a gasoline station. He volunteered to drive a gasoline tank truck through the burning woodlands to a gasoline station in Marlow Village, whose underground tank was empty. Even after his daring dash, the lack of electricity made the pumps inoperable.
Using Yankee ingenuity, station owner Bert Strickland activated the pump by rigging a pulley contraption strapped to the wheel rim of his pickup truck and safely unloaded the fuel from the tanker into the underground storage tank.
The Corey family wasn't so fortunate. The Bellows Falls Times reported that when it appeared the fire would destroy Marlow's village, the family moved many of its possessions to a home they owned on Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard. The house they abandoned in Marlow was spared; the house in Stoddard burned down.
The winds on the second day shifted from east to west, pushing the fire into Stoddard.
Day 3, April 30
Fred Jennings had watched the fire's progress from his perch on Pitcher Mountain throughout the blaze. Jennings's observations were carefully logged by Susie Holland, the district fire chief's secretary, whose precise notes became a vital part in chronicling the fire. She made her first notations 13 minutes after the fire first started:
3:30 p.m. — Jennings called up. Fire toward Gustin Pond (Marlow) near Potwin mill …
3:42 p.m. — Jennings called up. Gustin Pond Fire is a real one. Looks to be in pine … Marlow alarm has been sounded."
Her entire log is many pages long, typed single-spaced.
On the third day Jennings called in his last report at 2:45 p.m., and after that the line went dead, Holland wrote. Later, Jennings would say he climbed down to trouble-shoot the dead line. He barely escaped with his life.
"Fred Jennings kept fire headquarters informed of the fire spread until the very last moment when he fled through sparks and smoke so hastily that he left $20 behind in a wallet in his pants," reads an account from Stoddard's town history records. "The tower cab burned like a torch in the sky before the main fire swept through early in the morning."
The Sentinel printed several articles April 30, with headlines such as "14 Stoddard cottages burn, situation called terrible." Nadig, "The Cheshire Cat," wrote about the danger sawmills posed in the dry woods.
Boxing, the upcoming Kentucky Derby and Keene High's baseball opener were the top sports stories of the day. And an advertisement for live wrestling in North Swanzey promised, "Everything goes, nothing barred except strangleholds."
Day 4, May 1
A cold front moved in through the night, bringing a combination of rain and snow not unlike Tuesday's weather here. Strickland says higher elevations were covered white in snow, and The Sentinel reported, "Rain of night subdues forest fires in Marlow, Stoddard and Washington."
Meanwhile, two other fires in the region had also broken out — one in the Nelson area and one in Hinsdale that burned 10,000 acres. The Sentinel reported on its front page that, in fighting the Hinsdale fire, high school senior Channing Rouillard was bitten on his hand by a rattlesnake.
The fires were out by the fifth day, "whipped," reported The Sentinel.
Elliott Kauback "Boots" Beauman died in Claremont, NH on April 11, 1967. He was born on January 24, 1909 in Claremont; the son of Clair and Ida (Kaulback) Beauman.
He married Madeline Smith on November 26, 1932 in Whitehall, NY.
He played a small, but very dangerous, part in helping extinguish the 1941 Marlow-Stoddard fire as evidenced by the newpaper clipping below.
He is survived by his wife and children Robert and Betty.
Burial is in Mtn View Cemetery.
Source; NH death record, NY marriage record, census records
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the Keene Sentinel, Keene, NH, April 27, 2016
MARLOW — Anniversary reflections of seminal events invariably prompt us to ponder: Could it happen it again?
One answer, ironically, came a week early.
Last week's brush fire that swept through the parched woods of Stoddard shared many characteristics of the Great Marlow-Stoddard Forest Fire of 1941 that broke out 75 years ago this Thursday.
Similar to 1941, temperatures this spring have been warm and rain scarce. Plant life has yet to bud. Trees felled by storms in recent years — the ice storm of 2008 is still taking its toll — became tinder on the forest floor.
Similar to 1941, last week hundreds of firefighters from across the state, and state lines, trudged deep into the woods with rakes and shovels to stomp out the blaze. They emerged many hours later, weary, soot-stained, unharmed.
And yet, in perspective, there's no comparison between 1941 and 2016. Everything about 1941 was much bigger, badder, more destructive.
Last week's brush fire in Stoddard burned nearly 200 acres. The Great Marlow Forest Fire of 1941 was 120 times larger, consuming 24,000 acres. It encompassed four towns, engulfed 20 buildings, burned 48 percent of the total area in Marlow, 42 percent of Stoddard, 9 percent of Washington and 1 percent of Gilsum.
That there were no deaths or injuries has been oft-described as miraculous.
"It's mind-boggling how big it was," says Tracy Messer of Peterborough, producer of the documentary "Four Days of Fury," about the 1941 fire.
Messer has thrown himself into researching the fire over the past 25 years. He collaborated on the film with Charlie Strickland, 90, of Marlow, who fought the fire as a 15-year-old and dedicated his life to firefighting and forestry. They have been collecting material, namely stories and photographs, for 25 years and will screen the documentary Thursday at 7 p.m. at Keene State College's Putnam Theater.
"Charlie has been keeping this story going and I'm just one of his ambassadors," Messer says. "And there's always new material that emerges every time I give these talks."
The film, first shown on the fire's 65th anniversary to an overflow audience at the Historical Society of Cheshire County, is still in the first-cut stage and Messer will provide the narration Thursday. The documentary is sponsored by Patricia Gallup, co-founder of PC Connection, which opened in Marlow in 1982. Messer's goal is to eventually remaster it so it can be widely shown, perhaps on PBS.
It recounts personal stories that are fast becoming entombed in history as the years sweep by. It keeps alive legendary tales such as Elliott "Boots" Beauman's daring dash through the flames with a truck full of fuel to replenish supplies, and police Officer Leslie Menzies' yeoman efforts to protect people and property, at one point wielding a fire extinguisher to save a house.
The affable Strickland has been talking about the fire for eight decades. He was a Marlow firefighter for more than 40 years, former fire chief and fire warden for Marlow, and a special deputy warden for the state and at the Pitcher Mountain fire tower, which was a major player — and eventual casualty — of the 1941 blaze.
Last week Strickland listened intently on his scanner from home as the Stoddard fire unfolded. "I still listen to the monitor because I want to know what they're doing wrong, what they're doing right," he says with a laugh.
Tanker trunks and helicopters helped fight last week's fire. Dozens of out-of-town departments responded in a flash. Had those resources been available 75 years ago, perhaps the fire would have been extinguished on the first day, Strickland says. Then again, conditions were so arid, and dead wood so plentiful in 1941, maybe not.
"The first night the fire went 7 miles. If they could have had the tankers back then, maybe we would have stopped it on the first day," Strickland says.
Volunteers wearing their everyday clothes — it's estimated 2,000 people fought the blaze, many of them high school students — carried rakes and shovels into the fire zone.
"Now they've got those yellow jackets and flame retardants," Strickland says. Of course, 15-year-olds weren't allowed anywhere near the fire last week. But 75 years ago, Boy Scouts and students from Keene High School were right there on support lines.
"I was a high school student at that time and I saw it on the way home," Strickland recounted in an interview 32 years ago. "That first day, April 28, no one in town knew how bad it was until it was too late. I was scared when Marlow got encircled by flames and we couldn't get out of town. We were isolated. For two or three days there, the fire was completely out of control. Only a snowstorm stopped it."
Day 1, April 28
The ingredients were in place for a major conflagration as April 28 dawned in 1941. There hadn't been a warmer or drier April since 1871, with some days pushing 90 degrees and precipitation at under half an inch. The woods were entangled in downed trees, blown over in the Hurricane of 1938 just 2½ years earlier. Strickland recalls firefighters talked in advance of the woods being a tinderbox. His father was a firefighter, and Strickland used to accompany him to fires.
Col. Charles Lindbergh's resignation as reserve officer in the Air Corps was the big national story of the day. War updates from Europe were prominent, the U.S. trying to keep its distance, some eight months before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Locally, Dr. Zenus Lamb died at age 78, Mary A. Grube was named valedictorian of Keene High and "Buck Privates" starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello was playing at the Latchis. The Sentinel's Henry David Nadig, who wrote under the moniker of "The Cheshire Cat," questioned President Franklin Roosevelt's leadership.
Up on Pitcher Mountain, Fred Jennings was in the lookout tower and reported winds of 18 mph, blowing toward the southwest. A cloud on the horizon caught his eye … only it wasn't a cloud.
The fire started at Potwin's portable sawmill near Gustin Pond at 3:20 p.m. Although Marlow's population was about 200, sawmills were abundant as crews took advantage of trees blown down by the hurricane. It was dangerous work. Four years earlier, Earl Hurd, his wife Rena and 5-year-old son had perished in a lumber camp fire.
Today, Strickland explains in detail how the record-setting warm weather caused vapor lock in the saw engine's fuel pump. When the engine backfired, it caused a spark that ignited. The same thing had happened the day before, only the workers were able to douse the flames.
This time the fire quickly got out of hand, racing southward and burning the full length of Marlow. Jennings kept watch on Pitcher Mountain, describing its progress as the fire nudged into Gilsum.
Day 2, April 29
"Flames Threaten Marlow," was the screaming headline in The Sentinel April 29. Indeed, 10 local fire departments raced to the downtown area. Fire surrounded the village and while it consumed several homes, firefighters saved the village center itself.
Selectman Jim McPhail described their futile efforts to save the Baine place on the outskirts of town, only to see flames roaring through the treetops so quickly that he hid in a nearby well to save himself.
Radio station WKNE broadcast a plea from police to stay away from Marlow; instead, the town quickly filled with spectators. Police officers Menzies, who died in 2013, and partner Chet Hartwell were among the heroes credited with saving more than one house in Marlow.
"Curious onlookers were a constant challenge for Officer Menzies," went one newspaper account. "He turned away a carload of 'young fellas' twice in the same day. When they showed up again the next morning, he was not amused and put them to work. Officer Menzies spotted them the next day in their charred clothes and burnt sneakers, much to his own amusement. They never came back."
Then there was the story of Elliott "Boots" Beauman of Claremont, who owned a gasoline station. He volunteered to drive a gasoline tank truck through the burning woodlands to a gasoline station in Marlow Village, whose underground tank was empty. Even after his daring dash, the lack of electricity made the pumps inoperable.
Using Yankee ingenuity, station owner Bert Strickland activated the pump by rigging a pulley contraption strapped to the wheel rim of his pickup truck and safely unloaded the fuel from the tanker into the underground storage tank.
The Corey family wasn't so fortunate. The Bellows Falls Times reported that when it appeared the fire would destroy Marlow's village, the family moved many of its possessions to a home they owned on Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard. The house they abandoned in Marlow was spared; the house in Stoddard burned down.
The winds on the second day shifted from east to west, pushing the fire into Stoddard.
Day 3, April 30
Fred Jennings had watched the fire's progress from his perch on Pitcher Mountain throughout the blaze. Jennings's observations were carefully logged by Susie Holland, the district fire chief's secretary, whose precise notes became a vital part in chronicling the fire. She made her first notations 13 minutes after the fire first started:
3:30 p.m. — Jennings called up. Fire toward Gustin Pond (Marlow) near Potwin mill …
3:42 p.m. — Jennings called up. Gustin Pond Fire is a real one. Looks to be in pine … Marlow alarm has been sounded."
Her entire log is many pages long, typed single-spaced.
On the third day Jennings called in his last report at 2:45 p.m., and after that the line went dead, Holland wrote. Later, Jennings would say he climbed down to trouble-shoot the dead line. He barely escaped with his life.
"Fred Jennings kept fire headquarters informed of the fire spread until the very last moment when he fled through sparks and smoke so hastily that he left $20 behind in a wallet in his pants," reads an account from Stoddard's town history records. "The tower cab burned like a torch in the sky before the main fire swept through early in the morning."
The Sentinel printed several articles April 30, with headlines such as "14 Stoddard cottages burn, situation called terrible." Nadig, "The Cheshire Cat," wrote about the danger sawmills posed in the dry woods.
Boxing, the upcoming Kentucky Derby and Keene High's baseball opener were the top sports stories of the day. And an advertisement for live wrestling in North Swanzey promised, "Everything goes, nothing barred except strangleholds."
Day 4, May 1
A cold front moved in through the night, bringing a combination of rain and snow not unlike Tuesday's weather here. Strickland says higher elevations were covered white in snow, and The Sentinel reported, "Rain of night subdues forest fires in Marlow, Stoddard and Washington."
Meanwhile, two other fires in the region had also broken out — one in the Nelson area and one in Hinsdale that burned 10,000 acres. The Sentinel reported on its front page that, in fighting the Hinsdale fire, high school senior Channing Rouillard was bitten on his hand by a rattlesnake.
The fires were out by the fifth day, "whipped," reported The Sentinel.
He married Madeline Smith on November 26, 1932 in Whitehall, NY.
He played a small, but very dangerous, part in helping extinguish the 1941 Marlow-Stoddard fire as evidenced by the newpaper clipping below.
He is survived by his wife and children Robert and Betty.
Burial is in Mtn View Cemetery.
Source; NH death record, NY marriage record, census records
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From the Keene Sentinel, Keene, NH, April 27, 2016
MARLOW — Anniversary reflections of seminal events invariably prompt us to ponder: Could it happen it again?
One answer, ironically, came a week early.
Last week's brush fire that swept through the parched woods of Stoddard shared many characteristics of the Great Marlow-Stoddard Forest Fire of 1941 that broke out 75 years ago this Thursday.
Similar to 1941, temperatures this spring have been warm and rain scarce. Plant life has yet to bud. Trees felled by storms in recent years — the ice storm of 2008 is still taking its toll — became tinder on the forest floor.
Similar to 1941, last week hundreds of firefighters from across the state, and state lines, trudged deep into the woods with rakes and shovels to stomp out the blaze. They emerged many hours later, weary, soot-stained, unharmed.
And yet, in perspective, there's no comparison between 1941 and 2016. Everything about 1941 was much bigger, badder, more destructive.
Last week's brush fire in Stoddard burned nearly 200 acres. The Great Marlow Forest Fire of 1941 was 120 times larger, consuming 24,000 acres. It encompassed four towns, engulfed 20 buildings, burned 48 percent of the total area in Marlow, 42 percent of Stoddard, 9 percent of Washington and 1 percent of Gilsum.
That there were no deaths or injuries has been oft-described as miraculous.
"It's mind-boggling how big it was," says Tracy Messer of Peterborough, producer of the documentary "Four Days of Fury," about the 1941 fire.
Messer has thrown himself into researching the fire over the past 25 years. He collaborated on the film with Charlie Strickland, 90, of Marlow, who fought the fire as a 15-year-old and dedicated his life to firefighting and forestry. They have been collecting material, namely stories and photographs, for 25 years and will screen the documentary Thursday at 7 p.m. at Keene State College's Putnam Theater.
"Charlie has been keeping this story going and I'm just one of his ambassadors," Messer says. "And there's always new material that emerges every time I give these talks."
The film, first shown on the fire's 65th anniversary to an overflow audience at the Historical Society of Cheshire County, is still in the first-cut stage and Messer will provide the narration Thursday. The documentary is sponsored by Patricia Gallup, co-founder of PC Connection, which opened in Marlow in 1982. Messer's goal is to eventually remaster it so it can be widely shown, perhaps on PBS.
It recounts personal stories that are fast becoming entombed in history as the years sweep by. It keeps alive legendary tales such as Elliott "Boots" Beauman's daring dash through the flames with a truck full of fuel to replenish supplies, and police Officer Leslie Menzies' yeoman efforts to protect people and property, at one point wielding a fire extinguisher to save a house.
The affable Strickland has been talking about the fire for eight decades. He was a Marlow firefighter for more than 40 years, former fire chief and fire warden for Marlow, and a special deputy warden for the state and at the Pitcher Mountain fire tower, which was a major player — and eventual casualty — of the 1941 blaze.
Last week Strickland listened intently on his scanner from home as the Stoddard fire unfolded. "I still listen to the monitor because I want to know what they're doing wrong, what they're doing right," he says with a laugh.
Tanker trunks and helicopters helped fight last week's fire. Dozens of out-of-town departments responded in a flash. Had those resources been available 75 years ago, perhaps the fire would have been extinguished on the first day, Strickland says. Then again, conditions were so arid, and dead wood so plentiful in 1941, maybe not.
"The first night the fire went 7 miles. If they could have had the tankers back then, maybe we would have stopped it on the first day," Strickland says.
Volunteers wearing their everyday clothes — it's estimated 2,000 people fought the blaze, many of them high school students — carried rakes and shovels into the fire zone.
"Now they've got those yellow jackets and flame retardants," Strickland says. Of course, 15-year-olds weren't allowed anywhere near the fire last week. But 75 years ago, Boy Scouts and students from Keene High School were right there on support lines.
"I was a high school student at that time and I saw it on the way home," Strickland recounted in an interview 32 years ago. "That first day, April 28, no one in town knew how bad it was until it was too late. I was scared when Marlow got encircled by flames and we couldn't get out of town. We were isolated. For two or three days there, the fire was completely out of control. Only a snowstorm stopped it."
Day 1, April 28
The ingredients were in place for a major conflagration as April 28 dawned in 1941. There hadn't been a warmer or drier April since 1871, with some days pushing 90 degrees and precipitation at under half an inch. The woods were entangled in downed trees, blown over in the Hurricane of 1938 just 2½ years earlier. Strickland recalls firefighters talked in advance of the woods being a tinderbox. His father was a firefighter, and Strickland used to accompany him to fires.
Col. Charles Lindbergh's resignation as reserve officer in the Air Corps was the big national story of the day. War updates from Europe were prominent, the U.S. trying to keep its distance, some eight months before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Locally, Dr. Zenus Lamb died at age 78, Mary A. Grube was named valedictorian of Keene High and "Buck Privates" starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello was playing at the Latchis. The Sentinel's Henry David Nadig, who wrote under the moniker of "The Cheshire Cat," questioned President Franklin Roosevelt's leadership.
Up on Pitcher Mountain, Fred Jennings was in the lookout tower and reported winds of 18 mph, blowing toward the southwest. A cloud on the horizon caught his eye … only it wasn't a cloud.
The fire started at Potwin's portable sawmill near Gustin Pond at 3:20 p.m. Although Marlow's population was about 200, sawmills were abundant as crews took advantage of trees blown down by the hurricane. It was dangerous work. Four years earlier, Earl Hurd, his wife Rena and 5-year-old son had perished in a lumber camp fire.
Today, Strickland explains in detail how the record-setting warm weather caused vapor lock in the saw engine's fuel pump. When the engine backfired, it caused a spark that ignited. The same thing had happened the day before, only the workers were able to douse the flames.
This time the fire quickly got out of hand, racing southward and burning the full length of Marlow. Jennings kept watch on Pitcher Mountain, describing its progress as the fire nudged into Gilsum.
Day 2, April 29
"Flames Threaten Marlow," was the screaming headline in The Sentinel April 29. Indeed, 10 local fire departments raced to the downtown area. Fire surrounded the village and while it consumed several homes, firefighters saved the village center itself.
Selectman Jim McPhail described their futile efforts to save the Baine place on the outskirts of town, only to see flames roaring through the treetops so quickly that he hid in a nearby well to save himself.
Radio station WKNE broadcast a plea from police to stay away from Marlow; instead, the town quickly filled with spectators. Police officers Menzies, who died in 2013, and partner Chet Hartwell were among the heroes credited with saving more than one house in Marlow.
"Curious onlookers were a constant challenge for Officer Menzies," went one newspaper account. "He turned away a carload of 'young fellas' twice in the same day. When they showed up again the next morning, he was not amused and put them to work. Officer Menzies spotted them the next day in their charred clothes and burnt sneakers, much to his own amusement. They never came back."
Then there was the story of Elliott "Boots" Beauman of Claremont, who owned a gasoline station. He volunteered to drive a gasoline tank truck through the burning woodlands to a gasoline station in Marlow Village, whose underground tank was empty. Even after his daring dash, the lack of electricity made the pumps inoperable.
Using Yankee ingenuity, station owner Bert Strickland activated the pump by rigging a pulley contraption strapped to the wheel rim of his pickup truck and safely unloaded the fuel from the tanker into the underground storage tank.
The Corey family wasn't so fortunate. The Bellows Falls Times reported that when it appeared the fire would destroy Marlow's village, the family moved many of its possessions to a home they owned on Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard. The house they abandoned in Marlow was spared; the house in Stoddard burned down.
The winds on the second day shifted from east to west, pushing the fire into Stoddard.
Day 3, April 30
Fred Jennings had watched the fire's progress from his perch on Pitcher Mountain throughout the blaze. Jennings's observations were carefully logged by Susie Holland, the district fire chief's secretary, whose precise notes became a vital part in chronicling the fire. She made her first notations 13 minutes after the fire first started:
3:30 p.m. — Jennings called up. Fire toward Gustin Pond (Marlow) near Potwin mill …
3:42 p.m. — Jennings called up. Gustin Pond Fire is a real one. Looks to be in pine … Marlow alarm has been sounded."
Her entire log is many pages long, typed single-spaced.
On the third day Jennings called in his last report at 2:45 p.m., and after that the line went dead, Holland wrote. Later, Jennings would say he climbed down to trouble-shoot the dead line. He barely escaped with his life.
"Fred Jennings kept fire headquarters informed of the fire spread until the very last moment when he fled through sparks and smoke so hastily that he left $20 behind in a wallet in his pants," reads an account from Stoddard's town history records. "The tower cab burned like a torch in the sky before the main fire swept through early in the morning."
The Sentinel printed several articles April 30, with headlines such as "14 Stoddard cottages burn, situation called terrible." Nadig, "The Cheshire Cat," wrote about the danger sawmills posed in the dry woods.
Boxing, the upcoming Kentucky Derby and Keene High's baseball opener were the top sports stories of the day. And an advertisement for live wrestling in North Swanzey promised, "Everything goes, nothing barred except strangleholds."
Day 4, May 1
A cold front moved in through the night, bringing a combination of rain and snow not unlike Tuesday's weather here. Strickland says higher elevations were covered white in snow, and The Sentinel reported, "Rain of night subdues forest fires in Marlow, Stoddard and Washington."
Meanwhile, two other fires in the region had also broken out — one in the Nelson area and one in Hinsdale that burned 10,000 acres. The Sentinel reported on its front page that, in fighting the Hinsdale fire, high school senior Channing Rouillard was bitten on his hand by a rattlesnake.
The fires were out by the fifth day, "whipped," reported The Sentinel.
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