Fire of 1955
After only a few years of existence, the community had expanded from the original fifteen sisters to nearly fifty sisters and plans were being made to update the building from the makeshift monastery of a farm house with adjoining barns to something more suited to monastic life. However, on December 23, 1955, the entire building burned to the ground. After Compline, as most of the sisters were retiring for the night, a fire ignited in the wall between the sacristy and the chapel. When shouts of “fire” were heard by those who had not yet gone upstairs to the dormitory, attempts were made to smother the fire, but due to the inexpensive materials of which the building was constructed the fire rapidly spread and efforts to extinguish the blaze were futile. Within minutes the chapel had filled with smoke and was unapproachable. The fire department was called and the community alerted to the danger. The floor of the dormitory was hot under the feet of the nuns as they evacuated the building. The smoke had been kept out of the upstairs portion of the building by a door to the stairwell on the first floor, but exiting the building once on the ground level required passing through thick, choking, smoke. While most of the sisters made it through the smoke unharmed, some chose alternate routes through windows, one sister going out a second story window onto a low roof and jumping to the ground, breaking her foot in the process. Sister Mary Dolores of the Holy Angels, who had made her solemn profession just ten days before on December 13, 1955, making her the youngest of the solemnly professed sisters, hastened to help a sister with a heart condition to safely exit the building. After a head count revealed one sister missing, Sister Mary Dolores and Sister Mary Constance of Jesus received permission to re-enter the building to save the infirm Sister Mary Regina of the Rosary. Sister Mary Regina, presumably mistaking the source of the fire, had moved away from the best exit and further into the monastery. Before Sister Mary Dolores and Sister Mary Constance could help her back toward the safest exit all three were overcome with smoke.
Since they had been preparing for bed, many of the sisters were in their pajamas and slippers, meager attire for a December night. The firemen generously gave their socks and jackets to the sisters to keep warm. The surrounding community responded quickly in coming to the aid of the devastated sisters. They were given clothing, food, and shelter by the local Congregational Church as well as the Sisters of Mercy in nearby Madison, Connecticut. Near mid-night, the thirty-nine surviving sisters and their chaplain, Reverend Reginald Craven, O.P., were taken by bus to New Haven where they received the hospitality of the Dominican Sisters at Albertus Magnus College. The funeral Mass for Sister Mary Dolores, Sister Mary Constance, and Sister Mary Regina took place the following day at Albertus Magnus and arrangements were made for the deceased sisters to be buried in the Dominican section of Saint Lawrence Cemetery until they could be brought back to the cemetery in North Guilford. After a brief stay at Albertus Magnus, Archbishop O’Brien arranged for the sisters to be given the use of the Walter House, an unused building in West Haven, until the monastery in North Guilford could be rebuilt.
Amidst the rubble that once was the sacristy, two charred fragments were found. One from a prayer for priests which read, “Whose lives burn out before thy consecrated shrine. . . have only human hearts and human frailty.” The other was a shred from the Missal which read, “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.”
