1965 Pullen Hall Fire
John Atkins recalls the atmosphere on campus before and after an arsonist set a fire that destroyed Pullen Hall in 1965.
Interview on 2011-06-14 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
00:00:00
It was a frightening time but it also was a time of great student intrigue
00:00:06
and the kind of who-dun-it syndrome set in.
00:00:11
Being where Pullen Hall was and where the school of design was-
00:00:16
and the fact we never left the school of design until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning
00:00:20
-when that fire broke out, which was give or take about midnight,
00:00:24
I mean we could see the blaze, and of course we all moved-I say we all; maybe there were, I don't know, twenty-five of us or whatever
00:00:33
-but we all moved over, and I mean it was just absolutely incredible,
00:00:38
and of course it was a wood frame building.
00:00:43
I've never seen a fire like that since then,
00:00:49
I mean just an incredible fire, and then of course these fires would start showing up in other places.
00:00:56
At that time at the university you could almost go in any academic building any time of the day.
00:01:02
I mean there just wasn't the security that you have on campus today,
00:01:06
They did not catch-. The academic year finished up and they had not caught the culprit.
00:01:13
It was well into the summer before they caught the individual who did it,
00:01:18
I wouldn't sit here and tell you we all went around in great fear,
00:01:23
but it was frightening in a sense of a disturbing way, that this would be going on at campus.
00:01:30
It's certainly not the frightening kind of sense of what we live with in today's world,
00:01:35
though I'm not saying we go around every day thinking about it, of a terrorist kind of thing,
00:01:41
and as I say all the who-dun-it stuff probably played out more than anything that dealt with fright or fear.
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