SUN CITY — On Dec. 1, 1958, 92 children and 3 nuns died in the shocking fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago. Richard Holman was there.
In early 1962, President John F. Kennedy visited Vandenberg Air Force Base in California during the height of the Cold War and the missile race with Russia. Richard Holman was there.
Richard Holman looks over his newspaper clippings and photos documenting the fire at Our Lady of the Angels in 1958. Holman, then a photographer for the Northwest Times in Chicago, also had experiences meeting President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev. (Photo by Hannah Sturtecky/Sun Day)
In September, 1959, former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev visited San Luis Obispo and San Francisco, California. Richard Holman was there, and shook the premier’s hand.
Years later, on the expressways and streets of Chicago, citizens were injured in accidents or violated traffic laws. Richard Holman was there, saving lives and issuing tickets.
Today, in his home in Sun City, Holman is a 76-year-old retiree who looks and acts years younger. During an interview with this writer, he repeatedly stood up and pantomimed as he told story after story about his experiences as a news photographer, journalist, and cop. His fascinating life gives new meaning to the term “great memories.”
This Friday, Dec. 1, is the 54th anniversary of the Our Lady of the Angels catholic school fire, one of the worst school disasters in American history. It made headlines around the world and led to sweeping nationwide changes in school fire safety standards and regulations. The changes have undoubtedly saved countless lives in subsequent years.
“It also was the only time in my hectic life of covering major events and protecting lives that I cried,” Holman said.
Hearing about the fire on his two-way fire radio while he was on another assignment for the former Northwest Times weekly newspaper in Chicago, Holman, then 22 years old, arrived at the former Walther Memorial Hospital. He wrote a story about his experiences that day, which became a memorable record of the tragedy.
“I walked into a three-bedroom on the third floor,” he wrote, “after visiting rooms whose beds were occupied by burned, blackened, charred children who clung desperately to life, trying to breathe in oxygen tents. When I got to one little girl’s bedside, I stood rooted, frozen with shock, then burst into tears.
I have seen many things as a news photographer, but never such a sight as this. Even the nurse was crying.”
He expressed his emotional, personal, human reaction to the tragedy eloquently in a front page story in the Dec. 3 issue of the Times. The page also displayed nine pictures Holman took of firefighters battling the blaze, grieving parents, and city and Chicago Archdiocesan officials.
A photograph of the front page of the Northwest Times documenting the fire at Our Lady of the Angels in 1958. (Photo by Hannah Sturtecky/Sun Day)
Holman has covered mission trips in Venezuela, where he survived a crash landing. “We flew into some of the most remote areas of the country, and we usually landed on bumpy, grassy fields,” he recalled. “I also took pictures of medical surgeries for doctors.”
But that isn’t the end of Holman’s story, which took a major turn a few years later.
“I freelanced as a news photographer for several papers in Chicago for a few months, and then I got a call from the Santa Maria Times, a daily paper on the California coast,” he said. “I spent four years there, during which I covered President Kennedy’s visit to Vandenberg Air Force Base, and Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to San Luis Obispo. On one occasion, a missile flew out of control, and they destroyed it; it exploded near us, and we had to run for cover while huge pieces of debris, some as big as a truck, fell around us. I also did a number of stories about the missile activities at Vandenberg and covered several Atlas missile launches. I also rode along several times with members of the California Highway Patrol and became well acquainted with how they do their jobs. I often gave a set of pictures of incidents to the police for their investigations and another set to the cops for their personal use,” he said.
“Since my family was in Chicago, I returned here and worked a year for the Chicago Tribune. I talked to a friend who suggested we apply for the Chicago Police Academy. I thought, ‘Why not?’ and I soon became a cop. For the next 31 years, I was a patrolman, worked traffic on the Kennedy Expressway, processed accident scenes, and patrolled the streets of the northwest side of Chicago,” Holman explained.
Like most cops, he has many serious and humorous “war stories” he loves to tell.
“I was called to an accident scene where a motorcycle had collided with the open door of a car,” he said. “The ambulance came and took the motorcycle driver to the hospital. I got a call a few minutes later asking me to search the area for the guy’s foot. I found it under the car driver’s vehicle, and I raced frantically to the hospital to deliver it. I found out later the guy survived. About 18 months later, I stopped a car making an illegal left turn in the same area, and it turned out to be the same motorcycle driver. After I discovered who he was, I decided not to ticket him.
“In a more serious vein, a man who said he was a physician and committed a driving violation swore at me repeatedly and threatened to harm me if I ever encountered him as a patient. Over the years, I got a wide variety of reactions from traffic violators,” he added.
On another occasion, Holman said he was writing a ticket to a woman who made an illegal turn right in front of him and almost caused an accident.
“She asked me, ‘Did God tell you to give me a ticket?’ several times, and finally I responded that ‘No, the devil made me do it,’” he said. “Later, in court, the judge nearly choked on his coffee when she recounted our conversation. He declared her not guilty as he laughed.”
Memories – Holman has a bucketful of them.
