Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1977. Providence College dorm fire claims 10 lives

Providence College senior Michael Delaney had just dozed off after 2 a.m., when someone started pounding on his door. "You're not going to believe what's going on outside."

Delaney looked out the window. He could see flames coming from the top of Aquinas Hall, a women's dormitory. He pulled on pants -- shoes without socks, coat without shirt -- and grabbed his camera.

As Delaney neared Aquinas Hall, he saw a fire truck extending its ladder toward a window on the fourth floor. In the window, Delaney could make out a faint figure. He aimed with his telephoto and snapped a picture, realizing it was probably too dark for a picture so far away to come out.

It was Dec. 13, 1977, a date that would be remembered as the Providence College dorm fire. In the end, 10 young women would die and a state would mourn.

Later that night, Providence Journal photographer Andrew Dickerman approached Delaney and asked whether he would sell his pictures to the paper. Delaney handed his film to Dickerman, with a warning: It might be underexposed because of the darkness and need extra developing.

Around 6 a.m., Delaney finally returned to his dorm room. He was hoping for sleep; he found a ringing phone. Dickerman told him to get down to The Journal. When he arrived, he was surprised to see his first picture had come out fine, showing a young woman in the window holding a towel over her nose and mouth.

The Journal bought the photo, as did the Associated Press and United Press International. It appeared on the front page of the New York Times, in Time and Newsweek magazines and in newspapers across the country and around the world. It also led to a career at The Journal for Delaney.

Five days later, The Sunday Journal presented readers with a narrative reconstruction of the fire that took up half the front page and a full page inside. The narrative told the story of the fire from the point of view of the women who experienced it.

Narratives, presented most Sundays, had been a recent invention, at least as a regular feature in The Journal. "We were looking for stories that had drama, that had people, that had action," said Joel P. Rawson, who was Sunday editor at the time. By adding context and bringing the whole story together, narratives helped readers make sense of the daily stories they read throughout the week. "They knew when they got to the Sunday paper, they were going to find out what really happened."