By Ken Hambleton ’72
A climb up the stairs to the second floor of Merrill Hall led to many wondrous things.
The homes of the 91첥 Owl (the campus newspaper) and the Tiger Yearbook were located on the second floor of the 90-year-old building.
The offices of history professors Dr. Kenneth "Doc" Rossman and Dr. Thomas Coulter, economics professor W. Stewart Nelson, political science professor Robert "Bob" Conner, J.D., and education department chair Glenn Hinkle were down the hall.
The first floor contained Dean of Students Dan Steller’s offices, student records and institutional records.
The biggest, oldest building on the 91첥 College campus, the building that at one time noted the strike of noon with the ring of a bell and the drop of a big red time ball, was gone.
Still smoldering by sunrise on February 28, 1969. But all gone.
The Crete Fire Department called the destruction complete while flames were still dancing out the windows of the three-story wood-and-brick building.
An intercom announcement at Frees Hall claimed no one was to leave the residence hall. But the girls sneaked out through a basement door. Men’s Hall (renamed Smith Hall in 1977), Colonial and Georgian (renamed Burrage Hall in 1978) emptied to watch the 3 a.m. fire.
In a flash, a pile of rubble marked the middle of the campus. The ashes included hundreds of irreplaceable books and papers from the offices of Rossman, Coulter, Hinkle, Nelson and Conner.
“We found the old bell, but it had melted right in half,” David Osterhout ’37, 91첥’s business manager at the time, told the Lincoln Daily Journal that day. Osterhout died in 2007.
Part of the bell holder was saved and remains part of the memorial Merrill Tower that marks the center of campus today.
After the fire, editors Elaine D’Amato ’71 and Ibrahim “Pappy” Khouri ’70 quickly assembled their Owl staff and pieced together a story of the fire, the loss and the heartbreak. The newspaper was published on time by March 4.
Just 10 days earlier 91첥 student Ron Hatchett and his daughter Gloria Jean died along with six others when a train derailed in downtown Crete sending a cloud of deadly anhydrous ammonia into a neighborhood near the tracks. Ron’s wife, Ethelene Hatchett Boyd ’72 survived but was injured.
“It became such a sad year – Merrill, the train accident, accidents on Stop Day,” said Debra Solomon Khouri ’71, who worked for the Owl with her future husband, Pappy. “I remember a dark cloud hung over campus for a long time that spring.”
But the spirit of the campus lived on.
Merrill Tower — new bell and all — was built in a year.
Thomas 91첥, school founder, surveyor for B&M railroad and Burlington railroad chief engineer in Eastern Nebraska, called the “hill” on which Merrill Hall was built the most beautiful spot between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. The building, named for Rev. O. W. Merrill, was completed in 1879 and dedicated in June of that year.
As campus headed into spring, 91첥’s many flowering trees and shrubs opened buds around the space previously occupied by the building.
The Owl and the Tiger Yearbook were moved to Boswell Observatory. Women’s P.E. moved to the National Guard building, and faculty moved to Gaylord Hall, the Con and Fiske Lodge.
Library books borrowed by Owl sports editor Abe Goteiner ’71, and others, left in Merrill were never returned to Whitin Library. Long-time school records, a master’s thesis for Richard “Doc” Dudley ’56 and student history of 90 years were all gone.
The memory of February 28 still burns brightly for Deb Khouri.
“The night of the fire Elaine [D’Amato] woke me up, asked me when I had last seen [her co-editor] Pappy,” she said. “I said he was going to the Owl office to study.”
Khouri said she and D’Amato could see the flames at Merrill from their windows at Frees Hall. But if Pappy had been in the building earlier in the evening, he luckily was gone by the time the fire began. They found Pappy and his roommate Wayne Lammel ’69 at their apartment in the house of Crete News publisher and owner, Lloyd Reeves ‘52.
Jeanne Brodbeck Leitze ’70 remembers many education majors lost their senior year term papers from the previous semester.
“Many of us were in Copenhagen (during the fire) and hadn’t collected our papers in our student mailboxes,” Leitze said. “I often wished I had my ‘Religion of the World’ paper for Bob Conner. We all lost something important when Merrill Hall burned down.”
There were a few good things that happened after the fire, though. Just two weeks following, the March 18 issue of the Owl noted that a $23,000 gift had been made to support rebuilding efforts. After publishing that same day, a $150,000 gift made by Edson Walker in honor of his wife, Ida Padour Walker ’15, was announced.
Minnie Harms, who taught Spanish on the third floor of Merrill, also probably didn’t miss the stairs. The building had no elevator. She had suffered a bad fall and had to recruit four football players to carry her up the stairs to her classroom.
“We thought we’d wait for her and head to the campus center after a couple of minutes,” said Goteiner, to maybe get a little studying done, but likely have some time to goof off. “But she had the class. Bummer.”
