CHAPTER 1

Russell Kaye

In the early 1880s, a young Mae Rodgers, the third oldest offourteen children, lived with her family in a small Harrisburg,Pennsylvania, home. Nine of the fourteen children were boys,so two of the boys had to sleep with the girls in the three-bedroomhouse.

Mae, with her brown curls and steel-gray eyes, turned manyheads as a young woman. She could likely have done better, but shebegan a long, difficult courtship with Calvin Kaye. Calvin, or "Pop,"as he came to be known, had a bad temper, was a hard-core racist,and had a severe drinking problem. Even so, he was no better orworse than Mae's father, Bill Rodgers. Mae really wanted to make therelationship with Calvin work, as she longed to get out of the overlycrowded home. Mae and Calvin finally married around 1895 and setup housekeeping in Harrisburg.

The thriving metropolis of Harrisburg became the capital ofPennsylvania in 1812. From the grounds of the capitol building, onecould look down onto the Susquehanna River, the city's westernborder. The Native American Indians who first inhabited the generalvicinity knew the area as Peixtin.

When Harrisburg was first established, it was a major crossroadof trade between the white men and the Native American Indians.John Harris, an English trader, was the first white man to settle inthe area. By 1785, John Harris Jr. and William Maclay had mappedout the original city, from Pine Street to the north, Tuscarora to thesouth, the Susquehanna River to the west, and Cameron Street to theeast. In 1791, John Harris Jr. named the city Harrisburg in honor ofhis father.

However, none of that mattered on the morning of February 3,1897. A typical winter morning, the wind gusts howled straight upState Street, and the choppy whitecaps on the river separated thecity from the river's west shore. The freezing rain stung when itslapped against bare flesh, and it was starting to change to a heavy,wet snowfall.

Calvin Kaye and several of his scrawny Rodgers brothers-in-law—Bill,Frank, Charlie, Walter, and Paul—were among the manyvolunteers of the City of Harrisburg Fire Department respondingto the fire at the state capitol building. Flames quickly ate up $1.5million worth of property. The state capitol building was destroyed,and the legislative halls fell in ruins.

It started on a day when the House of Representatives was insession. The Senate was about to come back into session after a shortrecess when someone noticed smoke pouring out of the windows ofthe House. Instantly there was a motion to adjourn. Meanwhile, in theSenate, the smell of fire pierced the senators' noses, and then smokeclouds surrounded them. Senator John Grady of Philadelphia quicklywarned the senators, and they began ripping their desks loose fromthe wooden floors and carrying them out. The representatives did thesame in the House chamber. Once outside, the desks were placed onthe capitol grounds under trees and then covered.

Crowds of people gathered from all over the city to watch, as ifthe fire were a Wednesday afternoon show. Flames shot from the roofover the lieutenant governor's chamber, where the fire had originated.The people began shouting when they realized that they were able toget there from their homes but the fire department still had not yetarrived. When the firefighters did finally get there, the first thing thehose crews did was walk around the capitol, assessing the blaze. Tothe crowd, that was another waste of time.

The fire licked through the roof of the capitol. In numerousplaces, flames skipped about like burlesque dancers. At last, the firecompanies started spraying water on the roof of the Senate wing,which seemed fruitless, as the fire had grown into a wall of flames,with embers of hot ash floating to the ground close to the spectators.To add to the mayhem, the water hardly had enough force to reachthe roof's edge, let alone get to the blaze that was breaking throughthe roof.

Much of the water was evaporating from the flames and heat, butwhat was falling back to the earth was turning into ice on that coldFebruary morning. Although the morning was stormy and a lot ofwet snow was falling, the dry wood was defenseless against the fire.The capitol burned as if it were made of matchsticks.

The roof quickly collapsed into the building, and the fire rapidlyate its way down into the Senate chambers. Those who were trying toget furniture and documents out of the building were suddenly drivenout and reduced to spectators like the hundreds of others. Within anhour or so, every part of the capitol was on fire. There was no hope.Nearby apartments were in danger of catching fire but were savedby an act of God—the wind had shifted in the opposite direction.

Numerous firefighters were injured by falling burning timbers.The flames finally burned themselves out when there was nothingleft to burn.

The finger-pointing started while the fire was still smoldering.The locals and the news media all blamed the...