Fritz Hirter's day, his life, was like a fine-tuned timepiece.

Ever since he came to Collinwood from Switzerland and landed a job as custodian for Lake View School, the 46-year-old father of eight followed the same routine.

He would rise before dawn, put on his round, rimless glasses and neaten his handlebar mustache before heading down the block to the 2 -story brick schoolhouse that nearly 400 of the village's children attended.

Hirter's first task was to make sure the building was warm enough for the children.

By 6:30 a.m., after adding some coal to the furnace, he was sweeping the halls and cleaning the classrooms.

A little after 8, he would fling open the back doors, and the children playing in the grassy school yard, including four of his own, would flood into the school.

He did all those things on March 4, 1908.

It was Ash Wednesday.

Around 9:30 a.m., a little girl appeared in front of him.

"The basement is on fire!" she shouted, pointing to smoke curling from under the basement stairs.

-- Tonya Sams contributed to this story.Order turns to chaos after alarm



At that moment, Hirter's steady tick went furious. He flew into a first-floor classroom to ring the fire alarm -- three taps on a gong. His five-year-old daughter Ella sat in the corner of the room.

"Hurry Ella. Go home," he told her. He ran to fling open the front and back entrances to make it easier for the children to get outside.

Air rushed though the doors, into the school.

It fed the already roaring fire.

Inside, the schoolteachers and children figured the alarm was a drill, since the weather was crisp, but clear and sunny.

Students lined up as practiced at their doors and headed toward designated exits.

Then they smelled smoke.

Katherine Weiler's second-grade class had been singing when they heard the bell and headed to the door of their second-floor classroom. Weiler was a strong young woman -- nearly 6 feet tall -- who taught arithmetic.

In her 20s, she was strict, possibly because she was brought up the daughter of a German Methodist minister.

She marched her 39 students down the rear stairway, commanding calmness.

A floor higher, another young teacher, Laura Bodey, coped with her panicking fifth-graders.

They saw the flames and screamed.

"Courage, children," she shouted as her lips turned white. "Everyone in line. You will be safe."

After finding both stairways blocked -- the front by flames and the rear by panicked students piling up -- Bodey led the kids back to the classroom. Some began to scatter and dodge past her. She grabbed them and threw them into the room.

"The fire escape," she cried. "Girls first." Those who listened made it out to stand with Bodey, her dress torn, her hair disheveled, on the lawn.

Some of the disoriented schoolchildren ran home. Others stood dazed and watched the horror.

Rescuers, parents rush to help



Also watching the inferno was Charles G. McIlrath, Collinwood's police chief. He descended from a proud pioneer family, among the first to settle the Western Reserve.

A generation earlier, his relative, Abner McIlrath, stood back to back with Abraham Lincoln during a reception during the president-elect's honor in Cleveland. McIlrath, to the audience's delight, was a half-inch taller.

Charles McIlrath, of the same solid stock, patrolled the village of 8,000 with his nightstick, often corralling citizens who drank a tad too much after a long day's work.

McIlrath was among the first to arrive at the burning building. He got a call about the fire and hopped into a passing wagon.

He knew that three of his children, Hugh, Benson and Viola May, could be inside.

But he didn't know if theirs were among the terror-stricken faces pressed against the school windows or among the little ones being carried away from the building.

Duty came first.

At the back door, fathers, mothers and passers-by struggled to pull out wailing children who tumbled over each other in a panic and were now wedged in a vestibule. Men -- many who dropped their tools and ran from the rail yard -- kicked and pounded at the solid wood doors with their fists until bloody.

One of the men was Fritz Hirter. He saved many students, tossing them out windows as he ran from the school, pulling them from the doorway. With his face and hands already singed, Hirter pulled at the tangle of arms and legs as more students tumbled uncontrollably onto the pile, which was nearly 6 feet high.

The children's moans mixed with the crackling of the fire.

Voices called out to men, "Papa, oh, Papa! Save me, save me!" But they couldn't untangle their little girls and boys and watched them wither in the fire. Flames until flames drove them away. Mothers, driven mad by the sounds of their children's screams, fought their way to the door.

One mother, who couldn't pull her daughter Jennie out, held her hands and talked to her.

"It's no use ma," Jennie said. "I've got to die."

As the fire crept up, she stroked her daughter's hair, burning her own hand to the bone before being dragged away.

When the village's horse-drawn fire wagon arrived; the building was already consumed. The firefighters didn't even have a ladder to reach the second floor. And the weak streams that came from their hoses merely produced steam that mixed with the smoke.

Soon the whole stairway, made of Georgia pine, disintegrated, sending the kids tumbling into the coal room.

In a little more than 20 minutes, all that stood of the smoldering school were the brick outer walls and a smokestack.

Rescue turns to recovery

That day, 172 children, two teachers and a rescuer perished. After the shrieks of the children died away, there was silence.

A gray-haired man dropped to his knees in the muddied schoolyard.

"Oh, God, what have we done to deserve this?" he moaned, his arms raised to the smoky sky.

Police Chief McIlrath had spent six hours containing the crowd of thousands who surged at the flaming building and later at its smoldering ruins.

McIlrath's son, Benson, 7, was among the first to escape from the building. And Benson's 9-year-old sister, Viola May, lost her hair to the fire but saved herself and three schoolmates from their second-floor classroom.

The oldest boy, Hugh, was missing.

Also lost in the fire was teacher Katherine Weiler.

At the stairway, even her commanding presence couldn't keep her students calm. They had begun leaping over the already-piling bodies in the rear stairway. Weiler hurled herself onto the pile, trying to grab the children and drag them back to the fire escapes.

"Quiet, children!" she had shouted. "Quiet. Go back to the fire escape."

They trampled her.

Dozens of ambulances ferried charred bodies to an empty storage area near the rail yards. The small bodies lost arms, legs and even heads during the short journey.

In the makeshift morgue, the children were placed 10 to a row by gender and covered with dark blankets. A railroad worker stood sentry at each row. Nurses were on hand to deal with parents who would no doubt swoon.

That evening parents were let in 10 at a time to look for their children. Most were unrecognizable. Some were curled next to siblings or friends.

Their trinkets often signaled identities: a gold ring, a silver watch or a suspender buckle.

One mother identified her daughter by a special pencil she carried, still in her hand. A 9-year-old recognized the plaid pattern of her older sister's skirt. A black-and-tan dog identified one child by curling up next to her body.

Chief McIlrath made his way to the bodies. After a nerve-wracking search, he identified his charred son by an L-shaped repair in the boy's pants. The boy's mother had mended them just the day before when he tore them while ice-skating.

"It's Hughie," is all McIlrath said, brushing back tears before heading back to the school, where he remained on duty far into the night. He later learned that his Hughie died a hero. He was last seen tossing students from the fire escape before heading back into the brick schoolhouse to rescue more.

Village overcome by grief



"HORRIBLE," the headline of the Collinwood Citizen read.

The Collinwood News called for calm.

"Collinwood is wrapt in sorrow; hearts are broke; families are destitute; a pall hangs over the village; we are dazed, humbled, abashed. . . . Fathers in your sorrow blame no one until guilt is proven."

That evening, the mayor of Collinwood called for saloons to close.

Volunteers were sent to check on mothers after several were found going insane with grief and trying to take their own lives.

White ribbons were placed on the doors of homes of children who perished. One street, Arcade Street, was adorned with 18.

A crowd gathered in front of Fritz Hirter's home.

His daughter Ella had made it home. But his three other children in the school were found huddled together on the second floor. Despite his loss many inconsolable parents blamed him.

Rumors flew: Hirter had left his post to have tea when the fire started. The doors to the school opened inward, trapping the children. Several girls had ignited the fire, making the tragedy an arson.

Community leaders vowed to fully investigate the fire and hold whoever caused it responsible.

But any reprisals would have to wait.

First, Collinwood had to bury its dead.

After all the parents had shuffled through the morgue, 19 bodies were still unidentified. The town ordered simple white coffins for them.

It was decided that the unclaimed children and 30 others, including teacher Grace Fiske, would be buried together, in a common grave. Other children were buried in cemeteries throughout the city.

Also never identified was teacher Katherine Weiler's body.

A body that was first thought to be hers was actually a rescuer.

Found in the rubble was a brown hair ribbon, a piece of tan skirt and a broken slate marked with the crooked chalk words, "I like to go to school . . ." The remains were believed to be Weiler's and were interred with the ashy remains of the children she desperately tried to save.

On March 6, at least four funerals were held every hour from sunrise to sunset. Services continued for days. There were so many to be buried that not enough funeral carriages were available. Undertakers' wagons and even streetcars carried the tiny coffins. The services for janitor Fritz Hirter's three children, Walter, 15, Helena, 13, and Eda, 8, were held at a small German church.

Beforehand, a crowd of 500 people had gathered in front of his home on Collamer Avenue, near the school. For days police and neighbors had been posted on the Hirters' porch with guns to warn away those wanting to hold the janitor responsible. Police accompanied his family on the procession. Hirter kept his eyes focused on the three caskets. Those who came in anger softened at the sight. All remained calm.

Fire survivors and students from Cleveland's schools served as somber pallbearers for their peers.

In Lake View Cemetery, on the day of the mass burial, large arches of flowers towered over the white caskets lined in the ground. Thousands showed up to mourn.

And now, 100 years later, an angel kneels over the gravesite, gathering the children under her bronze wings.

Epilogue: Janitor Fritz Hirter was cleared of any responsibility for the fire and worked as a janitor for the local schools until he retired at the age of 70. He lived until the age of 96 but seldom spoke about the fire.