Judy Andrews doesn’t acknowledge St. Patrick’s Day and hasn’t for most of her life. When she was 15, a fire on St. Patrick’s Day claimed the lives of her sister and her husband’s entire family.
Andrews said people still remember the fire and tell her so when they meet her. Some say it was the worst fire in Westbrook ever, and this St. Patrick’s Day marked the 50th anniversary of that fire.
Andrews said only the death eight years ago of her husband, Jim, was a more defining moment in her life than the fire, which happened when the couple was dating in high school. Jim Andrews was the only survivor of the fire.
Andrews has lived a lifetime since that night, and the memory of the fire has always quietly there in the background, a shaping force in the couple’s lives together, giving them perspective.
“We never, ever went to bed angry because you might wake up the next morning and they’re not there,” she said. “We had a special bond. You have arguments on who’s going to take out the trash or something like that. And you look at each other and you just start laughing because it’s so silly because at our age we’d already been through…a lot.”
The fire occurred 50 years ago on March 17 at the Andrews family home on Austin Street during what was remembered as the worst snowstorm of the year, according to newspaper accounts of the time.
The fire spread quickly in the middle of the night and trapped Leslie Andrews and his wife Vivian on the first floor and their children Barbara, 13, Richard, 9, and James, 17, along with Barbara’s friend Donna Ames, Judy Andrews’ sister, on the second floor. Only Jim, Judy’s future husband, escaped the fire.
According to published accounts, Westbrook fire department officials said heavy snowdrifts slowed them in responding to the fire while heavy winds helped to spread the fire quickly. Flames were consuming the house by the time firefighters got to the scene and they struggled against the wind, which blew the water from their hoses back in their faces.
To hear Andrews tell the story her husband relayed to her, the scene was nightmarish. She said her husband was awakened upstairs where the children slept by his father yelling to his mother to call the fire department. He got up and woke his brother and the two girls and, unable to get downstairs, took them to a window. He opened the window and stepped out onto a section of roof holding Richard’s hand.
At that moment the children’s mother yelled downstairs and Richard yanked his hand back, causing Jim to slip and fall off the second-story roof into a five-foot drift of snow. In his underwear and a t-shirt, he ran two houses down to the house of his uncle, William Richards. Richards ran back to the house but couldn’t get within 50 feet because of the heat.
Andrews said that the fire department found Andrews’ parents in each other’s arms in the downstairs bathroom. They were unable to locate the children at first because the roof had collapsed and the house settled into the basement. When they found them, the children were huddled together as well.
Andrews said she and her husband talked a lot about the fire in the time immediately afterwards, although neither of them read the newspaper articles because they didn’t want to know any more details. “They were gone. None of that could take the pain away,” she said.
As time went on, though, she said they hardly talked about it at all. They didn’t even share the story with their children until they were teenagers, although people in Westbrook all knew about it and skirted the issue with their kids, she said. The couple didn’t acknowledge St. Patrick’s Day, but would share a hug or a squeeze of the hand to silently remember it.
Perhaps surprisingly, however, they lived in a house built on the same site as the old house after they graduated from high school and were married. Jim Andrews built the house with help from his relatives. They chose a one-story ranch that didn’t “look anything like the other,” said Andrews. “No two-story.” They raised their children and sold the house about 10 years ago, she said. Eight years ago, Jim Andrews succumbed to prostate cancer.
Andrews said she’s more lost now that her husband is gone because they “were a team.” But she still has family, and she said family has always been the most important thing in her life. She said the same was true for her husband, who made family his highest priority while he was alive.
In his memory, she offered this message: “With every year a branch will grow, and some will fall with each wind blown. For on this day, even though you’re gone, know that because of you these roots are strong.”
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