History Spotlight
The 1956 Marple-Newtown High School Fire Written by Doug Humes Photos courtesy of the Marple Historical Society
The original 1914 school building
O
n April 9, 1956, just past Noon, the Marple-Newtown High School custodian, George Earle, was eating lunch in a basement room. He smelled smoke, opened the door to an adjacent storage room, and found it in flames. At the same time, teacher Anne Campbell saw smoke and instructed her class to leave the building. The fire alarm sounded. A contemporary news article noted that 750 pupils and 38 teachers filed out in two minutes, in orderly fashion.
The fire alarm was supposed to alert the nearby fire companies, but someone noticed that the phone wires from the building had burned. Two students jumped in their cars and raced to the Newtown and Marple firehouses, to give the alarm. When teacher Harry Harvey ran to his room to get records and money from a safe, he found himself trapped by the fire. Several students grabbed a nearby ladder and put it up to Harry’s room window, and he climbed down. Students and teachers worked
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