There are lots to choose from–and I will be showing more over the next week or so–but one of my favorite photographs of the Great Salem Fire of 1914 and its aftermath is a rare happy one, showing a smiling little girl and her rescued cat. The centennial anniversary of this major event, which burned down a third of our city, falls next week, and this weekend there will be a symposium at Salem State University with walks, speakers and an exhibit of the multitude of fire-related materials (many digitized) that have been deposited in our University Archives. It’s not particularly poignant, but I like this photograph because it just encapsulates the last century for me, a century when a saved cat could represent a little triumph over a great disaster. You don’t see cats emerging from the ashes of the Chicago, Boston, or San Francisco fires! But from 1914 on, the saving the cat story/picture seems pretty standard, yet another indication that that was a big year, in ways great and small.
Cats rescued from the Great Salem Fire of 1914, the New York World’s Fair in 1939 (New York Public Library Digital Gallery), and a North Andover, Massachusetts fire in 2013 ( Mary Schwalm/The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune).
