Public Health and Social Welfare Work
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remodeled for a school. The new St. Joseph's was fireproof, had its own steam and power plant, and was completely equipped with every modern facility known in those days. Although the hospital prospered because its efficient and scientific services commanded patronage regardless of prejudice, the academy, called Notre Dame, languished. It took a tragic fire to burn the impurities of the bad feeling and to unite the community. From an apparently harmless trash fire the wind scattered sparks to a nearby barn and from the flaming hay, it spread far and wide over all the city on that fateful afternoon and night of November 21, 1916. The roar of the flames grew louder and sirens screamed all over the city. The fire had started a good distance from St. Joseph's Hospital and Notre Dame Academy, but a few hours later it had spread everywhere and was turning the whole town into an inferno. The parents of boarding students came and urged that the Sisters, their students, and their patients leave before they were cut off from escape by the flames that threatened to engulf them. The Sister were reluctant the follow the advice. They waited until the priest could remove the Sacred Species in the academy chapel before they agreed to move to the fireproof building of St. Joseph's Hospital. Explosions of oil tanks followed, and through the night the fire continued to rage. The hospital, church and academy and two brick buildings in the business section was all that remained unconsumed the next day, in spite of the help summoned from Dallas, Fort Worth, and Texarkana. Seven hundreds homes were destroyed. St. Joseph's was thrown open as a refuge during the conflagration and, while the flames and smoke swirled about. Mother Robert sent the Sisters to give emer- gency aid to the fire chief and some of his assistants who had been over- come by the fire. The next night the town lay dark, except for St. Joseph's Hospital and the academy where many in need had found refuge and which was fully lighted with their own electricity. The hungry were fed, the injured given emergency treatment. and the needy clothed by the devoted Sisters without a question asked. During the next month St. Joseph's was more like a main office building than a hospital. The academy building was turned over to the mayor and councilmen for their use and that of the public schools; the basement and fourth floors of St. Joseph's were loaned to the public school superintendent for his offices; parts of the second floor were used by doctors and dentists as temporary offices.
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