Viola Delee lived in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century, when industry, immigrant neighborhoods, and vaudeville houses helped to form the city’s identity. She was born in 1883 to William and Kate Delee. They were a family of three daughters who lived on Chicago’s South Side. In the winter of 1903, Viola, like many young women of her day, enjoyed all the amusements the city had to offer, particularly the theater. Stepping out to watch a performance was an easy way to momentarily forget the repetitive cycles of work and home. Chicago welcomed its newest theater, the Iroquois, to Randolph Street that season. Dubbed the most elegant and “absolutely fireproof” theater in the nation, the irony would soon prove tragic.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
Viola and her friend Florence Corrigan were attending an afternoon matinee of Eddie Foy's comic melodrama Mr. Bluebeard on the afternoon of December 30, 1903. There was a full house of mostly women and children excited by a holiday extravaganza. Who among them could imagine that ten minutes later the theater would be ground zero for one of America's deadliest disasters. Partway through the show, a stage light likely shorted out and set fire to a muslin scrim hanging near the stage. Moments later, the entire stage became engulfed in flames consuming scenery as bits of fire-ridden curtains rained down into an audience that scrambled for safety. The crowd surged toward exits that were locked, hidden or too small to accommodate panicked families and children. Audience members stampeded only to be overcome by flames and more than six hundred dead including mothers and their children, lost in the chaos.
Investigators believe Viola and Florence had been seated on the main floor about eight rows back – close enough to the aisle that they were in peril when the fire leapt outward.
They had come to the theater together, but their bodies were found at opposite ends of the room. Viola's face was badly burned and disfigured; Florence had been burned beyond recognition. Identification was often gruesome and difficult, but Viola's uncle recognized her body. Like thousands of Chicago families, the Delee family grieved.
Viola's funeral took place January 2, 1904, at her family home at 7822 Union Avenue. Friends and neighbors came to pay their respects to the vibrant 20-year-old whose life had been cut short by such senseless violence. A high mass was celebrated at St. Leo's Church before she was laid to rest in Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery. Chicago never forgot the Iroquois fire. It reshaped building codes and safety standards across the country. It changed the nation's ideas about what responsibility a theater should have for it patrons. But for families that lost loved ones that night, life after the fire would mean a lifetime of remembering.
Ruins of the stage.
Front row seats and front of stage.
People searching for missing family.
As the years passed, members of Viola's surviving family moved west. Her eldest sisters, Katherine and Louise eventually moved to Los Angeles with their mother Kate to try and build new lives far away from where they had suffered their greatest loss. Kate lived in California until her death September 22, 1926, even then, the gravitational pull of Chicago remained strong. She was returned home to be buried next to her lost family.
It was not her final resting place. On August 8, 1929, the Delee family chose to reunite their departed in a new home. The remains of Kate, along with the ashes of her husband William and their lost daughter Viola, were exhumed from their Chicago graves and moved to Hollywood Cemetery in Los Angeles. There, in the serene corridors of the Abbey of the Psalms they were interred together in the Sanctuary of Hope, Crypt 302—a quiet, dignified space far from the noise of Randolph Street and the tragedy that once defined their lives.
Today, visitors to Hollywood Forever may pass the name of Viola Delee without realizing the enormity of the story behind it. Viola's tragic tale stands as one of the cemetery’s most heartbreaking stories. She was a young woman whose life was cut short after panic erupted during a theater performance. Her crypt stands to honor not only her memory but also the family she left behind and the lives that were affected by the events that night. By telling Viola's story here, we are sharing not only her memory, but we remember even the tragedies that happen far from home.
Viola Delee (1883-1903)
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