Centennial of Triangle fire marked at grave site (by middle school students)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20458932&BRD=2731&PAG=461&dept_id=574903&rfi=6


Students from PS 229 join community members at Mt. Zion Cemetery to commemorate the death of workers in the Triangle fire. PHOTOS BY ELIZABETH DALEY


Though the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory took place 100 years ago, at the Maspeth grave site of 15 victims, area middle school students remembered the event as if it happened yesterday.

“They inspire me,” said sixth-grader Ciara Keogh, regarding the 146 workers who lost their lives in 1911, when a fire erupted in the upper floors of the 10-story Greenwich Village garment factory.

Many of the young women who worked as seamstresses jumped to their deaths from the burning building. Others were trampled, some fell from a collapsing fire escape and many more were asphyxiated.

As a result of the fire, the New York State Legislature created a Factory Investigating Committee to make sure working conditions were safe and sanitary. “I don’t think it’s right that people had to be put through that for them to enforce the law,” Ciara said.

Ciara and her classmates from PS 229 in Woodside, led by their teacher Caroline Roswell, recounted the March 25 fire in vivid detail to a crowd gathered to honor its centennial at Mt. Zion Cemetery.

Some students read testimony from survivors of the fire, others placed the event in an historical perspective. Many attempted to dress in the attire of the era.

Diana Rodriguez, who read from the diary of a factory worker, said it felt good to honor the laborers. “They’re gone now and it’s like remembering a moment from the past and it gives me this weird feeling,” Rodriguez said.

FULL story at link.

[postulater]

1. We learn from the past.

Good for these kids.

And special thanks to their TEACHERS!