Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
It’s been 68 years since a horrifying fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago took the lives of her brother and 91 other children, along with three nuns, and Linda Maffiola-Piatkiewicz is still processing how the unspeakable tragedy has affected her and her family.
For more than three decades, Maffiola has been singularly dedicated to helping others process their own trauma stemming from the fire on Dec. 1, 1958, endeavoring to organize yearly memorial Masses, events and panels open to the community.
This year, Maffiola is helping the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist organize a memorial Mass at noon on Sunday, Nov. 29 at Our Lady of the Angels Church, 3808 W. Iowa Street in Chicago. (Parking will be available on the street in front of the church and in the lot on Hamlin Avenue just south of Iowa Street. Bus service will be provided from St. Eugene’s Church, 7958 W. Foster Ave. in Chicago).
She is also coordinating a seminar and memorial event with Elmwood Park Public Library Director Mike Consiglio, a survivor of the fire, at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 1 at the library, 1 Conti Pkwy in Elmwood Park. Tony Romano, author of “Where My Body Ends and the World Begins,” a fictionalized fire survivor’s story, will be a guest speaker.
A mother and grandmother, Maffiola is a retired Chicago Public Schools music teacher. She studied piano performance at DePaul University, graduate organ and piano performance at Concordia University, and has an elementary teaching degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
For more than 40 years, she served as music director and pianist, including at Our Lady of the Angels and Villa Scalabrini-Casa San Carlo, and for Masses at St. Ferdinand Church in Chicago, and Sacred Heart Church and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Melrose Park. She has also produced and directed countless musical performances.
“Currently, I am a freelance pianist working with several wonderful musical friends. I’m putting several performance programs together incorporating story telling with classical music,” she says. She’s also taking improv and music improv classes Second City Theatre in Chicago.
Maffiola and her family lived in a two-flat in the Humboldt Park neighborhood until she graduated 8th grade from Our Lady of the Angels School. She later attended Mother Guerin High School in River Grove. Her parents emigrated from Italy: her father from Conversano, near Bari, and her mother from Onara, near Padova.
Maffiola was 3 ½ when her brother Joseph, known as Joe, died at age 10. A “lovable class clown,” Joe had just been confirmed the day before the fire alongside his 5th grade classmates at Our Lady of the Angels School.
“I have wonderful memories of my brother,” she recalls. “He was my guardian, he loved and protected me, and played with me. I have letters that he wrote about me when he was in 5th grade about how much he cared for me.”
After Joe’s death, the family begun to spend Sunday afternoons at St. Joseph Cemetery in River Grove, where Joe and the children’s maternal grandmother were buried. They also attended memorial Masses for many years.
Still, for decades her parents never talked about the pain of that monstrous day, she says.
“My mother suffered greatly,” Maffiola recalls. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t grief counseling at that time. Doctors just prescribed her Valium for her emotional pain. My father showed the pain of his son’s death by becoming ill. A month after the fire, in January 1959, he was admitted to Michael Reese Hospital, where he suffered a kidney infection and had a kidney removed. He developed pneumonia after the surgery and almost died.”
It wasn’t until 34 years after the fire, in 1992, when Maffiola’s son Joseph was 3 ½ — her age at the time of the fire — that her memories of the tragedy started to come into focus and she began to understand the impact it had on her family, she says.
That year, Maffiola also discovered that no memorial event was being held at Our Lady of the Angels School. That’s when she decided to take action, coordinating a memorial Mass at St. Paul of the Cross Church in Park Ridge. The celebrant was Father Carl Morello, whose cousin had also died in the fire.
“I had no idea if people would attend that Mass,” Maffiola recalls. “I wanted to get the word out to as many survivors as possible, so I attended a media workshop at WBBM Newsradio and learned how to send out press releases. I sent out a press release to not only the major newspapers and news outlets but also local neighborhood and suburban papers, and church bulletins.”
The result? About 500 people showed up, including survivors, parents, firefighters, police officers, Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (who taught at the school), and many more.
The following year, Maffiola worked with the principal at Our Lady of the Angels School to offer two memorial services, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.
“Because the Chicago Sun-Times accidentally put my phone number in their Sunday paper the week prior to the Mass, my phone rang non-stop for four days from calls from survivors, many who had never spoken of the fire and its impact on them,” she says. “I fielded almost 500 calls at that time, and realized many needed help with their memories.”
While preparing for the services, Maffiola’s father brought out from the attic a suitcase full of newspaper clippings about the fire that he saved for 35 years. One had a photo of her brother being pulled out of his classroom that she’d never seen before.
“My dad gave me that clipping and I actually slept with it under my pillow for the next month,” she says. “I cried each evening and remembered my brother and prayed to him. It was my way of reconnecting with him.”
Among those who attended the services was photographer Steve Lasker, who brought his photos of the fire, including one depicting her brother Joe. “He started crying, telling me about his memories,” Maffiola recalls, noting that Lasker was nominated for a Pulitzer for his photos of the fire.
Realizing that the tragedy had affected countless people connected in innumerable ways, Maffiola amped up her efforts.
In collaboration with her therapist, Terri Schmidt, Maffiola spent the following year setting up a workshop, with the assistance of 20 trauma counselors, that was attended by 250 people.
Over the years, Maffiola has continued to organize yearly memorial events, always conscious of the long-lasting ramifications of a tragedy almost too great to imagine.
Maffiola has also done extensive volunteer work in the community, including at Casa Italia in Stone Park, Our Lady of the Angels Mission Food Pantry, and Dawes Fine Arts Elementary School in Chicago, where her daughter, Stephanie, is a Ffe and performing arts administrator.
Next, Maffiola says, she would like to start a children’s Italian choir, after being inspired by seeing a children’s choir perform this summer at the 80th anniversary of the canonization of Mother Cabrini.
“What I love best is working with either a young or older adult and helping them find their voice and confidence to sing,” Maffiola says. “My fondest cantor was Mr. Anthony Faustini at Villa Scalabrini who joined our choir at 93! You’re never too old to start something new.”
So where does her drive to serve come from?
“My drive comes from God and my family,” Maffiola says. “I am blessed with many talents, and want to share my gifts with as many people as I can. My parents worked hard all their lives — dad at Radio Steel and mom at Motorola — to get me a great education,” she says. “And obviously, the loss of my older brother Joseph and the 91 children in the fire had a huge impact on me, and all of us who were from Our Lady of the Angels. I felt I had to live my life and my brother’s, since he wasn’t able to.”
For more information about events in remembrance of Our Lady of the Angels School fire, please contact Linda Maffiola at lmaffiola58@gmail.com.
