‘Everybody was crying’: 50 years since Trussville school burned down

Blue spray paint was still wet on their shirts. 

It was supposed to be Play Day, a celebration of the school year, when T-shirts were spray painted for afternoon fun. Many thought the smell of smoke was from a passing train. Fifty years ago, Hewitt Elementary School students were supposed to sign each other’s yearbooks and spend an afternoon participating in activities and games. 

Instead, on May 10, 1973, Trussville children were sent running out of a 51-year-old building by orange flames and black smoke.

Hewitt Elementary School, the one located on North Chalkville Road near the former Trussville City Schools Central Office, caught fire around 11:30 a.m. that Thursday. The fire apparently started in the center of the building and spread throughout the wood-and-brick building within seconds. 

The cause of the fire remains a talking point today. Oiled wooden floors? Kids with matches? Something wrong with the lights? 

Miraculously, not one of the nearly 600 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders was injured. Perhaps the biggest losses that day were 937,000 bottle caps that students had collected (the goal was one million), library books and many of those yearbooks. 

Paul Bradford was in seventh-grade band class at the former junior high school when someone burst into the classroom yelling that the elementary school was on fire. Bradford and others ran to the elementary school. They stood on the playground and watched as firemen from Trussville, Center Point, Birmingham and Springville worked to extinguish the fire.

“Easily one of the most memorable days of our Trussville childhood, despite being a tragedy,” Bradford said. “People remember exactly where they were when they heard of it.”

The ordeal was such a big moment that the Trussville History Museum at Heritage Hall features articles, photos and even a printed collection of student comments about the fire. 

Bill Aliff said his class had just returned from lunch when a teacher hollered about the fire.

“We went outside and waited and after a while you could see the flames,” he said. “And then we could see our school was gone. And everybody was crying. Then we went in the church and sang until the bus got there. Then we went home.”

Mellonee Williams recalled that one girl had heard wires popping in the bookroom that morning. 

“We didn’t panic or anything,” Williams said. “We trotted out in a line. There was smoke in the hall by our room when we got out. All the girls in Mrs. White’s class were crying, and so was she. By the time all the fire trucks got there, it was almost destroyed. They couldn’t put the fire out. There wasn’t anything standing by May 11.” 

John Schuessler said that his class had been back from lunch for about five minutes when Mrs. Morris told Mrs. White that the school was on fire. Within five minutes, Schuessler said, firemen from various cities had arrived.

“They started spraying water all over the school,” he said. “I think it is a great loss to Trussville.” 

That building had served as Trussville School from 1922 to 1926, R.G. Hewitt High School from 1925 to 1938 and then Hewitt Elementary School from 1938 to 1973. It included a concrete lintel over the school’s double doors, which came down in the fire but was salvaged years later and is now preserved, more than 100 years since its creation. 

“When the decision was made to spruce up and open the museum for the public, this is the first thing we went looking for,” said Trussville Historical Board member Jane Alexander. 

For the remainder of that school year, classes took place in the Trussville Methodist Church and the nearby former First National Bank building. Portable classrooms were used for the 1973 fall term until additions could be made to the annex school on Cherokee Drive, which became the only elementary school in the city at the time.

In the printed collection of memories from that day, Eddie Hocutt said junior high and high school students thought the elementary students “were lucky, but if they had been there, they wouldn’t have thought we were lucky.” Yearbooks, gloves, pads, pencils, pens, paper, books and desks were all destroyed.

“Everybody wished it would during the fire drills, but they didn’t want it to on May 10, 1973,” Hocutt said. “Almost everybody was in tears — adults and children. The old red brick schoolhouse is finally gone. It was 51 years old. Three generations have gone to that school.”