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It was a quiet workday morning on South Wabash Avenue in downtown Chicago, in September of 1914. Around 11am, a massive explosion suddenly erupted, causing a wall of flame to sweep across the streetcar line, and blowing out the windows of the building across the street. More massive explosions followed. A plume of smoke rose hundreds of feet in the air. Perhaps my grandfather, Henry Sulcer, felt the pressure wave jolt his own office at the Chicago Tribune – a mere ten blocks away. Even miles away in Hyde Park, Charlotte would have heard it and looked up, wondering what it was.
It indeed turned out to be terrible news for my grandparents. The massive blast was the enormous Pain Company fireworks warehouse complex going up all at once, the nightmare of anyone in that business. Among the dead was its president, Charlotte’s uncle Harry B. Thearle, a well-known figure in the entertainment world of the last 40 years. He is believed to have been dictating a letter to his secretary, Florence, in the adjoining fireworks company office. A spark from electrical work going on next door was the likely cause – though more colorful theories about German saboteurs were floated around as well.
For Henry and Charlotte it had already been a year of tragic accidents, including the death of Henry’s father A.A. Sulcer from a car crash injury, just six months earlier, in California. Hap and Teen, still just toddlers, would not have been aware of these events, nor the irony of the fiery death of a creative businessman who thrived on producing dramatic spectacles, often themselves recreations of famous disasters.
Uncle Harry was a larger-than-life character in the family, known for producing musical and theatrical events, who had crisscrossed the nation in his private rail car managing some of the top acts of his day. He also another great example of the creative show business and musical DNA of the Thearles, which have has down to the Sulcers through my grandmother, Charlotte as well as from Henry. During his life he was a talent agent, producer, inventor, music business investor, but most of all, a master showman of his day.
Go on to read about the start of Harry’s career as a music impressario.
Sources
- “Fireworks Kill Five”, The New York Times, 1 October 1914
- “Lives Lost in Fire”, The Chicago Tribune, 1 October 1914
- Jones, John Price, and Hollister, Paul Merrick, The German Secret Service in America, 1914-1918, p. 102, Small, Maynard and Company, Boston, 1 January 1918
- NPR Books, “During WWI, Germany Unleashed ‘Terrorist Cell’ in America”, available at http://www.npr.org/2014/02/25/282439233/during-world-war-i-germany-unleashed-terrorist-cell-in-america on 16 April 2015
