Addie Richards attended Huntington School when it caught fire and burned in 1923. According to Addie, the teachers could not get the school board to build a fire escape for the second floor, so the Principal Leon Leonard and sixth grade teacher William Jarvis were instrumental in raising funds and having a fire escape built on the east side of the building. Orson Petersen's history of Emery County Schools says, "Fire drills had been practiced fequently. At the sound of the fire bell, the children would stand in the aisle and file out two by two in an orderly fashion to the tune of a lively march. The furnace room had been foolishly built directly below the double stairway leading to the upper story. The piano stood on the top floor between the two staircases, just above the furnace. The fire started in the furnace room. One midmorning, as the children were deeply involved in their studies, the fire bell clanged. William Jarvis had detected the fire. His wife, Vesta Wakefield Jarvis, rushed to the piano and began the marching tune. As the children filed out of their respective rooms, they found the hall hazy with smoke. With Leon Leonard at one end of the hall and William Jarvis at the other, encouraging the children to "step lively and keep in time," they marched to the fire escape and the ground below. Vest stayed at the piano with flames shooting up each side of her from the furnace room. . . until she was told all the children were out and safe. All was lost; nothing was saved except the precious lives of the children who attended there and the teachers who taught them." At the age of 93, Addie still mourned the loss of her beautiful new coat that she left in the school.
Emery County (UT) History Photographs
