The Game Boston College Never Got to Celebrate

Boston College did not make it to its planned victory party at the Cocoanut Grove. Earlier on November 28, 1942, Holy Cross had defeated the team 55-12 at Fenway Park. The party was supposed to include a large horseshoe table reserved for Burns and his teammates in the center of the club, according to the Boston Globe. The loss changed those plans.

The sources describe the Boston College team as foregoing the celebration. Ed Murphy later said that he and teammates were intercepted on the way to the Cocoanut Grove. “Mayor Tobin probably saved our lives . . . I sure do feel lucky,” Murphy said. None of the Boston College or Holy Cross players was among the nightclub’s 492 dead, though the sources do not establish that every individual avoided the club for the same reason.

At about 10:15 p.m., the fire began in the basement Melody Lounge. Eyewitnesses described seeing flames first in a decorative palm tree. U.S. Naval Reserve Ens. William G. Burns said the fire began slowly and appeared to be of such a nature that club employees could extinguish it. Instead, flames spread through wall and ceiling decorations, and within eight minutes of their first sighting had engulfed the entire club. The main revolving door jammed during the escape.

The fire’s cause and responsibility were not treated as the same question. Boston Fire Commissioner William Arthur Reilly’s official report concluded that the fire was of unknown origin and said he could not conclude that Stanley Tomasewski’s conduct had caused it. Barnett Welansky, the club’s owner, was later indicted and convicted on 19 counts of manslaughter for conduct tied to failing to abide by building standards and allowing overcrowding.

The football game had ended hours before the fire began. The planned party had been abandoned, while inside the Cocoanut Grove the first flames moved from a seemingly manageable fire to a catastrophe that killed 492 people.