Babbs Switch Fire

Christmas Eve Program Turns to Tragedy-1924
Christmas presentations were supposed to be heartwarming events for country school children, but for one small town in Oklahoma, a schoolhouse fire would forever change the nearby community of Hobart and claim the lives of 36 people half of whom were children.

​It was a tragedy of such dimension that a monument marks the site  of the schoolhouse today engraved with the names of all who lost their lives on that December 24, 1924. This year marks the 100th anniversary of that terrible night.

The Babbs Switch School children planned for weeks for their Christmas Tree Celebration as was the custom in one-room schools of the past. Parents and friends looked with anticipation to the annual play, poetry recitations, Christmas songs, and homemade treats. They would await the man of the hour, Santa Claus, slated to pay a visit. The tree was decorated with home-made ornaments and the candles were already lit.

Upwards of 200 family members and friends packed the schoolhouse that night to watch the program in a room that was a mere 25 x36 feet! Circumstances leading to the fire presented one red flag after another; a dry tree, newly oiled floors, a freshly painted ceiling, windows covered with grating to deter burglars, a single door that opened inward, no running water, overcrowding... and when added up, led to the horrific Christmas Eve aftermath.

Rather than catalog the sordid details, and if this has piqued your interest, you can see and hear the story unfold in two videos from YouTube offered below. If anything good came from the tragedy, the nationwide publicity over the fire ultimately led to stricter fire codes for all our schools and other public buildings.

The videos are short and some shock will remain with you as it did with me. Our nostalgic impressions of the simplicity, quaintness, and resilience  of one-room schools runs counter to harsh moment of truth in the re-telling of the Babbs Switch Fire. 

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And...believe it or not, there is a children's book in the form of a novel by Darleen Bailey Beard. It features fictional characters but is based on the actual event. It is entitled appropriately enough, The Babbs Switch Story.

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