This article concerns a picture that is worth 1,000 words —the exact number of words in this story, including the title and image captions. Some lazy writers might end this story at 995 words or exceed the grand total, but yours truly is not one of those. Of course, this story is not about me; it is about a photograph that pops up every year at this time, captured during a football game. The fans watch the play on the field, as a large school building burns in the background. The infamous Mount Hermon-Deerfield fire, which occurred sixty years ago, on November 20, 1965, is seared into our football photograph memory.
Located near the intersection of the borders of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, Mount Hermon School was founded in 1879 and merged with the all-girls Northfield School in 1971 to become Northfield Mount Hermon. Today, it educates boarding and day students for a mere $48,000 annual tuition, or $6,000 less than nearby rival Deerfield Academy, which came onto the scene in 1797, two years before George Washington died.
Entering the season-ending 1965 game against Deerfield, Mount Hermon had last lost a football game in 1963, winning 17 straight, including seven that season. Played annually since 1942, Mount Hermon led the series with Deerfield 11-10-2 and sought to win its fourth straight rivalry game.
As the Mount Hermon players ran onto the field before the game, they ran through a paper banner naming each vanquished foe from the 1965 season, then through an eighth banner symbolizing that day’s opponent, Deerfield.
The game proved a real barnburner, despite neither team generating much offense. A Mount Hermon bad snap and an interception in their own territory gave the 5-1 Deerfield Big Green opportunities to snag a 12-0 lead with two second-quarter scores and expanded it to 20-0 after a third-quarter touchdown. However, the Mount Hermon Big Red replied with a third-quarter touchdown and safety, supplemented by another touchdown with five minutes left to cut the deficit to 6 points. Despite the Big Red’s best efforts, Deerfield ate a good portion of the time remaining on the clock and left the field with a 20-14 upset.
Of course, the game is notable not for what happened on the field that day, but for what happened off it. Everything appeared normal when the game started at 1:30, but alarms sounded at 1:51 when smoke emanated from the third floor of Mount Hermon’s science building, Silliman Hall. The students inside the building quickly evacuated, though the fire, later blamed on an electrical short circuit, quickly engulfed the top floor, destroying laboratories, classrooms, and scientific collections. Water damage, combined with freezing temperatures that evening, left the second and ground floors with heavy damage as well.
A now-famous image of the event shows fans in the stands watching the game rather than the fire, suggesting they cared more about the game than the blaze —but that was only partially true. The playing field was approximately 100 yards from Silliman Hall and nearly twice as distant from the home stands and press box on the west side of the field. The east side usually stood empty, but for each year’s rivalry game, Deerfield and Mount Hermon lent one another bleachers to accommodate the crowds that reached 6,000 in some years. Hence, the fans seen in the images are largely Deerfield fans, who cared less about the building than the Mount Hermonites did, especially since Deerfield held the lead throughout the conflagration.
Beyond Deerfield’s schadenfreude, the authorities kept the game going because they feared fans might leave their seats and approach the fire, potentially endangering themselves or hindering firefighting efforts. Continuing the game was the safe bet.
However, not everyone stayed to watch the game. Mount Hermon’s backfield coach, Don Westin, the school’s science department chair when not coaching, decided his scientific and teaching duties superseded his assistant’s roles, so he quickly left the sidelines, running into Silliman Hall to save some lab equipment from the burning building.
At halftime, the fans listened to the marching band play a few tunes on the field, though it was far more fun watching the fire, which fire departments from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont fought before bringing the blaze under control as the game ended.
Robert Van Fleet, an amateur photographer whose son played for Mount Hermon, took many of the pictures that circulate from that day. As the father of a home-team player, Van Fleet sat in the stands opposite the fire, putting him in the perfect position to document the day. His images appeared in newspapers across the country and around the world, and his image seen atop this page won the Associated Press Sports Photograph of the Year.
Despite the efforts of multiple fire departments, Silliman Hall was a total loss. Fortunately, a new science building was under construction at the time, so when Silliman Hall was declared a total loss, Mount Hermon razed the building the following spring and planted a garden and grove of trees in its place.
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The image and the story are so mesmerizing. The 1980s song "Burning Down the House " by the Talking Heads is suddenly earworming and echoing in my skull. I would bet in this day and age, a full-scale evac. Would occur to ensure safety and limit liability. 1000 words LOL
Fascinating