Winecoff Hotel Fire Collection (SMC 162)

Biographical Note

Floreine Herron Hudson was a teacher at Baker High School in Columbus, Georgia during the 1940s. She was one of the chaperones on a school trip taken by students from Baker High School and Columbus High School to Atlanta in December of 1946. They joined high school students from all over Georgia who were in Atlanta for the annual General Assembly of the Tri-Hi-Y Club. On December 7, 1946 fire destroyed the Winecoff hotel, where they were staying. It was the deadliest hotel fire in American history, killing 119 people, including at least two students from Columbus. One of the surviving students, Dorothy Moen, was badly injured in the fire and rescue and hospitalized in Atlanta from the time of the fire until the last week of April, 1947. At some point she wrote an account of the fire, her rescue and her slow, difficult recovery. Mrs. Hudson edited it and submitted it to the Sunday Magazine of the Atlanta Journal. Both Dorothy Moen's unedited story is present, as well as Mrs. Hudson's edited typescript and her cover note to the Atlanta Journal.

Scope and Content

1947 1 folder

Permission to Publish

Permission to publish material from the Winecoff Hotel Fire Collection must be obtained from the Columbus State University Archives at Columbus State University. Use of the following credit line for publication or exhibit is required:

Winecoff Hotel Fire Collection (SMC 162) Columbus State University Archives Columbus, Georgia

Provenance

Gift of Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. in 2018

Folder List

Folder 1 - Winecoff Fire story, 1947