A Tale of Two Fires, by Ron Cole

It's on fire. I remember hearing that, and I remember a moment of time standing still. A paralysis came over me. As I try to relive that moment, I still quiver in spite of the time passed. A moment when everything I had ever known was about to pass away, people, things, hopes and dreams, to be replaced by something else; something dark, sinister, and unknowable. If I had been able to foresee the rest of that one day - say nothing of the rest of my life - would I have been able to keep living beyond the ensuing hour and a half? Since ignorance is such good friends with bliss, and because I foresaw nothing but a blur, I kept on living. 

What began with a fire became worse, darker, and evil. When the world collectively decides to blame you for a fire that consumed not just a building, but 76 people, including 25 children, there is no healing process that begins in the aftermath for anybody. Plane crash survivors enjoy that sort of thing. Not us, and I was there in the middle of it all for the next two years. 

How do you pick up a Branch Davidian girl? asked the National Enquirer. With a Dust Buster! the same magazine quipped, as Sheila Martin and I read it, while standing together in the checkout line of that Waco, Texas grocery store. Sheila Martin, a Branch Davidian girl, and me, against a world that was so filled with contemptuous condemnation. Sheila lost her husband, and her three eldest children, in the fire. In spite of that, Sheila lightly chuckled at the joke. What else could we do? 

Me, with Sheila Martin, at the site of the Waco fire, c. 1994.

Over the course of those months, I lived every day not knowing what might happen next. On some days, nothing happened besides things like the grocery store incident. Those were the best days. But on other days, you would go to the morgue to identify a body or go to Parkland Hospital to visit victims in the burn center. On other days one of your friends would get federally indicted and vanish into custody. A new report would be on the national news, and we'd freeze like deer in headlights. Lawsuits. Investigations. Maury Povich. Federal agents following you around wherever you went. And in every conscious moment, you wonder, paranoid or not - am I next? Is this my last day of freedom before being arrested? Is this my last day to be alive - and if it's not, what about my friends and the people I love? Is being a survivor only temporary?

I was the official public spokesman for the Branch Davidian survivors in Waco, Texas - from 1993 through 1995. I was a naïve 23-years old. I slept on the floor of a supportive friend's house because I had nowhere else to go. I had no money. I had a bag of clothes in the only car not run over by an Army tank. But I was passionate, relatively articulate, and I did the best that I could to be a positive, if assertive, voice on everyone's behalf - the living and the dead. 

Forward, by 29 years.

A friend called us that night, January 6th, 2022, and she said she'd heard that the Masonic Temple was on fire. I quickly scanned social media on my phone for it but found nothing. It had to be a mistake. But in minutes, a blurry photo emerged from my newsfeed; one that showed orange flames leaping into the night sky. My wife, Erin, and I jumped into our car and sped to the scene. I went live on Facebook from our vantage on 3rd Street, behind our art gallery. Over 5300 people watched it, and it seemed to catapult me into the position of being a spokesman in the wake of a fire for the second time in my life. Channel 10 News from Columbus called me the next morning for an interview. I was reasonably articulate, again. Without exactly being aware of the parallels in the beginning, I was nevertheless a seasoned expert in the field of being anguished on camera.  

My direct connection with the Masonic Temple had ended 4 years before, when I moved my growing business from there to across the street. But my Gallery Luminaria was born in the Masonic Temple. In 2015, Bob Grayson, the Manager of the Temple and a father of our local art community, invited me to open a gallery, there. Mine had been an online-only art business, and I'd never thought of having a local space to show my work, but Bob was so enthusiastic - I opened in a little room on the 3rd floor. 

The Masonic Temple was . . . charming. Built in 1902 from the finest materials then available and sparing no expense, it was everything you might expect an old Masonic temple to be, and it was extraordinarily original. The window glass was original; rippled and replete with the imperfections 100-year-old glass had. Some of those original windows still opened. The freight elevator was original. It usually worked. The marble stairs were original, worn uneven on each side by a million footsteps. The wiring was original. At least some of it. A sly promoter could have called the place a museum of early American breaker boxes, as they all appeared ancient and no two were alike. All charming characteristics. All vices, too, to varying degrees. 

Everyone in the Temple, mostly artists who needed a place to grow their talents within a building that was also an epicenter of our local downtown art walks, knew of those charms, and we worked together to make it all work. When someone's radiator broke down, we'd bleed it and figure it out. When half of my gallery's power blew an hour before my grand opening, everyone scurried around from breaker box to breaker box in search of the culprit. I never knew anyone to be negligent. Everyone was careful. Bob Grayson performed miracles, balancing his job as building Manager with his role as a community art leader, with not a lot to work with, little budget, and a cabal of stereotypically emotional artists always nipping at his heels. The building's owners in those days, not to be confused with the owners at the time of the fire, at least pretended to be broke, and their vision for the Temple seemingly changed with the weather patterns in Pittsburgh. 

Entertaining people during an art walk in my Masonic Temple gallery was
one the great pleasures of my life. My son and I repainted this room,
together, on the 4th floor. 

With all of that, I lived in the Zanesville Masonic Temple every day for 4 years - and sometimes slept there. If you've heard of it being haunted, I do have stories.

As a writer, this is the point in this story where I'd launch into a description of the fire that gutted the Temple a few weeks ago, assuming that readers knew nothing whatsoever about it and what happened. But we're all friends, and we know the story. We've been drowned by it since the night it burned, and if you didn't watch the live feed, then, you've probably watched the video since. You've seen hundreds of social media posts, and twice that many pictures. So, I'll bypass all of that redundancy and cover some different territory. 

In Waco, the Texas Water Commission had issued an order, late in 1993, that had quarantined all 55 acres of the land upon which our building had once stood. During the standoff, and fire, a tank of fuel oil had broken open and contaminated the soil. Be that true or false, a fence was erected all around the burned ruins of the building, and for two years an armed guard was placed inside of it. Everyone's suffering wasn't made any better when that happened, and by the time we were allowed back on our own land, every stone and personal effect had been hauled away into landfill oblivion. Except for a very few, precious, things - things I'd saved due to the recklessness of my youth, and no thanks to any authority at the time. 

Precious things. Personal effects. The stuff that many people write off as replaceable. But one of the only bright spots in my memory of those Waco days, was when I gave Sheila Martin the burned but legible high school diploma of her eldest daughter who'd died in the fire. I've never subscribed to the conveniently dismissive narrative that material things hold no meaning after they're gone; not when saving them is still an option.     

When it was announced in the Zanesville news that the Masonic Temple ruins were being deemed unsafe, possibly contaminated with asbestos, and would-be trespassers were threatened with arrest if caught near the building, it gave me flashbacks. Without a doubt, some people thought I'd become obsessed over saving something of the Temple before it was too late. But I'd seen this movie. Perhaps I'd grown too wise, or perhaps too chicken shit, or rightfully concerned about friends I might slight, but I wasn't about to repeat my Waco tactic of breaking through police tape. What I did do, was throw a virtual hand grenade on social media, in the hopes that something good would come from it, and before the last dump truck took the last brick, or burned artwork, away.

I'm tempted to boast that I don't mind people throwing outrage at me, but that would be a self-serving lie. It hurt to be attacked. Attacked because I wasn't born here. Attacked because I'd left the Temple before the fire. Attacked because I'd been raising money for the fire victims and disclosing it. Attacked for saying something that wasn't positive. Attacked for causing drama. Attacked for wounding the owners. A lot of shrapnel flies when you frag an already emotional situation.

But stuff started to shake loose, in a lot of ways. I learned some important things that should be more universally understood.

My Masonic Temple painting, paired with a piece of metal
from the Temple roof. All proceeds are still going to the
Muskingum County Community Foundation.

The Zanesville Masonic Temple underwent what can only be described as a salvation - if a temporary one - in 2019, when it was purchased by a partnership of locally based businesspeople. Unlike the previous owners, they put a lot of money into the building to address issues like the unreliable heat, and a new boiler had been installed not long before the fire. While it's true that nothing along the lines of a complete remodeling had been undertaken, and expensive projects, like a full rewiring of the structure, hadn't happened - any notion that the still-new owners of the Temple were willfully neglectful in the interests of making money with the building seems utterly unfair to me - in light of the facts, and some recent revelations.

Over the last few days, I've gotten to know one of the Temple's owners pretty well. She's not doing what I would do if I were in her shoes, nor what I did do in Waco 29 years ago when I was a public spokesman. But, unlike me then, or now, she and her family have things to lose if they say something wrong in public. If they say they're 'sorry' or 'feel guilty' about the fire, for example, that sort of public sentiment could be used against them in civil court if lawsuits are filed. She, and the rest of the owners, have been advised to say nothing. One day when it can be done without putting so much personal liability at stake, they'll make a statement in the media. That won't be enough for some people, and some people will interpret silence as complicity or guilt, but I understand their choice. Because of my own experiences in Waco - I know how they feel. Overwhelmed and attacked.  

I apologized to her for the insinuations that I had made, and why I felt so ashamed that I'd forgotten the agony of my own experiences and had come to false conclusions because her strategy differed from my own. She's a terrific young lady, and I got the feeling that she's suffering more than any of us.  

Let's be thankful that, while some of us might be tired of the drama surrounding the Masonic Temple fire, it's not on Maury Povich, and I don't think that anyone will be going to prison over it. 

- Ron Cole