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Donald, John Earl and Willie were the sons of William Henry
Hennessy (1863–1923) and Annie McEnery Hennessy
(1865–1949). William had immigrated to America from
Ireland with his parents as a youngster in 1868,
becoming a naturalized US citizen in 1883, and Annie/Anna
was a native of New Hampshire. They married in 1887
in Hyde Park.
In 1903 the Hennessy's lived at 4411 Calumet Ave in
Chicago. William Hennessy worked in sales for
the Jefferson Theatre Program printing company.
That meant he worked with Chicago theater managers every day.
Based on their homes, William was a good provider
which meant that to support his wife and two
remaining sons, he had to continue working, like all
the other fathers of Iroquois Theater fire victims,
but for William Hennessy that meant selling and
writing orders while listening to discussions about
the fire at work from co-workers and theater manager
customers, all with conflicting opinions about the
fire, some sympathetic to the owners, some
condemning, some critical of the audience for not
having calmly filed from the theater. Then he
went home to share the grief with his wife and sons, helping son
John with the pain of his severe injuries and
learning how to function with one hand, and finding
time to assuage the survivor guilt of his youngest son,
Donald, who not only survived but did so without
grievous injury.
Other
Forestville students who were Iroquois Theater fire
victims:
Leon Frady,
Erna and Ernest Reiss and
Minnie Schaffner, a teacher.
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In the years after the fire
In 1905 the Hennessey's brought $10,000 liability
suits on behalf of William and Earl.
In 1909 the family received two $750 settlements (around
$20,000 each in 2018 dollars) from Fuller
Construction, the company who built the Iroquois
Theater, for John Earl's injuries and Willie's
death, making them among a handful of about fifty
families who received some compensation.
Seventeen months after the fire, a stained glass window
by Louis J. Millet was
installed at the Forrestville School on Forth-fifth and St. Lawrence streets. It
memorialized teachers and students of the school who were victims of the
Iroquois Theater fire. Located on a third-floor landing, the window
included victim's names: teacher Minnie Schaffner and students Walter Bissinger,
Dora Reynolds, Ernest and Erma Reynolds, Leon Frady, and William Hennessy. The
window pictured a young girl bearing a lamp, shading the flame with her hand.
The original Forrestville Elementary School was converted to a high school in
the 1960s, razed in 1968 and replaced with the Martin Luther King High School in
the early 1970s. Nothing is known of what became of the Iroquois Theater
window.
John
Earl lived with his mother
after his father's death in 1923.
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