{"id":36475,"date":"2018-01-16T08:53:24","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T13:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=36475"},"modified":"2018-01-17T13:09:24","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T18:09:24","slug":"remembering-ad-building-fire-1-16-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/remembering-ad-building-fire-1-16-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Ad Building fire: 1\/16\/1984"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early morning hours of Jan. 17, 1984, then-professor Jay B. Landis received a phone call: the Ad Building, where he had once lived as a student and had taken classes \u2013 biology, speech, Greek, psychology \u2013 and which had housed the library, offices, the chapel and auditorium and more, was on fire.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The renovated Ad building, just before the fire.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Landis quickly went to the hill above the Eastern Mennonite College campus, where others were gathering, wandering around, watching fire engines scream to the scene.<\/p>\n

For six and a half decades the building originally dubbed the \u201cCracker Box\u201d had served as the hub of campus life. On that night 34 years ago this month, in just hours, without known cause, it was reduced to a blackened shell.<\/p>\n

Scroll down to see a video about the fire.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The next morning, Mary Emma Showalter Eby \u2013 who like many neighbors had slept through the commotion \u2013 looked out her window and saw \u201cheartbreak\u201d: \u201cThe tongues of flame that had shot upward in the heat of the inferno had now changed to a red glow softened somewhat by a cloud of smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jerry Lapp was commissioned to create a sculpture from Ad Building remains, which now can be viewed on the south side of the Campus Center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The building had been empty for renovating, greatly reducing the fire\u2019s impact on daily campus activity. But times were already difficult for the school. Historian Donald B. Kraybill wrote in Eastern Mennonite University: A Century of Countercultural Education<\/em><\/a> that the university had already been \u201con the verge of its \u2018most severe financial crisis\u2019 ever\u201d in part due to decreased enrollment. [Here’s a special purchase offer of the Centennial history<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

At first the university\u2019s insurance company balked at making payments for the burned building, but many other people offered ready support.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day after the fire,\u201d the spring 1984 issue of the Bulletin<\/em> (now Crossroads<\/em>) reported, \u201ca Harrisonburg rental agency sent a $200 donation. A grandmother in upstate New York sent $50, noting that she would urge her children to do the same.\u201d The 280 church leaders attending Ministers Week at the time of the fire took initiative and took an offering \u2013 of $4,000. College officials asked for donations \u2013 $100 per person \u2013 from Mennonite Church members, alumni and the broader community.<\/p>\n

Read about the fire in the <\/strong>spring 1984 <\/strong><\/a>Bulletin.<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

That spring President Richard C. Detweiler wrote of hope: \u201cA major renovation project that was progressing well and on schedule toward fulfilling a long-awaited dream of a campus center was largely destroyed in three hours on a cold winter morning\u2026. But that\u2019s only half of the story and it\u2019s the first half, not the last. The shattering of our hopes does not mean the end of hope. In fact, the failure of our hopes to materialize is often the context for the rebirth of hope\u2026. A community of hope has been born anew.\u201d<\/p>\n

All told, such donations plus the $1 million that insurance ultimately paid would surpass the hoped-for $4.5 million for the ad building\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will rise again, no doubt in new form,\u201d Eby had written, \u201cbut something beautiful and efficient will grow from those ashes. Goodbye, dear old ad building. Hello, new campus center.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new Campus Center opened in time for the 1986-87 academic year.<\/p>\n