Frederick Bahr

Around noon on December 30, 1903, twenty-two-year-old Edward and his sixty-one-year-old father, sometimes called Fritz, left off family gatherings and ventured into the Windy City. Their destination: an afternoon theater matinee advertised as an extravaganza of pretty girls, costumes, music, and ballet dancers flying through the air. By day's end, they could say they saw all that and then some.

Any thoughts Fred had of giving an interview to local papers about he and Edward's harrowing Chicago ordeal were probably extinguished when Rose's eighty-two-year-old widowed mother, Sophia Hermann, died the day after the Iroquois Theater fire. The funeral, scheduled for the following Monday, January 4, 1904, gave Fred and Edward time to take a train home from Chicago to help Rose make funeral arrangements and figure out how to accommodate a small army of guests.