I’ve got a full plate today but I have a few minutes to myself right now, sitting in the worst run Starbucks I’ve ever come across and getting ready to go back out into the rain and snow. (Yes, both.) I’m reminded, though, that stifling heat in the winter is the Yankee equivalent of our over-airconditioning in the summer.
Maybe perversely, this reminded me of a strange contact sheet I found in the Woodson’s photo files. The sheet is unlabeled and undated, but even in their tiny form the images caught my eye because of their seeming randomness.
I scanned quite a few and looked at them for quite a while before I hit on the one that I believe explains the others.
So the RMC must have caught on fire, maybe sometime in the early ’80s. I freely admit that I don’t know anything about this but I’ll bet some of you do.
Bonus:
Rain and snow? I thought you were in Hawaii! It’s a sad story. In April 1995, Will Rice junior Alberto Youngblood set the Pub on fire, causing a lot of damage to the Band Hall, the Campus Store, and the rest of the RMC. In September of that year, he was charged with arson. Thresher stories here: http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246510/?q=arson
http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246519/?q=arson
Here’s a Fifth Circuit opinion that has a short factual summary of the case:
http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions%5Cunpub%5C96/96-20567.0.wpd.pdf
I wonder how much of that fine he managed to pay?
Sad to report that he passed away last October.
https://www.funerals.coop/obituaries/alberto-youngblood
I think that it must be later than that based on the Apple Performa computers. Say mid 1990s.
Weirdly, I was already at Rice when this happened but I have no memory of it. I was a graduate student at the time, though, so there are probably a lot of other things I failed to notice.
Searching rice.edu for “Rice Memorial Center” and “fire” turned up a list of Woodson audio-visual materials including this VHS tape located in Box 19 (Item 3): “Rice Memorial Center Fire” local Houston coverage; April 6-7, 1995″ (http://library.rice.edu/collections/WRC/finding-aids/university-archives/audio-visual_UA151)
Yep, that would be the Willy’s Pub Fire of April 1995 (my sophomore year). A disgruntled student set a very late-night fire in (or near) the pub in the RMC. The stairwell of the bookstore ended up acting as a chimney, and everything in the store was declared a loss due to smoke damage, I believe.
Hopefully Grungy will weigh in soon. I’m sure he remembers it well.
They appear to have “basement of the RMC” in common.
The Campus Store storeroom, possibly the hallway from The MOB’s office door into the basement of Sammy’s (showing the fire suppresion water on the floor), Sammy’s downstairs storage, and a counter in the Campus Store with a note written in the soot.
You have nailed the event.
Would you like some soot?
I still have quite a bit of it…
Are you serious?
About which part? There’s plenty of soot on the FirstFedora uniforms, and quite a bit of the paper MOB records that I have.
And I still have half of a closet rod full of sooty ’82-’95 MOB uniforms in my master closet, 10 years later.
Quite a bit of the sooty stuff has been laundered, dry cleaned, or hurled into the abyss, but there’s still some that turns my fingers black when I handle it.
The offer stands.
Some of the soot that rubbed off in 2025.
https://grungeworthy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/1995.pub_.fire_.soot_.on_.mob_.files_.jpg
Those uniforms are stored in a different closet now – almost all of the surviving uniforms are jammed onto four six-foot closet rods in a spare bedroom.
The uniforms with inventory numbers in them, and sizes, are now hung in order, with a tag on the hanger, and the sizes and numbers are recorded in spreadsheet.
When I was pulling them off the hangers to check the numbers, I picked up more soot on my fingers.
I’ve replaced nearly all of the sooty hangers now.
But dry-cleaning over 100 uniforms is expensive, and many have yet to be cleaned.
I think Melissa’s archives need a little packet of RMC fire soot, don’t you?
I didn’t save any as a free-standing item.
It’s very clingy, although it has an affinity for skin.
Ah. Soot is approximately equal to toner.
Carbon black (basically: soot) is the color in black toner, carried by tiny bits of plastic and rust. Soot is harder to remove from skin than toner.
http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/All-about-Toner/ba-p/102
The pub itself was locked. The student poured lighter fluid on the outside of the pub’s wooden door and ignited it. Because of a lack of fire suppression and notification systems in the RMC at the time, the fire spread uncontrolled through the pub and other parts of the basement. Parts that didn’t burn still received significant smoke damage. After this fire the RMC and many other Rice buildings were retrofitted with fire sprinkler systems.
I think the Rice Conn bass sax died in that fire. A shame, too, as those things are fairly rare.
“Stifling heat in the winter” — very true! I’ve had many business trips to NYC and Boston when I’ve had to step outside the building in the middle of the cold, just to get a few minutes of relief from the near-80 heat indoors. Obviously outdoor temperatures in the 80s don’t bother me at all, but that kind of heat indoors makes me ill.
In its effect on campus life, the burning of the Pub was one of the worst events in Rice’s post-war history.
At a basic level, nearly everything in the building suffered smoke damage.
The student organizations on the second floor of the Ley Center were spared from most of it by their isolation.
But everything in the RMC was covered in soot.
At the time, the Association of Rice Alumni were housed at the south end of the hall on the second floor.
Much of the contents of the offices were spread out on the ground outside when I arrived, including a complete set of Campaniles, and I tried to find something to cover stuff up, as it looked like rain.
I rented a big box truck and moved MOB stuff to a self-storage unit adjacent to the ones I already occupied in NW Houston. Uniforms, music stands, furniture, boxes of paper. Somewhere there’s a picture of five or six of us outside of that unit with our hands completely blackened by soot.
The MOB was getting ready to move to what is now the basement of OEDK.
It was still Central Kitchen at the time, doing food (or something like it) prep.
They told us we could move none of our stuff in, as the soot would contaminate everything in the building, contrary to health department regulations.
The concrete ceiling of the Pub, which was the floor of the Grand Hall, was extensively damaged by the heat of the fire, and required time-consuming structural repair.
The charred and blackened Willy’s Pub sign that is over the stairwell created after the fire, outside of Sammy’s and across from the Campus Store, is the preserved original, from the hallway that led to the main entrance (where the fire began).
Here’s an image taken likely the afternoon after the fire.
Melissa Ratner and Keith Goodnight discuss something over a mound of MOB First Fedora uniforms, which are piled atop the (now plastic-covered) complete set of Campaniles from the Association of Rice Alumni offices.
Most of the stuff seen here is ARA stuff.
https://grungeworthy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/1995.pub_.fire_.behind.the_.grand_.hall_.jpg
Found the photo of the five us that moved (mostly) MOB stuff from the RMC to a storage unit that I rented.
Jeremy Mills, Keith Bourque, G, Eric Salituro, and his future bride Susan Schneider.
We are flashing the soot that rubbed off.
The wood shelves/cubbies on the right – that’s the backpack storage unit that shoppers in the Campus Store would set there stuff in.
They’re currently part of my pantry.
https://grungeworthy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/1995.mob_.stuff_.after_.the_.fire_.jpg