‘A small fire in the kitchen’

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Just up from the I-471 bridge that crosses the Ohio River sits the Buckhead Mountain Grill, a restaurant Brenda and I frequently visit in Belleview, Kentucky.

As we waited for our food one afternoon, I noticed a commercial on the television advertising a documentary about the tragic fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club that killed 165 people

“Did I ever tell you my story about the Beverly Hills Supper Club?” I asked Brenda.

The majestic club just up the road from the Buckhead, attracted top entertainers of the time, and some are considered legends today. Pat Boone, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Robert Goulet, and John Davidson often played there.

“We were lucky we weren’t in the crowd the night of the fire,” I said to Brenda. “We were planning to see John Davidson on May 28, 1977, but decided since we’d seen him perform before, to go a few weeks earlier on March 26, to see Robert Goulet instead.”

When we walked inside I remember thinking this is what a night club in New York or Chicago must have looked like in the old days. It glistened and shined.

We have often wondered what might have happened had we decided to see John Davidson instead of Robert Goulet those many years ago, but fate was on our side.

However, some people from Clinton County did attend the Davidson Show. Mark Dome, the former owner of the Master Mix Mill, and his wife, Sharon, along with his parents, Paul and Betty Dome, his sister, Nedra, and her husband, Rusty Merker, were there.

Mark, Nedra, and I grew up together in Port William, and their father, Paul, owned the Port William Mill for many years. Rusty on the other hand, was a Wilmington boy. We got to know each other when his Little League baseball team, the Redlegs, visited Port one summer evening to play the Bulldogs.

Mark and I had attended a Dale Carnegie seminar together at Laurel Oaks in 1979. One night when we were practicing our ‘ten-minute speech’ our instructor, Jim McDonald, asked if anyone in the class had a dramatic story to share.

Mark raised his hand, cleared his throat, and began to speak. “Two years ago, my family and I attended a John Davidson Show at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky, just across the Ohio River,” Mark began slowly.

“It was the night the nightclub caught fire and 165 people lost their lives,” Mark said to a room that fell noticeably quiet.

Mark went on to say, it was his parents’ 33rd wedding anniversary and they wanted to go somewhere special. He remembers his wife, Sharon, was feeling a bit uncomfortable during dinner. In retrospect, he said they think she faintly smelled the smoke that had been smoldering inside the walls and ceilings for hours.

The Domes and Merkers had excellent seats. Sitting in the first or second row from the stage, they enjoyed the comedy team of Teter and McDonald who were in the final stages of their act.

Suddenly, a busboy, Walter Bailey, leaped on stage and took the microphone out of the hand of Jim Teter. It was 9:06 p.m. He announced that the patrons needed to evacuate the room. “There is a small fire in the kitchen, and we need to clear the room,” he said, his voice and hands trembling.

Mark said he didn’t take the warning seriously at first, he thought it was part of the act, but his father, Paul, immediately took action. He stood up and told his family to follow him.

“We were being polite. At first, allowing people go in front of us. We hung back. Then, we saw thick, black smoke filling the room quickly,” Mark said. Mark then noticed the supper crowd was moving toward doors on the left side. He looked at the doors, but saw flames snapping and crackling uncontrollably around them.

“We can’t follow that crowd and make it out,” Mark shouted to his family. “We must find another way!”

Mark observed people heading toward a long, dark hallway. There were no lights on by that time, leading down a narrow stairwell, but he saw people escaping by this route.

“I would forget about the money,” someone yelled to the young lady trying to clear out a cash register. No one knows if she took the advice or not.

They moved as quickly as possible, reaching a set of double doors. Pushing them open they started downstairs, but the people began violently pushing and shoving. “The crowd had me totally bent over as they were trying to climb over the backs of each other,” Mark said.

When they arrived downstairs Mark remembered the family heard the doors behind them slam shut. “No one else got out,” Mark said sadly. “They didn’t make it.”

As they passed one of the doors, they saw Davidson just to their left. He escaped, too. Within moments, they came to one more door, flung it open and for the first time in nearly sixty minutes, smelled the clear, fresh air of Kentucky.

Once they knew Paul and Betty, who had gone out another door, were safe in the parking lot, Rusty tried to help other people. Some were beyond assistance.

Mark remembered theirs cars surrounded by fire equipment and ambulances. He then walked down the long driveway to a bar across the street. There, he called his great aunt in Montgomery and told her they were alright, and asked her to come get them.

Mark and I agreed a wrong turn inside the building that night or a different scheduled show could have produced a much different outcome.

As Mark said, “The Good Lord must not have thought it was our time to go.”

Sadly, 165 other people weren’t so lucky.

Pat Haley is a Clinton County Commissioner.

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Pat Haley

Contributing Columnist

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