On a gently rolling hillside in Baltimore's historic Green Mount Cemetery, the ashes of John Walter Lord Jr., 84, the author and historian who died May 19 in New York, will be interred in a private service this morning.
Lord, who was born and raised in Baltimore, will rest in his family's plot in the Yew Section of the cemetery, where his parents, John W. Lord Sr. and Henrietta Mactier Hoffman Lord, and his sister, Henrietta Hoffman Lord, who died at 19 of scarlet fever, are buried.
Nearby are the graves of Lord's mother's family, including Mary Dorothea Hoffman, the great-aunt he never knew, but whose memory and courage he venerated all his life.
In 1998, when Lord was suffering greatly from Parkinson's disease, he told a Sun reporter that if he were physically able, he would write a book about his Great-aunt Dora. She embodied his fascination with how ordinary people face extraordinary circumstances, a theme in many of his books, including A Night to Remember, his story of the sinking of the Titanic.
"Dora Hoffman, my grandfather's sister, lost her life in the great Hotel Windsor fire that swept through the Manhattan hotel on St. Patrick's Day in 1899 and killed 91," Lord said. "It was pure bedlam. The firefighters couldn't get through the crowds because of the St. Patrick's Day Parade. It was harrowing.
"She was visiting an elderly friend, Margaret Auze, on what they called the `fatal fifth floor' of the Fifth Avenue hotel when the fire broke out. She refused to leave her [friend's] side and perished," he said.
In March 1899, Hoffman and two nieces, Sophie and Elizabeth McLane, went to New York by train to see Auze, a friend of Hoffman's from Alabama. Hoffman and Auze both had rooms on the fifth floor of the Windsor, a fashionable eight-story marble and brick hotel.
On March 17, a beautiful spring day in New York, huge crowds lined the streets to watch the parade.
About 3 p.m., as John Foy, a hotel waiter, walked toward a fourth-floor window to catch a glimpse of the festivities, he noticed a guest striking a match to light a cigar or cigarette, and then tossing it aside. The still-burning match landed in the folds of a lace curtain. Within moments, flames shot to surrounding draperies.
Foy pulled the fire alarm chain, breaking it. He began warning guests as he raced to the main floor to alert the manager, Warren F. Leland.
