Fire destroyed the Motherhouse at Marywood College in Scranton.
I grew up only a couple of miles from campus, and while I remember the fire, I have no vivid memories of the building during better days. I was nine years old at the time of the fire.
My time as a Marywood student began eight years after the fire. The school didn't build anything in the space. We had a concrete gathering place called the "Memorial Commons." It was a nice place to spend a few minutes between classes, and leaving the area open was the right thing to do. Green space, even concrete space, at a college campus is second in value only to parking.
The Motherhouse would have been in the foreground of this photo, which I took in April of 2018.
There really isn't a moral to the story today, just some memories of a horrible day, which shaped the future of an institution. We should also remember the work of police and firefighters, who kept something awful from becoming even worse.
