Although the tragedy of the Roy and Ethel White family has been mostly forgotten by now, in 1916 it was briefly in the news nationwide. Today, a large granite family stone and the six smaller headstones behind it at Spring Hill are about all that remain to bear witness.
The dates of death on five of the headstones are the same: Father: Roy A. White, Mar. 3, 1882-Dec. 17, 1916; Mother: Ethel M. White, Oct. 4, 1888-Dec. 17, 1916; R. Francis White, Mar. 26, 1910-Dec. 17, 1916; Donald E. White, May 22, 1911-Dec. 17, 1916; and Guy I. White, Feb. 20 1913-Dec 17, 1916. Hubert O. White, Mar. 19, 1916-Dec. 18, 1916, outlived his family for just a few hours into the next day before dying in a Cheyenne, Wyoming, hospital, age 10 months.
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The White family, whose home was in California, had been on a visit of several weeks to Lucas County, called here by the death of Roy's father, John A. White, on Oct. 24. John had been buried at Spring Hill on Oct. 28.
They had left the C.B.&Q. Depot in Chariton on Sunday morning, Dec. 17, bound for California but planning to stop in Cheyenne to visit Ethel's sister, Ferne, who lived and worked there, stay overnight and then visit his uncle, Richard Brown and family, who lived at Divide, near Cheyenne, on Monday.
The hotel they checked into late in the evening was the venerable Inter-Ocean, at one time considered to be the finest hotel between Chicago and San Francisco, host to many legends of the old West and the scene of many legendary gatherings. By 1916, however, it was in decline.
About an hour after the family checked in, fire erupted on the third floor --- where their room was --- with the following result, as reported in The Casper Daily Tribune of Monday, Dec. 18:
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CHEYENNE, Wyo., Dec. 18 --- Six persons are dead as the result of a fire which last night and this morning gutted the famous old Interocean Hotel here, causing a property loss estimated at $50,000.
The known dead are: Roy A. White, 30 years old of Delta, Calif., a railroad electrician, who was electrocuted when he leaped from a window of the hotel; Mrs. Lily (actually, Ethel) White, his wife, burned to death; and four of the White children, aged 7, 5 and 3 years and 9 months, respectively.
The older White children were suffocated by smoke and their bodies were seared by the fire. The youngest White child was rescued while still alive, but was so badly burned that it died this morning.
Five hours elapsed before the Interocean fire was controlled. The building is owned by Ed Chase of Denver, and is leased by John Brown. It recently was condemned and has been undergoing reconstruction. Workmen had removed the entire front wall and this fact, and the presence of the staging used by the workmen, enabled the firemen the more effectively to combat the flames.
The fire in the hotel broke out under the roof, presumably from a short circuit, and in a few minutes the structure was filled with smoke so thick that the rescuers could not penetrate it.
In the brief interval, however, the fire reached the elevator shaft and the last persons to get out narrowly escaped cremation in the elevator.
That many of the 30 guests escaped was due to the heroism of Wiliam Sedmore, 19 years old, the elevator pilot, who stuck to his post, making trip after trip until the control lever burned his hand.
The Whites, who stopped here to visit Mrs. White's sister, Miss Fern Patterson, a stenographer in the State Land office, while en route home from Chariton, Iowa, to which place they had taken the body of Mr. White's father (inaccurate, John A. White died at home in Lucas County), arrived at the hotel less than an hour before the fire.
Their room was near where the flames originated, and the fire at once hemmed them in. Persons on the outside of the hotel saw nothing of Mrs. White and the children, but White appeared at a window, and shouted that he would have to jump, and leaped at once, his body landing on a network of wires five feet below the window. He was electrocuted, and for several minutes his body hung on the wires with electrical flames shooting from the feet and hands.
It finally was dislodged by William Cook, who was severely shocked when he reached a near-by pole and kicked it from the wires.
At about the time that White made his fatal leap, his baby was rescued by Sedmore, the elevator boy, and the bodies of Mrs. White and the three other children were found five hours later.
The Interocean was one of the oldest hotels in the State, and was considered one of the finest on the Union Pacific in the early 80's. Much history is attached to it, and within its four walls some of the greatest characters in the West have been entertained. It is said that the first owner lost it in a poker game in the days when the sky was the limit.
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Relatives in Chariton were notified of the tragedy by telegram and on Monday morning, Roy's brother, Guy White, and Ethel's brother and sister, Guy Patterson and Cora Belle (Patterson) Essex, traveled by train from Chariton to Cheyenne to take charge of the remains and to investigate.
They returned to Chariton at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 21, and a procession formed at the depot to take the remains to the home of Roy's mother in English Township, where funeral services were held at 2 p.m. Following the service, the six were buried in Spring Hill, just east of Roy's father.
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A coroner's inquest into the White family deaths was held two days after the fire that killed them. As nearly as could be determined, faulty wiring in or near the women's bathroom on the third floor had caused the fire.
The investigation cast serious doubt on the story of self-proclaimed hero, bellhop and "elevator pilot" William Sedmore (or C.W. Scidmore). As it turned out, firefighters had carried the baby from the hotel, not the bellhop. There had been only 10 guests on the third floor at the time and six of them, the Whites, perished. Fourteen guests were on the second floor. So there were no mass rescues.
In addition, it appeared that the bellhop and his supervisor, the night clerk, upon being informed that there was a smell of smoke on the third floor, spent about half an hour investigating the situation themselves before turning in an alarm.
The hotel owner, who lived in the building, insisted that he had notified all of his guests of the fire by telephone once he learned of it himself, but none of the guests remembered the warning. He claimed to have attempted to douse the flames on the third floor with fire extinguishers, but the only extinguishers found in the building were on the first floor.
The major factor in the White deaths, however, was the fact that there were no fire escapes on the building --- and not even escape ropes, standard at the time in buildings without fire escapes.
Cheyenne's fire chief told the coroner's jury that the Inter-Ocean had been "condemned" for 20 years because it lacked fire escapes, but neither Wyoming law nor local statute demand them and neither state law nor local statue provided any way to enforce fire department directives.
No penalties were imposed as a result of the fire, although the city ordered the building's owner to demolish rather than attempt to repair and rebuild what remained. In later years, as Wyoming worked to develop a statewide fire safety code, the deaths of the White family often were mentioned.
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