At around 1:00 am on December 25, 1945, Jennie Sodder woke up to smoke pouring into her bedroom. She woke up her husband, George, and they started evacuating the house of their nine children. By the time the fire took over the Sodder residence, only Jennie, George, and four of their children made it outside safely.
George and two of his sons frantically tried to get into the house to save the remaining children, but they couldn’t. When George went to fill up a bucket with water to start extinguishing the flames, the water was frozen, when he went to grab their ladder to get his children from the top story, the ladder was missing; when he went to drive his trucks to the second story window, neither would start despite having worked just the day before. And when they tried to call the fire department for help, no one responded for hours.
The only thing the family could do was watch as their home burned to the ground. Hours later, after the smoldering ashes were put out, a group of ...