Terry Matthew Foster

I wasn't going to post this tonight, but then thought more about it and decided to do it:

Exactly 40 years ago tonight, I was sitting on the back porch at my parents home (where I lived), when my Mom came out & told me that the Beverly Hills Supper Club was on fire. My Dad was a part-time police officer & was covering the police departments that were responding to the fire. I was an EMT for Taylor Mill Life Squad & about to graduate in a few months from Booth Hospital School of Practical Nursing in Covington, KY. I drove to our firehouse but the squad had already left & someone there told me they needed help at the scene so just drive over to the site. I drove (the next county over) to Southgate, KY, and parked off of Moock Road, then walking up the hill to the fire. Dozens of squads & fire trucks were already there & there was mass chaos.

I remember that when I got to the top of the hill, to my right, I saw about 20 people laying on the ground. I thought, how odd that looked, until I realized that they were all dead. Not a mark or burn on them. They were dressed in their finest clothes and jewels. One lady was slightly propped up against a man and she had on earrings that hang down. The earrings were moving slightly with the wind & smoke, which is an image forever embedded in my mind. Many of the ladies had corsages on which had wilted in the heat. I remember thinking that this is a horrible fire since 20 people have died (little did I know that the death toll would be 165!).

I moved around the big building towards the back and ran into a friend of ours, Rita Hasler, an RN who ran on our life squad. We just kind of quickly hugged & both of us said how terrible this was while almost bursting into tears, then moved on to help where we could. As I came around the building to where the garden was & the wedding chapel, the enormity of the situation hit me. There I saw more than one hundred or more people who where laid out on the lawn and all of them were dead! I just couldn't believe my eyes (and keep in mind, I was only 19 years old!). It was dark by now and at first I thought there were a lot of black people there (African American) but they were Caucasian people covered with soot from the smoke in the building--which is what killed them. None of them were burned.

In an ironic attempt to provide privacy, someone had gone around and pulled the women's dresses up to cover over there faces, but that left them exposed in their slips & underwear (an image that always bothered me for a long time). One life squad had a defibrillator there--keep in mind it was 1977--no paramedics, helicopter, trauma centers, or anything like that. The defibrillator was in the wedding chapel and periodically they would carry someone (a body) in there to put the paddles on them to see if there was any electrical activity in the heart--which there never was. I also distinctly remember several people walking around the big building yelling out their loved ones names in a desperate attempt to locate them. Several of those names yelled out were etched in my mind and I sadly saw those very names on the death list in the paper a few days later.

After a few hours at the scene, I left & went to St. Elizabeth in Covington (their was no South or Edgewood unit then), to help out. I don't remember us receiving a ton of ER patients but I do remember many frantic family members calling the ER or coming in to check on them. On Tuesday, I went to Booth Hospital for my nursing classes and at the time, we were doing our OB & Pediatric clinical's at St. Luke Hospital in Fort Thomas. St. Luke was very near the fire and had received most of the patients from the fire. Although we were supposed to do pediatrics, the hospital was filled with patients with burns & smoke inhalation, among other problems.

For the next few weeks, I learned how to give numerous IPPB (Bennet) treatments to patients who could only talk in a raspy, whispery voice. Many of them didn't know if their loved ones were alive or not. Also that week, our beloved Marge Kuhl, RN, helped lead groups of nurses to care for the bodies at the Ft Thomas Armory, which was a make shift morgue for the victims. For weeks, many nurses staffed this awful place to help with identifying the dead and helping the families. Everyone in this area knew several people affected by this tragic fire. It impacted me as a person and as a nurse. I'll never forget that night. I'm sorry for the long post, but thanks for letting me document this. It's something I'll remember until my dying day.

Terry Matthew Foster, writing on Facebook