Jayne Crosby Giles ’78

My grandmother, Bernice Chellis Crosby Cobbs, class of  1916, often told a story of a huge fire in the middle of the night and one lady, clad in her robe, flying “bumpity, bump” down the stairs in her escape. Fast forward to 1973, when my mother and I toured Wellesley. The student guide took us to the tall pillars behind Tower Court. As she told the story of the 1914 fire that destroyed College Hall, my mom and I realized this was Grandmother’s Fire. My grandmother lived in Beebe and witnessed the great fire on campus. Knowing this part of college history made me feel closer to Wellesley during my years as a student. My grandmother has passed, but her scrapbook of the fire lives on at the Wellesley Archives, preserving a piece of our Wellesley family history: six women and four generations from 1883 to 1986.