A Day Filled With Tragedy at Rose Parade

Consider the 115-year legacy of the Rose Parade: The New Year’s Day spectacle has endured the Depression, wars, detractors, bomb threats, no queen, no theme -- even the rise of the parodic Doo-Dah Parade.

But in 1926, the first time the event was broadcast live by radio, tragedy struck. The day remains the deadliest in Rose Parade history.

Even before the festival of floral floats, equestrian units and marching bands had crossed the starting line of the 5.5-mile route, a woman had lost her balance and plunged from a two-story building. Susan M. Bowen, 50, fell 25 feet to the sidewalk at 127 W. Colorado Blvd. She hit her head and died instantly.

Another casualty was Pasadena equestrian Police Officer John Fox, who was in charge of crowd control. As parade fans pressed in, his horse spooked, throwing him and trampling him. Fox suffered a wrenched back and spinal injuries.

Then, halfway through the parade, Pasadena mounted police chased away a marching band.

“One moment there was marching music, the next dead silence,” was how The Times reported the ejection of Robert’s Golden State Band.

“They had no assigned place in the parade, and their presence was unauthorized,” then-Pasadena Police Chief Charles H. Kelley said.

That’s not how the musicians saw it. “We were ejected because we are nonunion and we were showing up the union musicians in the other bands,” band members told the paper.

But within minutes, the musicians got a chance to be heroes.

The deadly disaster began with a loud crack, like the sound a snapped tree trunk might make. Then a wooden grandstand at the southeast corner of Colorado Boulevard and Madison Avenue crashed to the ground, taking several hundred people with it.

A survivor, William F. Thompson, described the scene to a reporter afterward:

“I was sitting in Row 19, one from the top,” he said. “The parade was passing. Hook and ladder just went by when there was just a slight trembling, and then slowly the whole stand moved forward. I heard boards splintering, women crying and then everything tumbled down.

“Something hit me on the head,” Thompson added. “I was dazed but not clear out. I could see faces of agony all around me. Then I remember someone pulled a board off me, and several men came and dragged me out.

“The last thing I saw as boards and other people fell on me was the arms of a man holding a child over his head,” he said. “This man was partly buried by timbers, but the little girl was safe.”

Thompson, a county employee, suffered a bad cut over his left eye.

Another survivor, Shav Glick, was only 5, but he remembered the experience clearly.

“Seconds before it collapsed, people in our stand started yelling at people in the grandstand across the street,” he said in a recent interview. “We thought they were swaying and about to collapse, when it really was us.

“Both my parents suffered broken feet and ankles, but I was tossed up, sort of like a cork from a bottle, and was one of the few uninjured,” said Glick, who would grow up to become a Times reporter.

“The thing I remember most is riding down Colorado Boulevard in an ambulance or a police car -- I do not know which -- and looking at all the people,” Glick said. “For me, it was pretty exciting.”

The ejected musicians and others frantically began pulling survivors from the splintered debris that had been the grandstand. It was largely as the result of band members’ promptness, a bystander reported, “that the victims of the crash were brought from under the debris so rapidly.”

“There was absolutely no way for anybody to get out” without help. “They all went down like rats in a trap,” another bystander, Eva J. Bruyn, would later testify.

Eleven people died of their injuries -- some within hours, others within days or months. More than 200 were injured.

Even before the post-parade cleanup, officials of the Tournament of Roses and of Pasadena declared that they were not liable. But they promised an immediate investigation.

A coroner’s jury blamed cheap materials and slipshod construction.

Building contractor Paul F. Mahoney was charged with manslaughter. So was Pasadena’s deputy building and safety inspector, Charles B. Bucknall, who had allegedly looked the other way.

Their trial began in March 1926 and lasted four weeks. The defense attributed the collapse to “wet, sinking earth,” rather than faulty construction.

More than 100 witnesses testified, including construction experts and victims. The prosecution used a scale model of the grandstand to illustrate that Mahoney had not used enough bracing. A witness testified that Mahoney had tried to buy $50,000 worth of liability insurance, but had been turned down because of “faulty construction.”

Instead, on the back of the grandstand, Mahoney had posted a warning: “All parties entering stand or parking cars on these premises New Year’s Day 1926 do so at their own risk.”

At one point during the trial, the proceedings were moved to Pasadena Hospital, today known as Huntington Memorial, to hear the testimony of Katherine Dobson.

She was recuperating from broken ribs, a punctured lung, shock and “various dislocations.” Her son Frank, 4, had broken his arm in the fall.

Testifying from a wheelchair in her hospital room, she began:

“The parade had started and was well underway when suddenly the stand began to quiver -- to settle. I was thrown forward. Then all became black. I do not know how long I was unconscious,” but when she came to she was holding Bessie Borich’s head in her lap.

Borich, an elderly woman from Dallas, was the first to die of her injuries.

The jury of eight women and four men deliberated nine hours on inspector Bucknall’s case but could not come to a verdict. Five hours later, they convicted Mahoney of manslaughter. He was sentenced to one to 10 years in prison. The case against Bucknall was dismissed.

But Mahoney had his defenders, even among the victims. Daniel F. Fox, pastor of First Congregational Church of Pasadena, had been badly injured. Nevertheless, he petitioned the governor to pardon the contractor. “I do not know Mr. Mahoney personally, and no one has asked me to intercede in his behalf,” Fox told the press. “But the reason we lock a man up is to safeguard society. Mr. Mahoney was guilty of a great wrong. He was grossly incompetent. But he was not willfully wicked.”

Trial Judge Charles Burnell was among those who signed the petition. The reason for his change of heart was unclear; during the trial he had made several comments that seemed to favor the prosecution, and during sentencing he had recommended that Mahoney not be eligible for parole.

In 1927, even before the governor had a chance to review the petition, the state Supreme Court ruled that Mahoney was entitled to a new trial. The court cited the trial judge’s prejudicial conduct.

Dist. Atty. Asa “Ace” Keyes dropped the charges instead, saying: “A new trial would be virtually impossible, inasmuch as prosecution witnesses necessary for the trial have since scattered all over.”

Mahoney was freed after a year at San Quentin. Eventually he moved to San Bernardino County, where he died in 1960.

Although the city of Pasadena was off the hook for any financial responsibility, it floated a $100,000 bond to defray victims’ expenses.

Strict new construction rules resulted from the incident, including the requirement that steel-reinforced frames be used in grandstands.

As for the interloping but heroic musicians, they were invited to fill in as the official marching band for the Washington State Cougars at the Rose Bowl -- which went on as though nothing had happened. Alabama’s Crimson Tide defeated the Cougars and the band’s karma, 20-19.