Profile written and provided courtesy Nowell Briscoe ( [email protected] )
ELLA
SUE MITCHUM
WINECOFF
HOTEL FIRE CASUALTY
AUGUST
28, 1930 – DECEMBER 7, 1946
Of all the graves in Rest Haven, one of the least known and possibly the
least visited grave sites happens to correlate with one of the worst hotel fires
in American history, the Winecoff Hotel fire in Atlanta on December 7, 1946
where 119 people died. One of them, Ella Sue Mitchell, had Monroe connections.
This fire was and still is the worst hotel fire in North America and the
second worst in the world.
Very little information is known about16 year old Ella Sue Mitchum except
that she was a high school senior from Gainesville High School who came to
Atlanta as a delegate for a youth assembly and stayed in room 1130 with three
other girls, Gwen McCoy, Frances Thompson and Suzanne Moore. All four girls died
from smoke inhalation and were burned beyond recognition. Ella Sue’s body was
found four days after the fire in a closet in the room shared by the girls. Her
father had to identify what he thought to be his daughter’s body by jewelry
found on the remains. It was only through dental records that Ella Sue and
Suzanne Moore were positively identified by information provided by a
Gainesville dentist along with an enlarged photo of both girls taken from a
recent high school yearbook.
It was through research of old cemetery records that we are able to
discern a link to a Monroe family. Ella
Sue’s parents were John Thomas Mitchum and Charlene “Charlie” London
Mitchum. John’s parents were
Woodson Berry & Susie Almeda Clegg Mitchum, whose father was John Watson
Perry Clegg, having a family cemetery two miles south of Monroe close to the
intersection of Pleasant Valley and Frost Roads.
There is no marker for Susie’s mother either in Monroe or the Clegg
family cemetery.
In the 1993 book about the fire, The Winecoff Fire, written by Sam Heys
and Allen B. Goodwin, it was revealed that the fire was started by a Fayette
County man seeking revenge against another man who was playing in an all-night
poker game.
What turned out to be an exciting trip to Atlanta for this young high
school girl and her friends ended up a national tragedy, resulting in her being
buried in Rest Haven, a young girl’s life cut short along with 118 more on a
cold December Saturday night in Atlanta.