Profile written and provided courtesy Nowell Briscoe

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.