Mother of ATO fire victim reflects on last 10 years

It was 4:32 a.m. when a patrolling University Police Department officer noticed a thick odor in the air. Then, he saw the smoke.

The two-story brick and wood-frame Alpha Tau Omega house was burning. As the sirens began to blare, the young men inside the building scrambled from their beds.

Fortunately, many of them knew the emergency plan, and they rushed to safety. Once outside, the 21 men and their housemother counted off.

Two ATO brothers, sophomores Howard Stone of Martinsville, Virginia, and Jordan Williams of Atlanta, Georgia, were missing.

Attempting to maintain composure as fire engines roared up to the green double doors of 1 Confederate Drive, they counted heads again.

The number of missing men remained at two.

When they counted off for a third time, they noticed a change.

Now, three brothers were missing.

Despite the danger, William Townsend of Clarksdale, Mississippi ventured back into house to save his best friend.

‘I need to know about this fire.’

Four hours later and 63 miles away, Vida Townsend received a phone call from a friend of her son.

“Have you talked to Will this morning?”

“No, haven’t talked to him,” Townsend replied. “It was Thursday night last night, you know?”

The young woman on the other end of the line lowered her tone. “There was a fire at the house, and I can’t get him on his phone.”

Concerned, Townsend immediately went to the central office of Lee Academy, the private school where she had worked for nine years. She’s a trained librarian, but on this particular morning, she was acting as the substitute teacher for a K-4 class in the elementary school.

She made a single phone call to The University of Mississippi’s Office of the Dean of Students.

“I said, ‘I need to know about this fire.’ And the lady on the other end said, ‘Mrs. Townsend, let me give you this number to call.’

She called the number as she was told. To her surprise, the chancellor of the university, Robert Khayat answered the phone.

“I said, ‘Robert, where’s Will?’ He said, ‘We don’t know. Can you come?’”

She agreed and quickly called her husband, Jim, a local banker, to come to the school. At the time, her daughter Ellen was in ninth grade at Lee. Upon notice of the news, she was excused from class, and the family left for Oxford.

‘A mother knows’

As they drove east through the Delta flatlands, Townsend attempted to call two of her son’s close friends who lived off campus. She thought may be he spent the night with them, but she was unable to get an answer from both.

They arrived on campus and were ushered into Khayat’s office in the Lyceum.

“I will never forget the look on Robert Khayat’s face,” she said as tears welled in her eyes. “We were sitting there, and he walked in, and he didn’t look at anybody but me, and I just remember telling him, ‘Robert, we’ve got to find my child.’ And it was just something in his eyes. It was just like he knew, but I just think he couldn’t tell me. “He sat down right next to me and just picked up my hand. That’s probably when I knew in my heart what had happened. I mean, a mother knows.”

Townsend and her family were sent to Khayat’s personal suite located in The Inn at Ole Miss. It wasn’t long before word of their presence spread around campus.

“Somebody opened the door, and the entire hallway was full of people,” she said. “It was students, and it was their parents all in hysterics. I just remember thinking, ‘What are those people doing here? Why are those people here?’”

It was when her “boys” or the young men who were also members of her son’s pledge class visited that she knew exactly what had happened. “By this time, they didn’t have to tell me. I knew that my child was gone. I knew.”

‘Love built it.’

In the days following the fire, Ole Miss students and citizens of Oxford and Clarksdale rallied together to support the fraternity and the families of those who died.

Historic department store Neilson’s donated suits to boys who would be attending three funerals. Campus Greek groups and non-Greek groups collected items such as towels, sheets, underwear, toothbrushes and soap.

“People were just bringing stuff,” Townsend said. “They didn’t know where to take it. They just wanted to do something. The amazing generosity of Oxford, it was just overwhelming.”

Townsend recalled people from the across the nation pledging generous amounts of money to rebuild the house that sits on campus today. Some people did it because they loved the fraternity. Some people did it in memory of Stone and Townsend and Williams.

“The house,” she said. “Love built it. “

Vida Townsend holds a photo of her son, Will one of the three fraternity brothers who dies in the Alpha Tau Omega house fire 10 years ago today. (Photo/Logan Kirkland)

True steel magnolia

Though ten years have passed since the untimely death of her only son, Townsend admitted that when it comes to grieving, some days are worse than others.

“I’m not super woman,” she said as her voice began to shake. “I’m a little old lady from the Delta, and this is the hand. You have to play the hand you’re dealt.”

Townsend said some days she gets angry with her son.

“You knew better. You knew better than to do that. You were taught better. You knew better than to go into a burning building, but it’s like his friend Matt said, it was not if Will was going to do something like that, it was when.”

Townsend said to Will, things were black and white. Life was either fair or it wasn’t, and he wanted everything to be fair for everybody.

“If something would happen he would say, ‘But that’s not fair.’ Even when he was little he’d say, ‘Momma, that’s not fair.’ I’d say, ‘I know it’s not fair, but some things are not going to be changed. That’s the way life is.’”

In the early morning hours of Aug. 27, 2004, Will Townsend made the courageous decision to risk his life for a friend.

“What if I’d never had him?” Townsend asked. “That’s the way I look at it. We were the fortunate ones. I mean this sincerely, God is God, and God is good all the time. We would not have made it without our faith; we would not have made it.

“People will say, ‘How could God do that?’ Well, God didn’t do that. There was a fire. It happened. My child made a choice based on the type of person he was and what he believed in, and that’s what happened.

“It’s not been an easy life. It’s not ever, but it’s been a good life. It’s a good life.”

Lacey Russell

dmeditor@gmail.com