Volume 10 , Issue 41

Mid-1940's Alva Grocery Fire

I am searching for information concerning a fire that occurred in the 600 block of Barnes Avenue, Alva, Oklahoma. Possibly around or after the mid-1940's. Perhaps around February 8, 1944.

This Mid-1940's fire burned a two-story building that housed a grocery store in the location of the one-story old Magnuson's grocery and where the Senior Citizen building is today. The ground level of the burned two-story buidling was a grocery store with apartments on the second floor> It may or may not have been called "Magnuson's" at that time. It may have gone under another name.

What we do know is that a young child may have crawled under a bed in one of the apartments above the grocery store and died in that fire. I have heard from one individual that the young child may have been Virgil "Buster" Erikson's son, Larry (b. 1938, d. feb. 8, 1944).

Another lady in Cherokee thought the Magnuson's grocery fire was later in the 1940's to '50's and that it was a young girl who had died when a mother went down to the grocery store below and left two young girls above.

If you have access to Northwest Oklahoma newspapers around the time of 1944 to 1949 period (especially, February 8, 1944), would you see what you can find on that fire and death of the young child in the 600 block of Barnes Avenue, Alva, Oklahoma? Thanks!
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