Phoenix Day honors the life of student killed in dorm fire
On Sept. 18, the Hester College community gathered to remember the life of a Murray State student who died in a fire 20 years ago in the residential college.
The case
On Sept. 18, 1998 at 2:38 a.m., a fire broke out on the fourth floor of Hester Hall. Less than an hour after the fire began, Michael Minger, sophomore from Niceville, Florida, was pronounced dead at the Murray-Calloway County Hospital at 3:22 a.m. Five other students were injured during the fire.
At the time of the fire, Tim Clements was on the fourth floor of Hester, just down the hall from Minger.
“I remember a lot from that day,” Clements said. “Far too much to bore you with, but vividly would be the fear of that morning and seeing several of my dorm mates hanging out of their windows screaming in fear for their lives.”
Investigators quickly determined the fire was intentionally set. Just weeks after the deadly blaze, seven people, including four members of the University’s rugby team, were arrested and charged in connection to the fire but the charges were later dropped.
The University offered students a full scholarship and a $30,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspected arsonist.
Jerry Wayne Walker Jr., a student who lived in Hester at the time, was indicted twice for various charges related to the fire including manslaughter and arson. He walked free both times with the first trial ending in a hung jury and the second with an acquittal.
Then, in 2012, Walker Jr., plead guilty to six counts of tampering with evidence in connection to the fire and was sentenced to five years of unsupervised probation. Walker Jr., who went on to become an assistant principal at Paducah Middle School, was later convicted of tampering with evidence and sentenced to three years in prison. His probation for those charges is set to end in 2021.
“I’m sad justice was never received for Michael Minger,” Clements said.
Phoenix Day
Today, Hester residents and alumni remember Minger and the fire with an annual event called Phoenix Day.
Ron Cella, college head for Hester in 1998, said when he proposed the idea of Phoenix Day to the student council the year following the fire, they were confused about the name.
A Phoenix is a mythical bird that is known for rising from the ashes as a stronger version of itself.
“I think it’s an appropriate symbol for remembering what we’re trying to remember here and that is that Hester College rose up from a very bad experience,” Cella said. “This is a memorial to a student that lost his life and the other students that suffered… It was also then a celebration of what came after that and how we managed to rise from that awful event and make things better.”
Current Hester Residential College Council President Reilly Schaefer, senior from Burlington, KY, said this is her third time organizing the event.
“I think it means a lot more, especially with it being the 20th year,” Schaefer said. “You learn that a lot of students don’t even know that there was a fire here and that a lot of students don’t even know how big and tragic it was to the entire town.”
Community helps out
In the aftermath of the fire, the Murray community opened its doors to displaced students by taking them in until more suitable housing was found.
“In situations like that there are people who will help,” Cella said. “And we had an enormous amount of help.”
A few days after the fire, the residents of Hester, minus those who lived on the fourth floor, were allowed to re-enter the building for the first time. Residents of Murray along with faculty members volunteered to help students gather their belongings from their dorm rooms.
Amber Wilson, the 1998 RCC president of Hester, said that because students didn’t know when they would be able to enter the building again, they had to prioritize what to bring with them.
“After they cleared it safe that we could actually go up to that level, we basically had to go with someone from the community and they gave us a garbage bag and said, ‘stuff what you can in the garbage bag and take it out – you can get the other stuff later,’” Wilson said. “We didn’t really get to come back in until the next semester when it was officially cleaned up… We really didn’t have anything for several days as far as clothes, books and money.”
Despite the lack of a physical building, the members of the Hester RCC decided to continue business as normal.
Part of this included participating in the Homecoming Parade during which residents of Hester rode on a truck bed displaying signs that said “Hester Hedgehogs: Now & Forever” and “Hester Refugee Camp.”
“A lot of us were great friends and we were such a tight family,” Wilson said. “I think we tried to kind of make light of it with the whole ‘refugee camp.’ But it was a lot of fun for us to see each other because we weren’t seeing each other in passing on a day to day basis, not living in the same place. So doing those events became more meaningful because it meant you were going to reconnect with everybody.”
Besides participating in the Homecoming Parade, the Hester RCC continued to hold their weekly meetings by borrowing the spaces of other colleges.
Cella said the legacy of Hester was able to continue after the fire because of the people who lived there.
“Hester College is not the building,” Cella said. “It’s the people who make up the college. And those people managed to pull together for the rest of the year an astonishing series of events.”
State Impact
During the fire, Interim President Bob Jackson was working as a Kentucky state senator.
“Today a bad thing happened,” Jackson said during the 2018 Phoenix Day. “A young man lost his life and others were injured, so it’s a tragedy. But good things came from that tragedy. And that’s the way I think today we have to reflect back on it.”
Jackson said he didn’t know Michael Minger but knows his mother, Gail Minger.
“I worked with her closely along with my colleagues in the legislature at the time to pass some laws and appropriate and authorize money to address fire safety issues in Kentucky,” Jackson said.
One of the laws passed as a result of the Hester fire was the Michael Minger Act, in honor of the 19-year-old student who lost his life.
The Michael Minger Act is a Kentucky state law that requires public colleges and universities as well as private institutions licensed by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education to report campus crimes to their employees, students and the public on a timely basis.
The Minger Act, along with the Jeanne Clery Act, requires universities to have a public crime log available to the public that records incidents known to campus authorities. The act also requires special reports, such as the timely warning emails the Murray State community often receives, to be sent out when there is an ongoing threat to the safety of the campus community.
Laws were not the only changes made as a result of the Hester fire: the Murray Fire Department also operates differently today.
Lt. Steven Lax, a firefighter with the Murray Fire Department, was not present at the Hester fire but his father, a firefighter at the time, was called to the scene.
Lax said the fire completely changed the way the Murray Fire Department operates.
“We talk about this fire probably on a weekly basis,” he said. “Everything that happened that day led everything else to change and we have forever been different in the way we operate.”
Lax said the biggest things student can do in any situation that the fire department is called to, is to listen to firefighters and take fire alarms seriously.
“Every firefighter at the Murray Fire Department, every officer at the Murray Fire Department takes your safety very seriously,” Lax said. “That’s what we’ve dedicated our lives to do and is what we’re going to continue to do. But we absolutely need you to do your part.”
Every year the Murray Fire Department attends Phoenix Day to talk about fire safety with students. Schaefer said the Hester RCC usually tries to donate money to the fire department to show their appreciation.
“Because it is the 20th anniversary we wanted to make it extra special so we fundraised extra hard for this one,” Schaefer said.
This year they were able to donate their highest amount yet, $750.
Although the legacy of the fire has brought positive change, Jackson said it is an event that puts life into perspective and shows us how quickly it can change.
“Because this evening, 20 years ago, when I got that phone call it was pretty startling,” Jackson said. “And for the next many months we spent a lot of time addressing serious matters in regard to making campuses safer, addressing fire safety issues, making sure sprinklers were in buildings, so that this would never happen again. So that’s the good thing that came from a terrible terrible tragedy.”
Elizabeth Erwin
News Editor
Present day photos: Nick Bohannon/The News
Past photos courtesy of The Murray State News Photo Archive
