{"id":54,"date":"2005-12-12T09:27:38","date_gmt":"2005-12-12T13:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stacyhorn.com\/restless2\/?p=54"},"modified":"2005-12-12T09:27:38","modified_gmt":"2005-12-12T13:27:38","slug":"the-1945-sodder-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/?p=54","title":{"rendered":"The 1945 Sodder Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I went to West Virginia last week to research a piece I&#8217;m doing for NPR about a fire in Fayetteville, WV on December 25, 1945.  Five children were believed to have died in the fire, but there was enough weirdness that night and for years afterwards that the family never accepted it.  They believed the children were either kidnapped or murdered that night.<\/p>\n<p>This is the billboard the family put up starting in 1952.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"smallerBillboard.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/restless\/images\/smallerBillboard.jpg\" width=\"352\" height=\"266\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p><font size =3>The children who died or went missing that night.<\/font size><\/p>\n<p>Maurice Sodder, 14 years old on December 25, 1945.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Maurice Sodder.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/stacy\/Maurice Sodder.jpg\" width=\"316\" height=\"486\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Martha Lee Sodder, 12 years old on December 25, 1945.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Martha Lee Sodder.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/stacy\/Martha Lee Sodder.jpg\" width=\"292\" height=\"410\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Louis Sodder, 9 years old on December 25, 1945 (his birthday was in 5 days).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Louis Sodder.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/stacy\/Louis Sodder.jpg\" width=\"292\" height=\"442\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Jennie Sodder, 8 years old on December 25, 1945.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Jennie Sodder.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/stacy\/Jennie Sodder.jpg\" width=\"291\" height=\"426\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Betty Sodder, 5 years old on December 25, 1945.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Betty Sodder.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/stacy\/Betty Sodder.jpg\" width=\"319\" height=\"489\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The site today.  The billboard sat at the top of the rise, by the pine trees.  The house that burned was on the left side of the driveway you see today.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"SmallerSodderhouse.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/restless\/images\/SmallerSodderhouse.jpg\" width=\"369\" height=\"241\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is Fayetteville today.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"SmallerFayetteville.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/restless\/images\/SmallerFayetteville.jpg\" width=\"363\" height=\"272\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Fayetteville Courthouse.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"SmallerCourthouse copy.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/restless\/images\/SmallerCourthouse copy.jpg\" width=\"363\" height=\"272\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to West Virginia last week to research a piece I&#8217;m doing for NPR about a fire in Fayetteville, WV on December 25, 1945. Five children were believed to have died in the fire, but there was enough weirdness that night and for years afterwards that the family never accepted it. They believed the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piV6s-S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therestlesssleep.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}