LEBANON — Most folks have a few events in their memory they’ll never lose track of, days like Nov. 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, or Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They’ll remember what they were doing when the news broke, where they were located, who told them about it, what their reactions were at the time.

Anyone around the Upper Valley on Friday, June 19, 1964, will likely have an indelible memory of the Great Lebanon Fire on that day, a time when much of the city’s downtown was leveled, 20 businesses were destroyed and a life was lost. It was in the afternoon of a lovely early summer day and life in the community still had a leisurely pace that hadn’t changed much in a generation.

Downtown Lebanon was home to an eclectic mix of stores so typical of New England towns before the big-box era came along — hardware, jewelers, banks, a five-and-dime, drugstore, paint and wallpaper shop, grocers, news stand, several eateries. It also included a propane dealer, funeral parlor and a welding shop. From time to time, trains would rumble along the Boston & Maine rail tracks that bisected the area.

That afternoon Terry Lacasse was washing his car in the yard of his family’s home on Meriden Road. Just graduated from Lebanon High School, he was waiting to ship out for Army basic training. He had the car radio on and suddenly it broadcast word that a fire had broken out in downtown Lebanon. Lacasse jumped in the vehicle and headed toward the scene. 

He stopped along the way and picked up Wally Tucker, a Grafton County deputy sheriff. A police roadblock had been set up on School Street, but when Tucker flashed his lawman badge they were waved through. On arriving at the scene, they were directed to join a group of men removing paint from the Fletcher paint shop and then merchandise from the nearby jewelry store. But the fire was expanding and intensifying by the minute and in an instant they were running for their lives, a scene caught in an iconic photograph shot by Larry McDonald of the Valley News.

Lacasse recalls standing at a distance watching the roaring inferno and its enormous column of smoke marching up Hanover Street toward Colburn Park. Fire trucks from all over the area were pouring water on the fire, and which looked as if it might engulf all of downtown Lebanon, but when it wiped out the wooden buildings and hit brick walls and streams of water pulled from the Mascoma River and city hydrants, its advance slowed and then stalled.

After Army service, Lacasse would become a fixture in the Upper Valley auto sales business for half a century. His recollections of that day of devastation are as sharp now as they were immediately after Lebanon’s biggest fire.

Dave Jones, age 11, was shopping with his mother at Tom’s Toggery, a Hanover Street clothing shop, when someone came in and announced there was a fire in progress behind the store. Jones and his mom ran to the nearby wooden bridge over the rail tracks where they observed flames and when they saw a transformer explode they ran. Later that afternoon Jones and several pals climbed to the top of the 40-meter ski jump on Storrs Hill and watched the fire, often through a telescope one of them had carried along.

Jones, a descendant of a prominent family of Lebanon attorneys, is retired in Connecticut after a career in sales. Viewing from a distance, he and his friends realized quickly they were watching a huge fire, he recalls.

Stephanie Jackson was employed as the chairman’s assistant in the Department of Psychology at Dartmouth College. She left work that afternoon for her usual leisurely drive down Rt. 120 to the family home on Prospect Street in Lebanon. But she would be stopped by police at Summer Street who told her about the fire that had consumed much of downtown, something she hadn’t heard a word of at work.

She detoured around the fire scene via Heater Road and Riverdale and when she arrived home she found out her father, Frank Jackson, was down at the H.W. Carter factory on Bank Street. He was the owner of the company, which made the venerable line of “Watch the Wear” denim overalls, frocks and other work clothing. The Carter building (today home of AVA Gallery) was a wooden structure and he feared flying sparks from the conflagration a few hundred yards away could easily ignite the ancient building, but that didn’t happen.

After a career with social service organizations around the globe, Jackson, now a Canterbury, N.H., resident, says it is still remarkable to her that the community never directed anger, hostility or hatred toward the man who was eventually convicted of starting the fire. The man “was an idiot,” she says, and that’s why the community saw no value in demonizing him. 

Jim Vanier was 11 years old and in a full body cast after suffering a fractured femur. He was part of a family of six boys and three girls living on School Street. With his limited mobility, he couldn’t watch the actual fire, but could see and smell the smoke. He says he knew right off it was going to be serious because of all the wood-frame structures in the downtown area.

Lester Bouchier, of Meriden, a retired postal worker, has many snippets of memories of that day. He was pumping gas for Manchester’s Gulf on Hanover’s South Main Street, when he saw trucks rolling out of the town fire station. He heard “fire in Lebanon” on the radio and continued at his job. As word spread of the enormity of the blaze, he took off on a roundabout route to the scene.

He remembers emotions of disbelief when he heard that Lewis Brothers hardware store had been consumed. He saw employees of the E. Cummings Leather tannery on High Street on its roof wetting down the surface. He recalls the heroism of Albert Herrin who rescued a man about to perish in the flames.

Bev Metcalf recalls her husband, Lang, racing off to help at the fire scene, where he wound up performing traffic control. She walked up High Street past Bashaw’s and Heath’s markets and the tannery to get a look at the devastation across the Mascoma River. She turned back as dusk fell — a neighborhood she says was dark, smoky and creepy.

Jack Lebrun was out on the job as a surveyor for the New Hampshire Highway Department that afternoon but got home to his Eldridge Street house in time to witness the tail end of the fire from the steps of the Catholic Church. Later his survey crew was enlisted to help locate the body of the lone fire victim in the smoldering ruins.

Sheila Stone was shopping for a car in Claremont with her mother and stepfather when they heard a radio report of a fire in progress in Lebanon. It didn’t seem like something to be concerned about at the time, but on returning home they learned otherwise. Stone, a former Plainfield dairy farmer now residing in West Lebanon, speaks of how different the means of communication were in 1964 from today’s saturation of social media and cellphones. Local radio and word-of-mouth were the primary information channels back then.

Dan Perrier was a Hanover call firefighter and ended up being on duty at the fire scene for 24 hours. He had been working on a highway survey team that afternoon and when he got back to Hanover he saw all the town’s fire trucks were gone. His brother, Bob, was the dispatcher on duty and Dan was told to get his gear and head to Lebanon.

Perrier has vivid memories of trying to save merchandise in threatened shops, explosions in the paint store and a long, hard stretch on duty. But his most enduring memory is what happened to the Lebanon High Class of 1964’s graduation pictures — they were all lost when the fire burned out McNeil’s Drug Store.

The Valley News boosted its press run for the next day and sold out all over the Upper Valley. Its coverage was built around Larry McDonald’s dramatic photographs and a three-deck banner headline proclaiming losses of $3 million, equivalent to $30 million today.

Not everyone who learned of the fire was close by. Erling “Sonny” Heistad of Lebanon was a grade foreman for Perini Construction building Rt. I-93 in the Plymouth, N.H., area. One of his truck drivers pulled up and said Lebanon was burning down — he’d heard it on the radio in his cab. Several other drivers from the Lebanon area lined up and shut off their rigs and Heistad let them stand around to hear radio reports.

The entire New Hampshire Army National Guard in convoy passed through Lebanon on Rt. 4 about noon June 19, bound for annual field training at Camp Drum, N.Y. The motor march included jeeps, trucks and five battalions’ worth of 155-mm and 8-inch howitzers. The column reached Keene Valley, N.Y., in the evening and set up a bivouac site and had vehicles refueled. A transistor radio tuned to a station somewhere in the Adirondacks had a report of the downtown of Lebanon being destroyed by fire.

No cellphones in those days — when the Guardsmen finally reached Camp Drum, the next afternoon someone located a pay phone and called back home to get the news, which spread rapidly through the ranks. Half-jokingly, it was hoped the troops who had just passed through Lebanon wouldn’t be blamed for starting the Great Lebanon Fire.

How to rebuild the fire-ravaged Lebanon downtown would result in political wrangling for years. Finally a design developed by Hanover planning consultant Hans Klunder was adopted, creating a mall where the old Hanover Street had been, rerouting Rt. 120 traffic and leading to development of new business structures and extensive parking lots — a whole different vibe for Lebanon.

Steve Taylor, an occasional contributor to the Valley News, resides in Meriden. He was in the National Guard convoy passing through Lebanon minutes before the fire broke out.