04/28/2026
This Year in Hebron Fire Department History
Smoke Beside the Panhandle Line
November 17, 1936
I wasn’t far from Main Street that morning when it happened. It was a Tuesday, about 10:40 in the morning. The kind of day you remember without trying. Sunny, but with a crisp bite in the air, somewhere around 45 degrees, the kind that keeps your hands in your pockets a little longer. Couldn’t tell you exactly what I was doing, probably nothing important, but I remember the sound clear as anything. That siren didn’t just ring, it cut right through you. Folks stopped mid step, mid sentence, just turned their heads like they all felt it at once. You didn’t ask where it was going. You waited a second and then you knew. Right there in town. The hotel.
We didn’t all call it the same thing. Some still said Bates House from way back. Others stuck with Commercial Hotel. By then though, most of us had taken to calling it The Heritage Inn. Big place for a town like ours. 3 stories, all wood, sitting right along Main Street like it belonged there more than anything else, right about where Main Street meets what is today U.S. 231, where Casey’s General Store sits now. And just to the north, not more than about 30 feet off, you had the Panhandle line running through, what folks called the Panhandle Railroad, though its proper name was the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis line. You could hear those trains before you saw them, and when they pulled into the depot just up the way, what everyone around here called the Panhandle Depot, the station right here in Hebron, people stepped off looking for a place to stay. More often than not, they didn’t have far to go. Just a short walk and they were standing at Inez’s door. That place stayed busy because of it. Travelers, salesmen, folks passing through, they all ended up there one way or another, and that’s what made your stomach drop when you saw smoke.
Fire and wood don’t waste time figuring things out. If it gets going, it goes, and that building would have gone quick. Not just itself either. With the railroad right there and the rest of Main Street so close, it could have turned into something the whole town felt. But something about that morning went different. By the time the firemen came through, there wasn’t anything left for them to fight. I remember that part too. No hoses dragged out in a hurry, no shouting, no panic. Just men stepping down, looking, knowing it had already been handled. Later on, you’d see it written down plain as could be. Cole, Mrs., written just like that, the man who logged it put Mrs. after the name. Occupant, Mrs. Cole. 3 story frame. Hotel. 7 firemen. Out on arrival. That’s all the book gives you.
But I knew who that was standing there. Inez. Some folks would say Mrs. Cole, and sure, that’s proper, but when you’ve known someone long enough, names get shorter. She had been around, not born here, but she might as well have been by then. Came from Terre Haute, DeRolf before she married, back in 1886. She married Eldon Cole in 1910. Most people called him Earl, though. That’s just how it went. He was the kind of man who stayed busy, always working, always moving. Sold for Shell, knew people, kept himself in things around town. And before all that, I remember hearing older folks talk about him playing quarterback for the old Iroquois football team out of Hammond, back when that league was still finding its footing, long before anything like what folks now call professional football took shape. Before Shell, he worked the refinery and the steel works. He wasn’t afraid to put in the hours.
Then one day he just didn’t come back from it. Word got around quick when he died. That was in 1931. Out in his garage in Hammond, just doing what a man does, working with his hands, and something gave out. People guessed all kinds of things at first, but it didn’t matter. He was gone. 45 years old and gone. That left Inez with 3 kids and everything else that comes after something like that. So when you saw her standing there that morning at The Heritage Inn, you weren’t just looking at someone who owned a building. You were looking at someone who had already been through more than most. She had Marjorie, Edward, and Helen to raise, and she did it the only way you could. She kept moving.
Now there was always one thing about that family that never quite sat straight with me, and I’m not the only one who noticed it. There was a name that came up once in a while, Carl Buchanan. Folks would hear it and assume it was one of hers, but it wasn’t. He was her brother, and that’s where things get tangled. Because she was a DeRolf, same as her people, so why was he carrying Buchanan?
Carl was born January 29, 1897. 6 days later, February 4, 1897, their mother Wilhelmina "Minnie" DeRolf (Garlin or Garlein) passed. Minnie was the mother of both Inez and her sister Mary, and losing her that quickly leaves little doubt about how hard that moment must have been on the family. 6 days is all it took. I’ve seen enough in my time to know what that usually means. Childbirth could take a woman just like that back then. No warning, no saving it once it went wrong. It’s hard not to look at that and think that’s what happened here.
After that, the boy didn’t stay where you’d expect. Not long after Minnie died, he shows up in Terre Haute under the roof of Mary Buchanan, Inez’s sister. In 1900, he’s listed right there in her household, not as a nephew, but as her son, 8 years old, alongside her other children Clarence, Edith, and Arthur. That alone makes you stop and think.
But that same year, in that same city, there’s another household. George DeRolf, Minnie’s husband, is listed as a widower, living with his children. Inez is there, along with her brothers Frank, Harry, George Jr., and Walter, and her sisters Josephine, Josie as they called her, and Freda. A full household. But one name is missing. Carl is not there. Not listed among his father’s children. Not present in that home at all.
By 1910, he’s still under Mary’s roof. Mary carried the Buchanan name, and in that household she was listed as the head. Their mother Helena was there too, another widow in the home. And Carl, in that same house, wasn’t listed as a son anymore, but as a nephew. That’s how it was written down. A nephew in his own mother’s family, raised under a different last name than his own.
And even later, it shifts again. By 1920, he’s still in Terre Haute, now 23 years old, living in the household of Sam Crandell and his wife Edith, Mary’s daughter. Mary Buchanan is there too, listed as the mother-in-law. And Carl, in that same home, is now listed as a brother-in-law. Not a son. Not a nephew. Something else again.
Later on, Carl would name George DeRolf and Wilhelmina (listed as deceased) as his parents, so there’s no question about where he came from, but the name never changed. Now you can draw your own thoughts from that. Maybe he was taken in and raised under Mary’s name after Minnie died. Maybe there were hard feelings, the kind nobody spoke out loud, a child tied too closely to a loss the family couldn’t shake. Maybe he was blamed in some quiet way for a death no one could control. Or maybe he came into the world under circumstances folks preferred not to explain, and a different name made things easier. No one ever said it plain, and that’s the truth of it.
Back on Main Street, none of that mattered in the moment. What mattered was that the fire didn’t get the chance to become what it could have been. Someone caught it early. Someone acted when it counted. The book just says out on arrival, but that’s enough to tell you it never had time to grow. Inez stayed on for years after that. Life pulled her away from Hebron eventually, but not far. She passed in 1955 up in Indianapolis and was laid to rest in Elmwood. Her children went on, just like you’d expect. Edward stayed close to Hammond, worked steady, raised a family of his own, and then he was gone in 1968 at 51 years old.
That’s how it goes more often than not. But I still think about that morning now and then, about how close it came to being something else. That building, the railroad just steps away, people coming and going, all of it tied together in one place. It wouldn’t have taken much, but it didn’t happen, and sometimes, that’s the only reason a story gets told at all.
And the old logbook?
It’s got plenty more stories left to tell.
