Taken too young
The story of a young man’s death on Court Avenue and how a family fought for justice.
By Matt Miller
It was cold and gray and dreary when Lou, Ted and Ron Davidson drove through Glendale Cemetery on May 13. The temperature was in the lower 50s, but the blowing sheets of mist made it feel much colder. Winding the path — up, down and around — the three finally came to a stop alongside a headstone just off the beaten path.
“Steven James Davidson — 1950-1970.”
Nestled among the countless other graves that stretch beyond the hillsides, the memorial of Steve Davidson continues to touch the brothers’ hearts. But today, the visit to their sibling’s grave is eerily similar to the day on June 1, 1970, when they lost him in a downtown Court Avenue building collapse. It was a rainy, overcast afternoon 40 years ago when that tragic accident changed their lives forever.
“Steve was a great man who seemed like he had everything going for him,” said Ted. “There were four brothers in the family, and he seemed like he was the one who was always going to make it.”
A fateful day
It was late May 1970 and Ted, who had recently moved home from Des Moines after serving a four-year stint in the military, was looking forward to spending time with his younger brother, Steve. For Steve, it was summer as he had just ended his spring semester at Iowa State University in Ames. Both had returned to Des Moines looking for money, and that meant summer jobs. Within a short time, they were working downtown, unloading tires from trucks and storing them in a four-story building, located at 212-214 Court Ave., owned by the Paul Weston Estate and leased by the Jacobson Warehouse. The building stored an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 truck tires.
“We had only been working about two weeks,” said Ted, now 64 and residing in Waukee. “We went in knowing that it wasn’t right, but our parents were very proud that we had a job, so we did it.”
As the group of 11 young men was finishing the day’s work of unloading and loading 90 lb. tires, Ted remembers his coworkers “sitting on the tires” about two minutes before 5 p.m.
Then it happened — the building collapsed.
Day turned into night as thousands of tires, some stacked 12 feet high, crashed to the ground and littered Court Avenue. Those downtown braced for impact as bricks pelted cars, and plumes of dust sent a haze throughout the district.
“There was no warning — it just fell,” Ted said. “There were all kinds of stories about what happened, but no one really knows. Many people thought Steve was alright, but obviously he never showed up.”
Rescue workers used a crane, bulldozer and searchlights to pick through thousands of pounds of debris that had poured onto Court Avenue. After at least 10 hours of searching, the body of the 19-year-old workman was uncovered at about 1:25 a.m. Dr. R.C. Wooters, assistant Polk County medical examiner, pronounced Steve dead at the scene. He was the only one killed that day as the ten other workmen, all in the building at the time of the collapse, escaped through side and rear exits.
“There’s been an accident where your brothers work!”
Those are the words that continue to stir through Lou’s ears that fateful day on June 1, 1970. Twenty-eight years of age at the time, Lou, who served on the Windsor Heights Volunteer Fire Department, raced in his 1963 Chevy Impala down to the scene.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal, but I was still going down there,” Lou said. “I broke every rule to get down there as fast as I could.”
Turning the corner, Lou ran into Ted and his father, Sam. The three stood in the drizzling rain with approximately 50 onlookers well into the night.
“Late in the evening a fireman came out with the body, and my dad turned white,” Lou said. “Our dad wasn’t a verbal guy, and when they brought Steve out, the blood left him. Dad took it hard. I don’t think Dad was ever the same.”
Soon after the accident, the family members turned their own ways to deal with the loss of Steve, but all moved to California. Ron was in high school, and Lou was married with one kid. Ted took his frustration out with the bottle.
“I was working, and then I turned to partying,” he said. “I didn’t give anyone trouble, but I just went out and drank. I went on with my life, but I still cried a lot. I just had the mindset that it never happened. Steve took a bullet for everyone else. I never got a real handle on it. I continue to ask, ‘Why didn’t I die?’”
Lou agrees.
“I told myself when it happened that it would be a defining moment in my life,” he said. “I would imbed it in my mind and never forget.”
Growing up
A lifelong resident of Des Moines, Steve grew up the third youngest of four boys born to Samuel and Myra M. Davidson. A young man full of life and spunk with a head full of hair and dark-rimmed glasses, Steve seemed to have the whole world in front of him. He graduated from Roosevelt High School, was the drummer in a local band called The Goo, traveled Europe and was in love.
Pam Dennis and Steve fell for each other during her sophomore and his junior years at Roosevelt High School. The two had planned to be married that summer.
“The best memory is the fun we had with our families,” said Pam, who still stays in contact with the Davidson family. “We were kind of hippies. I remember that he was really funny, and his mom and dad were awesome people.”
Upon graduation from Roosevelt, Steve attended Iowa State University where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. The 19-year-old was an engineering major and planned to transfer to the University of Kansas at Lawrence in the fall of 1970 and major in business.
“When he went off to college, I would visit him in Ames,” Pam said. “And we were going to be married that summer — it wasn’t going to be a big wedding, but that didn’t matter because we were so in love with each other.”
Pam, now married and has a career as a central Iowa artist, still remembers that tragic day.
“I was working at Younkers at the time, and my father had picked me up from work,” she said. “On the way home we heard about the accident on the radio. We just looked at each other. It was a devastating thing.”
Ron, who was three years younger and ran with a different group of friends, still has fond memories of his brother.
“I had just turned 16 when Steve passed away,” said Ron, who was babysitting his niece, Lou’s daughter, at the time of the collapse. “At that time in our lives, our friends were different so we didn’t hang out as much. I just think of ‘who would Steve be today?’ ‘What way would his life take him?’ He was a musician, student, had a girlfriend. He had all of that ahead of him.”
For Ted, one of his memories involves Steve singing “Give Peace a Chance,” a 1969 single by Plastic Ono Band. Written by John Lennon while the Beatles were still together, it was one of his most famous songs.
“He always was talking about love and peace,” Ted said. “He wanted that for the world.”
An accident waiting to happen
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports there were 5,214 fatal occupational injuries in the United States in 2008, the lowest annual total since the fatality census was first conducted in 1992. Broken down, the report includes the deaths of 4,827 men and 387 women with the highest fatality rate in the 45 to 54 age range. In Iowa from 1992 to 2008, there have been 1,315 fatal occupational injuries, or an average of 73 per year. In 2008, there were 98 fatalities.
But what do these statistics really indicate? Are our work areas safe? For some, the death of Steve Davidson highlights where the system has been and where it could be headed.
Historically, building codes came about as a result of big disasters such as the Great London Fire in 1666 and the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. The City of Des Moines has had building codes in place since 1928, but generally inspections are not conducted that often.
“When a building is erected, we do inspections to confirm the codes are in place at that time,” said Phil Delafield, building official/permit and development administrator with the City of Des Moines. “The owner takes it from there to maintain it.”
The warehouse that Steve and 10 others were working at was built in 1905. Before it was leased by the Jacobson Warehouse Co., it was leased by Plumb Supply Co. Reports indicate that the building was last inspected in 1917, more than 50 years before the building collapsed. More over, a city tax appraiser at the time deemed the four-story warehouse in one of the oldest sections of the city in “fair to poor condition.” Former City Assessor Andy Regis said the tax evaluator ruled the building was “55 percent worn out” and also “50 percent obsolete.”
“There was a structure report that said the building was stable enough to hold the tires,” said former State Labor Commissioner Jerry Addy. “Looking back, obviously it wasn’t.”
At the time of the accident, Addy reported the state’s 13 safety inspectors rarely visited warehouses, and that Iowa needed five times as many inspectors to conduct check-ups. In 1970, the City of Des Moines had three building inspectors. Today, the city has 17 construction inspectors, along with housing and fire inspectors.
“There needs to be some realization from the public that the owner has a social obligation to maintain the building,” Delafield said. “I don’t think it’s within the community’s resources to have inspections all the time. Plus, many may think the inspections are unreasonable or an invasion of privacy.”
In response to their son’s death, the Davidson family walked door-to-door seeking out residents to sign a petition for “better and more sufficient building inspection policies for the City of Des Moines and the State of Iowa.” They collected 258 signatures.
“There were no laws that were broken,” Ted said. “So we did the petition because we wanted to see if we could change that”
Two years after their son’s death, Sam and Myra M. Davidson filed a $150,000 damage suit in Polk Country District Court against Weston Investment Inc., claiming the company was negligent in renting an unfit warehouse that was the cause of their son’s death.
The Davidson’s asked for $100,000 in damages for the estate and $50,000 to cover funeral and burial expenses and the loss of their son. The three brothers are unsure of how much, if any, the family received.
“They got screwed,” said Ron, 56, who lives in Clive. “It was all about the money. They were going to cut corners to get the money — our society won’t change, and it never will.”
The State Bureau of Labor shut down the warehouse at 212-214 Court Ave., and in the fall of 1971 construction began on the new headquarters of Jacobson Warehouse Co., at 2400 East Broadway. Today, Jacobson Warehouse Co., 4141 Dixon St., has more than 30 million square feet of warehouse space in 27 states across the United States.
Even with the loss of life, Delafield believes it wasn’t the city’s responsibility.
“In hindsight, it’s easy to say the city should have been responsible,” he said. “But that neglects the owner for taking responsibility for it. We are happy to come out and take a look at a building, and we conduct about 100 inspections per year. A lot of them are on a complaint basis.”
Lou still has strong feelings toward how his family was treated.
“It was disheartening that the city didn’t take responsibility,” he said. “The whole thing was bullshit. How much is a young man’s life worth? They didn’t hold anyone accountable, and engineer-wise they should have known. But they just didn’t care.”
Section 5 entitled “Duties” of OSHA, states that each employer 1) shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees; 2) shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this Act.
States must set job safety and health standards that are “at least as effective” as Federal OSHA standards. Iowa also adopted a new state building code that references the 2009 International Building Code (www.iccsafe.org.). The new code became effective Jan. 1.
Getting by
It’s been more than 40 years since Steve’s death turned the Davidson family upside down. Friends have come and gone, businesses have changed, and the City of Des Moines has seen a turnaround, highlighted by the revitalization of downtown. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the spirit of the Davidson family and their commitment not to forget Steve and the lives he touched.
“Since his death, the Davidsons have embraced me,” said Pam, who occasionally visits and swaps holiday cards with the family. “It was weird when he died because I was so young, and no one I knew had died. I felt like I lost a couple years of my life. But I think Ted and I have come to a point realizing that it was a horrible tragedy, but it was almost a gift. It taught me a lot about life, death and acceptance.”
Shortly after Steve’s death, the family received a note from an unknown person with the poem, “I’ll Lend You a Child.” Ted says the poem (first verse) is a sweet reminder of Steve.
“I’ll lend you for a little time,
A child of mine,” God said,
For you to love the while he lives
And mourn for when he’s dead.
It may be six or seven weeks
Or thirty years, or three,
But will you, till I call him back
Take good care of him for me?
He’ll bring his charm to gladden you
And should his stay be brief
You’ll have his lovely memories
As solace for your grief.”
Lou says good things have come out of his brother’s death, including carrying on Steve’s name. The Bellville, Ill., resident named his youngest son Stephen James, an honor in the Jewish faith to name someone after another who has passed away.
“You think about losing your mother and father at some point, but not about your brother or sister,” he said. “You experience it, and it sucks. But at the same time, Steve’s spirit lives on through all of us.”
To this day, the trio of brothers still visit Steve’s memorial. Some days it’s overcast and raining just like that fateful day on June 1, 1970. But other days the sun shines brightly.
“I designed Steve’s marker, and I’m proud of it,” Ted said. “But it’s another reminder of how much I miss him. People always ask, ‘you haven’t gotten over it?’ You don’t get over it — you get by it. We miss him every day and can’t wait to see him again.” CV
