DALLAS — Fifty-eight years after one of the worst building fires in North Texas history, historians in Dallas are adding a new memorial to the life-savers lost that day.

On Wednesday morning, the Dallas Firefighter’s Museum is set to dedicate a restored fire alarm pull box from the 1960s and display it at Dallas’s Station 18. The pull box - box 157 - is the exact box that was once in use at the corner of Commerce and Browder in downtown Dallas when public pull boxes were the best way to alert firefighters of an emergency nearby.

It was that very box that was pulled early one morning in 1964. The blaze changed the lives of the firefighters at Station 18 and of several families such as Saundra Gaylord’s.

 “I woke up to the phone ringing,” said Gaylord, remembering the early morning call on Feb. 16, 1964, that sent her mother into worry, when Gaylord was just 10 years old. “It was someone from the church about this fire on Commerce Street.”

According to the Fire Museum, the fire broke out at the Golden Pheasant restaurant and would quickly become infamous in the city. 

Dallas at the time was still reeling from the Kennedy assassination and was still abuzz with the fallout when the fire stole the headlines. News coverage from the time stated that the fire started in the basement of the restaurant and was eventually ruled  arson. One person would go on trial but was ultimately acquitted.

According to a 2015 synopsis of the fire on the City of Dallas’s news website, more than 750 firefighters fought through the early morning hours to put out the flames, including firefighters from Station 18 and Gaylord’s father, Jerry Henderson. Henderson was one of the firefighters inside when the floor of the building finally collapsed, sending him and several others into a fiery fall.

Gaylord said as the morning progressed, her mother and her family got the news that they always feared.

“Later on, of course, there was a knock on the door,” she said, saying her mom opened it to see a Dallas Fire captain and several of her father’s good friends. “They came in to tell her that it was confirmed, the four firemen were lost.”

Along with Henderson, firefighters Ronald Manley, James Gresham and James Bigham were all killed in the firefight that day. The oldest of the four men was only 36 years old.

Gaylord remembered the days that followed as telegrams and condolences from firefighters and people around the world arrived at her family’s home. She said she still remembers the endless lines of men in uniform as the bagpipes played during her father’s funeral.

The wounds of that day, almost 60 years later, according to Gaylord, are still tough, even though they do feel a lifetime away for her now. 

Now living in Granbury, Gaylord sat at the firefighter memorial looking at the brick her own daughter had made in Henderson’s memory - sitting at the foot of the firefighter statue in the center of the park. The now-grandmother looked though a large box of photos, personal items and memorabilia of her father that she said sat in her mother’s attic untouched for many years; the memories inside too heavy for her mom to confront for a long time.

Now, though, as she prepared to bring her entire family out to the new memorial dedication, she leafed through many of the photographs of Henderson and recalled memories of the man who will forever live as the 29-year-old father and firefighter she last saw the night before that 1964 fire.

“I remember feeling so proud because everyone knew he was a fireman and everyone, you know, looked up to him,” she said with a smile.

Gaylord believed that her dad, who always wanted a big family, would be proud to see his grandkids and even great-grandkids learning about his heroics that day in February.

“I think he’d be glad to know we’ve all kept that dream of his,” she said.