75 Years Ago: Employee Intentionally Sets State Building on Fire
It was 75 years ago when a disgruntled employee intentionally started a fire in the state office (Lewis Cass) building.
In February 1951, 19-year-old state clerk Richard Shay was worried he may have to serve time in the military and get sent overseas to fight in the Korean war.
How to get out of military service?
By proving he was an “undesirable”, that’s how.
But how could he prove that?
By setting his workplace on fire.
Shay figured he would be arrested for the offense and deemed unfit to serve in the armed forces. So, he proceeded with his plan by lighting a match and tossing it into a filled wastepaper basket. His plan did not include burning down the building, just a fire small enough so he could put it out, then turn himself in and get charged with minor arson....hopefully disqualifying himself from the draft.
But that ain’t how it turned out.
Before he knew it, the fire got too big and out of control. It destroyed the top floor and burned stacks of historical state records.
When the story got out and his reasoning for the fire was made public, Shay’s draft board told him he was exempt and would not have been drafted anyway, because he had a wife and baby. He was found guilty of arson and sent to prison, leaving his wife and baby anyway.
The Lewis Cass structure was built in 1921, replacing an earlier, demolished one. When the building was being reconstructed after the 1951 fire, the seventh floor was removed and never replaced.
On June 30, 2020, the Lewis Cass building was renamed the Elliott-Larsen Building.
