Reporting from Bizzell
Dec. 5, 1940 — The Oklahoma Daily
Student hospitalized after fall through glass floors in Bizzell Library
by Jenny Holden, Daily staff writer
An OU student was transported to the Norman Regional Hospital after she fell through glass flooring in the decks of the Bizzell Memorial Library.
The student, English junior Francis Walters, was walking through the decks around 1 a.m. when one of the plates shattered and she fell through, OU Police Department spokesperson Rudy Garrison said.
Walters sustained injuries to her neck, witnesses said.
"I was studying in the Great Reading Room pretty late and I heard this awful crash, glass shattering and a girl screaming, so I ran into the decks and saw this girl fell through the floor, landed on her neck. Goodness, she was a mess," mathematics sophomore James Reynolds said.
A view of the Great Reading Room. Just a few steps away, in the decks, Francis Walters fell and injured her neck early Monday morning. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Another witness corroborated Reynolds' account. Eleanor Dowd, a library employee on duty when Walters fell, said Walters had come to the help desk earlier that night looking for a book, and Dowd had directed her to the decks to find it.
"I just feel awful that I pointed her to the decks ... I mean, I didn't know that was going to happen," Dowd said. "About a half hour after Francis had come to talk to me, someone came running up the the help desk hollering that someone had fallen through the glass in the decks and snapped their neck. I just instantly had a bad feeling that it was Francis."
The floors in the decks are made of frosted glass to allow light to pass through, library spokeswoman Doreen Woods said. Sunlight from windows and artificial lighting on each floor can pass through to other floors so it's easier to see book titles, she said.
"We've had the frosted glass plates for years, and we've never had any problems before," Woods said. "I'm not saying it was this girl's fault, but maybe she was just stepping a little too forcefully, you know."
Woods said the library had closed off the decks for the rest of the year to protect students from the shattered glass. Students who need to access books located in the decks will have to be accompanied by a library employee, she said.
"When library employees are walking through the decks, you can be sure they're going to be stepping really gently and carefully," Woods said. "That being said, we're all praying for Francis's recovery, and we're going to be reviewing safety measures in the library to be sure this doesn't happen again."
A call to the Norman Regional Hospital confirmed that Walters is in critical condition as of early Monday morning, and the hospital is not allowing visitors at this time.
Walters' sorority, Alpha Gamma Delta, will be selling baked goods on the South Oval this week to raise money for her medical expenses, sorority president Francine DiFranco said.
"We're all just so worried about Francis, and we were thinking, 'How could we help?'" DiFranco said. "So naturally, we thought of baking. We know Francis will be OK. I hope we can visit her soon."
Walters' family could not be reached for comment.
The Daily will update this story in print editions throughout the week.
Author's note: In Jeff Provine's book, he writes about library ghosts that haunt the decks of the library — a claustrophobia-inducing area with low ceilings and glass floors that can be accessed through a door near the Great Reading Room. The lore is that a student once fell through the glass plates in the decks, breaking his or her neck. From then on, the library's decks have been haunted with creaking and phantom footsteps, seen and heard late at night in the library. The legend goes that this happened in the 1940s, but some dedicated students who read through hundreds of issues of The Oklahoma Daily, OU's student newspaper, looking for information about a student death in the library, never found anything about a student death in the library.
In my retelling of this story, published in a 1940 edition of The Oklahoma Daily, I've written a news article about a student who fell through the glass plating in the decks and was hospitalized for neck injuries. This is consistent with the folklore outlined in Jeff Provine's book. In the news article, Francis Walters' condition is left ambiguous. Since there is no evidence of a student dying in the library, this leaves the situation up in the air: she could die later and haunt the decks, but that's for the reader to imagine now.
Bibliography:
Provine, Jeff. Campus ghosts of Norman, Oklahoma. The History Press, 2013.