I was born and raised in Shenandoah - 1940-1959.  My dad had the Shenandoah Music Company on South Main Street. I got married in '59 and moved away.

A picture of the "Shenandoah Music Company" (my dad's store) before the fire of Feb. 1955. We lived above the store until the fire.

This is Eddie Sudnick's Men's store going up in flames.  Our store was to the right of it.....

This one shows our house and store going up.  The water hydrants were frozen solid - no water pressure.  They had to use water from the trucks... which was almost useless.  No one died in this fire - although some fire- fighters were injured.

There was a huge piece of molten silver from money from juke boxes and pinball machines which had fused into one piece.  The treasury department was called in by the bank and they were able to determine a value from the weight of the silver.  
The one remarkable thing that I can remember is when the flames hit all the records in the store, it was like the Fourth of July.  There were mini explosions constantly.  

This is the end of the fire and the end of our store.  From here we rented an apartment on West Oak Street next to the Greek Orthodox Church and got on with our lives.  But somehow, it was never the same.