The Erie Daily Times headline announced the “torch death” of a “former Erieite.” The day before, Nov. 2, 1965, a 31-year-old Quaker and pacifist named Norman Robert Morrison set himself on fire in front of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. as he stood beneath the office windows of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.
The United Press International reported that he self-immolated in the evening during the bustle of rush hour foot traffic. It appeared to be in protest of the escalating Vietnam War. Morrison, holding his infant daughter Emily, had approached the building, doused himself in kerosene, and lit himself on fire, the “sound of a small rocket” as flames engulfed his body.
No video or photographs exist, so reports drew from eyewitness accounts. They varied. Some witnesses said he set down his daughter. Others said he handed her off. Others yet said he tossed or dropped her after setting himself on fire. Onlookers watched “horrified” while others attempted to extinguish him. “He was a mass of flames, a human torch,” said one witness. He was dead by the time medics transported him to a nearby Army medical clinic only a few blocks away…