Floreine Herron Hudson was a teacher at Baker High School in Columbus, Georgia during the 1940s. She was one of the chaperones on a school trip taken by students from Baker High School and Columbus High School to Atlanta in December of 1946. They joined high school students from all over Georgia who were in Atlanta for the annual General Assembly of the Tri-Hi-Y Club. On December 7, 1946 fire destroyed the Winecoff hotel, where they were staying. It was the deadliest hotel fire in American history, killing 119 people, including at least two students from Columbus. One of the surviving students, Dorothy Moen, was badly injured in the fire and rescue and hospitalized in Atlanta from the time of the fire until the last week of April, 1947. At some point she wrote an account of the fire, her rescue and her slow, difficult recovery. Mrs. Hudson edited it and submitted it to the Sunday Magazine of the Atlanta Journal. Both Dorothy Moen's unedited story is present, as well as Mrs. Hudson's edited typescript and her cover note to the Atlanta Journal.