LEWISTON — A ceremony meant to honor victims of a Jan. 31, 1945, New Auburn fire will be pushed back a week because of Saturday’s storm.

Members of Auburn’s Cub Scout Pack 111 planned to host the ceremony on the 70th anniversary of the boarding house fire that killed 17 — including 16 infants.

“But we can’t make people come out in the middle of a storm like that,” said organizer Cameron Hartley, father of one the scouts and an organizer of the effort. “I don’t want to make anybody get on the road if there are going to be slippery conditions.”

The Cub Scout pack and Fortin Group will host their ceremony at 8 a.m. Feb. 7 at the mausoleum at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Lewiston.

It will be followed by a reception and refreshments at 9:30 a.m. at the Fortin Group Funeral Home in Auburn, 217 Turner St.

“Everything else will be the same, the same place, we’re just moving the date,” Hartley said.

The Cub Scout pack has made memorializing the fire victims their service project for the past year. They’ve raised more than $2,800 to buy stone markers for 11 of the people killed in the fire.

“We’ve placed 10 stones for 11 people,” Hartley said. “One was placed for a mother and a child who were buried together. One stone was placed at Evergreen Cemetery, one was placed at Mt. Hope in Lewiston, one at Mt. Hope in Bangor and the other seven are at St. Peter’s.”

They’ve also purchased two metal plaques commemorating the date. One plaque is on display in Auburn Hall and the second will be placed in St. Peter’s Cemetery.

Hartley learned about the fire in his teens. It turns out his aunt, three-month-old Carol LaRochelle, was one of the infants killed in the fire at the Lacoste Baby Farm.

The baby farm was essentially a boarding house and day care center for the children of Lewiston-Auburn’s veterans during World War II. While the fathers served in the armed forces, the mothers had to work to support the family. If they didn’t have family to fall back on, they had to rely on a service to care for their babies.

According to news articles, the fire started with an explosion in the home’s kitchen about 5:30 a.m. and spread quickly throughout the two-story, wood-framed house.

Nighttime assistant Blanche Tanguay discovered the fire and ran through the housing, yelling to wake everyone, before running out into snowdrifts to wake the neighbors and call the Fire Department.

Proprietor Eva Lacoste was dragged out, but was unable to save any of the children. Loretta Fournier, a 20-year-old mother and an employee of the nursery, and 14-year-old Laurent Lacoste were there as well. Fournier was able to escape with two infants, including her daughter, Cecilia. Laurent Lacoste saved his six-year-old brother, Norman.

But one adult and 16 children, ages three months to five years, died in the fire.

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