"He's New York State-born," said Adolph Rakowski, 62, a retired custodian who recalled that the only Republican for whom he had voted in recent years was Mr. Pataki in 1998.

Last week, Mr. Calhoun brought his mother, a retired custodian and a widow of four years, down from New Roads, La., where they are staying with his in-laws, to see the nightmarish tableau with her own eyes.

Aida Marriott, a retired custodian, for instance, is raising two teenage granddaughters, Julie and Vanessa Avila.

The man who died, James Crocker, 83, was a retired custodian who relatives said could not be coaxed to jump from a second-floor window, even as the fire grew in intensity.

A retired custodian, James Crocker, 83, who lived next door, died after becoming trapped.

Richard Kendrick, a retired custodian who lives across the street, said: "I hate to see the place close.

Mr. Condon recommended that 10 custodians be dismissed and that 3 retired custodians be banned from doing business with the school system.

But many people who showed up today were like Flenoy Jackson, a retired custodian who used to work in the Chicago Theological Seminary where Mr. Jackson was a student.

"There's a monster up there, way up top somewhere, and the monster opened its mouth and let loose, and it all came down," Mr. McCall, 61, a retired custodian with the Trenton schools, said last Sunday.

"You do what you have to do," Mr. Gratter, a 74-year-old retired custodian from East Orange, said after an I.R.S. officer told him during a special two-day session set aside for delinquent taxpayers that he owed more than $10,000 in back taxes.