New London School Explosion
Photo Courtesy Of London Museum
By STEPHANIE JETER
Staff Writer
It's been 70 years since a deadly school explosion rocked the small East Texas town of New London, but those who walked out of the rubble say the memories of that day remain as raw as ever.
On Thursday, March 18, 1937, an unknown natural gas leak inched its way across the New London junior-senior high school's basement. Around 3 p.m., the gas mixture ignited.
Staff Writer
It's been 70 years since a deadly school explosion rocked the small East Texas town of New London, but those who walked out of the rubble say the memories of that day remain as raw as ever.
On Thursday, March 18, 1937, an unknown natural gas leak inched its way across the New London junior-senior high school's basement. Around 3 p.m., the gas mixture ignited.
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From eyewitness accounts, the explosion disintegrated walls and flattened classrooms. The building was reduced to rubble. Inside the destruction, about 300 of the 700 teachers and students were killed.
Because of the number of fatalities and injuries, the New London explosion is still considered the worst school disaster in U.S. history.
Last week, the explosion's 70th anniversary was on the minds of survivors - including Bill Thompson, H.G. White, Otis Bryan, Randy Rogers and Charles "Moco" Dial.
While a typical story passed down from generation to generation is often flocked with tall tales and family rumor, somehow the story of the New London school explosion remains mostly yarn-free.
Perhaps, as London Museum docent John Davidson said, it's because the story is told by those who lived it.
'A FAIRLY COOL DAY'
Now 82 years old, Thompson still lives in New London. He built his life, business and family here, all within spitting distance of his reconstructed alma mater.
Looking in the school's direction, he remembered the accident.
He lived about five miles from school. Every morning, he said, he was first on the bus that would take him to one of the wealthiest school districts in the nation.
It was 1937, and the Great Depression was still heavy on America's mind and pocketbook. However, the discovery of oil seven years earlier had turned New London into "a spotlight of wealth," Thompson said.
Oil money built the impressive school building, Davidson said. New London's junior-senior high school was two stories tall, complete with a workshop and lighted football field. The E-shaped building cost $300,000 and accommodated New London's fifth through 11th grades.
Thompson, who was in the fifth grade then, recalled March 18 as "a fairly cool day."
"There was a lot of spirit in the school, lots of excitement," he said.
The excitement was spawned from competition, he said. The next day, New London was to compete at the county academic and athletic meet in Henderson. The meet was so popular that school officials had canceled Friday classes to allow more students to compete.
But that was Friday. On Thursday, students would be in their last class of the day when the accumulated gas ignited.
IN AN INSTANT
Thompson and classmate Randy Rogers were in English class. Thompson said he had swapped seats with a student in front of him to flirt with a girl he liked.
In another classroom, H.G. White had just returned to his desk after getting help with a math problem.
In art class, Otis Bryan was filling a fountain pen with ink.
In another classroom, a teacher lectured about the benefits of oil. The blackboard read "Oil and natural gas are East Texas' greatest mineral blessings. Without them, this school would not be here and none of us would be here learning our lessons," Davidson said.
Students and teachers didn't know that their subject matter had accumulated under their feet.
As Thompson said, "everything was normal until it happened."
At that moment, a teacher in the workshop turned on a piece of equipment and a giant arc of electricity jumped out, said Charles "Moco" Dial, a sixth-grader at the time. His big brother was in the workshop and saw the spark fly.
The gas erupted in a terrifying boom heard four miles away, Davidson said.
Although they were sitting on ground zero, some survivors said they didn't hear any noise.
What Thompson did experience, he said, was being lifted out of his chair and tossed in midair. White said the explosion felt like "somebody slapped me on the side of the head."
THE DAY WENT BLACK
All who shared their stories said that suddenly, the sunlit day went black.
Mortar, cement, glass and dirt ballooned around the building, covering everything.
"I ran," Bryan said. "I could not see, but I knew something bad, bad, bad had happened, and I ran home just as fast as I knew how."
He said his classroom was in the last wing, where there were more survivors.
White was trapped beneath the wreckage and heard children groaning in pain.
Thompson was unconscious and came to under a pile of rubble.
Dial had gone home to put on his band uniform - "a white shirt and black shoes," he said.
He was still at home when the boom sounded. "I thought it was a boiler," he said.
But when he walked up to the school, he said, "it was all gone."
Debris flew in the air, the building had caved in and the accumulating bodies were being lined up next to a fence, he said.
Thompson said that to his eyes, everyone was gray. Blood mixed with flying mortar, causing a thick layer of filth to cake on students and teachers, he said.
ANGUISH AND JOY
White's parents, and many others', rushed to the school, frantic to find their children.
"Mother and Daddy started digging through the dead folks and debris, because they knew where my classroom was," White said.
They walked through rows of dead children, finding one dressed in the same plaid shirt, khaki pants and boots White had worn to school that day.
The boy's face was injured beyond recognition, but White's father knew his son's boots had recently received a new half-sole. In desperation, White said, his father picked up the deceased boy's leg and pulled his fingernail down the bottom of the boot, feeling for the line that would tell him if his son was dead.
The half-sole wasn't there. White was alive.
He had already been pulled from the wreckage, placed in a family friend's car and taken to the doctor with a large head wound. When White and his parents met later in the middle of the road, he said, they tore out of their cars and had a "hallelujah jubilee."
"Mother shouted and praised God," White struggled to say against tears. "My daddy just stood there and cried."
His hair still coated with mortar, White slept in the same bed as the other three members of his family that night. It felt better that way, he said.
CRISIS SCENE
Back at the school, oil field workers and citizens used their bare hands to free trapped children. Soon, winches and cutting torches from the oil field were brought in to move heavy concrete and steel beams. In 17 hours, Davidson said, workers had moved about 4 million pounds of debris.
A nearby farmer dropped peach baskets off near the school. Davidson said they were used to transport rubble and body parts.
The city was in a state of emergency, he said. Even Boy Scouts patrolled with unloaded rifles to keep the peace.
Families huddled around radios, listening to an anchor read descriptions of students and what towns they could be found in, Davidson said. Parents searched for their children in makeshift morgues around East Texas.
One such morgue was where Dial found his little brother. His features were gone; the only thing that identified him was a piece of bacon string he and his brothers had used to spin tops, Dial said.
But eventually, the crying stopped, and the town tried to move forward.
TRYING TO COPE
Davidson said that about two weeks after the explosion, students were called back to school to hold class in makeshift wooden buildings placed next to the demolished school.
The first roll call, Davidson said, was brutal.
"They started calling names to separate us (into classrooms)," he said. But not all of the students called were there - or even alive.
At the roll call, Davidson realized that the student he had traded seats with before the blast had died. It launched a guilt he wouldn't overcome for 50 years.
No one spoke of the accident, the survivors said. And if someone did, he was asked to stop.
The cause of the gas leak is still unknown, and no one was held responsible. But many blamed the school's superintendent, W.C. Shaw. The school had canceled its natural gas contract to tap into a nearby gas company's residue line, Davidson said. Some thought that was the cause.
"Pa wanted to hurt somebody because they took his son away," Dial said. "Pa was pretty bad. He put on his gun and went out, but I stopped him."
Families did what they could to take their minds off the heartache. Dial said one family he knew spent hours digging man-sized holes in their backyard, just to cover them up again.
"It's the way they survived," he said.
Emotions remained unspoken back then, Bryan said, so survivors and families kept their memories and grief quiet for 40 years. It wasn't until then, at the school's first reunion, that facades started to crack and stories started to spill.
"The explosion changed everybody's lives," Bryan said.
LASTING IMPACT
It also changed Texas legislation, and eventually changed the way the entire country distributed natural gas.
On March 22, less than a week after the explosion, a fifth-grader named Carolyn Frei addressed a special session of the Texas Legislature.
Standing in the House speaker's chair, Davidson said, she had a simple request: Make natural gas safer. The Legislature consented, and on May 17, a bill was put in place that required the addition of scent to the odorless, invisible natural gas. Texas was the first state to require the additive, but the rest of the country soon followed suit.
"That rotten-egg smell that natural gas has - that's because of New London," Davidson said.
It's also because of New London that the Engineering Regulation Act, which prevents unlicensed engineers from working on buildings, was passed on May 28, 1937.
"That just assured that anytime something like a gas line was hooked up at a school, it would be done by people who knew what they were doing," he said.
On Sunday, survivors will meet in the auditorium of the West Rusk school, a new school built directly in front of where the old one once stood. The 10 a.m. meeting is a public memorial, but Thompson said there will be private ones too.
"I shed a tear," he said, "Not just (for being) sad, it's for being glad - the joy of being here. The joy to have known the ones I have come to know through the school.
"Wildcats are forever."
Because of the number of fatalities and injuries, the New London explosion is still considered the worst school disaster in U.S. history.
Last week, the explosion's 70th anniversary was on the minds of survivors - including Bill Thompson, H.G. White, Otis Bryan, Randy Rogers and Charles "Moco" Dial.
While a typical story passed down from generation to generation is often flocked with tall tales and family rumor, somehow the story of the New London school explosion remains mostly yarn-free.
Perhaps, as London Museum docent John Davidson said, it's because the story is told by those who lived it.
'A FAIRLY COOL DAY'
Now 82 years old, Thompson still lives in New London. He built his life, business and family here, all within spitting distance of his reconstructed alma mater.
Looking in the school's direction, he remembered the accident.
He lived about five miles from school. Every morning, he said, he was first on the bus that would take him to one of the wealthiest school districts in the nation.
It was 1937, and the Great Depression was still heavy on America's mind and pocketbook. However, the discovery of oil seven years earlier had turned New London into "a spotlight of wealth," Thompson said.
Oil money built the impressive school building, Davidson said. New London's junior-senior high school was two stories tall, complete with a workshop and lighted football field. The E-shaped building cost $300,000 and accommodated New London's fifth through 11th grades.
Thompson, who was in the fifth grade then, recalled March 18 as "a fairly cool day."
"There was a lot of spirit in the school, lots of excitement," he said.
The excitement was spawned from competition, he said. The next day, New London was to compete at the county academic and athletic meet in Henderson. The meet was so popular that school officials had canceled Friday classes to allow more students to compete.
But that was Friday. On Thursday, students would be in their last class of the day when the accumulated gas ignited.
IN AN INSTANT
Thompson and classmate Randy Rogers were in English class. Thompson said he had swapped seats with a student in front of him to flirt with a girl he liked.
In another classroom, H.G. White had just returned to his desk after getting help with a math problem.
In art class, Otis Bryan was filling a fountain pen with ink.
In another classroom, a teacher lectured about the benefits of oil. The blackboard read "Oil and natural gas are East Texas' greatest mineral blessings. Without them, this school would not be here and none of us would be here learning our lessons," Davidson said.
Students and teachers didn't know that their subject matter had accumulated under their feet.
As Thompson said, "everything was normal until it happened."
At that moment, a teacher in the workshop turned on a piece of equipment and a giant arc of electricity jumped out, said Charles "Moco" Dial, a sixth-grader at the time. His big brother was in the workshop and saw the spark fly.
The gas erupted in a terrifying boom heard four miles away, Davidson said.
Although they were sitting on ground zero, some survivors said they didn't hear any noise.
What Thompson did experience, he said, was being lifted out of his chair and tossed in midair. White said the explosion felt like "somebody slapped me on the side of the head."
THE DAY WENT BLACK
All who shared their stories said that suddenly, the sunlit day went black.
Mortar, cement, glass and dirt ballooned around the building, covering everything.
"I ran," Bryan said. "I could not see, but I knew something bad, bad, bad had happened, and I ran home just as fast as I knew how."
He said his classroom was in the last wing, where there were more survivors.
White was trapped beneath the wreckage and heard children groaning in pain.
Thompson was unconscious and came to under a pile of rubble.
Dial had gone home to put on his band uniform - "a white shirt and black shoes," he said.
He was still at home when the boom sounded. "I thought it was a boiler," he said.
But when he walked up to the school, he said, "it was all gone."
Debris flew in the air, the building had caved in and the accumulating bodies were being lined up next to a fence, he said.
Thompson said that to his eyes, everyone was gray. Blood mixed with flying mortar, causing a thick layer of filth to cake on students and teachers, he said.
ANGUISH AND JOY
White's parents, and many others', rushed to the school, frantic to find their children.
"Mother and Daddy started digging through the dead folks and debris, because they knew where my classroom was," White said.
They walked through rows of dead children, finding one dressed in the same plaid shirt, khaki pants and boots White had worn to school that day.
The boy's face was injured beyond recognition, but White's father knew his son's boots had recently received a new half-sole. In desperation, White said, his father picked up the deceased boy's leg and pulled his fingernail down the bottom of the boot, feeling for the line that would tell him if his son was dead.
The half-sole wasn't there. White was alive.
He had already been pulled from the wreckage, placed in a family friend's car and taken to the doctor with a large head wound. When White and his parents met later in the middle of the road, he said, they tore out of their cars and had a "hallelujah jubilee."
"Mother shouted and praised God," White struggled to say against tears. "My daddy just stood there and cried."
His hair still coated with mortar, White slept in the same bed as the other three members of his family that night. It felt better that way, he said.
CRISIS SCENE
Back at the school, oil field workers and citizens used their bare hands to free trapped children. Soon, winches and cutting torches from the oil field were brought in to move heavy concrete and steel beams. In 17 hours, Davidson said, workers had moved about 4 million pounds of debris.
A nearby farmer dropped peach baskets off near the school. Davidson said they were used to transport rubble and body parts.
The city was in a state of emergency, he said. Even Boy Scouts patrolled with unloaded rifles to keep the peace.
Families huddled around radios, listening to an anchor read descriptions of students and what towns they could be found in, Davidson said. Parents searched for their children in makeshift morgues around East Texas.
One such morgue was where Dial found his little brother. His features were gone; the only thing that identified him was a piece of bacon string he and his brothers had used to spin tops, Dial said.
But eventually, the crying stopped, and the town tried to move forward.
TRYING TO COPE
Davidson said that about two weeks after the explosion, students were called back to school to hold class in makeshift wooden buildings placed next to the demolished school.
The first roll call, Davidson said, was brutal.
"They started calling names to separate us (into classrooms)," he said. But not all of the students called were there - or even alive.
At the roll call, Davidson realized that the student he had traded seats with before the blast had died. It launched a guilt he wouldn't overcome for 50 years.
No one spoke of the accident, the survivors said. And if someone did, he was asked to stop.
The cause of the gas leak is still unknown, and no one was held responsible. But many blamed the school's superintendent, W.C. Shaw. The school had canceled its natural gas contract to tap into a nearby gas company's residue line, Davidson said. Some thought that was the cause.
"Pa wanted to hurt somebody because they took his son away," Dial said. "Pa was pretty bad. He put on his gun and went out, but I stopped him."
Families did what they could to take their minds off the heartache. Dial said one family he knew spent hours digging man-sized holes in their backyard, just to cover them up again.
"It's the way they survived," he said.
Emotions remained unspoken back then, Bryan said, so survivors and families kept their memories and grief quiet for 40 years. It wasn't until then, at the school's first reunion, that facades started to crack and stories started to spill.
"The explosion changed everybody's lives," Bryan said.
LASTING IMPACT
It also changed Texas legislation, and eventually changed the way the entire country distributed natural gas.
On March 22, less than a week after the explosion, a fifth-grader named Carolyn Frei addressed a special session of the Texas Legislature.
Standing in the House speaker's chair, Davidson said, she had a simple request: Make natural gas safer. The Legislature consented, and on May 17, a bill was put in place that required the addition of scent to the odorless, invisible natural gas. Texas was the first state to require the additive, but the rest of the country soon followed suit.
"That rotten-egg smell that natural gas has - that's because of New London," Davidson said.
It's also because of New London that the Engineering Regulation Act, which prevents unlicensed engineers from working on buildings, was passed on May 28, 1937.
"That just assured that anytime something like a gas line was hooked up at a school, it would be done by people who knew what they were doing," he said.
On Sunday, survivors will meet in the auditorium of the West Rusk school, a new school built directly in front of where the old one once stood. The 10 a.m. meeting is a public memorial, but Thompson said there will be private ones too.
"I shed a tear," he said, "Not just (for being) sad, it's for being glad - the joy of being here. The joy to have known the ones I have come to know through the school.
"Wildcats are forever."
Stephanie Jeter covers Cherokee, Rusk and Upshur Counties. She can be reached at 903.596.6267. e-mail: news@tylerpaper.com
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