March 15, 2017 • 30 mins
This was one of the worst disasters in Texas history, the worst school disaster in U.S. history, and it was a horrific tragedy that stemmed from a huge number of small decisions and moments.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Before we
jump into today's show, we will announce one more quick
time because I think this is the last, our last
(00:22):
opportunity to do it. Holly and I will be at
Salt Lake Comic Con fan X once again March seventeenth
and eighteen. We will be doing some appearances both of
those days, so if you were in the area, that
is coming right up. Uh. And today's podcast is when
we've gotten a lot of requests for including from Laura
(00:42):
mar Doug John, Katrina Alyssa, Amy, Nicole Page, Jana Casey,
Randy and Adrian. Those are just the ones that came
in via email since because in our email address changed
and now we have also moved on to a different
email play for platforms, so like trying to look for
(01:03):
old stuff is really hard. Uh. It is the New
London school explosion which happened on March eighteenth, nineteen thirty seven,
so it's anniversary is coming up. So if you're wondering,
how can I get the topic that so many people
have requested moved to the top of the pile. The
answer is, have it have a milestone anniversary coming up?
(01:25):
That seems to be the trans lately. Uh. This was
one of the worst disasters in Texas history. It was
the worst school disaster in the United States history. It
was a horrific tragedy that stemmed from a number of
small decisions and moments, and changing any of them would
have prevented or mitigated the whole thing, or in some
cases changed it to a way that was also bad
(01:48):
and maybe even worse. Uh. We we recently did a
show on on the UM the Temple bombing in Atlanta,
and we offered some reassurance at the beginning that that
seems like from the title that s it's going to
be a dreadfully tragic show. We cannot offer that reassurance today. Yeah,
in that case, the show sounded really terrible and in
(02:09):
the end was really quite a positive message and there
was not a lot of of even though there was
a bombing involved, there was not. Uh, there were no
fatalities or casualties of any kind. You're not in for
the same kind of happy ending on this one school explosion.
It's as bad as you think yeah. So. For background,
New London is in Rusk County in East Texas, and
(02:32):
it was originally known as Just London from eighteen fifty
five until about nineteen thirty. It's primary industry was agriculture,
with the two largest crops being corn and cotton, followed
by a variety of food crops. The Civil War had
devastated this industry, which had relied heavily on enslaved labor
in the area's economy had only really started to recover
(02:53):
after the turn of the twentieth century, but even then
the turnaround had continued to be quite slow, and that
slow recovery, of course, started to falter with the onset
of the Great Depression. But in the autumn of nineteen thirty,
Columbus Marion Joyner struck oil in Rust County at Discovery
Well Daisy Bradford Number three. Other discoveries of oil soon followed,
(03:16):
which quickly proved to all be part of the East
Texas Oil Field, which was at the time the largest
known oil field in the United States. There were a
lot of things about Joiners business practices and his mineral
rights schemes that were incredibly shady. He was what's known
as a wildcatter. He drilled oil wells in places that
(03:36):
oil wasn't known to be in the hopes that he
would just luck out and find some. His method was
described as being made out of quote, faith, and cuss words,
and he wasn't above taking advantage of other people's equipment
and labor to get the job done. In spite of
making a fortune in oil, by the time he died
in seven he was nearly penniless. Regardless of all of that,
(03:58):
his discovery earned him the nickname Dad as the father
of the nation's then largest oil field. Joiner's discovery of
oil meant that London became a boom town seemingly overnight.
It went from a struggling rural area to one that
was still rural but also incredibly wealthy. Oil wells popped
up everywhere, along with refineries, many of them tiny, so
(04:21):
called teapot refineries that essentially processed the oil in the
field rather than shipping the crude oil to a larger
facility to be refined. People swarmed into the area looking
for work in the rapidly growing oil and gas industries.
Within a couple of years, Rusk Counties population more than
doubled to sixty people, and many of the area's property
(04:42):
owners became rich when it became clear that there was
oil under their land, and there was some strife between
the longtime residents and the newcomers, with the locals viewing
the people moving to the area for oil jobs as
a bad crowd, particularly the ones whose time in town
was just temporarily. This influx of money and people meant
that a wave of new construction swept through through the
(05:05):
town as well. People built new homes, churches, and businesses.
Within a year, a new post office was established, and
that's actually what necessitated the name changed to New London,
since it turned out there was already a London post
office and operation in Kimball County, also in Texas. Obviously.
Humble Oil and Refining Company also moved its district headquarters
(05:27):
to New London, relocating about a hundred families to the area,
and in ninety four New London finished a newly expanded
school which had come with a price tag of about
a million dollars. This was an expansive, twenty one acre
campus which consolidated and absorbed the student populations of other
schools in the area. It had an elementary building for
(05:49):
grades one through four, and a combined junior senior high
school building that went from grades five to eleven. The
two classroom buildings were about a block apart, and for
all grades combined, the school had a capacity of about
twelve hundred students. The new campus also had a large auditorium,
a workshop, a separate gymnasium, and the state's first school
(06:11):
football stadium that was equipped with electric lights. In addition
to the building itself, the Surgeon wealth in New London
had brought in better pay for the teachers, new instruments
for the music classes, and new books and equipment. By seven,
the school's taxable value had soared to roughly twenty million dollars,
in part because of the functional oil wells on the
(06:33):
school's property. There were more than ten of them, which
brought even more revenue to the school, and it became
one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest school district
in the United States. Even though it was so wealthy,
the school was also looking for ways to save money
both during its construction and during its operation, and a
combination of money saving efforts would ultimately lead to the
(06:56):
school's destruction. Also, there's the irony that all this wealth
was coming from oil, and a byproduct of that oil
ultimately led to the destruction of the school. We'll get
into all of this and how it tied together after
a quick sponsor break. We know it's a little earlier
in the show than we normally do it, but coming
up as a bunch of stuff that we would like
(07:17):
to keep all together. One of the ways the New
London Consolidated School tried to save money was on its
natural gas bill, which originally was coming from Union Gas.
Cost of school about three dollars a month. In seven
(07:37):
the suggestion came in to cancel the contract with Union
Gas and instead tap into the nearby parade gasoline companies
casing head gas line. Casing head gas, also sometimes called
wet gas, is essentially natural gas that's brought up along
with the crude oil. It was considered to be a
waste product. Tapping into a casing head gas line to
(07:59):
get access to natural gas for free was actually a
relatively common practice for people living in areas that were
home to the oil and gas industry, and while it
wasn't particularly encouraged by the companies in question, in many
cases it was tacitly allowed. This to me is one
of the most bizarre parts of this story, that it
was just a completely common place, commonplace practice to tap
(08:22):
into a residue gas line as though you were stealing
cable like that's so strange to me. Sources contradict one
another about whether New London School did this with or
without Parade Gasoline Companies knowledge or permission. It was, however,
approved by the school superintendent William Chesley Shaw, and apparently
(08:46):
also the school board. So in January of seven, plumbers
tapped into Parade Gasoline Company's residue line and swapped it
out for the Natural Gas Companies line, replacing the natural
gas with this residue gas. According to testimony later given
it hearings that followed this explosion, Shaw said, quote, the
(09:06):
piping was not a secret at all. We went down
and made the connection. It was not buried deep or anything.
The United Gas Company knew it positively, We told them. Apparently,
when informed that the school was going to tap into
the Parade Gasoline Company line, United Gas Company did express
that there might be some danger involved. However, the school
(09:28):
board interpreted this concern as just trying to retain the
school's business and there's three a month in gas expenditures.
Adding to the school boards perception that this would be
perfectly safe was the fact that so many other people
were tapping into the residue line. This same thing was
being done in homes all over the area and everyone
was fine. Still baffling, this change from an official natural
(09:56):
gas supplier to tapping into a residue line to get
waste gas for was only part of the problem, though,
and the original building plan New London Consolidated School was
supposed to be heated by one central boiler. Instead, to
cut costs, the central boiler was replaced with a collection
of seventy two individual gas powered radiators, which was apparently,
(10:17):
uh kind of counterintuitively less expensive. Both the school board
and the contractor believed that these individual radiators would be safe,
but having this many individual radiators, all of them runoff
of gas, did offer far more opportunities for leaks to
develop in all the interior gas lines, and somewhere in
this system there was at least one leak. Since this gas,
(10:41):
in its natural state is colorless and odorless, no one
knew of the danger that was developing. Even when students
started a complain of headaches and burning eyes. No one
suspected that anything was wrong at the school. Spirits were
pretty high at New London School on March eighteenth, seven.
It was a mild early spring day and the next
(11:03):
day was supposed to be a holiday because there was
going to be a district wide academic and athletic competition
that would take place in Henderson, which is the county seat.
Sources very a little bit about exactly what time the
explosion happened, but it was less than fifteen minutes before
the end of the school day for the middle and
high school students. The elementary classes had already been dismissed
(11:25):
and most of the students from grades one to four
were already on their way home. Three seventeen pm is
cited a lot, but then there are other UH eyewitness
accounts and scheduling things that make it seem like closer
to UH three twenty or three fifteens. It's a little
bit hazy. Even though the source of the explosion is
(11:48):
difficult to conclusively pinpoint. There were survivors who were in
the school's machine shop that day that reported seeing sparks
fly from a sanding machine. When the teacher tr Butler
turned it on. It might have been this, It might
have been some other spark. Literally, any spark could have
set it off. But something ignited the gas that had
been silently accumulating in the school's lower levels. According to eyewitnesses,
(12:13):
the walls of the middle and high school building blew outward,
and the roof was literally lifted off the structure. When
it came back down, the parts of the building still
standing were crushed. People as far as forty miles away
reported feeling the blast, and the force was so great
that a two ton slab of concrete was thrown more
than two hundred feet, crushing a car that it landed on.
(12:36):
At least two hundred people were killed, most of them students,
and most of them instantly. Fourteen of those killed were
teachers are staff, and four were visitors to the campus,
and it's possible that that count is a little lower
than reality. The labor force and the oil fields tended
to be somewhat transitory, and records about who is where
(12:58):
weren't always complete. The adults at a PTA meeting that
was being held in the gymnasium heard and felt the
explosion and rushed to the scene to find the middle
and high school building leveled. Soon help began to pour
in from all around the area, particularly laborers from the
neighboring oil fields. Clearing the debris and looking for survivors
(13:20):
became an immediate and largely manual process. About fifteen hundred
oil workers manually removed building materials, forming a bucket brigade
style line to move peach baskets full of rubble and
smaller debris out of the field. Virtually every nearby building
became either a field hospital or a morgue. There were
(13:41):
not nearly enough horses or ambulances, so delivery trucks, pickup trucks,
and trucks that typically carried livestock had to be used
for the purpose. Stocks of bandages and medicines were depleted
at all of the area's pharmacies and doctors offices. A
new hospital that was scheduled to open the next day
in the neighboring town of Tyler had to open immediately
(14:02):
when words spread about the disaster. A radio station that
opens just the day before broadcast both calls for help
and offers of assistants. There were notes like ht Leverette
near Overton opens his home for any use whatsoever. To
the parents of three Alexander children. They are safe and
(14:22):
attention undertaker's Edgeworth Decorating company Longview has men and materials
ready to go to work on coffins. Soon the surrounding
roads were clogged with people trying to come into help
and trying to transport injured students and teachers to safety,
so much so that it became a total log jam.
Governor James already declared martial law, which remained in effect
(14:45):
until March. He sent in the Texas Rangers and the
Highway Patrol to steer traffic and coordinate the efforts. Soon
they were joined by the National Guard, the Red Cross,
the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, and many other organizations.
A group of about thirty doctors and one nurses traveled
in from Dallas to help. As the sun set and
(15:07):
it started to rain, rescuers set up floodlights and they
continued to work through the night. Seventeen hours after the
initial explosion, the rubble and the victims had all been removed,
but because there were so many fatalities spread out among
so many locations, it took a lot of families days
to find their children and loved ones. There's also Texas
(15:28):
Monthly did an article on one of the more recent
milestone anniversaries where they talked to a lot of survivors,
and a lot of the eyewitness accounts are horrifyingly grizzly.
We're not going to repeat all of that here, but
that article will be in the show notes for folks
who are interested. Because of the nature of the blast
(15:49):
and the injuries, making accurate identifications was also incredibly difficult.
Parents match swatches of fabric from clothes that they've made
for their children, or notice detail is like fingernails that
had been colored on with crayon. There are also definitely
cases of mistaken identity and people who were mistakenly reported
(16:09):
as either safe or killed that turned out later not
to be true. The whole uh, the whole thing was
incredibly difficult and later became one of the one of
the incidents that people used as um support for the
idea that all children should be fingerprinted and have their
fingerprints stored with law enforcement in case something horrible like
(16:32):
this happens. This disaster quickly became a national news story.
Walter Cronkite, who was then only twenty two covered it
as his first major assignment for United Press International, later
saying quote, I did nothing in my studies nor in
my life to prepare me for a story of the
magnitude of that New London tragedy, Nor has any sort
(16:55):
of any story since that awful day equaled it. Reporter
Felix Night, who was twenty six of Dallas, began his
first report Today, a generation died. We'll talk about the
aftermath of this explosion, uh, and some of them reforms
that it led to you after another quick sponsor break.
(17:21):
A lot of the same laborers who had helped remove
debris after the New London school explosion also dug graves
for the victims. There were no mass burials, but there
were so many funerals to conduct that a lot of
them were held in groups, some of them as many
as twelve funerals at one time. Most of the victims,
although definitely not all, were buried at nearby Pleasant Hill Cemetery.
(17:46):
Texas Funeral Director sent twenty five embalmers to New London
to help with the preparations. Parents and teachers at other
schools in the area and in the rest of the
nation were terrified that something similar can happen anywhere that
natural gas was being used as fuel. Official scrambled to
test for leaks and drop safety plans. An inquiry began
(18:10):
almost immediately and it ran for three days, and although
it ruled that the school board and superintendent had not
exercised good judgment, the report to the governor was that
it did not warrant prosecution. Superintendent Shot testified that he
was quote partially responsible for the decision to tap into
the residue gas line. On the stand he was obviously
(18:33):
both guilt stricken and grief stricken because both his son
and his niece had died and the explosion that had
also killed so so many other people. A professor of
chemical engineering at the University of Texas gave expert testimony
that the culprit was gas that had pooled under the
floor of the school's lower level. That replaced an earlier
(18:56):
theory that it had seeped into hollow walls and kind
of collect did there. Gordon C. Holly of the State
Fire Insurance Company testified that regulatory measures were needed to
prevent a similar to a tragedy from occurring in the future,
including better boiler safety codes and better building exit codes.
(19:17):
He also recommended adding a malodorant to gas lines, which
would have made it obvious that gas was leaking into
the building. He was quoted as saying, I don't want
to appear heroic, but we've got to do something about this.
The Texas state legislature convened an emergency session to draft
legislation to require inspections of gas connections and the addition
(19:41):
of a recognizable odor to gas supplies. Other states followed,
and the federal law. More than seventy lawsuits were filed
in the aftermath of the explosion, although few of them
ever actually got to trial and none of them ended
with any sort of pay out or conviction. They were
actually ca calls to Lynch Superintendent Shaw over his role
(20:03):
in this disaster. He wound up a media uh. He
wound up eventually resigning and moving out of the area.
Only about one thirty students who were in the building
at the time escaped without serious injury. Classes resumed ten
days later in portable and temporary structures and in the
undamaged parts of campus. So many people had been killed
(20:26):
that some students only learned that people they knew had
died during roll call, but prom and commencement did take
place as planned that spring. In nine, a memorial monument
was unveiled near the side of the explosion. It's a cenotaph,
which is a tomb like structure that doesn't contain actual remains,
(20:46):
carved from a block of Texas granite on two massive pillars.
The upper portion bears a life size relief carving of
students and teachers. A museum was also founded in a
former soda shop across the street from the monument. In
For decades, the explosion was little talked about in New
London until the reunion was held in ninety seven. Then,
(21:10):
many of those who had survived as children talked about
being beset with guilt over having lived. Some described receiving
death threats from the grief stricken parents of friends who
had died. It was obvious that the entire community was
just absolutely, unsurprisingly, completely devastated. Compounding this grief and guilt
(21:32):
was the fact that the PTA meeting that had been
held in the school's gymnasium was normally held in the auditorium,
and when it was held in the auditorium, school was
dismissed early to accommodate it, and if that had been
the case, it would have been a completely different tragedy,
with most of the students spared, but many of their
teachers and parents being killed when the auditorium was destroyed. Today,
(21:56):
mercaptain is used in natural gas in the United States,
which is harm us, but it gives it a noticeable
and unpleasant odor. Yeah. The idea of adding a bad
smelling substance to natural gas existed prior to this, but
it was not widely adopted in the United States. But
after this tragedy, which was obviously horrific. UM, even even
(22:20):
though it's sort of it in a lot of ways,
disappeared from the national the national consciousness in the decades
that have passed since then. UH. In a lot of places, UM,
it had immediate change in the requirement for UH natural
gas to be something that you could easily smell, so
you could tell if there was a leak, so that
it wouldn't so that this exact thing would not happen again.
(22:45):
One of the pieces that I read about this kind
of tried to theorize about why something that was such
a huge national news story at the time. UM. Today
a lot of people have never heard of a part
from the many many people who emailed us UH to
suggest that we do this as an episode, and one
of the theories was that it was not long before
(23:08):
um the Hindenburg disaster. So perhaps the Hindenburg combined with
the fact that so many people who survived or who
parents who have lost their children were just so reluctant
to talk about it for so many years after it
actually happened. Before we move into some listener mail, it
(23:32):
is still March. Yeah, we're gonna talk a little bit
about podcasts. Obviously you like podcasts. If you're listening to ours,
maybe this is your first podcast you've ever listened to.
You're still trying to decide if it's for you. But
during March, podcasts are recommending other podcasts, and you can
get on this too with the hashtag tripod t r
(23:52):
y p o D. If you go to Twitter search
for that, you will find folks talking about the podcast
that they recommend. One of my favorite podcasts has nothing
to do. This has nothing to do with history at all.
Most of the time it is Judge John Hodgeman and
which people bring their disputes to the Court of Fake
Internet Justice. And John Hodgeman rules in one of the
(24:15):
party's favors uh on on the subject of their dispute.
Some of the favorites from way way back in the
day are whether a machine gun is a robot um,
whether someone can have a sadness tree in their home.
During the season of Advent, one of the more recent
ones was whether this guy's really nasty old bathrobe he
(24:36):
had had for for so long was something he could
continue to having wear or whether he needed to get
a new one. So a lot of these seem like
very ordinary, maybe even petty disputes among people, but a
lot of times the discussion turns out to be very
funny and very insightful into being a human being on earth.
And the same is true for the judgments that come
(24:59):
at the end. They often are also um very thoughtful
and pliant. I like listening to it a whole lot,
So a tripod hashtag tripod for lots of podcast recommendations
this month. Do you also have some listener mail? Do you?
This is another listener mail about Ed Roberts and it's
(25:21):
from Nellie and Nellie says, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I've
been listening to your podcast for almost a year and
I am so glad I found you two. You make
my commute to work so much more enjoyable, and I
love the range and inclusivity of your topics. I want
to thank you from the bottom of my heart for
your wonderful podcast on Ed Roberts. I worked at a
Center for Independent Living for two years and I was
planning to email you suggest him as a podcast subject
(25:43):
on his birthday. I was pleasantly surprised to see on
your Facebook page that it was already in the works.
While working at the Center for Independent Living, I was
a coordinator for our youth program. Our main goal was
to help young people with disabilities transition from high school
to college, work, or independent living in the community. Part
of my job involved going into local high school special
education classes as a guest speaker to talk about the
(26:06):
history of disability rights in America. We always told the
story of Ed Roberts, as many of the challenges he
faced as a transitioning young adult are things that my
students and clients were also facing, such as obtaining accommodations
for school or figuring out how to live independently from
their parents. It always amazed me how these students with
disabilities knew little to nothing about the history of disability rights. Often,
(26:29):
when we started our lesson, we would ask students who
has heard of the civil rights movement? Who has heard
of the women's rights movement? Ultimately everyone would raise their
hand once we said who has heard of the disability
rights movement? Almost no one er to raise their hand.
A colleague of mine pointed out to the class once
that if they open their history books, it's very unlikely
that this history or Ed roberts story would ever be
(26:50):
included in its text. Ed Roberts, his legacy in the
work of countless other disability rights advocates, are truly missed
in history class all the time. It's especially detrimental for
all of young people with disabilities who are missing out
on an empowering part of their own history. I wanted
to share a fun story about Ed, which you may
have come across and your research. You mentioned that he
was in the hospital. The doctor had told Ed's mother
(27:12):
that she should hope that he would die, as he
would be quote no more than a vegetable. Years later,
Ed's response was this, I decided to be an arctic choke,
a little prickly on the outside, but with a big
heart on the inside. You know, the vegetables of the
world are uniting and we're not going away once again.
Thank you for your podcasts and more importantly, for making
sure the voices of the disability rights movement are being heard.
(27:34):
Best wishes, Nellie. Thank you so much Nellie for this note.
I love the many emails that we have gotten about
Ed Roberts, and I also wanted to say we have
not read any of these yet, uh, and I'm not
quite sure whether we will because a lot of them
are quite personal. We have also had a lot of
people right in UM with stories about their families related
(27:55):
to our episodes on the Japanese American internments during World
War Two. After Executive Order, We've had a lot of
people who have sent in family stories and pictures, UM,
and just all kinds of things. A lot of them
have been very lovely, and I just wanted to thank
everyone who has taken the time to do that UM.
(28:16):
As I said, a lot of the stories are very personal,
and it's clear that even within their families they have
not been talked about a whole lot. Uh, So thank
you so much for sharing those things with us. I actually,
when you were discussing how UM today's topic kind of
fell aside in terms of historical record. I thought about
(28:36):
some of the things that came up when we were
doing the Executive Order ninety six six episode, because in
many cases, so many of those families just did not
want to talk about it. They kind of, you know,
pushed that aside and buried it a little bit. And
I have to presume there's some similar psychology in the
mix there. Yeah, Well, it's uh yours and my father's
(28:59):
uh BO have military service experiences that they have not
really talked to us about, and like I, I have
not really asked my dad. It's the sort of a
thing that we have not, uh had had much conversation about.
And I part of me wonders, Uh, next time I
go home, should I take this heap recorder and we'll
(29:19):
talk about Vietnam? And then part of me is like,
I don't know if I want to pry with that
because I know that was such a difficult time for
so many people. So thank you again for all the
folks that have shared so many personal stories with us.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast where a history podcast At how
stuff works dot com, we're also on Facebook at Facebook
dot com slash miss in history, and on Twitter at
(29:41):
miss in history. Our tumbler is missed in History dot
tumbler dot com, or on Pinterest at pinterest dot com
slash miss in history, and on Instagram at miss in history.
You can come to our parent company's website, which is
how stuff works dot com. You'll find all kinds of
stuff about petroleum and oil and gas and all the
types of fuel that we talked about today. Income to
our website, which is missed in history dot com, where
(30:02):
you will find an archive all the episodes Holly and
I have ever done. You will find show notes for
the episodes that we have done, and those show notes
uh starting basically now ish are are now combined with
episode pages, so you don't have to look in two
different places to find out what sources we talked about.
So you can do all that and a whole lot
(30:22):
more at how stuff works dot com or missed in
history dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Before we
jump into today's show, we will announce one more quick
time because I think this is the last, our last
(00:22):
opportunity to do it. Holly and I will be at
Salt Lake Comic Con fan X once again March seventeenth
and eighteen. We will be doing some appearances both of
those days, so if you were in the area, that
is coming right up. Uh. And today's podcast is when
we've gotten a lot of requests for including from Laura
(00:42):
mar Doug John, Katrina Alyssa, Amy, Nicole Page, Jana Casey,
Randy and Adrian. Those are just the ones that came
in via email since because in our email address changed
and now we have also moved on to a different
email play for platforms, so like trying to look for
(01:03):
old stuff is really hard. Uh. It is the New
London school explosion which happened on March eighteenth, nineteen thirty seven,
so it's anniversary is coming up. So if you're wondering,
how can I get the topic that so many people
have requested moved to the top of the pile. The
answer is, have it have a milestone anniversary coming up?
(01:25):
That seems to be the trans lately. Uh. This was
one of the worst disasters in Texas history. It was
the worst school disaster in the United States history. It
was a horrific tragedy that stemmed from a number of
small decisions and moments, and changing any of them would
have prevented or mitigated the whole thing, or in some
cases changed it to a way that was also bad
(01:48):
and maybe even worse. Uh. We we recently did a
show on on the UM the Temple bombing in Atlanta,
and we offered some reassurance at the beginning that that
seems like from the title that s it's going to
be a dreadfully tragic show. We cannot offer that reassurance today. Yeah,
in that case, the show sounded really terrible and in
(02:09):
the end was really quite a positive message and there
was not a lot of of even though there was
a bombing involved, there was not. Uh, there were no
fatalities or casualties of any kind. You're not in for
the same kind of happy ending on this one school explosion.
It's as bad as you think yeah. So. For background,
New London is in Rusk County in East Texas, and
(02:32):
it was originally known as Just London from eighteen fifty
five until about nineteen thirty. It's primary industry was agriculture,
with the two largest crops being corn and cotton, followed
by a variety of food crops. The Civil War had
devastated this industry, which had relied heavily on enslaved labor
in the area's economy had only really started to recover
(02:53):
after the turn of the twentieth century, but even then
the turnaround had continued to be quite slow, and that
slow recovery, of course, started to falter with the onset
of the Great Depression. But in the autumn of nineteen thirty,
Columbus Marion Joyner struck oil in Rust County at Discovery
Well Daisy Bradford Number three. Other discoveries of oil soon followed,
(03:16):
which quickly proved to all be part of the East
Texas Oil Field, which was at the time the largest
known oil field in the United States. There were a
lot of things about Joiners business practices and his mineral
rights schemes that were incredibly shady. He was what's known
as a wildcatter. He drilled oil wells in places that
(03:36):
oil wasn't known to be in the hopes that he
would just luck out and find some. His method was
described as being made out of quote, faith, and cuss words,
and he wasn't above taking advantage of other people's equipment
and labor to get the job done. In spite of
making a fortune in oil, by the time he died
in seven he was nearly penniless. Regardless of all of that,
(03:58):
his discovery earned him the nickname Dad as the father
of the nation's then largest oil field. Joiner's discovery of
oil meant that London became a boom town seemingly overnight.
It went from a struggling rural area to one that
was still rural but also incredibly wealthy. Oil wells popped
up everywhere, along with refineries, many of them tiny, so
(04:21):
called teapot refineries that essentially processed the oil in the
field rather than shipping the crude oil to a larger
facility to be refined. People swarmed into the area looking
for work in the rapidly growing oil and gas industries.
Within a couple of years, Rusk Counties population more than
doubled to sixty people, and many of the area's property
(04:42):
owners became rich when it became clear that there was
oil under their land, and there was some strife between
the longtime residents and the newcomers, with the locals viewing
the people moving to the area for oil jobs as
a bad crowd, particularly the ones whose time in town
was just temporarily. This influx of money and people meant
that a wave of new construction swept through through the
(05:05):
town as well. People built new homes, churches, and businesses.
Within a year, a new post office was established, and
that's actually what necessitated the name changed to New London,
since it turned out there was already a London post
office and operation in Kimball County, also in Texas. Obviously.
Humble Oil and Refining Company also moved its district headquarters
(05:27):
to New London, relocating about a hundred families to the area,
and in ninety four New London finished a newly expanded
school which had come with a price tag of about
a million dollars. This was an expansive, twenty one acre
campus which consolidated and absorbed the student populations of other
schools in the area. It had an elementary building for
(05:49):
grades one through four, and a combined junior senior high
school building that went from grades five to eleven. The
two classroom buildings were about a block apart, and for
all grades combined, the school had a capacity of about
twelve hundred students. The new campus also had a large auditorium,
a workshop, a separate gymnasium, and the state's first school
(06:11):
football stadium that was equipped with electric lights. In addition
to the building itself, the Surgeon wealth in New London
had brought in better pay for the teachers, new instruments
for the music classes, and new books and equipment. By seven,
the school's taxable value had soared to roughly twenty million dollars,
in part because of the functional oil wells on the
(06:33):
school's property. There were more than ten of them, which
brought even more revenue to the school, and it became
one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest school district
in the United States. Even though it was so wealthy,
the school was also looking for ways to save money
both during its construction and during its operation, and a
combination of money saving efforts would ultimately lead to the
(06:56):
school's destruction. Also, there's the irony that all this wealth
was coming from oil, and a byproduct of that oil
ultimately led to the destruction of the school. We'll get
into all of this and how it tied together after
a quick sponsor break. We know it's a little earlier
in the show than we normally do it, but coming
up as a bunch of stuff that we would like
(07:17):
to keep all together. One of the ways the New
London Consolidated School tried to save money was on its
natural gas bill, which originally was coming from Union Gas.
Cost of school about three dollars a month. In seven
(07:37):
the suggestion came in to cancel the contract with Union
Gas and instead tap into the nearby parade gasoline companies
casing head gas line. Casing head gas, also sometimes called
wet gas, is essentially natural gas that's brought up along
with the crude oil. It was considered to be a
waste product. Tapping into a casing head gas line to
(07:59):
get access to natural gas for free was actually a
relatively common practice for people living in areas that were
home to the oil and gas industry, and while it
wasn't particularly encouraged by the companies in question, in many
cases it was tacitly allowed. This to me is one
of the most bizarre parts of this story, that it
was just a completely common place, commonplace practice to tap
(08:22):
into a residue gas line as though you were stealing
cable like that's so strange to me. Sources contradict one
another about whether New London School did this with or
without Parade Gasoline Companies knowledge or permission. It was, however,
approved by the school superintendent William Chesley Shaw, and apparently
(08:46):
also the school board. So in January of seven, plumbers
tapped into Parade Gasoline Company's residue line and swapped it
out for the Natural Gas Companies line, replacing the natural
gas with this residue gas. According to testimony later given
it hearings that followed this explosion, Shaw said, quote, the
(09:06):
piping was not a secret at all. We went down
and made the connection. It was not buried deep or anything.
The United Gas Company knew it positively, We told them. Apparently,
when informed that the school was going to tap into
the Parade Gasoline Company line, United Gas Company did express
that there might be some danger involved. However, the school
(09:28):
board interpreted this concern as just trying to retain the
school's business and there's three a month in gas expenditures.
Adding to the school boards perception that this would be
perfectly safe was the fact that so many other people
were tapping into the residue line. This same thing was
being done in homes all over the area and everyone
was fine. Still baffling, this change from an official natural
(09:56):
gas supplier to tapping into a residue line to get
waste gas for was only part of the problem, though,
and the original building plan New London Consolidated School was
supposed to be heated by one central boiler. Instead, to
cut costs, the central boiler was replaced with a collection
of seventy two individual gas powered radiators, which was apparently,
(10:17):
uh kind of counterintuitively less expensive. Both the school board
and the contractor believed that these individual radiators would be safe,
but having this many individual radiators, all of them runoff
of gas, did offer far more opportunities for leaks to
develop in all the interior gas lines, and somewhere in
this system there was at least one leak. Since this gas,
(10:41):
in its natural state is colorless and odorless, no one
knew of the danger that was developing. Even when students
started a complain of headaches and burning eyes. No one
suspected that anything was wrong at the school. Spirits were
pretty high at New London School on March eighteenth, seven.
It was a mild early spring day and the next
(11:03):
day was supposed to be a holiday because there was
going to be a district wide academic and athletic competition
that would take place in Henderson, which is the county seat.
Sources very a little bit about exactly what time the
explosion happened, but it was less than fifteen minutes before
the end of the school day for the middle and
high school students. The elementary classes had already been dismissed
(11:25):
and most of the students from grades one to four
were already on their way home. Three seventeen pm is
cited a lot, but then there are other UH eyewitness
accounts and scheduling things that make it seem like closer
to UH three twenty or three fifteens. It's a little
bit hazy. Even though the source of the explosion is
(11:48):
difficult to conclusively pinpoint. There were survivors who were in
the school's machine shop that day that reported seeing sparks
fly from a sanding machine. When the teacher tr Butler
turned it on. It might have been this, It might
have been some other spark. Literally, any spark could have
set it off. But something ignited the gas that had
been silently accumulating in the school's lower levels. According to eyewitnesses,
(12:13):
the walls of the middle and high school building blew outward,
and the roof was literally lifted off the structure. When
it came back down, the parts of the building still
standing were crushed. People as far as forty miles away
reported feeling the blast, and the force was so great
that a two ton slab of concrete was thrown more
than two hundred feet, crushing a car that it landed on.
(12:36):
At least two hundred people were killed, most of them students,
and most of them instantly. Fourteen of those killed were
teachers are staff, and four were visitors to the campus,
and it's possible that that count is a little lower
than reality. The labor force and the oil fields tended
to be somewhat transitory, and records about who is where
(12:58):
weren't always complete. The adults at a PTA meeting that
was being held in the gymnasium heard and felt the
explosion and rushed to the scene to find the middle
and high school building leveled. Soon help began to pour
in from all around the area, particularly laborers from the
neighboring oil fields. Clearing the debris and looking for survivors
(13:20):
became an immediate and largely manual process. About fifteen hundred
oil workers manually removed building materials, forming a bucket brigade
style line to move peach baskets full of rubble and
smaller debris out of the field. Virtually every nearby building
became either a field hospital or a morgue. There were
(13:41):
not nearly enough horses or ambulances, so delivery trucks, pickup trucks,
and trucks that typically carried livestock had to be used
for the purpose. Stocks of bandages and medicines were depleted
at all of the area's pharmacies and doctors offices. A
new hospital that was scheduled to open the next day
in the neighboring town of Tyler had to open immediately
(14:02):
when words spread about the disaster. A radio station that
opens just the day before broadcast both calls for help
and offers of assistants. There were notes like ht Leverette
near Overton opens his home for any use whatsoever. To
the parents of three Alexander children. They are safe and
(14:22):
attention undertaker's Edgeworth Decorating company Longview has men and materials
ready to go to work on coffins. Soon the surrounding
roads were clogged with people trying to come into help
and trying to transport injured students and teachers to safety,
so much so that it became a total log jam.
Governor James already declared martial law, which remained in effect
(14:45):
until March. He sent in the Texas Rangers and the
Highway Patrol to steer traffic and coordinate the efforts. Soon
they were joined by the National Guard, the Red Cross,
the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, and many other organizations.
A group of about thirty doctors and one nurses traveled
in from Dallas to help. As the sun set and
(15:07):
it started to rain, rescuers set up floodlights and they
continued to work through the night. Seventeen hours after the
initial explosion, the rubble and the victims had all been removed,
but because there were so many fatalities spread out among
so many locations, it took a lot of families days
to find their children and loved ones. There's also Texas
(15:28):
Monthly did an article on one of the more recent
milestone anniversaries where they talked to a lot of survivors,
and a lot of the eyewitness accounts are horrifyingly grizzly.
We're not going to repeat all of that here, but
that article will be in the show notes for folks
who are interested. Because of the nature of the blast
(15:49):
and the injuries, making accurate identifications was also incredibly difficult.
Parents match swatches of fabric from clothes that they've made
for their children, or notice detail is like fingernails that
had been colored on with crayon. There are also definitely
cases of mistaken identity and people who were mistakenly reported
(16:09):
as either safe or killed that turned out later not
to be true. The whole uh, the whole thing was
incredibly difficult and later became one of the one of
the incidents that people used as um support for the
idea that all children should be fingerprinted and have their
fingerprints stored with law enforcement in case something horrible like
(16:32):
this happens. This disaster quickly became a national news story.
Walter Cronkite, who was then only twenty two covered it
as his first major assignment for United Press International, later
saying quote, I did nothing in my studies nor in
my life to prepare me for a story of the
magnitude of that New London tragedy, Nor has any sort
(16:55):
of any story since that awful day equaled it. Reporter
Felix Night, who was twenty six of Dallas, began his
first report Today, a generation died. We'll talk about the
aftermath of this explosion, uh, and some of them reforms
that it led to you after another quick sponsor break.
(17:21):
A lot of the same laborers who had helped remove
debris after the New London school explosion also dug graves
for the victims. There were no mass burials, but there
were so many funerals to conduct that a lot of
them were held in groups, some of them as many
as twelve funerals at one time. Most of the victims,
although definitely not all, were buried at nearby Pleasant Hill Cemetery.
(17:46):
Texas Funeral Director sent twenty five embalmers to New London
to help with the preparations. Parents and teachers at other
schools in the area and in the rest of the
nation were terrified that something similar can happen anywhere that
natural gas was being used as fuel. Official scrambled to
test for leaks and drop safety plans. An inquiry began
(18:10):
almost immediately and it ran for three days, and although
it ruled that the school board and superintendent had not
exercised good judgment, the report to the governor was that
it did not warrant prosecution. Superintendent Shot testified that he
was quote partially responsible for the decision to tap into
the residue gas line. On the stand he was obviously
(18:33):
both guilt stricken and grief stricken because both his son
and his niece had died and the explosion that had
also killed so so many other people. A professor of
chemical engineering at the University of Texas gave expert testimony
that the culprit was gas that had pooled under the
floor of the school's lower level. That replaced an earlier
(18:56):
theory that it had seeped into hollow walls and kind
of collect did there. Gordon C. Holly of the State
Fire Insurance Company testified that regulatory measures were needed to
prevent a similar to a tragedy from occurring in the future,
including better boiler safety codes and better building exit codes.
(19:17):
He also recommended adding a malodorant to gas lines, which
would have made it obvious that gas was leaking into
the building. He was quoted as saying, I don't want
to appear heroic, but we've got to do something about this.
The Texas state legislature convened an emergency session to draft
legislation to require inspections of gas connections and the addition
(19:41):
of a recognizable odor to gas supplies. Other states followed,
and the federal law. More than seventy lawsuits were filed
in the aftermath of the explosion, although few of them
ever actually got to trial and none of them ended
with any sort of pay out or conviction. They were
actually ca calls to Lynch Superintendent Shaw over his role
(20:03):
in this disaster. He wound up a media uh. He
wound up eventually resigning and moving out of the area.
Only about one thirty students who were in the building
at the time escaped without serious injury. Classes resumed ten
days later in portable and temporary structures and in the
undamaged parts of campus. So many people had been killed
(20:26):
that some students only learned that people they knew had
died during roll call, but prom and commencement did take
place as planned that spring. In nine, a memorial monument
was unveiled near the side of the explosion. It's a cenotaph,
which is a tomb like structure that doesn't contain actual remains,
(20:46):
carved from a block of Texas granite on two massive pillars.
The upper portion bears a life size relief carving of
students and teachers. A museum was also founded in a
former soda shop across the street from the monument. In
For decades, the explosion was little talked about in New
London until the reunion was held in ninety seven. Then,
(21:10):
many of those who had survived as children talked about
being beset with guilt over having lived. Some described receiving
death threats from the grief stricken parents of friends who
had died. It was obvious that the entire community was
just absolutely, unsurprisingly, completely devastated. Compounding this grief and guilt
(21:32):
was the fact that the PTA meeting that had been
held in the school's gymnasium was normally held in the auditorium,
and when it was held in the auditorium, school was
dismissed early to accommodate it, and if that had been
the case, it would have been a completely different tragedy,
with most of the students spared, but many of their
teachers and parents being killed when the auditorium was destroyed. Today,
(21:56):
mercaptain is used in natural gas in the United States,
which is harm us, but it gives it a noticeable
and unpleasant odor. Yeah. The idea of adding a bad
smelling substance to natural gas existed prior to this, but
it was not widely adopted in the United States. But
after this tragedy, which was obviously horrific. UM, even even
(22:20):
though it's sort of it in a lot of ways,
disappeared from the national the national consciousness in the decades
that have passed since then. UH. In a lot of places, UM,
it had immediate change in the requirement for UH natural
gas to be something that you could easily smell, so
you could tell if there was a leak, so that
it wouldn't so that this exact thing would not happen again.
(22:45):
One of the pieces that I read about this kind
of tried to theorize about why something that was such
a huge national news story at the time. UM. Today
a lot of people have never heard of a part
from the many many people who emailed us UH to
suggest that we do this as an episode, and one
of the theories was that it was not long before
(23:08):
um the Hindenburg disaster. So perhaps the Hindenburg combined with
the fact that so many people who survived or who
parents who have lost their children were just so reluctant
to talk about it for so many years after it
actually happened. Before we move into some listener mail, it
(23:32):
is still March. Yeah, we're gonna talk a little bit
about podcasts. Obviously you like podcasts. If you're listening to ours,
maybe this is your first podcast you've ever listened to.
You're still trying to decide if it's for you. But
during March, podcasts are recommending other podcasts, and you can
get on this too with the hashtag tripod t r
(23:52):
y p o D. If you go to Twitter search
for that, you will find folks talking about the podcast
that they recommend. One of my favorite podcasts has nothing
to do. This has nothing to do with history at all.
Most of the time it is Judge John Hodgeman and
which people bring their disputes to the Court of Fake
Internet Justice. And John Hodgeman rules in one of the
(24:15):
party's favors uh on on the subject of their dispute.
Some of the favorites from way way back in the
day are whether a machine gun is a robot um,
whether someone can have a sadness tree in their home.
During the season of Advent, one of the more recent
ones was whether this guy's really nasty old bathrobe he
(24:36):
had had for for so long was something he could
continue to having wear or whether he needed to get
a new one. So a lot of these seem like
very ordinary, maybe even petty disputes among people, but a
lot of times the discussion turns out to be very
funny and very insightful into being a human being on earth.
And the same is true for the judgments that come
(24:59):
at the end. They often are also um very thoughtful
and pliant. I like listening to it a whole lot,
So a tripod hashtag tripod for lots of podcast recommendations
this month. Do you also have some listener mail? Do you?
This is another listener mail about Ed Roberts and it's
(25:21):
from Nellie and Nellie says, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I've
been listening to your podcast for almost a year and
I am so glad I found you two. You make
my commute to work so much more enjoyable, and I
love the range and inclusivity of your topics. I want
to thank you from the bottom of my heart for
your wonderful podcast on Ed Roberts. I worked at a
Center for Independent Living for two years and I was
planning to email you suggest him as a podcast subject
(25:43):
on his birthday. I was pleasantly surprised to see on
your Facebook page that it was already in the works.
While working at the Center for Independent Living, I was
a coordinator for our youth program. Our main goal was
to help young people with disabilities transition from high school
to college, work, or independent living in the community. Part
of my job involved going into local high school special
education classes as a guest speaker to talk about the
(26:06):
history of disability rights in America. We always told the
story of Ed Roberts, as many of the challenges he
faced as a transitioning young adult are things that my
students and clients were also facing, such as obtaining accommodations
for school or figuring out how to live independently from
their parents. It always amazed me how these students with
disabilities knew little to nothing about the history of disability rights. Often,
(26:29):
when we started our lesson, we would ask students who
has heard of the civil rights movement? Who has heard
of the women's rights movement? Ultimately everyone would raise their
hand once we said who has heard of the disability
rights movement? Almost no one er to raise their hand.
A colleague of mine pointed out to the class once
that if they open their history books, it's very unlikely
that this history or Ed roberts story would ever be
(26:50):
included in its text. Ed Roberts, his legacy in the
work of countless other disability rights advocates, are truly missed
in history class all the time. It's especially detrimental for
all of young people with disabilities who are missing out
on an empowering part of their own history. I wanted
to share a fun story about Ed, which you may
have come across and your research. You mentioned that he
was in the hospital. The doctor had told Ed's mother
(27:12):
that she should hope that he would die, as he
would be quote no more than a vegetable. Years later,
Ed's response was this, I decided to be an arctic choke,
a little prickly on the outside, but with a big
heart on the inside. You know, the vegetables of the
world are uniting and we're not going away once again.
Thank you for your podcasts and more importantly, for making
sure the voices of the disability rights movement are being heard.
(27:34):
Best wishes, Nellie. Thank you so much Nellie for this note.
I love the many emails that we have gotten about
Ed Roberts, and I also wanted to say we have
not read any of these yet, uh, and I'm not
quite sure whether we will because a lot of them
are quite personal. We have also had a lot of
people right in UM with stories about their families related
(27:55):
to our episodes on the Japanese American internments during World
War Two. After Executive Order, We've had a lot of
people who have sent in family stories and pictures, UM,
and just all kinds of things. A lot of them
have been very lovely, and I just wanted to thank
everyone who has taken the time to do that UM.
(28:16):
As I said, a lot of the stories are very personal,
and it's clear that even within their families they have
not been talked about a whole lot. Uh, So thank
you so much for sharing those things with us. I actually,
when you were discussing how UM today's topic kind of
fell aside in terms of historical record. I thought about
(28:36):
some of the things that came up when we were
doing the Executive Order ninety six six episode, because in
many cases, so many of those families just did not
want to talk about it. They kind of, you know,
pushed that aside and buried it a little bit. And
I have to presume there's some similar psychology in the
mix there. Yeah, Well, it's uh yours and my father's
(28:59):
uh BO have military service experiences that they have not
really talked to us about, and like I, I have
not really asked my dad. It's the sort of a
thing that we have not, uh had had much conversation about.
And I part of me wonders, Uh, next time I
go home, should I take this heap recorder and we'll
(29:19):
talk about Vietnam? And then part of me is like,
I don't know if I want to pry with that
because I know that was such a difficult time for
so many people. So thank you again for all the
folks that have shared so many personal stories with us.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast where a history podcast At how
stuff works dot com, we're also on Facebook at Facebook
dot com slash miss in history, and on Twitter at
(29:41):
miss in history. Our tumbler is missed in History dot
tumbler dot com, or on Pinterest at pinterest dot com
slash miss in history, and on Instagram at miss in history.
You can come to our parent company's website, which is
how stuff works dot com. You'll find all kinds of
stuff about petroleum and oil and gas and all the
types of fuel that we talked about today. Income to
our website, which is missed in history dot com, where
(30:02):
you will find an archive all the episodes Holly and
I have ever done. You will find show notes for
the episodes that we have done, and those show notes
uh starting basically now ish are are now combined with
episode pages, so you don't have to look in two
different places to find out what sources we talked about.
So you can do all that and a whole lot
(30:22):
more at how stuff works dot com or missed in
history dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.