| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Abercrombie, Clotiele B.
Abercrombie, Loyd D. Sr.
Abercrombie, Virgie Blalock
Armstrong, John
Bain, Pamela
Bento, Lola
Box, Dorothy Womack
Campbell, Lu
Holbert, Pearl Shaw
Challis, James E. "Ike"
Cole, Beaver
Coleman, Howard
Cronkite, Walter
Degnan, Julie E.
Duch, Greg
Erikson, Charles Henry
Ezell, Alta Reigh
Farrell, Hal
Gregory, Doug
Grenley, Martha Rogers
Grigg, Horace
Grigg, William N.
Hannon, Bill
Harris, Howard
Johnson, Joe and Bobby
Kronjaeger, Jim
Lester, George
Lester, George - Playmates
Lummus, Darlene
Lummus, Don
Martinez, Nelma Cummins
Mayhew, Bessie
McAllister, Mark
Meissner, J. Raymond
Moody, Mildred
Motley, Pete
Nelson, Ron
Plant, Sally
Platton, Mike
Read, Osceola Jefferson
Robertson, William Judson
Robinson, Jimmie Jordan
Mack Thornton Rogers
Ryan, Terri Jo
Seacrist, Debra
Shaw, Marjorie
Stanley, Glenda G.
Taylor, Bob
Taylor, Jim
Thompson, Bill
Vail, Mary Lechtenberg
Vento, Eduardo
Vinson, Allen Earl
Vinson, Melvin
Williams, William B. |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
O. J. Read Received from his great
granddaughter, Linda Tiedt |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
My two cousins (their names are Florence Cruise
and Carol Nelson) found this in their dad's "sea
chest" when they were going through the house.
This was passed down from my great grandfather
who was one of those on the scene to rescue and
perform services.
My great grandfather wrote this to their dad
(his son). Written by O.J. Read to Bill Read. |
|
| |
Click On Photo To Enlarge |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
I am attaching a transcript of my father's
account of the New London School explosion. My
father 84 and is living in Groveton, Texas.
Barbara Robertson Hardison
[The following transcript is exactly as we
received it. The words and phrasings are those
of a man who lived through this terrible event
in our history, and is sharing his
recollections.]
Mary Etta and I, we married in February and we
moved to a place there called the Hale Farm. It
had one well and a three-room house. We didn’t
have a car and hadn’t been there very long, and
we didn’t know anything about the surrounding
country. I was sitting there one day reading a
magazine, and I heard an explosion. It scared
me, and I jumped up and run to the back door.
There two 500 barrel tanks behind our house
there, and I thought one of them had blown up,
but it hadn’t. I run back, and up in the air was
a lot of dust. This dust was coming from an
explosion at the school. It was over behind some
pine trees, about ¾ of a mile, and I didn’t know
there was even a school there. It was one of the
richest schools in that part of the country,
because they had oil land of their own. This
school had blown up because it was made with
hollow bricks, and the Superintendent and the
janitor cut off the Lone Star Gas Company’s
gas and hooked onto a line they called a "drift
line." This just went through the field picking
up old gas and flaring it up at the Parade
Refinery.
They left a leak in a union where it went
through the wall, and several days the kids had
been talking about having headaches. They
complained about it and nobody paid much
attention to it.
What happened was, a kid down in the basement -
it wasn’t his fault - he plugged in a sander and
caused a spark. That entire school blew up.
We stood around there a little bit, Mary and I
did, and in a little bit we saw a kid come
running up the road and we went out there and
asked him, "What happened?" He said, "The school
blew up."
Well, about that time - we lived on the road
from Henderson to New London. There were fire
trucks, ambulances, cars - every kind of vehicle
- emergency vehicle - come by there at high
speed. So we decided we’d walk up there, and we
went up there it was a pretty bad mess. There
was over 300 teachers and kids killed. I saw
them pick up a roof there that - they picked
this roof up that had fell down on over 20 kids
and a teacher and killed them.
The Arp ambulance was a brand-new ambulance, and
the school ground was terraced. The ambulance
backed down in there and loaded a bunch of kids
in there to take them to the hospital. When it
went over that terrace, I saw blood run out the
end of that thing. It was pretty bad. That was -
everybody knew, of course, in a little while,
and there was all kinds of things went on.
Humble Oil Company, the biggest oil company
around there, they sent a man down there and
told him, said, "Anybody that needs a funeral
paid for, you pay for it." Gave him authority to
pay for it from the Humble Oil Company. They
came down there and they buried a lot of kids,
and there was a lot of things went on. A lot of
kids they didn’t find for a day or two.
There were some kids picked up the body and
carried plumb to Jacksonville. Every funeral
home around there was picking up bodies and
taking them. Of course, they were in it for the
money - it was a sad thing.
They buried one casket that had five body parts
in it that they couldn’t identify. It was a
pretty said thing. It tore up the whole
community.
There was a fellow come down there - there was a
spring close to the house Mary and I lived in.
Real good water. People would come down there
and get water. There was a guy come down there.
He had two daughters in that explosion and one
of them was killed outright. The other one came
home. She didn’t look like she was hurt, but she
just walked about two days kind of in a daze,
and one day she just fell dead. Never did really
know.
The superintendent that hooked up this gas line,
he lost a daughter in that. So it was a pretty
sad thing altogether.
One little-known fact is that Adolph Hitler sent
flowers over there to the funeral to some kids.
I don’t know which ones or anything like that,
but he sent flowers over there. At that
particular time, in 1936, he wasn’t known to be
that mean. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jimmie Robinson from an email |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Today, I happened to run across your request for
information from people who knew something about
the New London School Explosion. My sister Elsie
and I were both in the explosion. I was in the
3rd grade and my sister was in the 5th grade.
As you may know, there was a PTA meeting being
held in the school auditorium that afternoon and
since the elementary school students had gotten
out early, I walked over to the school where my
sister's classroom was - located in the basement
of the school. The bell had just rang to let the
children out - everyone was gathering in their
books - and then the school exploded.
All children in the next room to us were killed
since the wall fell in on them. My sister never
lost consciousness but I was completely covered
by debris except for my hands. She proceeded to
dig me out and stayed with me until someone
picked me up and put me into a truck going to
the Overton Hospital at which time we were
separated.
When she later came to the hospital, she
searched for me and found me laying on a sheet
in the corner of a hospital room unconscious and
with head injuries. At that time, the hospital
staff was taking pulses and removing bodies and
she feared they would take me away. She had a
nurse that knew our family to put a tag on me so
I would not be taken and because she was
ambulatory, she wandered all around with her
right eyelid cut in two - but because she was
not as badly hurt, the staff tried to take care
of the more seriously wounded.
My mother made it to the hospital and was just
overcome by the carnage that she observed. My
father, who worked in the oilfields, found her
on the hospital steps and together they located
me and the staff loaded me into an ambulance and
sped me to Tyler where a neurosurgeon was on the
way in to help with the injured. I was taken to
Bryant's Clinic in Tyler, where I became the
first patient of Dr. DiErrico (from Dallas) who
removed the bone from my upper forehead and said
"if she lives 24 hours, she will make it".
In the rush to get me treatment, my sister Elsie
was left in Overton. By the time they got her to
Tyler, they had to put her in the Mother Frances
Hospital. She did not believe that I had
survived. After her eye was sewn up and I had
regained conscious, they brought her to visit me
and we both were reassured that we had indeed
survived. I had no recollection of anything
until I woke up in the hospital.
My family moved in 1938 first to Hobbs, N.M. and
then to the Houston Heights, where the family
lived for many years. My sister Elsie died in
1998 of leukemia. We had three cousins who
attended New London at the same time. Their
names were Mildred, Sybil and Billie Jordan. My
parents were Wilson and Corine Jordan. Because
my grandfather's name was James and my parents
had only daughters, I was named Jimmie (after my
grandfather). Elsie and I never went to the
reunions of the survivors but did make a trip in
about 1990 to the site of the memorial in New
London. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Left: Jimmie Jordan Robinson, Wimberley, Texas
Center: Jimmie and Elsie Jordan with Miss Thora
Ingebritson (Assistant to the Director of
Nursing Service of the Midwestern Red Cross).
taken during a trip to Dallas to assess injuries
by doctors. Six months after the explosion.
Right: Elsie Jordan Hendricks, Deceased
September 1998. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
