Gone at 3-17

by David M. Brown

  The bitter lessons of the explosion—human mistakes, oversights, and imprudence that created a massive, hair-triggered bomb ready to detonate beneath hundreds of innocent children—lost their urgency over time. Few people alive today have any clue about why gas from their ovens and furnaces smells so noxious when the pilot light goes out. Most have never heard of the New London, Texas, school explosion.

  Carolyn Frei downplays any personal credit, saying reforms enacted by the Texas legislature would have passed in the wake of the catastrophe regardless of her plea. Even so, her testament must have had a profound impact on the lawmakers and given calls for reform unstoppable momentum.

  She went on to chart a life for herself as a teacher, wife, and mother. She had three children with her first husband, Bert Morris, who died in an accident. Her daughter, Helen McKenzie, works as an academic at the University of Idaho. Twin sons, Richard and Ronald, are a tax attorney and family physician, respectively. She has nine grandchildren.

  Early in her career, after receiving a college degree in elementary education, Carolyn taught fifth grade and elementary reading. She later received a master of teaching degree, and for eighteen years she taught high school students language arts—English literature, grammar, journalism, and speech. She loved coaching debate. She credits her mother with instilling in her a love for education.

  Carolyn never developed a close relationship with her father, Walter Jones, although he came in and out of her life at various times over the years. She loved him, but... and she never really finished that sentence. She was a dutiful daughter and took care of her father as he lay dying.

  She and her second husband, Ray Frei, live in Lewiston, Idaho, where Carolyn enjoys doing volunteer work, reading, and writing poetry. She has written several poems in recent years that have dealt with the school explosion. One recaptures the terror she felt:

  Cold Morning

  (March 18, 1937)

  The night of the disaster, no one slept.

  Sirens ripped darkness with doom.

  Dogs howled in Greek chorus.

  After the bodies were found,

  we tried sleep, staring at the dark

  ceiling, transfixed by scenes

  we could never escape or soon describe.

  Fatigue broke our grip on consciousness;

  we slipped into a dark pool, floated

  face down below the surface, until

  water merged with gray dawn.

  Rising, we forced leaden feet to the terrible task:

  caskets, the unctuous minister, the exhausted

  emergency worker. In a garage next

  to the mortuary, makeshift tables held

  the remnants of lives, shrouded in bloody sheets.

  Rituals were forgone. No neighbors stood

  in doorways bearing plates of cake.

  Those not bereaved avoided our eyes,

  terrible as gorgons.

  Friday’s March morning warmed

  to the trills of mockingbirds. Gulf breezes

  rushing inland tossed new bluebonnets.

  Saturday was a cottonmouth under a stone.

  A second poem is Carolyn’s peace offering to her sister, Helen, who was killed before they had a chance to sort out hard feelings between them as a result of their parent’s divorce.

  Begging Your Pardon

  First born, first grandchild, your place

  secure before our parents’ marriage died,

  you were never soft, never a coquette.

  Armed with a cutting tongue,

  you disputed Mother.

  I learned from you the futility

  of war; as the middle child,

  I appeased, swallowed rebellion

  until I choked.

  We would have made peace

  in time. You never

  held the child I named

  for you. Did you hover

  over her cradle? Shadow

  my way west?

  When I was fifty, you opened

  a door at Ashlawn, a Colonial

  miss, dressed in mobcap;

  another year I saw you

  in a cousin’s face.

  Had you lived, you’d be

  nearing ninety, Welsh locks

  white as your forebears’,

  your wit perhaps still keen.

  Now eternally fourteen, budding

  Womanhood wrapped in a

  a crimson sheet. Forgive

  my submission, my failure

  to conspire.

  The only period in his life that Bill Thompson spent much time away from East Texas was during World War II. Even during the war, it was impossible for him to escape the past.

  Thompson enlisted in the navy in 1943 and became an ordnance specialist in the Naval Air Corp. His job was keeping the guns and ammunition ready for action, and he was required to go up with one of the pilots on maneuvers.

  On one of his first flights, he sat behind the pilot in a fighter plane. The pilot took the aircraft high up into the sky and suddenly began making barrel rolls through the clouds. A remarkable fash registered in Thompson’s brain, taking him back to the instant the school exploded. He was rolling through space. Years before he had felt only that sensation, nothing more, before he awoke covered with debris.

  After the war, Bill and millions of other GIs returned home and set out to claim their stake in the American dream. Bill and his sweetheart, Margaret, were married in 1947. Bill used the GI bill to attend Kilgore College. After college, he seized a business opportunity in New London and established a profitable dry cleaners, housed in a storefront directly across from the high school that was built to replace the one that had exploded. The new school is still in use today. Occupying the same gentle slope, it is a handsome structure of a style and design similar to the previous school-house. The front window of Thompson’s dry-cleaning business looked out on the monument that bears the names of his lost classmates.

  Bill and Margaret bought a modest, three-bedroom house with a carport and a shady lot on a side street in New London, less than a hundred yards from the cleaners. There they set about the arduous task of raising four sons.

  The building that housed his cleaners now contains the London Museum and Tea Room and is located across from the high school on Memorial Drive. The museum faces an island in the road on which the towering cenotaph stands as the town’s solemn centerpiece.

  Before a recent summer when the pain in his hip became so acute it limited his physical activities, Thompson frequently walked from his home to have his morning coffee in the museum he helped establish. Molly (Sealy) Ward, another survivor, spearheaded the drive for the museum. Visitors at the museum sometimes make the walk to Bill’s house and have coffee with him. The conversations are hit and miss because, even with the assistance of a hearing aid, his hearing is fading. Life at home is more lonesome now, he will tell you. Margaret had become so fragile she had to move to an assisted-living facility in Henderson. Bill spends his days there but always likes to come home to his own bed at night. His grown boys have encouraged him to move into the facility with Margaret. “I’m not quite ready yet,” he says.

  If his legs and hips are up to a stroll, Thompson might take you for a walk to a narrow ravine across from his house. It is thick with summer brush. He pulls back some of the weeds and points. “There it is—that old black pipe. That’s part of the old Parade line that took residue gas down to the school,” he says, matter-of-factly. Bill Thompson’s life is as entwined with the school explosion that happened when he was twelve as this section of pipe is wrapped in vines that have held it, inert, for more than seven decades. Bill doesn’t mind talking about the past

  The old man shifts his position on the kitchen stool, takes a sip from the coffee that he’s let get cold, and stares out the back screen door with a wistful gaze.

  “My family had been intact for a long time,” he says. “I hadn’t lost any brothers or sisters that I knew. There was one I didn’
t know. They were all healthy. Had healthy families. No tragedies until 1968; my oldest son was killed in a tragic car accident. He never regained consciousness.”

  Rodney was nineteen and preparing to start his second year in college. “My father died about the same time. I grieved for them both.”

  “What brings you out of grief is another grief,” Thompson says. “Two years later, my younger son, Greg—he was fifteen—was riding a motorcycle on Sunday evening before sunset. A couple of brothers were out on a regular Sunday evening drinking party and racing cars. They were racing down the highway on a stretch that was kind of curvy, and my son was coming home from Overton, and they were coming west, side by side, and they couldn’t miss my son.”

  A doctor in Overton stopped Greg’s profuse bleeding and stabilized him for an ambulance ride to a Tyler hospital. Bill Thompson rode in the back of the ambulance.

  “He was kind of thrashing around, except one side wasn’t moving,” Bill recalls. “They rolled him into the emergency room, and when they pulled the sheet back, I saw why one side was still. His foot was gone and all that was left of his leg was a bare bone all the way up to his hip.

  “I shouldn’t have had to see that,” Thompson says, breaking into tears, and then quickly regaining control of his emotions.

  “They said it was a miracle he lived. He lost over half his blood, but he survived and he’s doing well today. He went to Kilgore College and became a mechanic and owner of an automobile repair shop.

  “So, one tragedy leads to the next. Relating back to the families that lost children, through the years when tragedies started hitting my family, my siblings and children, I would think about the families that lost them all at one time. The thought of my losing a son, compared with losing all, saved me some grief; I say it did, because I still had the comfort of having three boys left, one not whole, but he’s still happy.

  “We celebrate many reunions over and over—the ones that lived before us, the ones that left in their childhood in the explosion, will be waiting for our next and final reunion, which will not be on this earth. That’s my thoughts. As long as I’m living I’ll be trying to make the reunions with people I knew and loved and went to school with, knowing I’ve overcome the loss of those in the past. In the end, we’ll all be a part of one whole. From the other side, we’ll look back and understand all of this.”

  In June 2010 Bill Thompson slipped in his bathroom and cracked one of his hips beyond repair. That July he became the oldest person to receive a hip replacement at Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler.

  The survivors, though dwindling in number, gather still.

  32

  A Final Word

  Of all the personal articles combed from the rubble—the bits and pieces of the many lives shattered on March 18, 1937, in New London, Texas—none can rend the heart more, nor serve a higher purpose, than the small autograph booklet one of the children had been passing among her classmates.1 Contained within are wishes, flirtations, silliness, exhortations, and notes of friendship. Above all, this meager book is a remembrance, the touchstone of our divinity. What physics and time conspire to erase, we resurrect with memory.

  “Dear Betty Joe,” Rachael wrote. “Roses are red, violets are blue, pickles are sour, and so are you (Ha! Ha!).”

  Other notes followed on pages of alternating pink, yellow, and green.

  “Dear Betty Joe,

  “When you slide down the banister of life may there be no splinters.”—Ethel.

  “Dear Betty Joe,

  “When you get married, and live across the flat, send me a kiss by the old tom cat.”—Donald.

  “Dear Betty Joe,

  “It gives me great pleasure to write in your little book. I enjoy having you in my room. You are so sweet and help me with my lessons. Always remember me as your friend.”—Ruth.

  But for one more note, the rest of the pages were blank, smudged with dirt and dimpled where drops of rain fell from the heavens. The note ended with a vow of dedication—“Yours always”—from Gene.

  “Dear Betty Joe,

  “When I am dead and buried, and all my bones are rotten, this little book will tell you my name, when others have forgotten.”

  In Memoriam

  Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Rusk County

  Lakewood Memorial Park, Henderson

  Overton City Cemetery, Overton

  Rose Hill Cemetery, Tyler

  Shiloh Cemetery, Brachfield

  Mount Hope, Joinerville

  Oakwood Cemetery, Waco

  Pirtle Baptist, Pitner Junction

  Crims Chapel, Henderson

  Ebenezer Cemetery, Arp

  New Brazoria Cemetery, Brazoria

  Breckenridge Cemetery, Breckenridge

  Joaquin Cemetery, Joaquin

  Memory Park, Longview Heights

  Mt. Tabor Cemetery, Caviness

  Sipe Springs Cemetery, Sipe Springs

  Tennessee Cemetery, Simpson

  Thornton Church Cemetery, Glendale

  Tyler Memorial Park, Tyler

  White Oak Cemetery, White Oak

  Alto City Cemetery, Alto

  Bethel Cemetery, Appleby

  Cedar Hill Cemetery, Rusk

  Center Ridge, Maud

  Corinth Cemetery, Timpson

  Creekmore Cemetery Cass County

  Eastland City Cemetery, Eastland

  Eastview Memorial Park, Vernon

  Elderville Cemetery, Rusk County

  Elmwood Cemetery, Bowie

  Fairview Cemetery, Center

  Fairview Church Cemetery, Nacogdoches

  Greenpond Cemetery, Como

  Greenwood Cemetery, Garrison

  Hamilton Beeman Cemetery, Retreat

  Highland Cemetery, Deport

  Holly Springs Cemetery, Montalba

  Huffines Cemetery, Atlanta, Texas

  Indian Creek Cemetery, Mineral Wells

  Johnson City Masonic Cemetery

  Kemp City Cemetery, Kemp

  Kingsbury Cemetery, Sequin

  Loving Cemetery, Loving

  Lynch Chapel Cemetery, Alto

  Macedonia Cemetery, Caddo

  Maple Grove Cemetery, Minden

  Melrose Baptist Church Cemetery, Nacogdoches County

  Mostyn Cemetery, Montgomery County

  Mount Calm Cemetery, Limestone County

  Nocona Cemetery, Nocona

  Oak Grove Cemetery, Graham

  Oak Grove Cemetery, Kerens

  Oak Grove Cemetery, Nacogdoches

  Oakwood Cemetery, Corsicana

  Old Palestine Cemetery, Alto

  Peatown Cemetery, Lakeport

  Plainview Cemetery, Madison County

  Reilly Springs Cemetery, Reilly Springs

  Rock Church Cemetery, Tolar

  Rogers Cemetery, Rogers

  Salem Cemetery, Troup

  Savannah Cemetery, Jefferson

  Sonora Cemetery, Fairlie

  Stag Creek Cemetery, Sidney

  Stanford Chapel Cemetery, Waco

  Stong Cemetery, Henderson

  Sweetwater Cemetery, Decatur

  Burial Sites Outside Texas

  Bethel Cemetery, Bethel, Louisiana

  Bethel Cemetery, Lillie, Union Parish, Louisiana

  Bethleman Cemetery, Claiborne Parish, Louisiana

  Shreveport, Louisiana

  Central Cemetery, Robeline, Louisiana

  Cooper Cemetery, Leesville, Louisiana

  East Mt. Olive Cemetery, Bienville Parish, Louisiana

  Fairlawn Cemetery, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

  Gracelawn Cemetery, Edmond, Oklahoma

  Morris Cemetery, Morris, Oklahoma

  Mount Gilead Cemetery, Vivian, Louisiana

  Rock Creek Cemetery, Duncan, Oklahoma

  Rose Hill Cemetery, Ardmore, Oklahoma

  Shiloh Cemetery, Provencal, Louisiana

  Hillcrest Cemetery, Weleetka, Oklahoma

  Wilton Cemetery, Wilton, Arkansas

&nbs
p; Woodberry-Forest Cemetery, Madill, Oklahoma

  Woodford Cemetery, Woodford, Oklahoma

  Woodland Cemetery, Kentwood, Louisiana

  Probable Burial Sites Based on Research

  Uncertain Burial Sites

  Different spellings are shown on various lists for many of the victims named here. We made a diligent effort to find sources for correct spellings. We apologize for any spelling errors that still occurred.

  Interviews

  This book derives its form and heartbeat from interviews with scores of survivors, witnesses, rescue workers, and others who either experienced the New London school explosion in person or had direct knowledge about it from family members who lived through the disaster. Other interviews were conducted for background with people who had direct knowledge of experiences in the oil fields of East Texas, the Great Depression, and the historical background of the story’s setting. To all those who shared their stories, we say thank you from our hearts; without you no book of this scope and depth would have been possible. An audio copy of all taped interviews was presented to the London Museum in New London, Texas, for preservation and the use of future researchers. Principal interviews that shaped the story include the following: