Wheel in the Sky
Fifty years ago this month members of the Memphis High School marching band traveled to Dallas to perform at the State Fair. One of them never came home. And the town hasn’t been the same since.
Donna says: This is one of the most moving stories I have ever read. It is strange how such a tragedy has forever linked so many people. Equally sad is the impact this tragedy had on the lives of each throughout their lifetimes. (January 24th, 2009 at 4:06pm)
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From the stadium entrance, however, the first object in sight was a double-wheeled metal contraption looming nearly a hundred feet over the fairgrounds like a predatory counterpart to the unctuous figure of Big Tex at the opposite end of the amusement park. Cynthia issued the command: “Let’s all ride the Ferris wheel!”
Barbara agreed. So did Ouida, only to realize that she had left her money on the bus. “I’ll catch up with you,” she called out, while Cynthia, Barbara, and three other Memphis girls joined the ticket line.
The man standing at the gate of the Sky Wheel took their tickets. Cynthia and Barbara headed toward a seat. There was room for a third, but Ouida was still back in the bus. “Come on, Kay,” one of them said to a third girl.
Her name was Kay Leslie, the town florist’s daughter. Kay was a tall, skinny girl with glasses and a ready, toothy grin—well liked but also relatively new in town and somewhat shy, certainly not one to chase the boys of Lakeview and Estelline in the manner of Cynthia’s frisky gang. She slid into the seat first. Cynthia took the middle, where she could hold both girls’ hands. Barbara slid in beside her best friend. A fourth Memphis girl, Judy Miller, tried to squeeze in as well, but the man told her the seat couldn’t hold that much weight. Judy shrugged and took the next seat with another band member, Sharon Harrison.
After some twenty seats were filled, the machine hummed, the wheels began to grind, and the girls screamed with delight as they began their ascent. It was a clear autumn day in Dallas. From their perch, the Memphis girls could see the thousands of schoolchildren bunched around the mile-long expanse of amusements. They could see boys in ducktail haircuts and the picket line of Negroes protesting segregation at the edge of the fairgrounds. They could see the exhibit hall containing displays from Sweden, Japan, Belgium, and other nations. Climbing farther, they could see the Dallas skyline, the pancake sprawl of the Metroplex. The three girls in the one seat and the two girls in the other called out to one another—words that none of them would remember, except that, as Judy Miller Davis would reflect half a century later, “It was sheer joy. It was youth. It was youth.”
Still, as the wheel conveyed them again to its peak of 92 feet, their gaiety faltered. They were very, very high up. A child of Memphis was not so accustomed.
“I’m ready to get off,” said Barbara nervously.
“I am too,” said Cynthia.
“Me too!” said Kay.
The snapping noise was both definitive and foreign. People hearing it clear across the park knew it was not a good sound. They looked up. What they saw was a seat at the virtual peak of the Ferris wheel swivel off its pivot at an asymmetrical dangle. From that fractured seat, three small figures in bright uniforms flew into the air. The fairgrounds erupted in screams. One of the figures sailed clear over the Ferris wheel. Another tumbled straight down through the metal apparatus. The third figure headed down toward the guts of the Ferris wheel as well. But then, almost monkeylike, the third figure reached out and grasped ahold of a metal bar and clung there, swinging some 25 feet from the ground, until she fell as well.
The man operating the Sky Wheel stopped the machine almost immediately. Hundreds began to run toward it. Those who arrived first saw one teenage girl lying still on the pavement and another motionless on the platform. Those who reached the third girl were stunned to see her spring to her feet and cry out, “Where’s Cynthia? Is she okay? Cynthia!”
Judy Miller and Sharon Harrison sat crying thirty feet from the ground as workers began to scale the motionless wheel. They could see their friends splayed out on the ground. Ambulances and policemen arrived on the scene. A Dallas Morning News photographer began to snap pictures. Climbing off an altogether different ride, Ouida and another band member were accosted by a breathless stranger. “You’re wearing the same uniform as those girls!” he told them. Ouida followed the rush of fairgoers in the gravitational pull of the accident.
Elsewhere on the fairgrounds, a ten-year-old boy and his grandfather were strolling through the crowd when a park official approached them and began to speak quietly to the elderly man. The boy, Larry Ed Combest, could tell by his grandfather’s expression that something was wrong. They were ushered into a building and into a room where a number of cots lay on the floor. On one of the cots was a blanket covering a body. The official lifted the blanket. Larry Ed stared back at Cynthia—his sister and single constant presence after his mom had died mysteriously in the park two years before. Forming around Cynthia’s head was a pool of blood.
The medics loaded Kay and Barbara into an ambulance. The latter was bruised, and her ankle hurt. The medics told her to lie down next to Kay, who seemed to be sleeping but was moaning loudly. The noises scared Barbara. She remembered that sudden sick descent. Remembered thinking, with abject certainty, I’m going to die. But remembered as well flailing with her hands for something to grab onto, and somehow, with her eyes closed, her fingers curled around some metallic object and…Where was Cynthia?
The other Memphis band members watched shell-shocked as the ambulance left the fairgrounds. “Let’s everyone go get their instruments and put them back on the bus,” said Tooter’s father. There would be no evening performance at the Cotton Bowl. As one sobbing band member prepared to board, a boy stepped out of the crowd. “I’m sorry,” he said to the crying girl, and gave her his handkerchief.
BACK AT THE HOTEL WITH THE AILING BAND MEMBER, Miss Phillips answered the phone. The voice on the other end asked, “Are you in charge of the band from Memphis? There’s been a tragic accident, and some of your kids have been taken to Baylor Hospital.” Miss Phillips was already out the door and heading toward the parking garage when the awfulness of the message fully registered. Tragic accident.
Three hundred miles away in Memphis, Kay’s mother was home eating lunch in the kitchen when her portable radio blared: “We interrupt this program…” The town’s telephone operator, Ouida’s mother, saw the entire switchboard light up at once. Over the loudspeaker, the students of Memphis High heard the names of three of their classmates. Within the next couple of hours, three two-seater private planes were located to ferry Barbara’s father and Kay’s parents to Dallas.
Miss Phillips reached the hospital long before the parents did. She was led to the hospital director’s office and asked to sit down. The official’s voice was somber. “Is Barbara Allen your student?”
When Miss Phillips said that she was, the director stated, “She has a sprained ankle. Is Kay Leslie your student?”
Miss Phillips nodded. “She’s quite seriously injured,” said the director. “She’s upstairs being worked on. We don’t know the extent of the injuries, except that they’re bad. Is Cynthia Combest your student?”
“Yes.”
“She was killed.”
A wave of dizziness overcame the band instructor. She heard the man say, “Put your head between your legs.”
As she did, Miss Phillips realized, And we didn’t have a chance to say the Lord’s Prayer.
The office telephone rang. After answering it, the director said to Miss Phillips, “A reporter wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him to go to hell,” she said.
Miss Phillips sat outside Kay’s room. She could hear the unconscious girl screaming. A doctor informed her that the back of Kay’s head had been smashed so badly from the fall that they had notified one of the finest brain surgeons in the country. Word had come down from the lawsuit-conscious Texas State Fair officials: Spare no expense.
Mr. Leslie arrived at the hospital before his wife did. Miss Phillips began to stammer her sympathies. He coldly ignored her. The band director thanked the hospital staff and boarded the bus, which drove all evening in near silence, other than a few half-stifled sobs. They arrived at Memphis High School after midnight. As the children filed out, their parents rushed to embrace them.
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