History Lesson 
“Oh, My God! It’s Our Children!”
On March 18, 1937, the combined junior-senior high school in the small East Texas town of New London exploded without warning, killing nearly half of the students and teachers. To commemorate the seventieth anniversary of that tragic day, survivors remember the horrific events—and the heroic response—that changed their lives forever.
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Maxine Lawson (whose maiden name was Kelley) was in the sixth grade. She now lives in Caldwell: Billie was saying, “Maxine, help me out!” And I didn’t; I know I didn’t. She doesn’t remember that. All the people in the front of my room were killed: the girl reading the book report, the teacher. I guess the wall fell on them.
Dorothy Box: I could hear the sirens coming in, and I wondered if there was a fire. I could hear a student screaming, “Don’t go down the stairs!” There was a big boulder hanging over the stairwell about to come crashing down. I was yelling to my friend Pearl, who had been standing to my left, and she never answered me. I didn’t know at the time that she had cement dust in her mouth.
Charles Dial was in the sixth grade. He now lives in Houston: I had run home to get my band uniform and was just sitting down to put on my shoes when the school exploded. We heard explosions all the time from boilers in the oil field, but my mother said, “Something happened over there.” I said, “It’s probably one of those steam buildings blown up,” and she said, “It’s too loud. You get over there and see about your brothers. Get!” So I started off toward the school, and on the way I ran into my older brother, John, coming across the field. He was in rough shape. He said he was in shop class, and he asked the teacher to turn the band saw on, and when he opened the electrical box and pulled the switch, the electricity arced.
I told John to go home, that I’d find our brother Travis. I couldn’t believe what I saw when I got to the school. On the east wing there were a few bricks that didn’t get knocked down; on the south side there was a little of the building left. The rest was all gone. Flattened. The children were lying all over the ground.
Amos S. Etheredge was in the seventh grade. He now lives in Ridgecrest, California: Just before my brother jumped out a second-story window, a girl got caught on some glass and died. So he was careful not to touch the glass.
Martha “Peggy” Melton (whose maiden name was Harris) was in the eleventh grade. She now lives in Overton: I thought we had been bombed by Hitler. I crawled out from what used to be the ceiling and saw the children jumping out the windows. One was hanging on there and bleeding to death.
Marion Steen (whose maiden name was Walker) was in the eleventh grade. She now lives in Houston: I remember seeing a redheaded girl whose hair had turned the color of cement. She was lying outside. I don’t remember seeing anybody to talk to. The people I saw were dead. I was walking around and realized I still had a pencil in my hand, and I remember thinking, “What am I doing with my pencil?” I threw it down.
Reba Moseley: My friend Kay Challis and I crawled under the table in the library to where the wall should have been; it was blown out. We sat with our feet on the outside of the wall, surveying the area, and all the way up to the highway we couldn’t see anything but piles of debris.
Lucy Wells (whose maiden name was Eipper) was in the tenth grade. She now lives in Diboll: When I got out, I saw a body in a black suit, a teacher. He looked like a big doll that someone had dropped on the floor and was asleep. Then my brain began to work a little. I could see the building was gone. I knew that the body in front of me was dead. But it was all like a dream.
Betty P. McBride (whose maiden name was Harden) was in the seventh grade. She now lives in Austin: When I emerged from the building, I made my way toward the front, near the street. I saw a playmate’s body almost covered in concrete with a Popsicle still in her mouth. I went around a car that was upside down with the wheels spinning wildly. When I got to the front of what had been the school building, I saw a man crying and holding a little girl’s body, and as I walked along, I saw what looked like the child’s brain, which had fallen out of the back of her head.
H. G. White: Once I got out, I walked over to a water fountain in the gymnasium to wash off a cut above my left ear, and an older boy walked up with deep cuts on his face. A teacher threw some water on him, and he fell down and expired right there.
Max Holleyman was in the tenth grade. He now lives in Lakeland, Florida: I went down the stairway to where my sister’s room would have been, and there was a child who was breathing his last breath in the stairwell.
Nathan Durham: I worked my way over to the study hall, and kids were streaming out and down the stairs. Out the window I could see a good friend rolling over and over on the ground.
Barbara Page: The mothers and teachers who had convened for the PTA meeting started running out of the gym.
Juana Fay Toennis: When I finally got out, the first person I saw was my mother, who was president of the PTA. She was climbing over the wall to my classroom. She grabbed me and asked, “What happened?” and I said, “I have no idea.”
Ollie Wyatt (whose maiden name was Bullock) was in the third grade. She now lives in Austin: I had just finished performing a minuet in the gymnasium for the PTA and had walked up into the stands to sit down next to my mother when all of a sudden the building, which was wooden, started rocking back and forth. There were just a few doors in the whole gymnasium, and we all started rushing outside. My mother grabbed me and we kept going. We were rushing away from the building because it was still moving. I was standing near Mr. Waggoner when we finally realized what had happened. He put his hands over his face and said, “Oh, my God! It’s our children!” People were yelling, “The world is coming to an end!”
Nadine Dorsey (whose maiden name was Beasley) was in the seventh grade. She now lives in Kilgore: I never heard a sound. The teacher had been giving us her assignment up in the front of our second-story classroom, and all at once I looked up and stuff had fallen in on me. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. Some students who had been on the football field climbed up, and I could hear them talking. I yelled, “Get me out of here!” and they pulled up whatever was on top of me. But when we went to the door, it was blocked. The wall to the outside had fallen out, and Mr. Waggoner was standing down on the ground, below. He said, “Can you get out, Nadine?” And I said, “No, the door is blocked,” and he said, “Well, jump and I’ll catch you.” So I jumped.
“The rescue workers weren’t always checking to see if kids were live or dead. They were just getting them out.”
Within minutes, oil field workers began to arrive and dig through the rubble. By nightfall, as word of the disaster spread, at least two thousand workers were tearing apart the site as parents searched for their children.
William G. Moore Jr. was in the eleventh grade. He now lives in Franklin, Tennessee: Once I found my brother, Ira Joe, we started digging, trying to get to the kids who had been covered up. They’d say, “I’m over here!” and we’d dig in that area. We were already working before the oil field workers arrived.
Ira Joe Moore was in the tenth grade. He now lives in El Cajon, California: We’d carry the bodies to the buses and trucks that were parked nearby and lay them out on the seats. I don’t know what happened to them after that.
Ed Crudup was in the ninth grade. He now lives in Mesa, Arizona: After lunchtime I had decided to cut out of school and sit under a persimmon tree on a nearby hill. When I saw the explosion, I ran to search for my stepbrother. When I got to the room where I knew he’d be, steel beams were still holding up part of his room. I hollered in, and a few kids hollered back. I told them where I’d start clearing so they could start working to the same area and crawl out.
Charles Dial: It wasn’t very long till the oil field workers came. They started picking the kids up and lining them against the fence on the south side of the building. Ambulances and cars began picking them up and taking them to hospitals in the surrounding area, since New London had no hospital. Some of the ambulances were picking up dead children and taking them to temporary morgues.
Marjorie Kinney (whose maiden name was Bryan) was in the sixth grade. She now lives in Fort Worth: When the parents began to arrive, they took the buses and tied the horns down, turning them into sirens. That went on all night long.
William Follis: After I came to, several minutes after the blast, I started helping the rescue workers dig kids out. Right in front of me there were three little girls wedged together. They had mortar dust caked in their eyes and noses and mouths, and all we would have had to do to save them was reach down and pull the mud out. I knew the kids. One looked up and said, “Save me.” Thirty or forty men were trying to dig them out completely. I watched them die. Later on, outside, I spotted one of my best friends, who was still alive, but it looked like someone split his brains open with a hatchet. The rescue workers weren’t always checking to see if kids were live or dead. They were just getting them out. One girl was completely twisted around. The poor thing—she was trying to cover herself up because she was exposed. Everyone was working just like they were in a daze. Nobody said anything.
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