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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Mary Lou Moring (whose maiden name was Upchurch) was in the sixth grade. She now lives in Gladewater: I thought I had fallen asleep and was having a nightmare and that if I screamed, I’d wake myself up. Those sitting on the side and in front of me were killed. I’m sure being knocked under the desk was my protection. Someone pulled me out and placed me on the ground.
James Kennedy was in the sixth grade. He now lives in Kilgore: The rescue workers were moving toward me, and I couldn’t move anything but my eyes but I could breathe fine. We were all screaming for help. I heard Mary Lou screaming. When some men came into our area, I said, “Get her out first. I think she’s hurt worse than I am.”
Nadine Dorsey: I started wandering around, and Mother and Dad were already looking for me. I found my mother. She was standing in front of the building, crying. I had blood all over my face, and my hair was white. She didn’t recognize me. I walked up to her, and she looked at me and did a double take. I said, “Mother?” and she went into hysterics.
Mollie Ward (whose maiden name was Sealey) was in the fourth grade. She later founded the London Museum and became the mayor of New London, where she still lives: When I got home on the bus, there were about eight mothers at the stop. They started screaming, “Have you seen Geneva?” “Have you seen Brenda?” My mother came out and started hugging and kissing me. She carried me into the house because the mothers kept screaming. Six of them lost their child.
Fran VanAssen (whose maiden name was Begley) was in the fifth grade. She now lives in Fort Bragg, California: My throat was so dry from the dust I tried to get across the street to a lunch place where I thought I could get a drink, but the ambulances and cars were racing across so fast I couldn’t get over there. I sat down beside a car and leaned against a tire and watched the bakery and cattle trucks unload so they could help carry children to hospitals and morgues. It seemed like I sat there for an eternity. My dad had been looking for me in the room where I had class and found a girl with a foot hanging off who was wearing a dress that was similar to mine, but he noticed she had on black patent-leather shoes, and he knew mine were lace-ups. Finally, someone told him where I was waiting. He said that every step he took toward me seemed like I was taking two away from him.
Max Holleyman: My dad had found my sister. She was dead. He recognized her because the dress she was wearing and the socks she had on were material he had picked out for her twelfth birthday, which she’d just had.
Opal Hamill (whose maiden name was Barton) was in the ninth grade. She now lives in New Braunfels: Mr. Waggoner laid my dead brother at my feet. My brother was seventeen, almost eighteen. He was a beautiful boy. He was captain of the football team, co-captain of the basketball team. Mr. Waggoner didn’t say anything to me. I sat down beside my brother, and he wasn’t obviously hurt. All he had was a little round hole in his forehead, like maybe the point of a nail hit him. He always carried a handkerchief in his pocket, so I took it out and wiped the mortar dust off his face. I sat there too shocked to cry. Two ambulance drivers picked him up and strapped him to a stretcher, and I started following along behind them. Finally, I said, “Where are you taking him?” They said they were taking him to Longview [which was 26 miles away]. Now, I was a kid; Longview seemed awfully far. So I said, “No, that’s too far.” They didn’t argue. They lifted him off the stretcher and put him on the ground and went on to the next body.
Marjorie Kinney: There was one area by the fence for the dead and another area for the injured. My friend’s daddy picked her up and laid her with the ones who were dead, but she was only unconscious. I don’t know how she got up.
Bob Clayton was in the fifth grade. He now lives in Pittsburgh: When I finally came to, some guy pulled me out from under the lockers and said, “Sonny, where do you live?” I said, “Selman City. I have to catch the bus.” He said he’d carry me up to where the buses were, and he set me down and said, “Wait right here. I’ll get my car.” Then some other man saw me, and he could see my head was bruised up, and he put me in the front seat of an ambulance. In the back, kids were stacked up like wood. I was thinking about just taking the bus? I was half-crazy, I guess.
Lois Johnson (whose maiden name was Rainwater) was in the seventh grade. She now lives in Henderson: My dad was helping with the rescue effort, and one of our neighbors told him that she had seen me and that I was dead. He told her he didn’t doubt it. When he came home and saw me, he nearly dropped dead himself. He stood there with his mouth open. He said he wasn’t surprised at all to hear I was dead but more shocked to find out I wasn’t.
William Follis: The impact of the devastation didn’t hit me until I started riding my bike home, and I started bawling.
Fran VanAssen: My mother was standing out in the backyard, under a trellis over the gate, when she saw my dad’s car drive up. I got out and started going to her. I had blood all over me and was skinned on my right-hand side. My hair was snow-white from the plaster dust. I guess I looked a fright. She wouldn’t put her arms out. She kept saying, “That’s not my baby. That’s not her.”
“… everyone was operating on adrenaline.”
After nightfall, martial law was declared in a five-mile area around the school, and only doctors, nurses, peace officers, rescue workers, newsmen, and relatives of trapped children were allowed near the area, now lit up with floodlights.
Ira Joe Moore: It got cold as the devil, and it had started raining when some workers from the oil field finally brought the heavy-lifting equipment. I think everyone was dumbfounded; I don’t recall a lot of conversation. I think everyone was operating on adrenaline.
William G. Moore Jr.: There were big slabs that needed moving, but some you could handle with enough people. When we’d come across a child or a teacher, we’d try to get the rubble away from them and get help to get them out.
H. G. White: Most of the rubble was moved with bare hands, not machinery. A guy came by with a truckload of peach baskets, and the workers formed a line and passed the baskets filled with body parts and cement chunks.
Nathan Durham: My dad and I helped our neighbor put his injured daughter, Irma Hodges, in our car; then we took off for the Henderson hospital. Irma had been blown out with the main debris. I could tell her hip was broken because her legs were crooked, and she was unconscious but she was breathing. She died in her father’s lap in the rear seat of my dad’s car.
Ed Crudup: As soon as I got my stepbrother out of the rubble, I ran home and told my mom I was taking the car. I started picking up bodies and taking them to Henderson. I’d pull up and say, “I can take somebody to Henderson,” and they’d put a child or a teacher in the backseat. When I got to a hospital, I’d ask for help, and someone would take the body out and I would leave.
Martha Moore (whose maiden name was Leath) was in the eleventh grade. She now lives in Lufkin: My daddy had a country grocery store on the highway between Henderson and Kilgore, about six miles from New London. He carried food over to give to the Salvation Army, which was passing out anything people could hold.
Nathan Durham: We stopped at the hospital in Henderson and told everybody about the explosion. We were the first people from New London they had seen. Then we took Irma to a funeral home, and just as her father was making funeral arrangements, a fire truck pulled up, loaded down with the bodies of kids. Some men took the children off and began stacking them along the hall.
Ed Crudup: After a while, hospital staffers told me not to bring any more children; they were filled up. Since I didn’t know where else to take them, I quit taking bodies.
Mollie Ward: Sometime in the night a worker found a blackboard that had been on the wall that read “Oil and natural gas are East Texas’ greatest mineral blessing. Without them this school would not be here and none of us would be here learning our lessons.”
“Hospitals were the first place you looked.”
As hospitals in the nearby towns of Henderson, Kilgore, Jacksonville, Tyler, and Overton filled up, rescue workers set up medical and embalming stations all over the region. Because there were few telephones in the area, the Western Union office in Overton was responsible for dispatching most of the news of the disaster. By ten o’clock Thursday night, reporters from major media outlets had arrived. (Notable among these was a cub reporter with the Dallas bureau of the United Press Association, Walter Cronkite.) As the news spread around the world, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a statement asking for the Red Cross and all government agencies to render assistance, and world leaders, including Adolf Hitler, paid their respects via telegram.
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