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News Herald reported tragic New London school explosion
papers.com All Right
The headlines in the News Herald were perhaps some of the most tragic immediately following the 1937 explosion at the New London School. A natural gas explosion killed hundreds and injured even more. It is considered one of the worst disasters in Texas history.
A Thursday, March 18, 1937 issue of the paper includes a banner headline across the front page: “Explosion Kills 500 Children, Wrecks Building, Burying Mutilated Bodies.”
“Horror gripped a mammoth crowd which rushed to the scene of the accident,” Alex Murphree wrote. “Mothers screamed when their children were discovered, their bodies torn and their limbs scattered amid the debris of the two-story building. Other mothers stood without hope while oil field wench trucks rushed to the scene, sought to tear the wreckage apart. More bodies were discovered each minute…"
Jewel S. Jones, a Kilgore insurance man, was reported as having seen the explosion while passing.
“He said that the building seemed to fall apart from the explosion, which was apparently caused by leaking gas boilers, although the cause could not be definitely determined.”
A late bulletin provided details of the scene later in the night.
“Martial law was declared in New London Thursday night to expedite the search for the dead in the frightful New London School explosion Thursday afternoon. A company of the Texas National Guard was patrolling the highways and not permitting anyone to go near the school except doctors, nurses, newspaper men and relief workers.
“Radio warnings were issued asking persons who had no business at the school to keep away.
“Most of the injured from the Overton hospital and from the Baptist Church in Overton which was transformed into an emergency hospital, were being transferred to Tyler and Kilgore.
“Gov. James V. Allred got in touch with the sheriff’s department in Longview and asked that the National Guard be called out but the commandant of the National Guard had already taken that action.
“Hopes were still held that injured children, not yet dead,
might have been trapped in the ruins at one spot where the walls had not caved in. Wrecking crews were proceeding cautiously in order that the wall might be kept from collapsing and killing any live children that might be pinned under the debris.
“With plenty of relief workers standing by ready to go to work when others tired, peace officers said that no more helpers were needed. Powerful floodlights were being rushed from Beaumont to illuminate the wreckage and aid workers. Longview, Tyler, Kilgore and Henderson were rushing food and cigarettes to add to the comfort of the workers, many of whom were still hard at work late Thursday night and had been in the job since shortly after the catastrophe.”
The following issues of the News Herald detailed eyewitness accounts from students and school officials, as well as the ongoing search and rescue efforts and the grief of hundreds of local families as they sought to identify bodies at the scene, at hospitals and at the churches in Overton who had been taken over as temporary aid sites.
“Here were many pathetic scenes,” the News Herald reported on March 19, 1937. “A red-eyed father or a ghost-white mother would tip-toe through the bodies – 85 were counted there at one time and then moved out as fast as relatives claimed them – afraid of what he might find. Lifting sheets, the father would, at length, find that which he had hoped not to find. He would drop to his knees, and with hands over his face, cry out: ‘My God! my baby!’ There were many scenes like that….
“Late Thursday, Mayor John Timberlake and City Attorney Rutherford of Overton established a ‘cleaning house’ at the city hall. Its purpose was to collect the names of the dead and injured in all cities and hospitals in an effort to expedite identifications and to help parents locate their children.
“Until a late hour, Overton was alive with people and cars. Along the street sat many persons in autos. It wasn’t infrequent that sobs were heard – sobs of people who didn’t know whether their loved ones were dead or alive or where they were.”
The March 21, 1937 paper described New London as “City of Dead.”
“A sinister quiet reigned up and down the streets of the small city,” Alex Murphree reported in his Sketch column. “There was no sound of children playing…
“The Kilgore News Herald joins every other newspaper, every person and every business firm in the world in extending sympathy to the bereaved who lost loved ones in the frightful New London School explosion. Without precedent and without justice, the calamity stands out in stark relief in comparison with all similar horrors. Because there is nothing to compare with the tragedy and horror of the occurrence, it is difficult to realize, impossible to conceive of the shocking toll taken by a natural phenomenon, some kind of explosive, in a single immeasurable instant.
“With pride, Sketch recalls the whole-heartedly, humanitarian way in which every man, woman or child in Kilgore volunteered his services to aid the victims and the grief-stricken.”
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