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Documentary by Kristin Beauchamp
The London Museum is the sole distributor of the
documentary "When Even Angels Wept" by Kristin
Beauchamp. The documentary will be shown on PBS
in 2012. The 90 minute DVD includes interviews
with survivors and rescue workers, who in their
own words, describe the events of the 1937
explosion.
This is an excellent documentary that you will
have to have.
All profits go to the New London Museum.
"When Even Angels Wept" will be on sale during
the Reunion, March 19 and 20,
at the Museum for $25 and by mail for $30. |
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Within this Articles Section of this website
there are many
typos and misspellings contained within
the original articles. These Articles are unedited
to retain originality.
On rare occasions
(translation: almost never) we are refused
permission to reprint an article from a
newspaper. We regret the inconvenience to
our
visitors of this website, but respect the wishes of
the publisher(s). For information regarding
this, contact the Webmaster. |
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(Newspaper, date, and author unknown)
Boomtown prosperity set the stage for the London
school disaster. The legendary Texas oil
wildcatter, Dad Joinier, brought in a discovery
well on Daisy Bradford's farm in Rusk County in
1930. By 1936, the county's population ballooned
from a few hundred to a few thousand.
Companies punched holes everywhere. The oil
flowed. It didn't have to be pumped from the
ground.
The London School campus was a new showplace in
1937, the product of new oil wealth that could
not have been imagined 10 years earlier. A
gymnasium, an auditorium and 10 other school
buildings, interspersed with playing fields, sat
surrounded by derricks, pipelines and temporary
camps for the oilfield workers.
The brick high school building, capped with red
tile roof, was the centerpiece. It housed 650 to
700 children in grades 5 through 11. There was
no grade 12 back then. At the time, the London
School district was said to be the richest in
the United States.
A commercial utility company had been supplying
natural gas to heat the school at a cost of
$3000.00 a year. To save money, school officials
made a change.
They tapped into an oilfield gas line to get
free gas, which was a natural by-product of the
oil spurting from a well. It was a common
practice back then to do it that way. Homeowners
and businesses simply hooked to a oil well gas
line for free gas, the oil companies didn't
care. They had no use for the gas, and they
usually just flared off into the air.
After the explosion, one state inspector wrote
that school officials had meant well. "There was
no niggardly thought of saving, but a thrify
thought of not spending uselessly," H. Oram
Smith of the Texas Inspection Bureau wrote in
his report.
Mr. Smith concluded that the oil field gas was
more unstable than commercial gas. The pressure
was hard to regulate. Teachers and students had
tampered with the burners to adjust them and had
jostled pipes connected to the radiators. In
turn, he said this caused stress leaks in the
pipe couplings below the floor. "No one
individual was personally responsible," he
wrote. "It was the collective fault of average
individuals, ignorant or indifferent to the
precautionary measures, where they cannot, in
their lack of knowledge, visualize a danger or a
hazard."
The explosion killed an estimated 280+ students,
15 teachers, 2 visitors and a school secretary.
Researchers are still attempting to document the
exact number. Some the death toll was higher.
The explosion ranks as the third-worst disaster
of the 20th century in Texas. The Galveston
hurricane of 1900 killed 6,000 to 8,000. A
chemical explosion in Texas City, in 1947, took
more than 600 lives. |
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