Link to news media coverage of the 87th anniversary memorial on March 16, 2024.
I worked on this piece for two years, finally writing the article back in 2004. After almost losing my very last copy, I decided to share it here, so I’ll have a piece of it forever. The whole experience of this project was unforgettable for me not only as a young writer, but also as someone who was raised in this small town and held this story close to heart.
I was fortunate to have personally interviewed journalists Felix McKnight and Walter Cronkite before their deaths. I visited Mr. McKnight in his home in Dallas, and spoke with Mr. Cronkite over the phone. I also spent hours speaking with survivors; moments I’ll cherish always. Sadly, Cronkite, McKnight and the survivors interviewed in this story have all passed on.
This tragic day has impacted every single person in the world. To have this story heard, and the lives not lost in vane, help spread this story as far as you can. In a few weeks on March 18, 2024, it will mark 87 years since the event that changed the world.
Silent History: The Story of the New London School Explosion
On a sunny spring afternoon in 1937, 12 year old Bill Thompson had finished his lesson in Miss Wright’s class and eagerly awaited his release for the long-anticipated three day weekend. With only 15 minutes left before the bell, he whispered to a friend to swap seats so he could sit by his girlfriend, two desks away. Obliging, the two made the swift trade and Thompson was happily sitting next to the girl he so admired. Thompson lived in New London, Texas, a small oil-refining town about 20 miles east of Tyler. The thriving community held some of the world’s richest acreage in its boundaries. But on March 18, 1937, a freak accident brought the town to its knees. 67 years later (87), New London still feels the pain from that fateful day.
The Rusk County Country Show, an annual event in nearby Henderson, had everyone excited, especially the children. That Thursday morning, administrators had debated on whether to let school out early or declare the next day, Friday the 19th, a holiday, so students could attend the show. Finally, the principal announced that all classes would be held as usual that day. Minutes before the last bell rang, tragedy struck. Unbeknownst to anyone, gas had been accumulating for a number of days in the basement of the rural oil community’s pride and joy, London High School.
The Blast
At about 3:15 during last period, L.R. Butler, the high school shop teacher, decided to test the sanding machine he had been working on all day. He turned on an electrical outlet setting off sparks that resulted in an explosion that killed approximately 311 students and teachers. According to witnesses, the building ‘flew into the heavens and came crashing back down to earth’ disintegrating into a cloud of dust and debris. Still deemed the worst disaster in the world involving school children, the explosion seemed like Judgement Day to the residents of New London. A Senate Investigative Committee spent several weeks studying the cause of the explosion and passed a Legislative bill that required natural gas to be treated with chemicals to create a detectable odor. The new process, providing a distinct warning sign of a gas leak, has saved millions of lives around the world.
Living in Riches
At that time, New London was a bustling community. The majority of the men were working as roughnecks for oil giants like Exxon and Gulf. Hundreds more, looking for work, had moved to the area and brought their families with them. Makeshift camps dotted the town and countryside and served as temporary housing. Considered one of the richest strips of earth, New London also had one of the richest rural school districts. “The richness of the school came from the blessing of oil,” says Thompson, one of only four survivors from his classroom. “The irony of it is that one of the blessings that gave us the school, also took it away.”
London High School, a $300,000 state-of-the-art building, stood two stories high, had an auditorium, gymnasium, and one of the first lighted football stadiums in the nation. The main gas piping flowed endlessly underneath the building in a six foot deep cement basement, rather than in an attic as is common for government buildings today. When Butler tried to turn on the sander, it released a spark that lit the mountainous gas fumes that had spread throughout the entire basement. The result was equivalent to that of several bombs.
Survivors
For those who lived, the tragedy lingers in their dreams when they close their eyes; the voices of their classmates, forever young, ring in their ears. Only a small number of the survivors are still living, but their stories of that day will remain forever in the hearts and minds of many.
Arthur Shaw, a tenth grader, was in the homemaking room, on the first floor. At 86 years old* Shaw remembers few details from that day. “Of the fifteen or sixteen students in my class, four got out alive,” he says, “and two boys out of us four had gone to the bathroom and weren’t even in the classroom.” Shaw, who lost a little sister in the explosion, had his head sewn up by dentist, Dr. Paul Monaghan, and a beauty operator. He was then put in a bread truck and taken to Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler. “It wasn’t five years later that I found out I had a fractured back,” Shaw says.
Loyd Richardson, a fifth grader, was sitting in class when ‘all of a sudden everything went black’ and he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He had to dodge falling pieces of the ceiling and walls as he struggled to make it to the door and then down the stairs. “as the dust lifted, the devastation was a terrible sight,” Richardson says. He and the others who made it were told to go to the front of the building and get on a bus. It was then that Richardson said he watched as the horror continued to unfold. “I saw four or five men trying to lift a beam off a girl, and they couldn’t,” he says. He also watched a father and mother carry their dead son from the rubble and put him in the back seat of their car and drive away.
Men were bringing children out of the rubble, according to Richardson, and the ones that were alive they put in any type of transport they could find to take them to the hospital. The ones that were dead, they laid side by side along a chain link fence on the school property.
Thompson, 80 years old*, was in the junior high part of the building, located in the southeast wing. Texas school had only 11 grades in 1937, and the school housed the 5th through 11th. Thompson says he didn’t hear the blast, but experienced ‘a flash of light.’
“I went up in the sky and came down and was under debris for 45 minutes and (woke up) when they dug me out,” he says. “I could hardly breathe and couldn’t move.” Hitler’s bombings had been recently discussed in class and Thompson says, “My first thought was that we had been bombed.”
Ike Challis was also in Wright’s English class when the explosion occurred. “I didn’t hear a thing,” Challis, now 78*, says. “I was knocked unconscious and covered in about two feet of debris. I could hear and feel the workers walking on top of me.”
He was finally pulled out in about 20 minutes only because his mother recognized his corduroy pants sticking out from underneath the rubble. When he was under the rubble he couldn’t move anything except for his right arm about two to three inches. But he repeatedly reached out to touch the face of a fellow student to reassure them they weren’t alone. Years later when Challis was in high school, he and some friends were talking about the explosion, and it was only then that he found out that the face he had been touching for comfort was Thompson’s. The boys had never discussed what happened enough to know how close they were that day.
Rescue and Recovery
Oil field workers, parents, and people just passing through town, worked through the night to find all the victims. Those who had jumped to their death from the second floor in fear, had been recovered quickly. A sight that was once again etched in our memory at the Twin Towers on 9/11.
The dead lined the fence in front of the recovery sight waiting to be transferred to Overton. Covered under blankets or anything available, the bodies were hardly identifiable to the parents, who were running from child to child in pure terror. Most had to resort to items or clothing they last saw their child wearing to be able to find them and know they were at rest. A rain storm had hit in the late evening and lasted until dawn, described by many as ‘the heavens crying down on New London.’ A farmer driving by in his truck had a load of peach baskets that were quickly confiscated to load piles of rubble in the recovery efforts.
Rookie News Reporters
Walter Cronkite, 21 years old in 1937, was a junior reporter for the United Press in Dallas when he got word of the explosion. “We didn’t know anything of the extent of the tragedy,” says Cronkite. His first report came from a headline from the Oil Editor with the Houston Press. With out any other information, Cronkite drove the then four hour trip from Dallas to New London. He first realized the magnitude of the disaster when he drove through Tyler on his way to New London. Tyler had the nearest funeral facility in the area where the dead were first brought in the early hours of the rescue efforts. “Oil and work trucks lined up at the funeral homes in Tyler,” he says, giving me my first indication of just how bad it was.”
At dusk, he arrived at the school. “Big oil field lights were mounted on rigs shining down in to the wreckage. It looked almost like a movie scene. There was almost nothing left of the school, except for one wall. Workers digging in the ruins had bloody hands as they relentlessly scoured for bodies, some looking for their own children.”
Although the scene was very emotional for everyone, Cronkite says he had to carry on with his duties. “Journalists are much like cops, doctors and firemen. It was our job to report the news and we had to do that first before we let our emotions get to us.”
Cronkite was competing for the stories against several reporters from the area, as well as Associated Press reporter, 26 year old, Felix McKnight (passed away February 8, 2004 at the age of 93). Cronkite and McKnight were both junior reporters, one for the AP and the other for the UP.
Felix McKnight, in his home in Dallas in 2002, before his death
Later in the evening of the 18th when he visited the morgue in Overton, Cronkite’s job as a journalist was finally put on hold and his emotions overwhelmed him. “On the temporary tables, there were bodies of kids; some with horrible wounds and others with no visible injuries,” he says. “I had seen the occasional dead body while working as a journalist, but never a mass of bodies that size and weeping parents identifying their children. I will never forget that sight.”
McKnight was thrust into the chaotic scene of death. He found himself drafted to stand in line and pass the rubble-filled peach baskets and to help sponge down the remains with formaldehyde to help preserve them. The horror kept him awake for five straight days. “It finally got to me and I went berserk one night,” McKnight said in an interview in 2002.
The Death of a Generation
March 29th was the first day back for the students in classes being held in small, wooden buildings behind the elementary school and about 200 yards north of the high school. Thompson was one of the many survivors who carried guilt after the explosion. At first roll call, there was no answer when the name of his friend, who had traded seats with him, was called. Someone blurted out that she had died. He carried the guilt of her death for more than 30 years, while others questioned their survival when so many of their classmates had died. Later, when in high school playing varsity sports, Thompson said sometimes they barely had enough players to make a team.
McKnight wrote in one of his published reports from the explosion that it was ‘the day a generation died.’
Impacting the World
The devastating explosion had an immeasurable effect on the small community and also impacted the rest of the world. Letters came pouring in from all over the globe. Students and teachers sent condolences, sympathies and heart-felt love. President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the news that night direct from New London by special telegraph lines. Having just made a speech at a new African-American school near Warm Springs, Ga, he issued this statement: “I am appalled by the news of the disaster at New London, Texas, in which hundreds of school children lost their lives. A few hours ago I dedicated a school building here in Western Georgia with high hopes for the future service it could render. Tonight, with the rest of the nation I am shocked and can only hope that further information can only lessen the scope of this tragedy.”
Another prominent figure, German Nazi leader Adolph Hitler, sent a personalized cablegram to President Roosevelt. It read: “On the occasion of the terrible explosion at New London, Texas which took so many young lives, I want to assure your Excellency of my and the German people’s sincere sympathy.”
Families Destroyed
The exact number of deaths from that day will almost certainly never be known. The most well-documented number of deaths is 294, according to name, age and grade at the time of the explosion and death certificates across the United States. When classes reconvened, attendance was called and answered by several echoes of silence, unknown whether the child was dead, or had left town. Pleasant Hill Cemetery, seven miles south of New London, is the burial place of 112 victims. Funerals took place in the town for weeks after the explosion, sometimes 15 a day. Some families lost all their children. Some were in New London only for work and left as soon as they found their child, dead or alive. It is only after the parents died, that a sibling or family member notified the school alumni of their family member passing in the explosion. Many parents did not speak of the tragedy and survivors did not know how to cope.
John Davidson lost a sister in the explosion. At the time, she was his parents’ only child. A member of the high school’s softball team, Ardyth took a photo with the team in uniform the day of the explosion. All but two members in the photo were killed that day. John’s parents, childless from the explosion, decided to have a baby. Davidson has devoted much of his life to preserving the memory of those killed. As of 2024, he still volunteers as Head Docent at the London Museum and Tearoom.
Changing the World
The explosion occurred during the time that World War II was beginning. The disaster in New London struck the hearts of millions because so many innocent school children were killed in such a ghastly way. At a time when the world was becoming numb to the feelings of war and death, it was shocked and devastated by the news of a school blowing up in a small East Texas town. For a moment, this disaster brought the world together in sadness and reminded everyone that death can come in horrific numbers, no matter the age or place. March 18, 1937 will forever be a date that changed history for the town of New London, and for the entire world.
For more information please visit the London Museum and Tearoom in New London, TX.
You can also visit the following websites:
New London Museum
London Museum and Tearoom on Facebook
*at the time of the interview in 2004
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