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March 22, 2010

Taylor recalls New London explosion

Kevin Jones Jacksonville Daily Progress

JACKSONVILLE — March 18, 2010, marked the 73rd anniversary of the tragic New London School explosion that happened so close to home all those years ago, the memory of which is still etched in the minds of the few that survived and in the minds of the families of the hundreds that perished.

The day was March 18, 1937.

“It was a beautiful spring day — beautiful,” said Mary Lou Taylor of Jacksonville, who attended the New London School. “Then all hell broke loose.”

The time period was fairly desperate as it was during the Great Depression, but an oil find in 1930’s Rusk County had prosperous effects on the small town of New London.

In 1932 a school was built for approximately $1 million dollars. They were the London Wildcats, not referring to an animal, but a play on the word “wildcatter” in reference to someone working in the oil-field or an oil prospector.

According to www.newlondonschool.org, students were preparing for an inter-scholastic meet in Henderson the next day while the PTA met in the gym.

At about 3 p.m. the manual training teacher, Lemmie R. Butler, turned on a sanding machine — little did he know it was the machine that would ignite a mixture of gas and air.

The flame from the ignition filled a nearly closed space 253 feet by 56 feet, beneath the building.

“Immediately the building seemed to lift in the air and then smashed to the ground,” according to the site. “Walls collapsed. The roof fell in and buried its victims in a mass of brick, steel, and concrete debris. The explosion was heard four miles away, and it hurled a two-ton concrete slab 200 feet away, where it crushed a 1936 Chevrolet.”

Mary Lou Taylor was there and she survived.

“I was there in the building when the school blew up, but I was not hurt,” Taylor said. “I was on the second story and jumped out of a window to the closest thing to safety.”

Taylor said she was 12 years old at the time.

She said because a lot of the school’s students were not in the building because of interscholastic league, a lot of them were saved.

“I had quite a few friends my age that were lost — I lost my homeroom teacher and several other teachers that were close to me,” she said.

“The building was a complete loss,” said Taylor.

“I remember very clearly there was a lot of broken concrete and very little part of the building was still standing,” Taylor said. “The part of the building I was in was still standing except the roof fell in on us and fell on the desks.

“We were not completely covered. Everyone was found fairly quick. After I jumped from the second story window, I had found my parents probably within a couple of hours. After the explosion, we went to school in portable buildings until they rebuilt the school.”

Hundreds were wounded that day, and www.newlondonschool.org counts the death toll at 293 students, guests and teachers.

“To commemorate the explosion we started having reunions in 1977,” Taylor said. “Now we gather as the ex-students association. Even though numbers have dwindled, the association still goes on strong.

“We have a reunion every other year, the odd year, because it was an odd year that the explosion occurred.”

This sad day in history took it’s toll on many lives and families. Still to this day we honor and preserve the memory of those lost.

Mary Lou Taylor was fortunate she survived. She has spoken to many an audience about the events of that fateful day, recounting the minutes that must have felt like hours.

But that fateful day did contribute to safety measures that, to this day, protect from similar disasters.

“In 1937 and all of the years before, there was no odor to natural gas,” Taylor said. “That’s when they started putting ‘odorizer’ in gas.”

Taylor is very grateful for what she has been given in life.

“Very definitely I appreciate everything I have because I have seen how fast terrible things can happen,” she said. “I was one of the lucky ones. I can’t answer how I got over it, except those of us who survived were very appreciative of what we have and the opportunities that the school gave us.”

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