Texas Highways, Volume 66, Number 8, August 2019 Page: 68
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The Day a Generation Died
New London Museum recalls the most deadly school tragedy in U.S. history
By Paul McDonnoldewsman Walter Cronkite would, in his later years,
recall it as one of the worst stories he ever covered.
Morning dawned over New London on March 18,
1937, with clear skies and mild temperatures. Along
Main Street, students made their way to school.
Despite the pall of the Great Depression hanging over the nation,
the future looked bright for the schoolchildren of Rusk County,
thanks to a sea of oil and gas quivering below their feet.
Seven years earlier, thousands had celebrated as the earth shud-
dered and the Daisy Bradford No. 3 drilling rig shot a black foun-
tain of oil into the sky. The town opened London Junior/Senior
High School two years later, a showplace built on oil revenue. In
1934, the local football stadium became one of the first in Texas toget lights. But soon, the same congealed energy that made all that
possible would literally explode, causing the most deadly school
tragedy in U.S. history.
A granite monument on Main Street memorializes victims, and
in Pleasant Hill Cemetery, a numbing plethora of graves bear the
same date-March 18, 1937. But to really understand the disaster
and its aftermath, a visit to the New London Museum offers deeper
perspective. Local survivors and other volunteers led an effort
to convert a local cafe into a museum in 1992, establishing it in
a modest building in the shadow of the memorial cenotaph, just
across the street from what is now West Rusk High School. The
museum still operates a cafe and soda fountain up front, a sweet
touch to an otherwise somber topic.68 texashighways.coho
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Photo: Sean Fitzgerald
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Texas. Department of Transportation. Texas Highways, Volume 66, Number 8, August 2019, periodical, August 2019; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1364237/m1/70/: accessed July 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.