DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at New London records — and friend, this is one you carry with you long after the road moves on. March 18, 1937. A Wednesday.
The New London Junior-Senior High School in Rusk County, Texas — a school full of children and the people who taught them — was there one moment and gone the next. A massive explosion tore through that building, and in the time it takes to draw a breath, an estimated 296 students and teachers were gone. Instantly.
That number alone ought to stop you cold on the highway. But the marker doesn't let you stop there. The subsequent deaths of victims from injuries sustained that day brought the final count to 311 souls.
Three hundred and eleven. Say that slow and let it land. The explosion was blamed on a natural gas leak beneath the school building.
And here is the detail that will stay with you — natural gas, in those days, was odorless. Undetectable. You could not smell it coming.
You had no warning at all. Within weeks of the disaster, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring an odor to be added to natural gas. That sharp, unmistakable smell you catch near a stove or a gas line today — that practice traces back to what happened in New London.
The community erected this memorial to the victims in 1939, two years after the ground shook and the world changed. Three hundred and eleven people. A school full of East Texas kids on an ordinary Wednesday.
Don't drive past it without rememberin' that.
What the marker says
New London School Explosion on March 18, 1937, a massive explosion destroyed the New London Junior-Senior High School, instantly killing an estimated 296 students and teachers. The subsequent deaths of victims from injuries sustained that day brought the final death count to 311. The explosion was blamed on a natural gas leak beneath the school building. Within weeks of the disaster the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring an odor to be added to natural gas, which previously was odorless and therefore undetectable. This memorial to victims of the explosion was erected in 1939.