2016 Healthy Kids Heroes

Every year, to mark the anniversary of the March 18, 1937 Texas School Explosion, I salute inspiring individuals who show extraordinary responsibility and inspirational leadership for school and community safety. They live and work by a standard of excellence and integrity — often in the face of denial, willful blindness, and indifference about hazards and unsafe conditions.

What was the 1937 Texas School Explosion? 

One lesson of the 1937 tragedy is that a safe quality environment depends on champions with an exceptional sense of responsibility. Another lesson is that we can’t take it for granted that local officials or elected representatives make community safety or health a priority. 

These four Heroes are inspiring for a combination of personal qualities and qualifications beyond credentials. Each, in his or her own way, promotes the values that build and continuously strengthen a culture of responsibility for safety and continuous improvement.

Todd Dresser, Courageous Visionary

Rick Reibstein, Prevention First

Todd and Rick are heroes because both have dedicated their lives and long careers to helping people make good decisions to prevent pollution and reduce environmental hazards in schools, workplaces and communities. As public agency officials, educators, mentors, and consultants, they have been innovative problem solvers in a variety of business, private, government and academic settings. They are experts at building relationships and trust with clients and communities.  

 

Jane Winn is a grassroots leader gifted at building community power to oppose pollution and advance sustainability. 

Brooke Leifer is an inspiring young woman dedicated to using music to inspire people “to make the world a better place, a special place, a healthy place, to stop pollution."

Let’s make March 18 an annual day to honor those whose extraordinary sense of responsibility and leadership protects students and staff from chemical hazards and unhealthy school conditions. Teach Safety. Teach Safely. Update our values and technical skills to live safely with 21st century chemicals and technology.

Heroes 2004 - 2015

Hero 2015: A Wow Experience. Gregg Smith, Salt Lake City Schools Facility Services 

Read: Foxborough Regional Charter School, 

Dr. Mark Logan, Executive Director, Foxborough, MA

Read: Mike Matley, Custodian, Westborough Public Library, Westborough, MA

Read: Roger Young,  Roger Young and Associates, Andover, MA

MORE Hero STORIES

Heroes 2004 - 2014

Janet Hurley 2013

 

Linda Stroud 2013

 

John Gann 2013

Aimee Code 2013

Dwight Peavey 2011

Ruth Breech 2009

Set aside a special day  

...let us suggest the legislature of Texas set aside a special day each year to be observed as a memorial day on which tribute will be paid to the children and teachers who died in this catastrophe...and to make laws of safety... Our daddies and mothers, as well as the teachers, want to know that when we leave our homes in the morning to go to school, that we will come out safe when our lessons are over.“ Read the complete speech by Carolyn Jones Frei, March 25, 1937 to the Texas Legislature after the 1937 March 18 Texas School Explosion.

Let’s make March 18 an annual day to Bring the Lessons of 1937 to Your School.  Tell the story of the 1937 TX School Explosion, study its lessons, and celebrate the leadership and partnerships that can save lives. Update your school's values and technical skills to live safely with 21st century chemicals and technology. Read about inspiring heroes at http://tinyurl.com/HealthyKidsHeroes2015.  

As a result of the New London tragedy, the 45th TX Legislature enacted House Bill 1017 which amended Article 6053, Texas Revised Civil Statutes, 1925, giving the Railroad Commission the authority to adopt rules and regulations pertaining to the odorization of natural gas or liquefied petroleum gases. On July 27, 1937, Gas Utilities Docket 122 was adopted and the Commission began enforcement of odorization requirements for natural gas.

"My sister Helen Jones, an honor student and member of the high school champion debate team, was not so fortunate. She and my uncle, Paul Grier, a senior who planned to study medicine, were both taken from us in this awful explosion that killed so many of the future generation of East Texas."-- Carolyn Jones Frei, 1937

 

East Texas Utopia: Remembering the New London School Explosion 9/18/2013

By Amy Burke, aburke@news-journal.com

See Photo Gallery

Photo: Ellie Goldberg, 2007

London Museum & Tea Room

690 S Main Street

New London, TX 75682

(903) 895-4602

It was March 18, 1937, and it was one of the most tragic days in Texas history, but it brought forth a law that would save countless lives in its wake.

The explosion that day at the New London Junior-Senior High School could be heard for miles — ripping down walls, smashing cars and killing around 300 unsuspecting students, teachers and visitors.

At the height of the East Texas oil boom, how could something like this happen at one of the richest rural school districts in the country? I set out to find some answers by visiting the place where it all began — at the self-proclaimed home of the original Friday Night Lights — New London.

The town is small — home to less than 1,000 residents — but the resilience of the locals is evident, especially inside the museum that pays tribute to the school and the victims in the aftermath of one of the biggest school disasters in the country....

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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 naturl 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 that Explosion was erected in 1939.

The Lives Unlived in Newtown
   By Sara Mosle, NYTIMES Magazine

On a country highway in the tiny town of New London, Tex., sits a small tea shop and a museum that houses the collective grief of a community that lost its children. On the afternoon of March 18, 1937, the London Consolidated School exploded a few minutes before classes were to be dismissed. An odorless cloud of natural gas had leaked from a faulty heating system into the building’s unventilated basement and ignited, most likely from a spark from the school’s shop class.

According to witnesses, the school appeared to blast off its foundation and hover in the air before collapsing again, generating clouds of ash and debris that plowed across the schoolyard. Scores of mothers, who had been attending a P.T.A. meeting in the nearby wood gymnasium, staggered out into a blizzard of whirling papers and pulverized mortar. When the dust settled, approximately 300 people were dead, nearly all of them children...

Read the article: The Lives Unlived in Newtown

...In the months before the 1937 explosion, state fire regulators tried to raise the alarm about the perils of natural gas, but it took the death of schoolchildren to impel politicians to act. Within days of the disaster, Texas legislators went into emergency session to promote the addition of a “malodorant” to natural gas, which has since saved countless lives.
 

Odor now added to natural gas
http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/news/stories/03192007_london_gas_odor.html

By MIKE ELSWICK  Monday, March 19, 2007

If a positive angle can be found in the tragic explosion of the London School on March 18, 1937, it could be that hundreds, if not thousands, of lives have probably been saved as a result, according to Archie McDonald.

"The major positive that came from the New London school explosion was legislation requiring gas companies to add an odor to their product so anyone can determine when natural gas is leaking or not properly utilized," said McDonald, a historian long associated with Stephen F. Austin State University who has researched the topic.

Naturally, natural gas has no odor. The smell today many associate with the release of natural gas comes from a malodorant agent added to the gas just for the purpose of allowing it to be smelled should a leak develop.

What some people describe as a rotting cabbage smell usually associated with natural gas comes not from natural gas itself but from mercaptans, which are added to natural gas during processing.

The London School can be credited with instigating, or at least speeding up and stimulating, laws resulting in requiring the odor agent to be added, McDonald said.

The April 1937 edition of the Quarterly of the National Fire Protection Association ran a 14-page summary of the London School disaster of the previous month. Among the conclusions in the report prepared by H. Oram Smith with the Texas Inspection Bureau, was that "the value of a distinctive malodorant in all gas supply systems by which leaking gas may be readily detected is clearly evident."

Smith wrote there was only one explosion associated with the disaster and no fire.

"Yet there is evidence of a most terrific force in the great extent of devastation and loss of life that came almost instantly; testimony of bodies tossed 75 feet in the air; an automobile 200 feet distant crushed like an eggshell under a two-ton slab of concrete that had been hurled from the building," Smith wrote. He said at the established point of origin of the blast the explosion had to "break through an 8-inch concrete floor slab before starting on its path of destruction."

In the Texas Railroad Commission archives covering a summary of the agency's activities in the 1930s was an item indicating enforcement of the new rules requiring odorants was enacted, said Ramona Nye, spokeswoman for the agency.

"As a result of this tragedy, the 45th Legislature enacted House Bill 1017 ... giving the Railroad Commission the authority to adopt rules and regulations pertaining to the odorization of natural gas or liquefied petroleum gases," the commission archives said. "On July 27, 1937, Gas Utilities Docket 122 was adopted and the commission began enforcement of odorization requirements for natural gas."

In May 1937, the Texas Railroad Commission, at the time referred to as the most powerful board of resource regulators in the world, had passed an order in memory of those killed in New London that continues to impact the lives of people worldwide.

Shortly after the disaster, the Texas Legislature met in emergency session and enacted the Engineering Registration Act, now rewritten as the Texas Engineering Practice Act. Public pressure was on the government to regulate the practice of engineering because of the faulty installation of the natural gas connection at the London School believed to have resulted in the natural gas leak.

Many other states soon enacted rules requiring an odorant be added to natural gas, and later in 1937 federal requirements were made law, Smith said.

According to the Texas Railroad Commission, the odorants are considered non-toxic in the extremely low concentrations occurring in natural gas delivered to the end user.