NEW LONDON, Texas — The New London community on Saturday united to honor the memory of those lost in the tragic London School explosion on March 18, 1937. The explosion, caused by an odorless natural gas leak, claimed the lives of 294 people and left over 300 injured.
Patsy Lefors Dawson, a London High School class of 1954 graduate, was just 13 months old when she was in the gym for a PTA meeting when the explosion happened.
"My eldest sister was thrown back and she broke her femur bones. She was in a body cast for the rest of that summer," Dawson said. "My next sister ran off into the woods with some other children and my mother said it was two hours before she found her."
Since then, she has taken it upon herself to learn about the tragic events that unfolded in the wake of the disaster.
Although Jean Davidson was born four years after the explosion, she shares a profound connection through her husband, who tragically lost his sister in the explosion. Davidson graduated from London High in 1959.
"He was born three years later. And he never, never knew her and never did know much about her until he and I started volunteering at the museum," Davidson said.
It was during that time when people began visiting the museum, sharing stories about his sister, keeping her memory alive in the community.
"It's meant a lot to him because his mother and daddy never really talked to him about it," Davidson said. "And so, he's been really blessed to have learned about her and know more about her. I think he actually got felt like he was close to her, which he had never felt."
After the explosion, Texas passed laws requiring natural gas to be mixed with a malodorant, serving as a model for other states. This initiative soon became federal law.
"Had it not been for what happened here, many, many lives could have been lost because gas did not have a smell and because of what happened here, now everybody smells gas," Davidson said.