Mark McAllister
(In addition, please see Note below.)
from an email

My mother witnessed the explosion from about 100 feet away.

  
Left to right: Genevieve Langham and Myrtle Braswell.

Genevieve Langham was a primary school music teacher, 20 years old, in her first year of teaching. She and another teacher, Myrtle Braswell, were walking toward the main building a few minutes after three. They were headed for the PTA meeting, apparently unaware that the meeting was not being held in the usual location - the high school auditorium - but rather in the gymnasium behind the main building. When they neared the building "Myrt" realized she forgot her coat and went back for it while my mother stood and waited. (Myrt only wanted the cigarettes in the pocket, my mother said later. They were roommates and best friends.) My mother was not injured when the building blew, but she has never been able to describe her immediate impressions.

She was the regular organist at the New London Methodist Church, and played for thirteen consecutive funerals on March 20. Many years later she gave me her autographed copy of "Living Lessons of the New London Explosion" which was written by the church pastor R.L. Jackson.

She continued to teach at New London after the explosion and met Bill McAllister, a chemical engineer working for Hanlon Pipe Line Company, in 1940. They married in 1941 and lived in Overton. I was born in 1944 in Dayton, Ohio at Wright Patterson Field where my father was a test pilot. We lived in New London after the war for a couple of years, but I have no memory of those times. My boyhood was spent in an oil camp northeast of Gladewater, where my father was appointed superintendent of a gasoline plant in 1947. So I'm definitely an East Texas boy.


New London 1941


[personal info deleted]

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Note from Bill:
I read Mark's book all in one sitting yesterday, and found it to be one of those that you can't put down after you start. Some parts will bring tears to your eyes, some will make you laugh. It's very captivating.
The book can be ordered from the publisher now and should be available in bookstores around mid-June.
Mr. McAllistar's personal web site
Publisher's web site