The day my daddy died – part 2

Continued from yesterday…

Neva and I dressed quickly and left for the local hospital. I don’t remember much about the trip. It was a local hospital, not very large and not very far from our home. By the time we got there, there were already ambulances arriving bringing injured people. We were in a waiting area very close to the point of arrival and were able to see those who were arriving in the ambulances. We were sure the next ambulance was going to contain our Daddy, but one after another arrived and he was not among those being brought in for treatment. Even now, 48 years later, it brings tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat as I remember those feelings of loss as I realized my Daddy was not going to be among the survivors. We had no idea how many casualties there were but judging from the severity of the blast we knew there would be many. Once the ambulances stopped coming, the three of us (my mother, my sister and I) walked the halls, looking in rooms to see if possibly he had been brought him in and we hadn’t seen him. So many people were burned and Neva remembers vividly the smell of burning flesh as we looked for Daddy. At times it was difficult to even get down the hall because there were cots in the halls with doctors and nurses working on injured people.

I don’t know what time it was when we finally gave up and decided to go home. It could be that we were told that Daddy had been found. It was the early hours of the morning and it was hard to quit searching but it became clear that Daddy was dead. We later learned that because of the number of people injured and the severity of the blast that some of the injured people had been taken to other hospitals, Lamesa, Tahoka and even to Seminole and Lubbock. We thought perhaps he might have been carried to one of the other hospitals but soon had to face the reality that Daddy had been killed in the blast. Four people were killed in the explosion; two volunteer firemen, Jim Cousineau and Wayland “Monk” Parker, my Daddy, James Bryant Ray, and Ruben Johnson, the man who was driving the transport truck. Over 160 people were burned, many of them seriously, when the butane tank exploded, sending a ball of flame several hundred feet into the air. Newspaper articles said that Daddy and the two volunteer firemen were standing about 50 feet from the truck discussing how they could free the man who was trapped in the overturned transport truck. The blast blew a large hole in the pavement of the Seagraves Hwy and the force of the explosion knocked chunks out of the south median, dividing the service road and the east bound lane of the Seagraves Hwy. The hole and the area around the blast was repaired very quickly, but it was visible for many years. I remember making lots of trips to the blast site and feeling a wrenching pain each time, yet feeling compelled to drive by just to feel close to Daddy. Buildings were damaged that were close to the blast and window panes in the downtown area of Brownfield, 5-6 miles away, were shattered. We later learned that the blast had also registered on the Richter scale and was felt with tremendous force 200 miles from Brownfield.

When we finally left the hospital, realizing that Daddy didn’t make it and was gone, we knew we had to notify Clara, our older sister. She was 19 years old, working in Lubbock at Reese Air Force Base. I don’t remember who actually went to Lubbock. I believe it was our Uncle Boots Bass, Jess Gregg (a close friend of the family who lived in Ropesville), and myself. Clara doesn’t remember much except that it was in the middle of the night and she remembers when we got back to Brownfield, Mother was in her bedroom in bed crying. She had been given a sedative to help calm her but the grief was so great and vision of what she had seen was so vivid in her mind that calmness was a long time coming.

Check back for the “rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey would say, tomorrow.