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Out of the Ashes
The
Virginia Tech shooting happened
April 16th. The Texas City Disaster
occurred April 17th 1947. This is
the anniversary month of my bloody
baptism into radio when I rushed to
Texas City to pick up bodies, many
of the unrecognizable as human. By
the end of that day I was hired when
I was asked to do remote broadcasts
from that carnage, my first
experience in talking over the
radio.
Everything I needed to know about radio I learned at KGBC in Galveston. In fact, the most exciting thing that happened to me in my career was not getting to know Frank Sinatra during my KLAC days. Almost but not quite. It was not being responsible for getting the giant pandas sent to this country from China while at KCBQ in San Diego, nor was it spearheading the campaign to establish Charter Schools in San Diego., nor saving the Beatle concert from a teen riot in Cleveland., or swimming across San Diego through 200 swimming pools for Muscular Dystrophy. or walking Death Valley or sky diving ten thousand feet. or climbing ten thousand foot Picacho Del Diablo for charity .Galveston was much more gripping. I determined to go to KGBC and introduce myself when I returned from a long voyage in the Pacific that included jumping ship in Persia, now Iran. Spending a lot of time isolated from the world on a slow moving tanker gave me time to think about what to do with my life. Radio was on top of my list in 1947. The day after my return to my hometown, Galveston, I went to the local station, and sought out Orland O. Dodson, the news editor. I had heard him often and admired his straight ahead style of reporting.. Today, he would be a network TV reporter. He was that good. I had a big voice, and told Dodson that I wanted to be a newsman. He was encouraging, and introduced me to Jim Bradner, a friendly open man who had just retired from being second in command of the TVA, a huge government water conservation system of dams in the Tennessee area. His wife was a beautiful middle aged woman with a constant smile and a mind for numbers. She handled the money. I told Mr Bradner that I wanted to get into radio.“Stick around, Harry,” he said. affably. “You can never tell what might crop up.” A few days later , tooling around town in my new-used- Buick, I turned onto Strand Avenue, a block away from the wharf area when my car was rocked by a quaking concussion followed seconds later by an ear-splitting explosion. I swerved to the curb in shock and confusion. I could see others walking around in wide eyed shock, as disoriented as I was. Cars stopped and drivers sat stunned. Not long afterward, the music on KGBC faded mid- tune and Dodson’s authoritative voice came on. A ship, the Grand Camp, had blown up on the dock at Texas City, a few miles north of Galveston, No one knew why yet. Dodson told us that he would soon be on the scene to tell us what was happening. I drove a block to the wharf to get a better view of a massive plume of smoke and fire roiling in the skies above me. It reminded me of the mushroom cloud suspended above Hiroshima. I gunned my car and headed across the causeway toward Texas City. On the way, I heard Dodson on the radio. describing a scene of death and destruction. His voice was constricted as he pleaded for volunteers to help. I was there in no time. It was a mere matter of blocks from the shattered outskirts of Texas City to the bedlam of the dock area. Buildings were splintered. Cars were overturned, including two police cars . Hundreds stumbled around in shock, their clothes in tatters, bloody from the shrapnel created by the ship’s atomization, their skin black from the tons of oil that had been blasted from the bowels of the Grand Camp. Mounds of human hamburger meat, were everywhere, Others, like me, were streaming in, including a couple of Air Force colonels from Ellington Field, who took over in the absence of policemen and firemen, many of whom had been wounded or killed when the shrapnel scythed through the town. They commandeered trucks and ordered me and others to start picking up bodies and laying them onto the flat beds. Many were not recognizable as human, which in a way, made it easier. We piled them onto the trucks and when they were loaded, I would tap the back of the truck, the signal for it to take off and deposit them in an open field that had been designated for the dead. One of the colonels ran to his car and drove to a high school auditorium which he officially designated as a morgue. Medics arrived from John Sealy Hospital in Galveston and began triaging the near dead. Some were so mangled that they were passed over in favor of those who had a better chance to survive the next few hours Later, it was learned that there were close to 600 dead that day and around 3500 wounded. Divine intervention was common. A man driving a Jeep had been dock-side when the Grand Camp blew, flipping over his Jeep, and trapping him under it, A few seconds later, tons of shrapnel rained down on that area, The bottom of the jeep, now the top, shielded him from being shredded. A few hours later, the unexpected happened. Orland O Dodson appeared and said, “Harry, will you take over for me? I have to get back to the station. I know you can do it, Just say what you see, and ask for blankets and water and emergency supplies.” He gave me a list of more things to ask for, and was gone, leaving me alone after he arranged for me to use the only public phone booth left standing, guarded by a deputy sheriff. I found an open water main, washed off as well as I could and went to work, telling myself that I was a real reporter. When he returned to KGBC, the really real reporter Orland O Dodson dug deeper for the explanation as to how the ship had exploded. He knew that the Grand Camp was carrying a hold full of ammonium nitrate, but why had it exploded? By now, the day after the initial explosion, the basic facts were that a small fire had broken out on the Grand Camp and when it couldn’t be doused with a small hose, or portable extinguisher, the order was given to batten down the hatches to smother the fire. Dodson called a professor at Texas A and M, for an on-air interview. He led off by telling the professor about how the crew had tried to stifle the fire by covering it up in the hold, The professor explained that the resultant trapped heat caused a decomposition of the Ammonium nitrate, producing a combustible gas. He told the professor that the crew then sprayed the hold with water to cool off its cargo. The professor explained ruefully that spraying the hold with water only aggravated the chemical which was sensitive to abrupt changes in temperature. He told Dodson that the ship blew up because everyone did precisely the wrong thing.. That explanation of the disaster was a national scoop for Orland. The Grand Camp had literally exploded sky high, almost downing two private planes flying a good five thousand feet over Texas City. The blast was so powerful that the ship’s two ton anchor was ripped off the bow and blown a mile and a half. away. I left Texas City in the early morning, an hour before another cargo ship, the High Flyer also loaded with Ammonium Nitrate exploded and torn loose from its moorings It then drifted too near the red hot Grand Camp debris and blew up This created a tidal wave at the wharf that launched a 130 foot long 30 ton barge out of the water where it surfed a hundred yards and crushed the phone booth I had been using for “broadcast central”. I went into the station that morning before noon to find Jim and Lenore Bradner waiting for me, grinning. I was hired officially as a staff man at KGBC, a job that called for me to do man on the street programs, read news, emcee studio music shows, do a jock show from 10am till noon, and host a “black music - then called race music- show each Monday through Friday afternoon, sponsored by Royal Crown Pomade. I played songs with lyrics such as “My baby ain’t no jockey but he sure knows how to ride . He jumps in the saddle and slides from side to side.” I also hosted big band network shows from the Balinese Room and the Municipal Pier, on Mutual, and ABC, the ticket that got me out of Galveston and into Hollywood at KLAC. KGBC gave me an invaluable foundation for anything that was to come later. The Program Director was a Hollywood-handsome man named Dean Turner., a fine talent in any market, but reported to have been purged from his last job for having consorted with the mayor’s wife. No matter. He treated me great, amiably pointing me toward newer, more challenging assignments. He got me into man on the street shows by simply saying, “Harry, go out and do a man on the street program at 23d and Mechanic.” Often, as many as a hundred listeners would show up to be on the air with me. My sponsor was Dixie Bell Ice Cream, the richest, creamiest ice cream I ever tasted, I would present my interviewees with Dixie Bell certificates. My talent fee was a certificate. We featured live studio music, such as Hubert Sutter and his jazz combo. Spud Goodall would often come in from Hollywood to visit his hometown and sit in. with Hubert. He was a major Hollywood studio guitarist. Hubert played a clarinet that Spud said was as about as good as Benny Goodman’s. Hubert was legally blind and gave new meaning to the phrase “Well, neighbors, the old clock on the wall says it’s time to go.” During the final moments of his show, he would climb on a chair to press his face against the large Westinghouse clock on the wall, peering at it to keep track of the time. Galveston spawned not just me for bigger things, but also Jack Carney who followed me at KGBC, and later went to St Louis where he was a major force on the air. Tom Dawson portrayed a highly popular country character named :”The Critter”. He talked like Pat Buttram years before Buttram copied Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker’s unique style of talking and became Gene Autrey’s side kick. Tom forsook talent, and went to New York where he became the V.P. of Spot Radio Sales at CBS. Years later, my acquired ability to work those raw street interviews into humorous payoffs led me to win an audition in New York to host a network television game show. The producer was Steve Carling who also produced the “$64,000 Question.” He was busted for slipping the answers to the questions to favored contestants on that show. The week when the quiz show scandal broke was the same week that I was to begin his new quiz show called “Chase.” I returned to Galveston a few years ago to visit old chums and segued to KGBC out of curiosity. The Bradners were gone years before, and I had heard that the current owners had let it run down. On the way to the station, I heard a fine talent on the air, and was curious to meet him. There, I found an older one-armed man sitting at the controls playing 45’s on a pair of feltless, bare metal 33-45 rpm turntables, He knew about me and was apprehensive. “You aren’t going to retire and come back here and take my job, are you? I said no, and that I had listened to him and was impressed, that he related to his audience, and sounded glad to be here, and that this was what it was all about Of course, Hollywood was more lofty than Galveston. I was fortunate to make friends with Paul Weston, Jo Stafford’s husband, and a major executive at Columbia Records. Paul took me to lunch by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel to cheer me up when I received my army draft notice. We were engaged in small talk when Skitch Henderson, the Tonight Show Music Director walked by and sat with us. He asked Paul how it was going, and Paul told him that he had just finished a composition commissioned by the Vatican, patterned on 5th century Gregorian chants. Henderson asked him why he didn’t base it on the more recent 7th century Gregorian chants and Paul replied,” Well, if everyone thought like you, there never would have been 5th century Gregorian.” Gosh, Toto! This isn’t Galveston any more. |
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e-mail Hare
hare@happyhareonline.com
Hare's Biography |
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Previously ...
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