So, some stories maybe don’t get better with age but they are so indwelled in your memory that you know they’re not going anywhere. Every year we get ready to start football season, I think of Jessica McClure, the little baby in Midland that was trapped in a well.
If you don’t know the story, and it’s thirty-seven years ago I think. She was eighteen months old and was out playing in her aunt’s back yard. Somehow there was nothing covering what turned out to be an old well. She fell into it and disappeared – twenty-two feet below the surface and I think and only about eight inches around. Anyway, it was a major news story. First it was in Texas and by the next day it was nation-wide, then world’ wide. Fox and CNN carried it live and everyone was watching. They dropped a microphone down and they could hear her make sounds. They had hopes that they could get to her and they tried all night. The community came together to help as well as workers and experts from all over. That was a Wednesday I think, and they tried all day Thursday to get her out to no avail. Now they’re getting concerned. They brought in a water jet cutter and they tried all day Friday. Finally Friday night they had another plan. Instead of going directly down they tried going down the other side of the well and eventually they broke through and got her out some fifty-six or fifty-eight hours later. She had multiple injuries but was alive.
They even made a movie about it. Almost forty years later, here’s what you need to know. Jessica McClure is a grown woman, married, still lives in Midland and has two children of her own.
Now, since it was a Friday night in October, I’m at Gordon Wood Stadium and I’m hoping to tell the fans some good news so we monitor, and monitor, and monitor. Finally it comes out that she’s been rescued so I put it on the air. She’s been rescued! It was a good story. It was a good story for me and for all the fans listening in.
But the game was being played in Brownwood and our Superintendent, Jim Lancaster, was about to make me the last person to know. He went through the press box and told everybody and then he came up to tell me. He opened the door to the radio room and said, “They got her out”. I said, “Good deal” because I had already put it on the air.
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].