Mariettas Halloween festivities marked by past disaster

By The Associated Press

Posted 11:45AM on Thursday 30th October 2003 ( 21 years ago )

For the last two decades, a city-sponsored festival has been held the weekend before Halloween. But between 1964 and 1984, the city didnt mark Halloween with festivities because residents couldnt get past the horrid night in 1963 when seven people died as the small-town celebration was ending.Roy Pritchard remembers that mild fall Thursday night when the Marietta square was filled with costumed children and the two drugstores on opposite sides of the square bustled with shoppers and trick-or-treaters.Pritchard was a rookie firefighter with a night off. He was at his Lawrence Street home with his family, about one mile from the square, when he felt a tremor shortly before 6:30. The phone rang. It was the fire station. There had been an explosion in the Atherton Drugstore on the southwest corner of the square. People were dead and many were injured by a blast so forceful it drove pens and candy into the drug store ceiling.The 20-year-old Pritchard spent the night digging out the injured and retrieving bodies.It changed my life and Mariettas forever, said Pritchard, who retired from the Marietta Fire Department two years ago as assistant chief and now lives in Waleska. The frolicking stopped that night.The dead included a 34-year-old man and his 7-year-old son, who were in the drugstore to buy a devil mask; a woman buying an Atlanta Journal; a businessman who stopped every night to buy a cigar; the choir director of Midway Presbyterian Church; and two store employees.Fumes from a leaking gas main under the sidewalk had seeped into the drugstore basement and were ignited, probably by a spark from soda fountain air compressors. The blast inside the store blew out the windows, driving chairs, tables and Halloween candy onto Whitlock Avenue. The keys on one mans belt were cut in two. The pressure pushed up the concrete floor at the front of the store, dropping 11 people into the basement. Concrete and debris rained down on the victims, crushing the seven who died.The explosion was devastating to Marietta, said Suse Ann Gresh, whose father, Samuel Alfred White, was killed. It was a small town and everybody knew everybody then.The Pleasantville nature of the Cobb County town made it that much harder for Pritchard as he helped retrieve the dead and injured from the basement. He had worked at the drugstore before joining the Fire Department and knew some of the dead.If every day was like that, I couldnt have stayed on the job, Pritchard said. I knew these people. I got goofy with my emotions. I was all tore up. I was spitting and puking. An older fireman patted me on my back and said, Get tough, son, hang in there.As with most tragedies, heroes emerged, Pritchard and a host of others in this case.The head of Marietta Civil Defense, Romeo Hudgins, ignored the warning of rescue workers and welded steel beams to shore up the cracked building so bodies could be retrieved. Hudgins, perhaps more than anyone, understood the panic and fear of those alive in the basement rubble. He had been trapped under a brick wall during a factory accident 30 years before.Doctors and nurses ended their costume party at an orthopedic surgeons house and dashed to Kennestone Hospital about 7 p.m. Many were in costume.We did not have triage then, said Dr. Jonathan Swift, 79, who was host for the party. The doctors talked together and everyone just did their job. By midnight we were done.Among those Swift treated was Marietta policeman Rupert Raines, now retired and living in Powder Springs.Raines wasnt supposed to patrol that night, but he had swapped desk duty with an older policeman who said his feet hurt. He stopped at the drugstore for a quick bite with fellow policemen George Kelly and Wendall Black. After eating, they stopped outside the front door to talk with high school student Jimmy Smith. The blast blew them into the street. Black, 23, had a fractured pelvis. Kelly, 31, and Raines, 26, had concussions and severe leg injuries. Smith lost a leg.The only memory I have is the sensation of being upside down in the air, Raines said. My wife said when she saw me in the emergency room that I said at least it didnt hurt my pretty face.Minute details of that Halloween fill three age-yellowed notebooks kept to this day in files at the Marietta Fire Department. Fire investigators and two police detectives spent two weeks recording the accounts of survivors and witnesses. The reports flesh out the activities of shoppers and employees in the moments before the explosion at the drugstore, which was later rebuilt and is now the location of Marietta Pizza Co.Pharmacist Robert Poole said people were shouting, Broken arm. Broken leg. One woman told him her son had a broken leg. Dont get me out. Help my son, she said. He picked the boy up and carried him outside. He remembered seeing a self-serve ice cream freezer on its side in the street.Cashier Patsy Hipps, who worked next to Betty Carlisle at the cash register, recalled waking up in the basement on top of glass and cigarettes. She saw the other cashier lying next to her.Betty told me she wasnt hurt, but said, Patsy, your eyes and face is bleeding. Wipe it off, Hipps said the next day. I took my smock and wiped it off. Then they took me to the hospital and sewed me up.Hipps was released after being treated for cuts and bruises. After she was interviewed by investigators, she asked whether they were going to talk to Carlisle next.She looked like she was in pain. But I didnt see no cuts or bruises. It was dark and hard to see, Hipps said, according to the investigators report of the interview. Where is Betty? Is she here?Thats when police told her Betty Carlisle had died.The sadness spread with news of each death, but for Pritchard, the firefighter, his toughest moment came about seven hours after the explosion.He was in the blast pit, working feverishly to find little Terry Wayne Carter, the 7-year-old who had been buying the devil mask.We worked all night, praying we would find him alive, said Pritchard, wiping his eyes. We had found the others. Then at 1 a.m., we found his body. It was really hard for all of us.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2003/10/185069