7
Maybe.
Maybe if Randy
Fitch and his camera had survived, we would have a better record. Maybe.
As it was, only
those on the very periphery survived. Of
those 53 who went down, only seven came out alive. None of them knew what happened, except
suddenly the tunnel was collapsing in front of them. One who was pulled from the wreckage, Nathan
Harkin, had his legs crushed, and would spend the rest of his time in the trap
on crutches.
It was most likely
a dispute over the use of explosives.
Earlier arguments I had overheard, particularly from Tom Bodell's
perspective, was that David Yankovich was utterly convinced he knew the exact
right place to put the explosives to safely accelerate their tunneling, and Tom
Bodell was equally certain that they could not be safely used. It looked Tom had been right.
Unlike earlier
tragedies, this was one that affected virtually everyone, student and faculty
alike. It was particularly devastating to
our close knit group, Artie and gang.
Tom Bodell and Jim Kurrash were not abstract figures to us, not somebody
we just saw in the hallway. They were
two of our closest friends, buddies we saw every day, talked to every day,
shared our lives with. As long as our
stayed intact, we felt we could endure the madness around us. But now it had gone full center, and the
force of it literally dropped us to our knees.
Mr. Jerry Bruchow,
one of the teacher supervisors, was miraculously one of the seven
survivors. This was a blessing,
considering his importance to us in agriculture, but my father had put him in
as one of the teachers in charge of the project. He had sent Mr. King, the shop teacher,
ahead, into the forefront of tunneling progress. Terence King had the authority to say yay or
nay on the use of explosives. He did not
survive. The other faculty casualty was
Mr. Robert Anderwicz, the drafting
teacher.
Two of our most
adept shop teachers were gone. So were
our most gifted mechanic, Tom Bodell, and our scientific genius, David
Yankovich. The human tragedy was heavy
enough, but we also felt greatly damaged in losing some of our best and
brightest in trying to help us find a way out,
Every person we
lost was a male. We were moving to a
less exist society, at least in the general world, but it had not penetrated
the attitude about a physical mission like the tunnel team. In my father's and Mr. Bruchow's defense, I
don't think there was any female who even asked to be on the team. Some, like Sue Boschman, would later voice
many regrets that they weren't down there, but that was after the tragedy.
The shattering
earthquake caused by whatever happened down there, even caused injuries around
the school, as students fell, or were hit by falling objects. One student was even killed, one Jack
Kessler, who died in the school auditorium when he fell and hit is head in just
the wrong way. My involvement in that
was completely unknown. No one must have
seen me in that area, either coming into the auditorium or leaving. I still feared further retribution from David
Izzner and his associates, but that was not an immediate concern, not while we
were trying to deal with such horrible losses.
Artie was
everywhere, consoling everyone. His
resolve to see us through was fierce, his caring an almost physical thing. He and Ginny were especially important to
reaching out to Mary Estill, Ginny's young sister and Jim Kurrash's
girlfriend. Lisa reached out to Sue
Boschman. It was everything Lisa and I
and Robert Bond could do to prevent from going down into the tunnel. Mostly I was left alone, and shivered, and
cried. Yes, I cried, Dr. Duncan. I cried like I hadn't cried since I was a
toddler. Everything came flooding up and
out of me, all the horror and insanity of the last few months. I didn't want my friends to be dead. I didn't want to be trapped. I wanted to see my mother again.
Eventually Lisa
went back to the makeshift infirmary, and Sue was encompassed by the Estill
girls. Artie came over to me, and put
his hand on my shaking shoulder.
"We will get through this, Lance.
We'll remember Tom and Jim and all they did to help us get out. We'll remember them for the great friends
they were. And we will look out for each
other. No more deaths. I promise."
Artie meant
it. He was very sincere. And he would fight very hard to make it
so. No one can deny how hard he fought
for us. He was a true prince among us, a
genuine leader. It would take awhile for people beyond our group to notice
that, but eventually they would. But
stopping the bad things from happening?
They seemed inevitable. Artie
couldn't stop them. My father couldn't
stop them. I couldn't stop them.
Our July
nightmares were not over.
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