I was 8 yrs old and remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the 3rd grade at Danforth. We had been outside watching the orange smoke, then went into class and the whole world seemed to explode. Glass flew everywhere, shades fell off the wall and we all forgot the fire drills we had practiced and ran out of the building. I feel very lucky to have survived that day but it is something all of us will remember forever.

— By MARY TALLEY on Apr. 16 at 8:26 AM

I was in the third grade at Sam Houston elementry school in Galveston. Mr Lester our principal rang the school fire alarm bell as the building shook and windows crashed. The school is long gone but it was on 25th street. Mr. Lester told us to get to the playground and to walk.(yeah) We stood on the playground and waited for our parents. All we were told was that there had been an explosion in Texas City. After about an hour or so we were told to walk directly home if our parents had not arrived. There were no school buses except for the kids that lived down the Island and Boliver.

We ran all the way home where my mother and infant brother George were. Mom told us dad had called and said a ship blew up on the TC docks. Dad was going down to help. Dad got home very late that night just in time to hear the second explosion. We stood at the window of our third story house and watched the skies lite up. It was real shary to my brother Bobby who was seven and I nine.

The next day dad went back to TC and helped haul injured and later dead people from the dock area. He used our old mail van that he had just bought. Mom told us to stay away from the van when dad returned because she feared it might be dangerous to us with the blood and all.

The ash fell for days and I remember Bobby and I washing the house down with the water hose. The Rourkes, the urbanis and the Fleck kids all were doing the same and we all thought we were helping our dads who were otherwise involved in other things.

I don't think I will ever get over hearing all the stories about where everyone was and what they did that day. I was still hearing them 30 years later. I hope the memories of those days never are allowed to be forgotten.

— By claud bolton on Apr. 16 at 11:49 AM