Your Experience

Doris Miller:

Dr. Harold Miller was one of only three physicians who were at the hospital on that Saturday. He recalled that he felt a vibration as he leaned against a desk, and that is how he first learned about the explosion. He either had the radio on, or else he or someone with him turned it on, and they heard the stunning news. It is very likely that someone at Reid saw the two clouds of smoke that rose immediately above the downtown. I remember that our family could see the two distinct clouds - white first, I think, followed by dark. This was from our farm, which was well outside the city limits. The smoke, along with the tremor, would have caused consternation. And in 1968, there was no internet, nor even a 24-hour television news channel, to which one could go for instant information. The telephone and the radio were the only ways to keep track of what was going on.

By the time the injured began to arrive at the hospital, the Disaster Plan and Dr. Miller were ready. He had organized the triage process and gave assignments according to the Plan. Doctors and nurses who had not been at the hospital came in without being called or notified; they just came, ready to help. Even doctors and nurses who were not on the hospital's staff came to assist as soon as they heard what had happened. Constant radio coverage kept the community informed. Radio listeners who owned station wagons were urged to transport victims to the hospital or to the armory. The response was so great that before long they had to tell people that no more vehicles were needed. Dr. Miller quoted one of the ambulance drivers as saying, "There are bodies all over hell down there." Dr. Miller also told about a doctor from Texas who was just driving nearby on Interstate 70 listening to his car radio. When he heard about the disaster, this physician came to the hospital to help. Unfortunately, no one can recall his name.

The main hospital dining room and the doctors' dining room were designated locations for triage and emergency treatment. Harold said that the victims arrived with everything from scratches to major injuries. As soon as casualties arrived and overflowed the small emergency area, the dining room tables were used as examination and treatment platforms for the injured. By then, it must have indeed looked like a scene from a television drama. The disaster plan proved to be efficient and successful. Although the cafeteria tables were covered with patients during the afternoon of the explosion, all victims had been examined and either treated or dismissed by the time regular food service was scheduled to begin. Tables were cleared of patients and dinner was served at the regularly-scheduled time, about 5:00 p.m. That must have been a very strange transition for the hospital staff who ate dinner that night in those "triage" rooms.

During all of this, Harold's children and I heard and saw the explosion from our home a little more than a mile north of the Richmond city limits. We, too, were glued to the radio for news. Sometime during the first hour after the explosion, Harold managed to call home, concerned about our safety. He was greatly relieved to find his wife and five children safe at home; he had been worried that we might have been downtown at the Hoosier Store, shopping for new Easter clothes on that Saturday before Palm Sunday. At that time, Easter season required all ladies and little girls to have new hats and dresses, and little girls usually needed fresh, white gloves from the Hoosier Store or from Knollenberg's Department Store. Even the little boys were dragged downtown to shop for new Easter outfits.

We listened to the local WKBV radio all day Saturday and Sunday. Our youngest daughter remembers being in bed, with a radio on in her room, and listening in the dark to the constant updates - sad and solemn announcements of the names of the dead as they were discovered and identified.

My then-12-year-old daughter recalls Sunday School the next morning - Palm Sunday. It was a beautiful April day in our hometown. All of the junior high school kids in Sunday School were pulled together and had a discussion in which they were encouraged to tell what they knew and to share thoughts and feelings. Our then-10- year-old remembers vividly what her daddy told about that day. The 7-year-old has always remembered someone's grim description of finding a single amputated foot in the rubble. Even the almost-4-year-old son remembers seeing and hearing the explosion, as far away as we were; and, our 8-year-old son says he was startled when the bowl of Spaghetti-O's on his plate vibrated for a short while. A few minutes later we looked out to see a plume of grey smoke rising high into the sky. He also remembers that the same adults who never tired of asking if he was "going to be a doctor like your daddy" would also tell him what a great job his daddy had done during the explosion.

Like many families in the area, we felt as if we had only narrowly missed being more directly and tragically involved, My father, who lived next door to us, had planned to pick up cleaning close to the Hoosier Store early that Saturday afternoon; but he had postponed the trip in favor of a nap. I think that pretty much everyone in town did know someone who had been affected directly. I suppose that Harold must have wondered, as he worked in the hospital that Saturday, whether he would see many friends or associates brought in by the ambulances and the station wagons.

As I think about it now, I see the irony that is so often folded into our lives: During his military service, Harold doled out cream for burns and delivered a few babies for military families. He performed surgery on an emergency basis and at sea, but he never served in a combat situation. It was on April 6, 1968, that he provided medical care in what mimicked, for a short time, a war zone.