UPDATE: RELATIVES KILLED IN NEW LONDON SCHOOL EXPLOSION

My friday update included details of various odd and strange places that Dad can visit while he's in Rusk County, Texas. One of those places was a museum and tea shop commemorating the deaths of nearly 300 students and teachers in New Longon, Texas due to a natural gas explosion at a school there in 1937.

Well, it turns out distant relatives died in that explosion. My mother wrote with this information:

I mentioned to mom that you had noted the school gas explosion, and she did say that that was the school that her cousins were killed in. They were a set of twins, one girl, and one boy. Joe and Cathryn Gordon. They were the children of Harry and Bess Gordon. Harry was Grannie Hays' cousin. She lived with Harry's family after her mother died, and her dad sent her to live with her aunt. At the time, he was unable to raise her properly, he had to work to send Fannie (Harry's mother) money to support her and her siblings(two brothers: Harry and Homer). Harry was Earl's dad. Remember Cousin Earl?? Anyway, that is the lowdown on the cousins and their relation to Grannie and Me-Maw. I remember pictures of them, but don't know what happened to those pictures after mom and dad moved to Alaska.

Well, there you have it. They were Chambers, Gordons by marriage it appears. Earl Chambers, or Cousin Earl as he's referred to above, died a few years ago. But in the few years before he did pass away, he came up to Alaska to fish and had a great time... even at the ripe old age of 83(?). I don't know how he can be forgotten - an excitable man, he not only spoke some dialect of Cajun/East Texas English, but frequently studdered through it when his blood pressure was up (nearly always). He had only one lung due to cancer as a result of years of smoking and installing asbestos as an international journeyman construction worker and he wore glasses with lenses thicker than those on a lot of hobby telescopes. But none of that really stopped him. In fact, he took to fishing in Alaska pretty quickly and with impressive endurance, all things considered. But it did take him time to learn how to fish in Alaska because the Cook Inlet was too deep to either dynamite or telephone the fish...

We visited him in his home one time - Jasper? - where he had recently purchased the neighboring property. It didn't take him long to have the house bulldozed, just so he could guarantee that a family with children wouldn't move in next door. Could you really blame the old guy?

Oh, well. Rest in peace, Earl.