Spring City tragedy memorialized

SPRING CITY, Tenn. — Patty Underwood was sitting at the front of the Spring City school bus, just behind the driver, when a train struck it in 1955, she said.

Smoke and dirt filled the air.

Several minutes later, she found herself lying atop a cabinet in Rockwood hospital with a gash above her eye and a broken collarbone, she said. She was 8 years old and a third-grader at the time.

“I wasn’t hurt as bad as a lot of them,” Mrs. Underwood said.

Eleven children died when a train struck a Spring City school bus just after 3 p.m. on Aug. 22, 1955. More than half a century later, the community hasn’t forgotten the tragedy.

Community members are creating a memorial wall and plaque for the accident and its 36 survivors that will be unveiled in the Spring City Museum and Depot when it opens May 10.

Two years ago, city officials placed a granite monument near the site of the accident, a rail crossing at the edge of downtown Spring City on Piccadilly Avenue.

Spring City Mayor Mary Sue Garrison said museum work began in November. The museum will have memorial walls for Spring City history and for the bus crash, she said.

A plaque to commemorate the accident also will be placed on a train caboose that sits next to the depot, she said. Originally, the community wanted to make the caboose into a museum.

“We’ve had to revamp,” Mrs. Garrison said. “There’s no way to make it handicap accessible.”

Instead, volunteers are refurbishing and repainting the train car, she said. The inside of the car also will be restored, Mrs. Garrison said.

Mrs. Garrison and Jim Galloway, owner of Ace Hardware in Spring City, have photos of the crash to be displayed in the museum.

Mr. Galloway said he was supposed to be on the bus. But a sudden trip to Chattanooga with his parents that day kept him off it, he said.

Four children who lived on his street died that afternoon, he said.

“It was horrible,” he said.

Rhea County Commissioner John Mincy also survived the bus crash. He was 6 years old and a first-grader. Mr. Mincy likes the idea of a memorial.

“It was a tragedy the time it happened, but it’s something Spring City will be remembered for,” he said. “It’s part of the history of Spring City.”

Mrs. Underwood, who now lives in Knoxville, said one good thing that happened in the aftermath. She said a band of mothers went to Nashville and lobbied for a law requiring school bus drivers to stop and look at railroad crossings. The law is still in effect today, she said.

She said she also likes the memorial wall.

“I think it keeps the memory there,” she said. “It’s still kind of hard to believe, even after all these years, that it happened.”