Kenneth Honeycutt on the Explosions

June 5, 2013

On March 18, 1937, nearly 300 students and teachers died in an explosion caused by a gas leak at the Consolidated School of New London. Playing nearby at the time of the disaster was Kenneth Honeycutt, who came to believe that the explosion was a punishment from God. In this conversation, Honeycutt discusses the tragedy and its impact on him with his wife, Gaye.

This story was produced by StoryCorps.

This story is a part of the American Pilgrimage Project, a conversation series that invites Americans of diverse backgrounds to sit together and talk to each other one-to-one about the role their religious beliefs play at crucial moments in their lives. The interview was recorded and produced by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.

Kenneth Honeycutt: I was very close to the building when it happened. I was eight and in the third grade. My younger brother, Baxter, and I were playing outside and there was the loudest explosion that you can imagine. It happened at 3:10 in the afternoon, about 20 minutes before school would have been dismissed. As a matter of fact, all of the school buses were already lined up to take the kids home. I had a lot of relatives going to school then. In my cousin, Forest, was in the sixth grade. My aunt, Elson, in the 10th grade. Forest was killed.

My aunt, Elson, had back injuries, but the major effect on her was emotional. She lived a very anxiety filled life from then on. This event seared my brain for life. I can remember almost every detail of it. And I had led a life of crime up to that point. I had snitched a few things from a grocery store across from us, and I felt that God had punished me by causing this school to blow up. And that remained something that I truly believed, almost until I was an adult. But the effect, I still feel today.