The Galveston County Daily News

On the morning April 16, 1947, Myron Perry and his pal Rudy Schrwon were laying out water hoses for firefighters battling a ship blaze at Warehouse Pier O along the docks near Monsanto.

Like others who saw the multicolored smoke rise from the hold of the Grandcamp, Perry and Schrwon remarked at the “beauty” the fire had created.

“It was a bit mesmerizing,” said Perry, who was an instrument technician for Monsanto in 1947.

Meanwhile, his bride of three years, Mary Louise Hemingway Perry, was going through her routine at the couple’s home in Galveston. Their oldest daughter, Barbara, then just 18 months old, was Mary Louise’s priority.

Soon after Perry and Schrwon had begun their work in assisting Texas City’s volunteer fire department, the nearby squawk box phone rang. They were needed to take a look at some gauges atop one of Monsanto’s distillation columns.

Off they went.

The two were about 10 stories up, but working on those gauges wasn’t what kept their attention.

“You could see the smoke rising, people all about and crowds gathered not far away watching everything,” Perry said, describing his view from above.

Shortly before 9:12 a.m. Perry, who had returned from the North African Theater of World War II, hollered, “Hit the deck.”

Seconds later, a mushroom cloud rose above Pier O. The Grandcamp was gone, and the dock where Perry and his pal had just been was destroyed. Every member of the Texas City Fire Department crew on the scene was killed.

It was the worst industrial accident in U.S. history — the Texas City Disaster.

“The impact of that explosion pulled the seams apart on my clothes,” recalled Perry, 86. “When I got up, my clothes where just shredded.”

Across the bay in Galveston, folks on the Perrys’ block heard the blast and could see the smoke rising. But Mary Louise didn’t make much of it.

“I told everybody it was just an oil well explosion,” she said. “There was nothing to it, I kept telling them.”

That was until a neighbor, who also worked at Monsanto, came home with a screwdriver embedded in his arm.

Mary Louise remembered asking him about her husband and whether anyone had been hurt or killed.

“He just kept screaming: ‘Everybody’s dead. Everybody’s dead,’” said Mary Louise.

By that time, Perry and Schrwon had made their way down from the column.

“We grabbed ropes, ladders, anything we could to get down as fast as we could,” said Perry.

Destruction surrounded them. Fires raged nearby, and buildings had turned to rubble.

As he ran, Perry saw acts of heroism.

“There was this big guy who was an electrician — he ran into a control room and scooped up two of the girls who were working in there and just kept running with them under his arms,” said Perry.

Perry and Schrwon stopped along the way to help the injured.

They eventually made it to the street and flagged down a bus.

Actually, they commandeered the bus, loaded up the injured they had helped along the way and told the driver to get to a hospital.

“That bus driver got us through places you couldn’t even ride a bike,” Perry said of the trip through the destruction.

The Texas City Disaster wasn’t Perry’s first brush with death.

The native of upper New York state survived 50 missions as a radio operator aboard a B-25 during the war, including one mid-air collision.

His entire crew survived. He walked away with a broken tooth.

“He survived all that, but one day he is going to step in a bucket and kill himself,” joked Mary Louise.

Some years later, Perry convinced his bride the family should move to New York. It was a tough choice for Mary Louise, a BOI, who didn’t think much of Yankees before marrying Perry.

You can take the girl out of Galveston, but not the island out of the girl.

“I had to bring her back home every two years,” Perry said. “There was no getting around that. She said she had to renew her citizenship.”

The Perrys were active members of their community. Myron even had an eight-year stint as mayor of Middletown, N.Y.

Mary Louise worked at the local blood bank.

These days they reside in Santa Fe.

Even as they near 62 years or marriage, the memories of April 16, 1947, are still vivid.

“You look back on it now and realize just how fortunate we were that (Perry) got that call to work on that tower,” said Mary Louise.

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T.J. Aulds is the mainland editor for The Daily News. Each week, his column focuses on everyday people who make living in Galveston County and Galveston Bay area better. If you know of someone who should be profiled e-mail tjaulds(at)galvnews.com.