School Bus

Late one wet night last week a shiny, blue school bus rolled through Rockville, Md., 16 miles north of Washington. Snugly inside the bus lolled boys and girls of the senior science class of Williamsport, Md. High School, returning from a chemistry demonstration at College Park. Most of them were in the rear. In front their teacher sat beside Driver Percy Line. The pupils were singing school songs so loudly that the driver could not hear well, and outside it was raining so hard that he could not see well. The bus started to lumber across a Baltimore & Ohio rail-road crossing, equipped with bell and safety signals, at exactly the same second that a B. & O. locomotive started to take the same crossing at top speed.

A steel-splintering crash, almost beneath his window, brought Rev. Charles R. O'Hara bounding from his bed. By the time he reached the window, the express, Washington-bound from St. Louis, had ground past with the rear half of the Williamsport school bus still clinging to the engine cowcatcher. Father O'Hara and another priest, his house guest, hurried into the rain. On the front lawn a girl lay unconscious. Two students were impaled on the cowcatcher, others strewn for 200 yards along the track. Bent on saving what Catholic souls might be among them, the two priests administered last rites to one & all. Meanwhile Rockville's volunteer firemen were sorting out the living from the dead.

At dawn the death toll stood at 14. Teacher, bus driver and the pupils in the front of the bus were bruised but safe. Said Driver Line: "I didn't see the train. . . ." Police charged him with manslaughter.

That afternoon President Roosevelt announced that $200,000,000 of Federal relief money would be spent to bridge over and tunnel under grade crossings.

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