Boy Scouts die in 1929 flood on White's Creek (Note: I only know of four monuments in Rhea County, which is a shame based on this area's history, but this is one, there's one in Spring City to the memory of the residents of Rhea Springs, one on the school grounds in Spring City dedicated to those children who died in a bus accident, and one on the Court House lawn dedicated to the Veterans of Rhea. The flood of 1929 did not just cover the area mentioned in this article, the devastation was wide spread over Roane and Rhea counties. A note about the writer, Sybil Hardaway. Sybil was one of those beloved characters around here who wrote for the local papers and for the Chattanooga papers for decades. Her regular articles were usually similar to those I have been posting, they were about the 'doings' and the 'goingson' of people in Rhea. Besides that, she wrote several long articles on serious subjects such as the below. Her coverage of the school bus accident in Spring City in the 1950's (in which 13 children died) earned her a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize.-EC) A Night of Terror in Rhea County Remembered Printed in the Chattanooga News-Free Press March 19, 1978, by Sybil Hardaway. (Full page article with pictures) Motorists who cross James Tarwater Wright Bridge over White's Creek at the Rhea-Roane County line frequently look to the east and try to read what is written on a memorial cross engraved with the insignia of the Boy Scouts of America. The bridge is old and narrow and there is barely room for two modern vehicles to pass, especially if one is a big truck, so they pass and repass and unless they stop and go down to the site they only know that the cross is in memoriam to something. The bridge is generally known as White's Creek Bridge, but the name of James Tarwater Wright is on the overhead structure in memory of a brave Scoutmaster who lost his life on March 23, 1929, along with seven young Scouts. (Note: The state has now built a 4-lane road through here with a new bridge and they did NOT replace the sign naming it the James Tarwater Bridge. The most capable destroyers of history that I've ever seen is the Tennessee Department of Transportation. They even had the sign for the entrance to Rhea County in the wrong place and had to move it. I best not get going on that subject-EC) Tom E. Douglas, who was the youngest of the group, escaped with his life, but he was critically injured and stayed seven and a half months in a hospital. The emotional scars of the tragedy have colored his life, but he has risen above it all with the incredible courage and stamina he evinced as a lad in overcoming the physical effects of the even. Tom, the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Sam Douglas of Rockwood, had just made first class with the Boy Scouts. His half-brother, Willie Evans, was also a Boy Scout. For about two months a camping trip had been planned but something always came up. The young boys were eager and impatient with the rainy weather. James T. Wright, Scoutmaster, set the date for March 8 and called it off on account of the rain. He set it again for March 15 and again called it off on account of the rain, promising that they would go on March 22 rain or shine. They planned to use a cabin owned by the Tarwater family on White's Creek. Tom and Willie started walking from home to meet the others at the Christian Church and were picked up by a cousin, Clarence Rayder, and taken to the church. They went on to the cabin. When they reached the cabin they made camp, ate supper, which was prepared by Dick Gilbreath, and were having fun. They started the Delco System so they could have light and built a fire. After the meal they had wrestling matches and contests and different kinds of games until they were exhausted. Mr. Wright decided they should go to bed. Two of the Scouts, Howard Brown and Walter Polston, had to go back home, planning to return the next day. Dick Gilbreath accompanied them and the others made their beds on the floor. They usually had a "watch" all night on their trips, but on this particular occasion, perhaps because all were so tired, they didn't keep a watch. A slow, steady rain was falling. Water coming into the cabin awakened Willard Staples and he got the others up. The water was rising fast and was already inside the cabin when the boys awoke. There were no lights except for their flashlights to they took them and went out on the porch into the water to hold to while they tried to reach the creek bank, but it was useless to try to get across the swirling water. The creek was normally about 60 feet wide, but now it appeared more like 600 feet, already filled with tossing debris from upstream. The Scoutmaster's car, the Delco System and the garage had already washed past the cabin. The Scoutmaster calmed the boys and told them to climb to the roof of the cabin. There were bars on the windows and they used them as ladders to climb up on. They sat on the roof about two hours. Mr. Douglas thinks it was from 4 a.m. until 6 a.m. Men from Rockwood came to the railroad trestle (railroad bridge nearby-EC) and looked helplessly at the marooned group. They had no way to reach them in the raging torrent. About 6 a.m. the steel bridge across the creek on the highway, and the load of debris backed up behind it, washed down on the cabin. The cabin moved out from the foundation and broke apart, throwing some of the Scouts into the angry water. The cabin separated into two sections with Scouts on each section. Tom was on a small section of the roof when he caught sight of his brother, Willie, and other Scouts on another section of roof just a few feet away. The terrified youngster jumped across the water to join them and missed. He fell into the water. Willie and another Scout caught his hands and pulled him from the water, but his leg had been broken. Mr. Douglas said, "I'm not sure what happened after that. There was so much water, debris, trees tossing, steel from the bridge and the broken cabin all around us, but I do know that my brother stayed with me and helped me onto two trees that washed away. He helped me into another the third tree where I managed to hold on until I was rescued. Willie also rescued Jack Hamby and was later awarded a Gold Medal for life saving by the Boy Scouts of America. Mr. Douglas said, "I remember sitting in the tree watching the blood drip from the wound in my leg where the bone came through the flesh. I told Willie it looked like I wouldn't make it and I begged him to go on and leave me, but he wouldn't go." At the bottom of the third tree in which Willie had hoisted Tom, the steel and other debris from the bridge and flood had lodged and some of the Scouts were on that. L.G. McCluen, Jack Hamby, Clifford Seward, Carl Mee Jr and Joe Brashears were on the debris until they were rescued. Joe Brashears was cut on the face and Jack Hamby's little finger was cut off at the first joint. All along the creek Scouts climbed into trees only to have them uprooted by the flood and washed away. Mr. Douglas said, "The screams of the Scouts could be heard all up and down the creek. I remember that when the cabin first broke apart Mr. Wright jumped into the water to rescue one of the boys and wasn't seen again. He died trying to take care of his boys." Mr. Douglas quoted L.G. McCluen, who still survives, as saying that he and the other boys with him were rescued when George King, Sam Chevrost and Charles Fulks came in a boat and picked them up. Wallace Raulston and Charley Acuff rescued Tom by boat about 1 p.m. on March 23. They also rescued Willard Staples. Wallace Raulston, who spent most of his life on the river, was quoted as saying the water was the roughest he had ever been in and that he made five attempts to get to the boys before he succeeded. Mr. Douglas said, "I can't remember much after that because I was only conscious now and the. I have been told I was taken to the Fielding Hedgcoth home where I was put to bed. The other survivors were taken there, too. "I can't find anyone who can tell me how I got across the creek to the ambulance driven by Ben Easter and that took me to the hospital. I had a compound fracture of the left leg, close to the hip. "Dr. George Edd Wilson gave me first aid at the creek, and Dr. T.H. Phillips and Dr. R.F. Regester took charge at the hospital. I stayed in the hospital seven and a half months. Willard Staples had a broken knee and was in the hospital about three months." I asked how they could afford such a long hospital stay and was told that rooms were only about $3 per day and that Mrs. Wright, mother of the Scoutmaster, used his life insurance to pay the bill for them and for other Scouts. Mr. Douglas said, "I was unconscious for three or four days because I took pneumonia. We didn't have the drugs to fight infection the way we now have and I spent months of agony while the doctors tried to get my leg bones knit back. My leg was so full of dirt and grass - leaves and such, that got in when it was broken. The doctors fought the infection the best they could and were amazed that I survived. "They kept lancing the infected place on my hip for a long time. The hospital didn't have an X-ray machine then, so I was taken to the doctor's office to have X-rays made. "After about three months the bones started to knit, but they were crooked and the doctors said I would never walk again. They waited until they had built me up so I could stand an operation, and with my family's permission they rebroke the bones and took about half an inch off each end of the bone. They reset it leaving my leg an inch shorter than the other, but when I got well I could walk." Mr. Douglas went on to say, "It was an experience I wouldn't want ever to live through again and I have been through some bad times since but never anything like that, I give credit to the good doctors and nurses and to my God for the care they gave me that I lived to tell this story of a tragedy most people have forgotten." Recently Mr. Douglas, who had never liked to talk about the matter, finally listened to the pleadings of his family to tell the story and let his wife, Mrs. Robbie Altum Douglas, write it down. Mrs. Douglas wrote the story as he told it and the result was one of great poignancy. Mr. Douglas recalled that the Scouts making the camping trip besides himself and his brother, Willie, were Joe Brashears, Howard Brown, Carl Mee Jr., James Cold, L.G. McCluen, Clifford Seward, Bill Taylor, Jack Shamhart, Jack Hamby, Ted Derrick, Paul Hickey, Jack Tarwater Jr., Willard Staples, Roy Green, J.C. Hill, Woodrow Kerr, Lawrence Montgomery, Walter Polston, Harry Shamhart and twin brothers, Ed and Fred Burnett, both of whom died. Others whose lives were lost were Jack Shamhart, J.C. Hill, Roy Green, Woodrow Kerr and Lawrence Montgomery and the Scoutmaster, James Tarwater Wright. Those are the names you will read if you take the time to detour off U.S. Highway 27 and drive under the bridge named for the Scoutmaster to reach the handsome memorial built by the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Tennessee, of which the Scoutmaster was a charter member. Mr. Douglas, now retired, and his wife, Robbie, were born in Rockwood. They have lived in their present home 37 years. Their children are Mrs. Jane Walker, Spring City, Mrs. Faye Day, Kingston; Mrs. Katheryn O'Dell, Rockwood; and Rolland Douglas, Birmingham, Ala. They have 13 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Willie Evans, the heroic half-brother, now lives in Dallas, Texas. When I visited Mr. and Mrs. Douglas recently, in company with their daughter, Jane, whom I had known for some time without realizing that she was the daughter of one of the famed Boy Scouts who had survived the great flood, I found them to be the kind of people I wish I had known all of my life. They are hospitable, kind, generous and intelligent people, involved in the life of their church (First Christian of Rockwood) and community. Mr. Douglas, now 61, is a Scottish Rite Mason and he and his wife are members and officers of the Order of the Eastern Star. While we were talking we reminisced about his hospital stay and with a glint of humor told of the gift of a BB gun he had received and with which he had riddled the ceiling of his room while he waited to recover. He also recalled the wheelchair races he and other Scouts had had and then Mr. Douglas told of the rainy season that had resulted in the flood. He said, "Only about 6,000 people lived in Rockwood then. The water was waist deep in Rockwood. Harriman was flooded. It washed a broom factory away. Little Emory was flooded. You could see broom handles long afterward. Once they saw an oil slick six or seven years after the flood and found a 50-gallon oil drum in the river with about five gallons of oil still in it." Mr. Douglas told how the water had washed box cars from the railroad like toys. He spoke of Judge L.G. McCluen, now ill at his home in Rockwood, and of Paul Hickey, grocery store owner of Rockwood, whom he said were with him on the camping trip but who were not injured. There were other survivors of the tragedy, but none who are able to tell about the dreadful time they all went through. When you cross the bridge, which we expect to be replace before long with a wider, modern bridge, (they replaced it in 1994-EC) look up and down the valley, marked by a now narrow, shallow and placid creek and remember that there are some things that happen which neither the Scouts nor we can "Be Prepared." ~~~~~~~~ Edna Clack