Many of us refer to our knowledge of a news event by saying "I heard about that." We hear about stories all the time in all the media. Only in a few stories can thousands of people say, "I heard that." But everyone in San Antonio, and I literally mean everyone who was in the city limits, whatever they were doing, heard the explosion at Medina Base (an annex to Kelly AFB) on the morning of November 13, 1963.
"A tremendous explosion at Medina Air Force Base rocked San Antonio and a wide surrounding area shortly after 10:30 AM Wednesday," the San Antonio Light's story began that afternoon. "People fled the scene in panic. Traffic near Medina was blocked in every direction." The subhead got to the point of what most people feared - "No Nuclear Peril, Officials Say." In order to understand the impact of this you have to consider the environment in which this explosion occurred. It was the Cold War, when there was not a day that an American did not consider the possibility of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Not a day. The Cuban Missile Crisis, when Soviets were forced to back off planting nuclear missiles just 90 miles from Florida, had occurred just over a year ago. And then, with no warning, KA-BOOM! No, Excuse me. It was more like,
KA-BOOM!!!
Yeah, I know you're thinking I'm overstating this. But on that same front page of the Light, there's a photograph of the Continental Bus Station on Broadway downtown. The explosion blew out its front window and shredded its curtains. The Continental Bus Station was 9.3 miles from the explosion. And there was plenty more damage around town - the bus station was photographed for the simple reason that it was across the street from the Light's offices. The explosion blew in four dozen windows at Roosevelt Elementary School on Fortuna, also nine miles from Medina Base. Luckily, all 500 students were playing outside when it occurred, avoiding a catastrophe of hundreds of local children with serious cuts from flying glass. "The blast was felt as far away as Castroville, where windows were broken," the article continued. That was a distance of almost 17 miles. The next morning the Express noted that picture windows had been broken at the Cadillac dealer downtown - which did not have a window facing west - and several were smashed at Wonderland Center, now known as Crossroads Mall.
Almost everyone has heard a tire blow out not far away, or heard a gun fired. This was completely different, orders of magnitude louder. Everyone in town knew immediately this was no average loud noise but something catastrophic. "The Air Force ordered all aircraft grounded and forbade air traffic over the area. Windows were broken all over the city by the impact of the explosion," the article continued. "A massive cloud boiled up right after the explosion, rising to a height of about 1,000 feet." A thousand feet. Imagine you're somewhere around town and hear a huge blast, then turn and see a cloud of smoke twice as high as the Tower of the Americas. Trust me, you're gonna think it was a nuke. So did everyone in 1963. "The sheriff's department reported cars were stretched bumper to bumper for two miles around the base after the explosion, trying to get out."
And why do I keep harping on the fear of a nuclear blast? Because everyone in town knew that Medina Base stored nukes for the Air Force. Even the Albuquerque Tribune noted it the next day, calling it "the top secret Medina Nuclear Weapons Plant" in its UPI report. The three men who were closest to the blast, Floyd Lutz, Louis Ehlinger and Hillary Huser, worked for a company that was under contract with the Atomic Energy Commission. Incredibly, none of the three was seriously injured. That UPI story noted that the bunker had contained "13 to 28 tons of TNT," and it all went up. A photo in the Express the next day showed a lunar-style blast crater thirty feet deep.
Why doesn't the Medina Base blast rank with the Battle of the Alamo in stories told to tourists by local residents? There are two reasons. One is that no one was killed. The other is that just over a week later, John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and, like an explosion in time, his death wiped out news events for weeks around it.
As for me? I was nowhere near the explosion. It's just that when it occurred I was in the chemistry laboratory at Robert E. Lee High School running an experiment, and for a moment I thought someone else in the class had blown up the building, it sounded that loud and that close.
But it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, as they say. The Express the next morning told the story of Mrs. Myron Wood of 900 Burr Road. It noted that she had "an old onyx clock" that had belonged to her mother that had not worked for 25 years, but "the blast set the clock ticking and it was still functioning properly Wednesday night." Trust me folks, that was the only ticker affected in a positive way by the blast that day.
