The Plane Crash

I attended Terra Bella School from Kindergarten until I was halfway through third grade. Terra Bella School was a school that was temporary in that it was nothing but portables (called bungalows back then). It was built in response to the booming population in the valley after World War II and also, I suppose, in response to the baby boomers coming of school age. I am not sure when it opened.

The point is that it was built cheaply to accommodate students while other permanent schools were being built, namely Vena Avenue School (where I ended up) and other schools as well. The playground was dirt, and every so often they would come in and "oil" the dirt to keep the dust from flying, or so the story went. There was no cafeteria and no library. It was bare bones. Temporary for sure.

Terra Bella School was on the corner of Terra Bella Avenue and (I think) Sharp Avenue. On the other side of the fence (also on Terra Bella Avenue) was Pacoima Junior High School.

On January 31, 1957, I was a third grader at Terra Bella. Two planes crashed over the campus of Pacoima Junior High and then down onto the playing field. Our teacher, sitting and facing the windows in the back of the room, saw the two planes collide in the air and gave the command "drop." This was the time of the cold war, so we were all well trained and knew that "drop" meant that we were to instantly drop to the floor under our desks in kind of a fetal position with our hands protecting the back of our heads. We all dropped, and when we got up we looked out and saw the sky filled with smoke and fire and debris flying around. It was scary.

The pilots of both planes were killed as well as a few junior high students who were outside on the playing field during gym class. That plane crash is actually listed as one of the top plane crashes in California history. I saw it listed someplace on the internet.

The response to the crash was that they called our parents to come and get us and we went home. Many students stayed home the next day, but I did not. I remember a reporter from the Valley Green Sheet coming and taking a picture of all of us elementary students looking through the fence at the wreckage on the other side. I remember feeling kind of sick to my stomach as a result of what I had seen.

What was interesting was the stories that came out of it. Some true. Some not true. One account had the pilot leaning out of the cockpit and motioning to the kids on the ground to get out of the way. One story was about a mom who was so worried about her son that she had gone over a seven foot fence in almost a single jump. Ritchie Valens (a popular singer at the time) was a student at Pacoima Junior High and there was an untrue rumor that he was killed in the crash. (What actually WAS true was that his best friend was killed in the crash, and sadly Ritchie himself died in a plane crash almost exactly two years later.)

The crash was on January 31, a Thursday. On the following Monday, Vena Avenue School opened its doors. It was finally finished and ready to receive students. I often think that moving to the new school was a good thing, because it got us away from the memories. Not all students left when I did, because the other new school (Sharp Avenue) wasn't ready until several years later. I wonder what it was like for them staying there after the crash.