Pictures of Uncle Bob in his Navy uniform and me as a baby. Another picture of Uncle Bob in his Merchant Marine uniform. A picture of the destruction in Texas City 16th April 1947.

On April 16th. and 17th 1947, two ships, the S. S. Grandcamp and the Highflyer, blew up in the harbor of Texas City. The disaster was one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the U.S. history, Texas was then the 11th. largest harbor in the United States. Over 500 people died and 2500 were injured, including schoolchildren. Some Monsanto engineers speculated that the blast was worse than the atom bomb which had recently exploded at Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the Texas City disaster was at ground 0. The Texas City disaster was the largest industrial disaster in United States history. These events also triggered the first ever class action lawsuit against the United States government, under the then-recently enacted Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), on behalf of 8,485 victims.
My uncle Bob was living and working there after serving in World War II in the Navy. The picture is of him in his uniform holding me.. Later he went into the Merchant Marines until he retired which was after his business blew up 16th of April 1947. On that courage day he lived because he had just walked out of his shop and was putting some thing into a car which had both doors open at the time. According to his 8 page letter he sent home to his parents, he tried to telegraph them but couldn't so wrote this letter of which I put parts of in the layout. He ran to make sure his landlord was all right.
He remembered running and seeing a woman and children sitting in the street screaming. They were all cut to ribbons with flying glass and blood was running like water. Everybody got the same idea at the same time and that was to get out of town. He then ran to see about his elderly landlord and got her out to their daughters home. Her home is in his map he drew down the street from his business. He described the dead bodies of friends and every thing that happened that day to his parents in the letter. He could not believe he was alive with all the flying items. His last paragraph is, " I have to say now is I have seen it go up before and I have seen it come down but I never saw it go up and go down beside coming out all sides at the same time. This includes my business.
Love Bob"
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