On the morning of Wednesday, April 16, 1947, in the industrial port of Texas City, Texas, 10 miles east of Galveston, the French vessel the SS Grandcamp, which was being loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, exploded. The explosion set off a chain of events, including the explosion of a second ship carrying ammonium nitrate, that changed history locally and even globally. Many families in the Shreveport and Bossier area suffered through the anxiety and grief of the disaster’s immediate aftermath.
Last week’s history article looked at the unthinkable experience of the Southerland family of Bossier City as they awaited the ultimately tragic news of Robert Southerland, who was first reported as ok and recovering in a hospital, then missing, then identified among the disaster’s almost 600 dead. Here is a story of another young man with ties to Bossier City, but whose Texas City disaster story was reversed. The initial news that reached Eugene’s family was dire. Soon it took a turn…for the better!
Eugene Barefield was born in Florida in August, 1928. His family moved frequently, and as a child, he lived in Houston, Texas and Monroe, Louisiana before moving to Bossier City in the early to mid-1940’s, where he attended Bossier City Grammer/High School. When he registered for the draft in 1946, he was still a student at Bossier High School. By the following year, he was working on a tugboat, which was in the port of Texas City on April 16th for needed repairs. The massive explosion that day forced the glass door of the wheelhouse into Eugene’s back.
According to the earliest report of the disaster in the Bossier City paper, the Planter’s Press of April 17, 1947, Eugene’s parents in Bossier City, Woodie and Willie Grace Barefield, had been advised that Eugene had been found “desperately injured in a hospital in Galveston” and was not expected to live. They immediately drove to be with him.
Happily, a week later, the paper reported that Eugene was still in a hospital in Galveston, and Woodie and Milburn Barefield brought home to Bossier City the news that Eugene’s condition was not as bad as expected. He was recovering from the gash on his back and one on his head, and his condition was not critical. His mother remained with him in Galveston during his continued recovery.
Recover he did. In 1952, the Planter’s Press reported on November 20th that both Eugene and his brother Milburn were serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. Eugene was already overseas and Milburn was still stateside in training. The paper reported that Milburn expected to be home to the Shreveport-Bossier area at Christmas to see family and friends, and an address was given for friends who wished to write Eugene, care of the USS Bataan.
Eugene married Nelwyn Middlebrook in March, 1956, in Carthage, TX. They had 4 children. He continued to work as a boat captain in the Gulf of Mexico for the oil and gas industry until his retirement. In 2019, as reported in an Associated Press story, he went back to Texas City for a gathering to mark the 72nd anniversary of the Texas City disaster. The article noted the details of his injury from the glass door of the wheelhouse, and said that it was Mr. Barefield’s second time returning to Texas City to commemorate the disaster, still the worst in U.S. industrial history.
Eugene Thomas Barefield passed away just shy of his 94th birthday on August 26, 2022.
If you would like to add to or explore our collection of Bossier lives, please visit us in the History Center, which is now within the new Bossier Parish Libraries Central Complex at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA (across Beckett Street from the original History Center and “old” Central Library). We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org
For other fast facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok,
Images:
- SS Wilson B. Keene, destroyed in the Texas City disaster's second explosion Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries
- Eugene Barefield in the 1946 Bossier High School Yearbook, Les Memoires
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