Robert Southerland and the Texas City Tragedy, 1947

 In Texas City, Texas, a busy industrial port between Galveston and Houston, an explosion occurred on the morning of Wednesday, April 16, 1947 that changed history locally and even globally. The shock of the explosion could be felt as far away as Louisiana, and the waves of anxiety and grief scarred many families in the Shreveport and Bossier area, including the Southerland family, as they awaited news of their brother, son, and son-in-law Robert D. Southerland.

Texas City, Texas had been a much sleepier town prior to World War II, but during the war, refineries and chemical plants and shipping brought an influx of people and jobs. In 1947, post-war, the plants had simply pivoted and pent-up demand was still being filled. One of these plants belonged to Monsanto Chemical, which, post-war, was making styrene, a component of synthetic rubber and plastics.

The Monsanto Texas City plant’s safety director, also referred to as their safety engineer, was Robert Southerland, a 1929 graduate of Bossier High School, who had played on the Bearkat football team with his older brother, Dell Jr. After graduation, Robert had worked in various positions related to the petroleum industry in Bossier City, including as a truck driver, clerk and bookkeeper and participated in the family business, Southerland Service Station on Traffic Street. In 1943, with his wife, Elsie Watson of Shreveport, and young son, Robert Jr., born in 1939, he moved to Texas City for the Monsanto job, reportedly after attending Centenary College to study chemical or petroleum engineering.

The Monsanto building and plant, in a former sugar refinery, was located just 300 feet from Slip 1 of the Texas City port. Docked in Slip 1 on the morning of April 16, 1947, was the container ship the SS Grand Camp of France, which was being loaded by local longshoremen with ammonium nitrate to fulfill a demand for fertilizer, as Europe worked to end its continuing wartime food shortage. There were some other items on board too: large balls of sisal twine, peanuts, drilling equipment, tobacco, cotton, and a few cases of small ammunition.

The explosive properties of ammonium nitrate were not yet commonly known at that time, and no special safety precautions were observed in its transport. Just after 8:00 a.m., several longshoremen went into the hold to wait for the pallets holding the 100-pound packages of the ammonium nitrate to be hoisted from the dock. Not long after, one of them smelled, and soon observed, smoke. However, the captain did not want to use any water to suppress a beginning fire because that would damage the cargo. The other methods the ship’s crew used were ineffective, and soon, flames were leaping into the sky in such unusually bright hues of orange and yellow that the ship’s fire attracted many spectators to the docks, including children. Texas City’s postwar schools were so overwhelmed with pupils that students attended school in shifts, thus the afternoon students were free to flock to the docks to witness the unusual flames of the Grandcamp fire.

Texas City’s small and underequipped volunteer fire crew showed up to fight the Grandcamp’s fire bravely, but in vain. The fire was too hot, and the heat evaporated the water they sprayed at it before it could even touch the flames. At 9:15 a.m., the SS Grandcamp, and its cargo of 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, exploded. The ship disintegrated, while sending the pieces as flaming projectiles to land hundreds of feet away. Also leveled were the dock and the neighboring Monsanto plant, and the flaming pieces of the ship set off a succession of oil storage tank fires, among other fires in the vicinity of the dock. These fires ultimately spread to the freighter wedged in a nearby slip, the High Flyer, also loaded with ammonium nitrate, which exploded into a nuclear-like mushroom cloud at about 1:15 a.m.

Thursday, igniting additional fires. It became the worst industrial accident in U.S. history, and resulted in an estimated 600 people killed and thousands more injured, and many other lives were changed forever.

Later that Thursday, the Bossier City Planter’s Press reported that Elsie Southerland had phoned relatives in the area the night before and said, “We are all O.K.” Sadly, whether Elsie’s original informant was incorrect or in the confusion, messages were crossed, a later, accurate article announced that Robert “Bob” Southerland was missing. Elsie later said she initially was informed her husband was recuperating in a hospital. It is possible that Robert’s name had been mixed up with that of his cousin, James Southerland, also of Bossier, and also a Monsanto employee in Texas City, who was injured during the disaster. Elsie, along with the FBI, and Monsanto officials, was busy visiting all hospitals, some of which were makeshift treatment centers that popped up to treat the massive numbers of injured, to try and locate her husband. Then, a couple of excruciating weeks later, in a makeshift morgue, the 34-year-old Robert Southerland’s body was identified. His death certificate was filed May 6, 1967.

The Monsanto company fire chief Walter W. Stephen, based at company headquarters in Anniston, Alabama, who travelled to Texas City at the first news of the Grandcamp explosion, arriving before the second explosion from the High Flyer, recalled in a speech to fellow firefighters or officials years later, during a rare moment when he decided to talk about the horrific disaster, what he knew of what would be Bob Southerland’s last moments. As safety engineer for the Monsanto Texas City plant, Bob Southerland was also chief of the plant’s fire department. With his department members, he was laying hose lines to Monsanto’s dock area several hundred feet from the ship. They connected their five-hundred-gallon pumper to a hydrant in a yard with two large brick and steel buildings, about two city- blocks distant from the Grandcamp. But Chief Stephen recalled,

“When the explosion occurred, these two buildings were no longer there and this pumper was picked up and thrown two hundred feet through the air. The entire Monsanto fire brigade, composed of men that I had trained and knew, their fine young chief, Bob Sutherland…and smiling Fred Atwood, their Assistant Chief, instantly went out of existence, along with the other heroes of the entire personnel of the Texas City and Republic Company [fire] departments.”

In fact, the fire in the area of the flattened Monsanto plant was not extinguished for several days, after an all-new, re-organized Texas City fire department, along visiting fire organizations and ultimately, a new Monsanto fire brigade, could put it out.

Having resided in Texas City, TX for four years, Bob Southerland had already become an integral member of the Texas City community, joining the local masonic lodge and junior chamber of commerce. His funeral was held May 3rd, 1947, at First Presbyterian Church in Texas City, where he was a member. Following the funeral, his body was shipped to Shreveport for a graveside Masonic ritual in Forest Park Cemetery.

On May 30th, 1947, Plain Dealing Progress newspaper in Bossier recalled Robert Southerland as a “peacetime hero,” along with the also recently-deceased Lt. Edward Teague, an Army Air Force pilot whose plane went down while stationed at a joint air base in Newfoundland, Canada. (See the History Center’s local history column of May 15, 2024, for this story). The article reported that Southerland had heroically worked to get the spectators of the Grandcamp fire away from the docks prior to the explosion that killed him, according to witnesses, and died trying to protect them, many of them children, as well as trying to aid the Grandcamp’s crew.

Stay tuned for an additional article on Bossier Parish ties to the horrific events in Texas City, Texas that started April 16, 1947. If you would like to add to or explore our collection of Bossier lives, including everyday heroes like Mr. Southerland, or his family who endured the unthinkable, please 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: 

• Robert Southerland, Bossier High School football team photo, 1927.
• 1947 Texas City disaster: Heavy debris flew from the explosions at the docks, often igniting more fires. Photo source: US Army Corps of Engineers

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Min Horowitz: Boss in Toyland

 With Labor Day approaching and the last weekend’s celebration of Women’s Equality Day, which commemorates the anniversary of American women winning the right to vote, this is a good time to introduce readers to Mrs. Min Frumer Horowitz. She was a Bossier City business owner, national business leader, international business ambassador, and philanthropist at a time when in most of these roles were filled by men.

Born in 1920 in Shreveport, Min Horowitz was the executive VP and treasurer of Gym-Dandy, the company she started with her husband Isadore. She was the first woman elected president of the Toy Manufacturers of America, which also made her the first woman ever elected to the presidency of a national manufacturers' association. Additionally, she served as the first woman chairman of the mercantile division of the United Fund of Shreveport.

Gym-Dandy had its beginnings in the 1930s when young Isadore Horowitz began making steel swing-sets for neighborhood children. Mr. Horowitz worked with his father in the oil-field steel supply business, so he had a ready supply of steel pipe. The first swings he gave away free of charge. In 1941, Mr. Horowitz and his wife decided to sell their swing-sets commercially. Eventually they invented their trademark name “Gym-Dandy,” which incorporated their daughter’s nickname of “Andy.” Wooden components of the playsets, like swing seats, were manufactured in Webster Parish.

In summer of 1956, they opened a new factory in Bossier City on Hamilton Road for their popular playground equipment. The new factory, Universal Manufacturing Company, was under the management of Isadore Horowitz and J. Roy Parker. Built at a cost of a million dollars, the factory occupied 32,000 square feet, and employed about 75 workers. By 1965, the company’s buildings totaled 240,000 square feet and by the next year they had added 40,000 more feet. The plant complex covered over 30 acres. This plant was very important economically for Bossier City. In 1970, Gym Dandy became a subsidiary of Gabriel toy company.

The glamourous and outgoing Mrs. Horowitz loved traveling the world for business (once she forced herself to get over a fear of flying) and could be found frequently in local and national media outlets of the day. She was a guest of the “Breakfast Club” radio program from Chicago in 1960, when she was in Chicago for the International Home Furnishings Market. She was also asked to be on the popular game show, “To Tell the Truth,” filming in New York City in August 1967. The June 1967 issue of “Southern Living Magazine” featured her in their “Singular Southerner” spotlight with the title, “Mrs. Min Horowitz, No Babe in Toyland, She.” She was a judge for the Louisiana State Junior Miss pageant, relieved that none of them had ever even laid eyes on a “hippie” and that they were dressed to the 9’s, while emphasizing that their grade point average was of the utmost importance.

In 1966, Mrs. Horowitz was interviewed by the “Shreveport Times’” reporter, Maggie Martin. When Ms. Martin inquired how she was accepted by the male members of her industry she said she’s never found men reluctant to accept her: “Oh, at first they might have been surprised to see a woman in the position, but as soon as they realized that I knew what I was doing, there have been no problems.” At the time her sons were 8 and 16 and she a grown daughter. Of her frequent travels, that once had her at a luncheon engagement in New York, a dinner in Los Angeles and an appointment in Montreal the next morning, she said her family thinks “this is just the normal of way of life.” And it’s the life she preferred, especially since she had the good fortune of having housekeepers to assist. Mrs. Horowitz noted, “It is the quality of time spend with your family, not the quantity.”

She even was a visitor to the White House for the Commission on Children in 1970, a national meeting called each decade by the President of the United States to assess the status of American children. She participated in the conference’s forum, “The Child and Leisure Time,” one of 24 forums scheduled exploring a wide range of issues affecting children. Mrs. Horowitz stated, “as a businesswoman, mother and grandmother, I’m deeply honored to take part in this conference.”

Mrs. Horowitz found time to give back to her community as a member of the board of the directors of the Louisiana Cancer Society, chair of their house-to-house fund drives, past president of the Quota Club of Bossier City, member of the National Committee on the Council of Jewish Federations Welfare Funds, organization chairman of the Foreign Trade Club of Shreveport and chairman of the Women’s Division of the Shreveport Jewish Federation. She managed to wind down with her hobbies of bridge and trap shooting.

By 1980, Min Horowitz was a business consultant in Dallas. She passed away in 1994 in Carlsbad, California where she was living near her grown children. Back in Bossier, a Gym Dandy “Surrey with a Fringe on Top” was put on display in the Bossier Community Center on Barksdale Boulevard in her memory. Now that surrey is part of the History Center collection, donated by late Bossier City Mayor George Dement. It serves as an object of interest to our visitors young and old alike. Please stop by the History Center to see it.

Also, please join us for our next Read and React with History series on the book, “Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull” facilitated by historian and Benton High School history teacher Rusty Beckham, who is back by popular demand. Come by the History Center to register and check out a copy of the book. We are located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA and 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

Photos:  Image 1) -Mrs. Min Horowitz prior to departing for the 400-year-old Nuremberg Toy Fair in Germany. She was receiving the key to the city of Shreveport from Shreveport Mayor Clyde E. Fant that she would present it to Nuremberg Lord Mayor Urschlechter on Mayor Fant’s behalf. ”Shreveport Journal” photo from Feb. 2, 1967.

Image 2) 1954 illustration of Gym-Dandy factory in Bossier City, La.-Gym-Dandy advertisement C. 1960

Article by: Pam Carlisle

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