Bill Thompson was riddled with guilt for more than 60 years, blaming himself for the death of a fifth-grade classmate in the New London school explosion that claimed the lives of almost 300 students and teachers in 1937.

"I was sitting in English class," Thompson, 83, recalled. "I asked the little girl sitting in front of me, Ethel Dorsey, if she would trade seats with me so I could sit by a little girl I fancied ... She graciously accepted to change seats with me."

Click the image above for an audio slideshow in the survivors own words. Click the image above to see a video on London history. Click the image above for more photos. MORE NEW LONDON STORIES: Cenotaph honors those killed in school explosion  London Museum houses items from tragic day  Cemetery home to 129 killed in blast  Through their eyes: Four survivors discuss how the New London explosion changed them forever  During oil boom, before explosion, the school was the PRIDE of New London  Reporters converge on New London  Odor now added to natural gas  Community gathers to honor those who died in school explosion and those who lived  Faces, forever changed: School blast survivors still unable to talk about those they lost  Remembrances roll as London School graduates gather  Silence was normal for many survivors  A shared pain: London School graduates gather to mark blast's 70th anniversary  Explosion survivor's faith still strong after tragedy

Ethel died in the March 18 blast that was caused when leaking gas ignited. It was 13 minutes before school was to close for a three-day weekend. Thompson, who was 12 years old, sustained head and leg injuries, cuts and bruises, but no broken bones.

Counselors didn't converge on this small Rusk County town to help the young survivors cope.

"We got none, none whatsoever," Thompson said of counsel. "Businesspeople here in town wouldn't talk about it because they didn't want to offend any of their customers who lost a child ... Everybody just hushed and suppressed it within themselves and lived with it.

"We know today that counseling in a trauma like that is very necessary for quicker healing and overcoming a tragedy. In my case, I carried the guilt of causing Ethel's death by asking her to trade seats with me."

For 60 years, Thompson didn't reveal Ethel's name to the media. But 10 years ago, he said, a reporter suggested that he contact the girl's relatives and tell them what happened. Thompson said he agreed with the reporter because "she had been part of my survival story all these years."

He contacted the girl's brother in New Mexico.

"He immediately told me, he said, 'Bill, don't you feel guilty about that,'" Thompson said the brother responded. "I'm really thankful that he had the attitude he had and was brought up believing that what is to be will be. He said it wasn't your time. It was Ethel's time. So that started kinda closing my guilt feelings. He said, 'You had no control over it. It was in God's hands.' I said, 'Well, I'll accept that.'"

His guilt was eased, but Thompson is faced daily with reminders of the tragedy. His home is in a small neighborhood behind the London Museum. The new school — now West Rusk County Consolidated Independent School District — is on Texas 42, across from the museum and tea room. A granite cenotaph, which bears the names of all known victims, stands tall in the Texas 42 median.

Curious visitors to New London also helped spark memories of the tragedy. After learning that Thompson was a survivor, some visitors would come to the cleaning business he operated for 18 years, wanting him to take them to the cenotaph.

Always, he said, the first name he saw on the cenotaph was Ethel Dorsey's.

"I would always say that my name should have been there instead of hers," Thompson said.

Does he question why Ethel and so many other students died, but his life was spared?

"All the time," he responded. "All the time."

Thompson's only memory of the explosion is that "everything went up." Because his class had recently heard current events reports about bombings in Europe, he thought the school had been attacked by the Germans.

"I was covered up, unconscious, and I don't know (but) everybody estimated it was probably about 45 minutes before they dug me out," Thompson said. "I came to under there, and I couldn't wake up, come out of that dream I was having. Then I realized it wasn't a dream. I could hear people screaming ... rescue workers digging and directing the rescue, and so my next thought was that we had been bombed by the Germans or some source because that was fresh on my mind from those reports."

Thompson didn't learn until about a week later that Ethel had been killed in the blast. When classes resumed, all students assembled for a roll call. Each time a name was called, someone would respond — present, dead, in the hospital or moved away.

"They kept on calling until they called Ethel Dorsey's name, and that was a big shock to me because I had not known that she was killed that day," Thompson said.

Several other survivors described their close brushes with death.

James D. Kennedy

Kennedy, an 82-year-old retired Kilgore educator, said he was in his sixth-grade English class on the second floor of the school when the building exploded. Because of his mischievous conduct, Kennedy said, he was assigned a seat in the first desk on the first row. A classmate was giving a book report. She was standing next to him, between the first and second rows of desks.

Kennedy, who was 13 years old, said he doesn't remember hearing an explosion.

"It seemed like a vacuum," he described. "It went up and took the air with it, I guess, and then the air came back ... and it seemed like the wind was blowing real hard."

Kennedy said he remembers that he was covered with debris. He could move only his eyes and mouth, he said.

"I think I must have been knocked out for a little while because when I first remember anything, the oilfield men had begun to arrive to help get us out," he said. "And, of course, we were screaming at the top of our voices."

Kennedy said he was concerned about the little girl who had been seated behind him.

"I vividly remember telling them, 'You might try to get her out first. I think she's hurt worse than I am,'" Kennedy said he told the rescuers.

He said she sustained minor injuries. Kennedy had a cut on his arm that required only two stitches.

Two other girls — the one giving the book report and the student seated in the first desk on the second row — were killed, along with the teacher.

After he was rescued, Kennedy said he walked outside and stood by the road.

"They had laid bodies down like cord wood," he said. "It didn't seem real. It was more like a nightmare or a dream. I was in a daze. I think I was."

The tragedy changed his life.

"I've never been the same since," he said. "I've had a hard time trying to understand why I was spared and those two little girls and the teacher ... That, I've never forgotten ... I don't know, but I feel this way. The good Lord spared me and gave me the chance to live and try to do the best I could, and I've tried to do that."

Otis Bryan

Bryan was in art class on the second floor of the school building when the explosion occurred. The 11-year-old fifth-grader was filling an ink well when "everything just got dark."

"I didn't hear anything. It just got dark," the 81-year-old Bryan said.

"When I come to, I remember running out of there," he recalled. "I remember running into the side of a car or two. And I was tangled up in an old barbed wire fence down behind the gym. And I had that old cement dust on me, and I was bleeding a little bit. And I come back around the school building, and I lit a shuck. Boy, I was running."

The bleeding, he said, was caused by pieces of glass that had become embedded in his skin.

Like Thompson, Bryan tried to block the tragedy from his memory.

"When I got home and I realized what had happened over the next day or two ... everybody would gang around, you know, and they would talk about it," Bryan said. "When anybody was talking about it, I left. I wouldn't stick around. ... I blocked it out of my mind. And every time I would try to think of it, some of the visions would come in. I just blocked it out."

Bryan, a retired oil company employee, questioned why he was among the survivors.

"Well, as I got older, I wondered about it, naturally," Bryan said. "I wondered how I got out. Just like I was a World War II veteran. Sometimes I wonder how I went through that school explosion and World War II. ... I have never really let that part bother me, but naturally, I've wondered why I went through two pretty good tumbles and made it through both of them."

Dorothy Womack Box

Box recalled that she and Pearl Shaw were working as student aides in the library during the afternoon hours on March 18, 1937. They had been busy preparing past due notices that were to be mailed. Pearl said she was going to the office to get stamps, but Box asked her to wait. Box said she was checking in or checking out a book for Clifton Barton and planned to join Pearl after she completed her task.

The explosion occurred before they made it to the library office.

"The front of the office is where everybody was killed," the 84-year-old woman said from her home in Henderson. "If we had gone around there, it would have been too bad. God prepares for those things and we can't question whether this or whether that ... "

Box said she recalled hearing a boom "and all of a sudden I was under the counter." A steel file cabinet fell onto the counter, followed by a mountain of debris. She was alive, but trapped.

The first words she heard were from Joe King, a senior who later became Henderson's police chief. He was screaming, telling everyone to not go down the stairs. Box said she found out later that a huge boulder was hanging over the stairwell.

Box said she was rescued by Pearl.

"I said, 'Pearl, what on earth has happened?'" Box said she asked her friend. "She said, 'Oh, Dorothy, it's horrible. The whole building is down.'"

Box wasn't injured, but she had to overcome rumors of her death.

Seconds after she was rescued, Box said, she came across Barton, the student she had been assisting at the library counter. She said he later was quoted in a Henderson newspaper as saying, "The first thing I remember about the explosion was Dorothy Womack shaking me and telling me to get up. She seemed not to have a scratch on her, but later she died."

There was confusion after her uncle identified a body at a Henderson funeral home. Box said she understands how she was misidentified. According to Box, she and the dead girl looked alike, they were in the same grade and both wore Little Orphan Annie rings.

Her parents were not Rusk County residents when the tragedy occurred. The oil company that employed her father had transferred him to Talco. Her parents had moved, but she stayed behind to live with her aunt the remainder of the school year.

The Womacks heard that their daughter had been killed while driving from Talco to New London. A radio newsman announced a location where the parents of Dorothy Womack could claim her body.

Of course, she said, her parents were overjoyed when they learned she was alive and at home with her aunt.

Box said her parents immediately took her to Talco and enrolled her in school there. She went to her new school, Box said, but she wouldn't talk to anyone. After school, she go home and go to bed or just sit in her room.

Her father knew she was miserable and later allowed her to return to New London.

"That was the best thing my dad ever did for me because that was a closure, you know," she said. "If we don't have a closure to things, they stay with you ... "

When she returned to school, Box said, Barton was surprised to see her.

"He did a double-take, then he grabbed me and hugged me," she said. "Everybody thought I was dead."

Box said she has lived a normal life.

"I've never had nightmares," she said. "You know, the Lord is good to you."

And she didn't question why her life was spared.

"I don't know whether I had that feeling before the explosion or whether I've always had it, but God is in control of everything," Box said. "And everything that he is in control of is going to be good."