The Cooper Files: An Inside Look At The Mine Subsidence Of 1940 (Part 1)

(Editor’s Note: This series was made possible by the discovery of nearly 200 documents in the former J.W. Cooper Memorial High School building pertaining to the Shenandoah School District’s response to the mine subsidence of 1940, provided to the Sentinel by Kent Steinmetz.)

“Severe mine settling closes Junior and Senior High Schools, Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Many private homes and business places affected. Gas and water service disconnected. Appreciate immediate investigation.”

A.J. Ratchford, superintendent of the Shenandoah Borough School District, sent that message via Western Union telegram to John Ira Thomas, state Secretary of Mines, on March 4, 1940.

The mines beneath the northeast side of town had given way, causing damage in and around the neighborhood from Main Street east to Emerick and from Lloyd Street north to Locust Mountain.

In that area, the surface dropped by up to four feet in spots, causing damage to the George Washington Junior High School on North Main Street and the J.W. Cooper Memorial High School at Lloyd and White Streets.

Ratchford succeeded Cooper as Superintendent in 1927 and would spend the next five years working to save his predecessor’s namesake.

Front Page News The World Over

From Fairbanks to Fort Lauderdale and nearly all points in-between — plus Canada and Great Britain — Shenandoah’s crisis was front page news, showing photos of growing fissures in streets and buildings and the crowds of lookie-loos gathered to see them.

The Evening Herald noted the crowd of what they called “metropolitan newsmen” that had flocked to town.

Early radio broadcasts, they said, gave “highly-colored and exaggerated” accounts of the subsidence. Soon, news reporters from print, radio, and newsreels were on the way to town from New York, Philadelphia, Allentown, Bethlehem, and Reading.

“Some of the out-of-town newshawks remarked the damage was not nearly so severe as they were led to believe from the first reports which trickled into their offices this morning,” the Herald reported on March 4.

Photos from the Bloomsburg Morning Press, March 5, 1940:

The Bloomsburg Morning Press the next day showed a photo of hundreds flooding the sidewalk in the 100 block of North Main Street.

Ratchford and Katherine McHale, his assistant superintendent, sent memos to George Schlitzer, janitor at the Washington school, directing him to let photographers from the Herald and the Allentown Chronicle photograph the damage.

Those photos showed stairwells separated from walls in one of the district’s older school buildings.

Governor Arthur James also came to down to observe the damage.

‘Make Safety Of Children First Consideration’

Around 5pm on March 4, Ratchford received a Western Union telegram from Francis B. Haas, superintendent of the state Department of Public Instruction, the predecessor of today’s Department of Education.

Haas directed Ratchford to “make safety of children first consideration.”

“Do not reoccupy school buildings until assured of surface safety by the department of mines,” Haas wrote, adding to provide the best temporary quarters available.

On March 6, Ratchford sent a letter to Haas explaining how the district would continue to educate Cooper and Washington students.

Juniors and seniors on the commercial curriculum track were moved to the Roosevelt school on Union Street, while all others from the Cooper were moved to the Lincoln school at West and Lloyd Streets.

Junior high students from the Washington were moved to the Jefferson school at West and Centre Streets.

All displaced students would be on a part-time schedule.

He said that additional cracks and pulls had been seen in the Cooper that day as well.

“The conditions in the community have been exaggerated by the radio and the press,” Ratchford wrote to Haas. “I shall keep you informed of the general conditions here.”

A memo that day to Katherine Dean, principal at the Roosevelt, said that desks, books, and other equipment were being transferred to her building for the high school students set to report there. A memo the day before noted that the high schoolers would be there from 8am to 12:30pm, a half day.

The new schedule was put into place on March 7.

In a March 15 report to Haas, Ratchford said that each student in the district had their own desk for a full school day.

Since the subsidence, the Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln schools were well over capacity, by 498, 364, and 591 students respectively. The grade schoolers originally assigned to those schools were moved to afternoon half-day sessions.

Four other schools were still operating in town at the time — the Jardin Street, Wilson, Penn Street, and Turkey Run schools — which were largely unaffected.

With the Cooper school went access to the library, labs, auditorium, and much more, Ratchford said.

“Grade school buildings were not constructed to take care of a program of high school education and the pupils and teachers, who are housed in these grade school buildings, are working under serious handicap,” Ratchford wrote. “True, school is being kept and both teachers and pupils have adjusted themselves magnificently to the situation, but it is time for us now, after we have completed this temporary arrangement, to stop and take stock of our situation in its full import.”

“A continuance of the present setup for any extended period of time will deprive pupils of a certain amount of instruction and of a type of instruction which they may never again be privileged to receive,” Ratchford added.

Part Two: https://shensentinel.com/news/the-cooper-files-an-inside-look-at-the-mine-subsidence-of-1940-part-2/

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