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Documentary on Floyd bus crash shown tonight in Hazard

Ivy Brashear, Hazard Herald

A recent documentary about the worst school bus crash in American history was shown at the Forum in Hazard on Friday.

The Very Worst Thing re-examines the school bus accident on Highway 23 in Floyd County that claimed 27 lives on February 28, 1958. The bus went off the road and into the Big Sandy River. Twenty-two children survived the crash.

Filmmakers explore the accident through the stories of six of the remaining 21 survivors, through stories of the community and with the help of rare photographs of the accident and the people involved.

Only two of the six survivors agreed to an on-camera interview, said director Michael Crisp, but those two told very moving stories about what it was like to be on the bus as it was crashing, he said.

Crisp said his mother is from a small community in Floyd County called Buffalo, which is close to where the accident occurred. Soon before the accident, his mom moved with her family to Michigan, and Crisp said that if his mother’s family had stayed in Kentucky, his mother could have been riding the fated bus.

“There’s always been a slim chance that my mom could have been on that bus,” Crisp said. “It could have really impacted her family had they stayed there.”

He also said when he was younger and would make trips to visit his mom’s family in Floyd County, he would hear stories about the bus accident and discovered that he was distantly related to four of the victims on the crash.

Crisp said that because of all of this, he became fascinated with the story of the crash.

“One of the first reporters that was on the scene was Ernest Sparkman, a legendary radio broadcaster for WSGS and Ernest is featured in the film,” Crisp told WYMT.  “We have about five minutes of audio from him broadcasting on the evening of the wreck.”  He said Sparkman broadcast live from the banks of the Big Sandy River as the bus was sinking and crews were trying to rescue children.  Crisp said he and his crew tell the story of how Sparkman felt just as much grief and pain from the incident, but still did his job in the face of the tragedy.

He also said he hopes the film makes people aware of the magnitude of this bus accident. He said he thought a lot of people didn’t really understand that this incident made national news and affected the entire country.

Crisp said that he chose Hazard as a site for screening his film because of a couple of special reasons, the first of which being Steve Hensley.

Hensley donated his time for an interview which appears in the film, and he donated original film from WYMT archives of an interview with Rebecca Jarrell, a woman who lost both of her children in the crash.

“Hazard has a special place in this story,” Crisp said.

He added that Hazard has always been a “sister city” to Prestonsburg and that that connection grew stronger during the bus accident. He said showing the film in Hazard was only natural.

Crisp said he will be in attendance for the Hazard screening, along with Captain Tim Cooley and other members of the Floyd County Emergency and Rescue Squad and author Jackie Branham Hall, whose book, “Portrait of a Disaster” contains rare photographs of the people involved in the accident.

The Rescue Squad was formed in 1958 as a direct result of the bus crash, Crisp said. He said it is now the third-ranked rescue organization in the United States.

Jackie Branham Hall will have copies of her book to autograph and sell available at the screening.

Crisp said that eastern Kentucky is not always portrayed positively by the national media, but that this film is portrays the area in a good light, and that’s something he wants people to remember.

“This film showcases hard-working, well-educated people of character and faith,” Crisp said. “It’s one of the first positive portrayals of eastern Kentucky in the national media in a long time.”