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Photo Courtesy of Nelson Harris
Two weeks before the Fourth of July in 1946,a TNT-laced fireworks display ignited.
At 6:47pm on Saturday, June 22, 1946, the Junior Grocery in downtown Roanoke exploded.
The one-story brick structure was reduced ‌to rubble, with two people trapped inside. The windows on the west side of Lee Junior High School were blown from their frames. The plate glass from the display windows of the grocery flew like shrapnel across Franklin Road, piercing cars and people. The east and south walls of the adjacent Mayfair Art and Gift Shop collapsed. The south end of Moore Radio Shop was gone. At the Larry Dow Pontiac dealership and Pitzer Transfer nearby, walls were cracked and windows shattered. The 200 block of Franklin Road was complete devastation.
As police and firefighters raced to the surreal scene, people lay stunned and bleeding on sidewalks and beside parked cars. Junior Grocery’s assistant manager Louise Aesy and customer Lucille Burchett were pinned in the debris. Aesy had suffered back fractures and severe lacerations to her left arm. Burchett sustained internal injuries and was unconscious, having been sent airborne across an aisle. As the women were pulled from the rubble and rushed to nearby Lewis-Gale Hospital, three others would soon join them.
R.C. Ratcliff had been in front of the store just prior to the explosion and flying glass had lacerated his arms, legs and chest. Mrs. Tinsley Morris had exited the store just minutes before and suffered the same fate, and passerby H.J. Deese felt searing heat course up his back seconds after hearing what he believed was a series of bombs detonating. All would survive.
Those on the outskirts of downtown believed they had heard dynamite in connection with the construction of the Bank of Virginia building. Days prior, the contractor had been excavating for the foundation and had used small explosives to create a cavity for the basement.
Roanoke Fire Chief W.M. Mullins, along with police, began interviewing witnesses and victims. All reported similar descriptions to that given by Deese that bombs had exploded. Within a few hours, Mullins formed an initial conclusion as to the cause of the disaster – fireworks. Several days before the Fourth of July, Junior Grocery’s owners had stockpiled a large inventory and created a mass display of the pyrotechnic gadgets in their front window. It was quite a collection. According to Emmett Aesy, the grocery’s proprietor, the display contained 3,465 small torpedo bombs, 720 two-shot repeater tornadoes, and 432 aerial bombs of various types. The payload had ignited taking much of the block with it.
Word spread quickly about the catastrophe. Soon, hundreds of motorists began slowly driving by on adjacent streets, while others found the doors of Lee Junior High unlocked and went inside to peer down upon the wreckage from the blown out windows.
The explosion made headlines in newspapers along the East Coast.
With witness statements and interviews, police believed they had determined the source of the ignition. Ironically, it was one of the victims, Richard Ratcliff. Roanoke police superintendent Major James Ingoldsby shared with reporters the following day that a charge of malicious wounding had been brought against the 40-year-old Vinton resident. According to Ingoldsby, Ratcliff had lit a match and stuck it through a crack in the display window. Ingoldsby had sent samples of the fireworks to the labs at the Viscose plant and the Radford Ordnance Works for analysis that later revealed some of the fireworks were laced with TNT.
Two days after the explosion, Roanoke City Council adopted an emergency ordinance submitted by Ingoldsby that fireworks be banned in the city. The ordinance, unanimously approved, prohibited the sale, possession, and shooting of fireworks of all kinds except by professionals associated with fairs and other entertainment, and that only by permit. Punishment for violating the ordinance was set at $500 and a possible six months in jail. Prior to this action, fireworks had been loosely regulated by the city with a $10 fee to sell them. Beginning in the early 1930s, the city had set periods for when fireworks could be used, namely on New Year’s Eve, the Fourth of July, and Christmas Eve and Day. Such regulations had been a response to concerns about noise, not safety.
Mayor Leo Henebry strongly urged in his public comments that surrounding jurisdictions adopt the same ban. Most did. Roanoke County adopted a fireworks ban two months later to take effect in mid-September. The ban came too late, however, for three boys in the Cave Spring section who received severe burns on their hands and arms from fireworks the day before the Fourth.
A few days after the explosion, Ratcliff was released from Lewis-Gale Hospital and went home, having posted a $1,000 bond. The suspect was adamant he had done nothing to ignite the display pile. Yet, witnesses reported seeing Ratcliff pressed against the grocery’s plate glass window, hands cupped, with a small amount of smoke emanating from his fingers. Ratcliff’s initial trial date was postponed due to Louise Aesy, a key witness, still being hospitalized and unable to make a court appearance. As police interviewed other witnesses, however, certainty surrounding the actions of Ratcliff and solid proof for him causing the explosion began to become murky. Weeks dragged on before Ratcliff’s trial could start, and investigators altered the charge from malicious wounding to destruction of property. Even at that, the judge in the case eventually decided to take the case under advisement, effectively relieving Ratcliff of any consequences.
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