On Jan. 20, 1982, a different kind of tragedy struck the quiet city of Spencer when a boiler exploded killing six students and one teacher, and injuring dozens more.

At the time, Star Elementary was located on the northwest corner of NE 23rd Street and Douglas Blvd. After repairs were made to the school, classes resumed until the final bell rang 22 years later. At that time, Oklahoma City Schools decided to sell the property but it was not until 2006, the school was demolished and eventually replaced with a Walgreens retail store.

Although no longer standing as an eerie reminder of that January day, many people in Spencer and the surrounding community still remember what happened on Jan. 20, 1982.

The unthinkable happened

Spencer made headlines across the nation when the boiler exploded in the Star Elementary kitchen.

According to news reports, the cold clear day with only a dusting of snow on the ground, was like any other day at the school. Children at the school were looking forward to recess after a morning in stuffy classrooms.

A noisy romp on the playground after lunch would be just the ticket, but some of those children never got the chance to play again.

At 12:13 p.m. that Tuesday, disaster struck and within seconds, students LaTasha Brown, 8; Gina Hiter, 10; Angela Martin (age no available); Kareem Manora, 8; Paul Motes, 7; Marlow Wallace, 9; and teacher Diannah Monroe, 34, were dead, most crushed to death against a concrete wall in the school’s cafeteria.

Some 42 other adults and children also were injured, some severely.

At first, the cause of the explosion was unknown, but Florence Hardy, a dishwasher in the school’s kitchen, said she was certain she knew the cause.

She pointed to one of the school’s two hot water heaters that had been making water too hot and had been worked on earlier that day.

Hardy was in the kitchen when she heard a "swoosh and a bang" that "knocked everybody on the floor."

Everywhere was debris of twisted steel, broken concrete and shards of glass. Where seconds before a concrete block exterior wall stood, there was now a gaping hole through which benumbed survivors could see the blue winter sky.

Several hundred feet away, lay the remains of an 80 gallon steel water heater than shot out of the building and then fell from the sky.

The vessel, a tangled imitation of its former shape, had narrowly missed hitting several students when it crashed back to the earth.

Those who survived the explosion will never forget it, but neither will James Greenawalt, Jr., who was the state’s chief boiler inspector at the time of the explosion.

"I don’t know quite how to say it," said Greenawalt. "But until you’ve wandered around in the debris after an explosion, you can’t imagine what happens when 80 gallons of water overheat and explode. A water heater taking off like a steam-driven rocket right through the kitchen roof, up into the air, landing on a playground 135 feet from its operating location…"

Greenawalt described the roof girders from the school looking like twisted pretzels.

"Walls missing. People stunned. Parents weeping for their children. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen."

"That water heater had sat in disrepair for three or four years," the inspector said. "The controls had been tampered with, the safety valve was in the wrong place and the temperature probe had been removed."

Before the school explosion in Spencer, Oklahoma’s boiler law, passed in 1921, only covered high-pressure steam boilers. Today, the state now inspects boilers in all city, county or state facilities as a result of the tragic accident.