The Mystery of the West Plains Dance Hall Explosion

Farmers from miles around came to West Plains to sell their goods and to buy the newest modern household goods and farming equipment. Their wives bought the latest fashions at department stores, such as Langston's.

There was also abundant things for the younger set of West Plains to enjoy. The teenagers and young adults were regulars at the movie house, the ice cream parlor, and the opera house, which were all located down on the courthouse square.

Best of all, there was Bond Hall, a favorite hangout on Friday nights. A weekly dance featured musicians playing the most popular songs of the day. It was here that men and women could dance the night away to the new music craze, jazz.

Bond Hall was located just off the square on East Main Street. As with most businesses on the square, the building had different uses for upstairs and downstairs. A motor garage, owned by Joseph Wiser, was located downstairs. The upstairs was a community hall that was available for rent. Baby and wedding showers and parties of all kinds had been hosted here by West Plains citizens for years.

On Friday nights, though, the upstairs came alive. Dances were held at Bond Hall every Friday without fail. Youth from West Plains and the surrounding area made it a point to attend these dances. It was the place for young people to be and be seen on Friday nights.

 One such young lady, Dimple Martin, was a frequent attendee of the dances held at Bond Hall before she moved away. A vivacious little redhead, she loved fun and having a good time. 

In April 1928, the 21 year old was home on her Easter vacation. Even though she was now attending a secretarial school in Memphis, Tennessee, with her sister, Blanche, Dimple frequently went to Bond Hall when she was home.

It was the 1920's, the Jazz Age, and Dimple's generation were embracing freedoms that their parents and grandparents had never even imagined. What was once taboo was now considered acceptable.

 Bold music, like jazz, and bold dances, like the Charleston and the Breakaway, raised the eyebrows of some of the more conservative set in the small city. Nevertheless, Dimple and the rest of the young people of the West Plains were ready to date and dance and have a good time, just as they did every Friday night.

Dimple’s parents, Robert and Soula Martin, were the organizers of the weekly dance held at Bond Hall. They served the best refreshments and booked the best orchestras in the area to entertain West Plains and the surrounding area's young elite.

On this Friday the 13^th, however, the orchestra they had booked had cancelled at the last minute. But there was no shortage of musical talent to be found in West Plains, though. They asked their friends, Carl Mullins, a drummer, and Dail Allen, a trumpeter, to provide the night's entertainment. Their daughter, Dimple, was a skilled pianist, and she agreed to round out the musical trio for the dance.

The band played all of the hits of the day, songs such as "My Blue Heaven", and "Sonny Boy". Nearly 60 couples took to the dance floor that night. There seemed no end to the music, food, and fun.

Finally, at 11:00 p.m., the band was winding down for the first intermission. Unwilling to take a break from dancing, the couples requested the band play one more song, “At Sundown”.

Husband and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends held each other as they foxtrotted across the dance floor to the peppy beat of the jazz favorite. Friends sat around tables or loitered on the stairwell, all laughing and talking and having the time of their lives. They had no way of knowing the nightmare they were about to be thrust into.

In the middle of “At Sundown”, a deep rumbling was heard. It was faint at first, but then the dance floor started to bow upwards. A powerful force burst through the wood floor of the hall and blew the entire roof off of the building. Everyone in the hall was thrown violently up into the air. Some survivors described the experience as a never ending feeling of "going up."

The explosion was so severe, it was heard and felt 30 miles away in towns such as Thayer and Mountain View, Missouri. The explosion was so severe, residents of these communities thought the powerful shaking was caused by an earthquake. They could have never imagined the horror that was taking place so nearby.

The explosion severely damaged the buildings and apartments surrounding Bond Hall. Those who lived in the upstairs apartments had to run for their lives to escape the debris and fire, some having to climb down splintered boards because the stairs had completely collapsed.

Everyone in West Plains hurried to the square to see what had caused such an explosion. What they were met with some something they had never before seen, and the ghastly vision would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Immediately after the explosion, a fireball erupted inside what was once Bond Hall. Those that were pinned by bricks and fallen debris were quickly burned alive. Other victims who were not trapped by the rubble fared no better.

The violent explosion had threw many dancers, still clinging to their partners, into the air. Some had landed clear of the building, and some were holding onto whatever they could grab as they fell back to earth.

A minister who was staying at the Arcade Hotel next door to the Bond Building was knocked to the floor of his second story room. He got himself up and ran out onto the porch to see what had caused such an explosion. To his horror, he saw a man and a woman clinging to what was left standing of Bond Hall.

They were nearly naked, burned, and badly injured. They screamed at him to help them. As he leaned over the railings to reach the woman, a huge burst of flame boiled up from below and devoured the couple. They then fell back down into the inferno below with the minister looking on in shock.

Though three sides had been blown out during the explosion, the back wall of Bond Hall was still standing, but leaning backwards at a sharp angle. Trapped men and women were seen trying to scale the wall to escape the fire. However, it had started to rain, which made the wall slippery and hard to climb. Every person that tried to climb the wall slid back down to the flames to their deaths.

The townsfolk stood in front of the raging fire wanting to rescue those inside screaming for help, but the heat was so intense no one could even get near the building to save them. All they could do was stand there helplessly on the street listening to the screams for help and the agonizing moans of those trapped inside.

Mercifully, the victims inside Bond Hall probably died very quickly. Though it seemed their screams went on for ages, witnesses later told authorities that there were no human sounds heard after only five minutes. 

That night, survival depended on where the blast had thrown you. Very few were able to free themselves from the debris and the fire blazing where Bond Hall once stood. If you were lucky, you were thrown out into the streets. 

Knowing there was nothing they could do to help the victims trapped inside the fire, volunteers turned their attentions to the street and began combing through the debris in an effort to find anyone who might have survived the explosion. The rescuers found a few men and women who were still alive and dug them out and carried them to local hospitals.

In all the commotion, someone spotted a flash of red. A gentleman ran over to see if it was someone who might be alive. There, crushed under the piano she had just been playing moments before, was Dimple Martin. Her parents were also found dead not far from her.

In all, 39 people lost their lives that chilly April night, and 20 more were seriously injured. But a whole town was rocked to its core by such a horrific tragedy, but their grief had just begun.

After the fire, families had the gruesome task of identifying their loved ones. 20 were positively identified, either by the clothing they had been wearing, if they were still clothed, or by trinkets or personal items that were found on the bodies. Some of their stories are heartbreaking.

A few weeks before the fire, Carl Mullins, had given his wife, Naomi, a locket to celebrate her pregnancy. It was this locket that helped Carl positively identify his wife.

A father recognized a couple of gold charms that his son had won in college that was found on an unidentified body, which brought him a bittersweet peace.

For 19 families, however, there was nothing but charcoal to claim and bury. Though they were sure their loved ones had perished in the fire, they had no body they could positively identify to lay to rest.

It was decided by the city of West Plains, and the families of the 19 unidentified bodies, that the victims would be buried in a mass grave in Oak Lawn Cemetery.

Nearly every household in the city of West Plains either lost a family member in the blast or knew a family that did.

The sorrow was felt even more deeply because most of the victims were teenagers and young adults. So many parents had lost a child, some their only child, that fateful Friday night.

Nearly every church in West Plains held a funeral for a victim in the days that followed the blast. But the most tragic funeral was for the unidentifiable victims. Mabel Riley's husband had not been able to be identified, and her family wanted the two of them to be buried together, which brought the number buried in the mass grave at Oak Lawn Cemetery to 20.

In a way, it was a time for the whole community to grieve. That day, an estimated 7,000 people attended the funeral honoring the victims.

The townsfolk of West Plains were suffering from grief and shock. They needed to understand how and why something so tragic had happened to their community.

The day after the fire, a coroner’s jury was convened to try to determine the cause of the explosion. For four days they took testimony from anyone who was at the dance, had been on the street, or had had any dealings with the garage owner, Joseph Wiser, that Friday.

Theories swirled as to what had happened. The most popular theory is that the owner of the garage was having financial difficulty and had deliberately caused the explosion to collect insurance money. Though many people believed this theory until they died, it seems implausible since Mr. Wiser was at the garage that night and was himself killed in the blast and he only had minimal insurance coverage on his garage.

Several witnesses testified they remembered seeing three strange men in the area of the garage that Friday afternoon. No one recognized them and they never came forward, so it is unknown if these men, if they did exist, had anything to do with the explosion.

In the end, the jury could find no cause of the explosion. Whether the explosion was caused by foul play or an accident, after 80 years it seems that the cause will never be known.