"Baby Jessica", 20 years later

Twenty years ago, a little girl from Midland named Jessica McClure was rescued from a well as the whole world watched.

There was no fanfare here Tuesday to mark the day in 1987 when 18-month-old Jessica McClure was lifted to safety after falling into the open backyard well.

The young wife and mother is living quietly in this West Texas oil patch city.

"Jessica's just been a wonderful, wonderful mother," said her father, Chip McClure. "That's always been Jessica's dream, to be a stay-at-home mom."

In 3½ years, however, her quiet existence might change when all the tributes that were sent to her while the nation waited anxiously for her safe rescue matures into a payment of $1 million or more.

Many of the sympathetic strangers worldwide who remained glued to television coverage until Jessica was freed from 22 feet below the ground showered the family with teddy bears, homemade gifts, cards and cash.

The cash sits in a trust fund waiting for the 21-year-old to turn 25. Her father says Jessica is a happy and active woman, and doing "all the normal stuff" with her year-old son, Simon.

[...]

In 1987, Chip and Cissy McClure were poor teenagers struggling to make ends meet during the depths of the oil bust.

Cissy McClure left Jessica in her sister's yard while she went to answer the phone.

Moments later, Jessica happened upon an 8-inch hole and innocently touched off a global event.

When rescuers brought her to the surface 2½ days later, her head was bandaged, she was covered with dirt and bruises, and her right palm was immobilized to her face, an image ingrained in millions of people's memories and one that won a Pulitzer Prize for Odessa American photographer Scott Shaw.

Chip McClure remembers being "absolutely floored" by the media coverage once the family got to the hospital with Jessica.

Vice President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, former Midland residents, visited. President Ronald Reagan called.

"It's a little surreal," Chip McClure said about the passage of so many years.

"It's difficult to comprehend."

About three years after the TV cameras left Midland, Chip and Cissy divorced. Each has remarried.

But throughout Jessica's childhood, both worked to give her a normal life.

"At the end of the day, she went through a lot and was loved by millions and millions," said Chip McClure, 38, who sells real estate in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

I last thought about Jessica McClure in 2002, which was one of the few times she has spoken publicly about her life since the ordeal. I've always wished someone would ask her what she thought about the Austin Lounge Lizards song about her. Maybe next time. It's nice to know that she's grown up to have a fairly normal life - I find some odd measure of comfort in that, for reasons I can't quite articulate. Sadly, and I hadn't realized this, the same cannot be said for everyone who was involved in her rescue back then:

In 1995, paramedic and rescuer Robert O'Donnell, who wriggled into the passageway and slathered a frightened Jessica in petroleum jelly before sliding her out into the bright television lights, shot and killed himself at his parents' ranch outside Midland.

His brother, Rick, has said O'Donnell's life "fell apart" because of the stress of the rescue, the attention it created and the anticlimactic return to everyday life.

In 2004, William Andrew Glasscock Jr., a former Midland police officer who helped in the rescue, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison on charges of sexual exploitation of a child and improper storage of explosives. A year later, he was sentenced to 20 years on two state charges of sexual assault.

Not really much to say about that, I suppose. May you continue to lead a normal, quiet life, Jessica McClure. I'm sure we'll see you again on a future anniversary of this event.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 19, 2007 to The great state of Texas