THE COLLAPSE OF THE WSM TOWER
In September 1950 WSM became the first television station in Nashville and in 1956 construction began on a new television tower just off of Charlotte pike. This was at Dakota & 38th Avenue. The purpose was to replace the old 578 foot tower at Compton & 14th Avenue South. This is where Metro Police Communications center is today. Upon completion the new tower would be 1,379 feet tall. In the school year of 1956-57 I was a first grader attending Martha Vaught Elementary just off of White Bridge Road. We lived within walking distance of the school at Apt. 3, Brookside Ct. Annex. These years were the happiest years of my childhood. There were plenty of kids to play with in the neighborhood and we had great neighbors. This was before most people could afford air conditioning. Neighbors spent a lot of time outdoors getting to know each other while the kids played together.
Everyday I could look to the southeast and see the WSM tower on the horizon as it slowly rose toward the sky. On February 4, 1957 our 1st grade class went on a field trip to the Children's Theater in downtown Nashville. We didn't return to our school until late in the afternoon. As we neared our school I realized that I couldn't see the tower anymore. When I got home I asked my mother what happened to the tower. She told me that it had fallen killing four construction workers. They were Donald Kinnan 25 of Tucson Arizona. George Presler 33 of Union City Tennessee. Ray Maxwell 33 of Jacksonville Florida and Robert Kirshner 30 of California Missouri. A fifth man Harold Kirshner 29 was treated for shock because he had just climbed down off the tower minutes before it collapsed.
The tower was made out of a new steel alloy that was supposedly three times stronger than regular steel. There was little wind that day and it was unknown why the tower fell. Donald Kinnan was interviewed by the Tennessean a few day's before the accident and he said "I would not drive a race car. Too dangerous. My jobs safe because I know what I'm doing. Besides more people get killed stepping off curbs than in my line of work". The tower fell in a residential neighborhood. It fell at 600 feet and a 300 foot section skidded down a hill stopping just short of a house. A piece crashed through a house on Lookout Dr. The only casualty in the neighborhood was a dog that was crushed. Television viewer's watching a soap opera called Modern Romances could hear workers screaming for help. Viewers heard an excited voice say "Oh my God, send help. The tower has just fallen down, help quick".
A few days after the collapse my mother took us to see what was left of the tower. It was just a heap of twisted metal for hundreds of feet. Later in the year WSM bought 100 acres on a a 680 foot hill behind our house called Knob Hill. At that time we were outside the city limits. WSM, however; wanted enough area that if the tower fell again it would not endanger anyone. The original tower cost 100,000 dollars. The new tower on Knob Hill cost 600,000. On March 25,1959 the new tower went into service. This was just before we bought our house in Charlotte Park. WSM eventually settled a lawsuit valued at 1,000,000 dollars for the families of the four construction workers. In today's dollars that was a lot of money. The first picture is the test pattern that WSM viewers saw before the station signed on the air in the morning and after it went off at night. The second is Jud Collins, a famous WSM announcer in 1950. He worked for channel 4 for over 30 years.
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| Harold Kirshner being transported to the hospital for shock |
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| Twisted wreckage |
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ReplyDeleteWhen something like this happens and one is in some way a part of it either directly ot indirectly for that matter,one would never forget it.
ReplyDeleteI remember this well. My dad gad just accepted the pastorate at a Southern Baptist church on Elkins Ave in West Nashville. I was about 7 years old as well playing in my yard when I heard what at first I thought was an airplane crashing! The sound of metal just seem to keep coming. It was so loud that we all knew something big had happened. Some of us ran up the hill to see what happened and that's when we noticed the tower had fallen. We couldn't get close due to the metal that seemed to be everywhere. Later we learned of those that had died. I'll never forget that day.
ReplyDeleteI was only a few blocks away. As I saw the tower fall, I couldn't believe it. I have never forgotten that afternoon.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Alfred Preslar is my uncle -one of the four who were killed. I remember my father crying since they were very close. Uncle Alfred had a beautiful wife, Dorothy and three great kids, Linda, Carol and Roger. All became very successful adults but their dad's death certainly colored their lives.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine. I lost my parents tragically when I was 12. Your life is never the same.
DeleteMid Feb. 1957 We heard what could be characterized as a jet plane in our backyard at 4105 Dakota . My Friend Gail Gonski actually watched as the WSM Tower approx 1600 ft tall crumbled . The sound was from the 12 large approx 3" diameter cables whipping through the air at supersonic speeds . They uprooted trees like they were weeds and knocked down all it their paths . As a 10 yr old, we played daily around the construction of the tower which went on for about a year. In the ground was concrete anchors as large as small homes with 4" diameter threaded bolts coming out of the ground to hold the 12 cables which proved later to be 12 too few and twice the correct diameter. The cables were simply too heavy to sustain an adjustment that happened to be pulling more torque on one side than the other due to an errant adjustment in anticipation of wind blowing strong from the South. Men with 10 ft long wrenches made the giant nuts turn in order to pull more or less on whichever cable they were adjusting. The weight of the 75 ft tall antenna which was being hoisted up was calculated wrong and thus the imbalance which caused one cable to snap, and each proceeding one made it worse - ass in a matter of one minute. Notice the "New" ( 1958) tower on Knob road has 24 cables half the diameter as the original. We headed up the hill to get a view and saw several men cut in half, even a hard hat with a head in it , but no body attached . It fell between homes but hit none. In today's computer era this would have never been allowed to pass any engineering standard, and would still be standing , most likely. There is precious little info available on this massive tragedy available on the internet.
ReplyDeleteGreat eyewitness testimony and great technical information, thanks.
DeleteI have been with my wife for 17yrs now. She used to tell me that before we met around 2003, she used to live in Skyview apartments which is situated on 38th Ave and Dakota Avenue. Over the years, she would occasionally bring up how she thought the apartment she was in was haunted with a ghost. Me myself, I don't really believe in ghosts, but have always heard of instances that were interesting and hard to explain. Well, she used to say that she would get a feeling someone was in the room with her and she had seen shadows in the corner of her eyes a couple of times. Also, one time a door shut behind her and when she opened it back up, her very young boys were sleep in the bed and couldn't have closed the door. She also mentioned always hearing a dog bark, but never seeing the dog outside. I heard this same story off and on for years. Finally, one day I just so happened to read a article about the WSM tower collapse on the internet and the location caught my attention. I'm from east Nashville, but I am familiar with west Nashville as well so I realized that this happened right where the current Skyview apartments are located. I told my wife about it (she never knew it happened). She was surprised, but also was like "I told you something eerie was going on there!" I was more shocked about hearing the dog that perished in the tragedy, because I had dismissed her hearing a dog barking all of the time for it must have been a stray running around somewhere, but to hear that there was one that was killed with the four men gave me goosebumps. For some reason, today thinking about this story, I just googled about the tower collapse and found this article and wanted to share my story about it. Could there be a connection? Who knows, but it is definitely a big coincidence that she experienced this stuff not knowing about the tower collapse and the persons killed in it, only to find out years later that it happened. On a final note, she didn't stay in the apartment long. It spooked her to much to stay.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience at my home in Murfreesboro in the early 1980's. I don't believe in ghosts either. If there is a supernatural element to it I believe that it is demonic activity. I lived in West Nashville until I was almost 13 but lived in East Nashville until I was married and entered the military at 18.
DeleteThank you for publishing this. My niece's ancestor is Ray Maxwell and this helped her learn more about his passing.
ReplyDeleteThank you, that is very rewarding to know that.
Delete“Television viewers watching a soap opera called Modern Romances could hear workers screaming for help. Viewers heard an excited voice say ‘Oh my God, send help. The tower has just fallen down, help quick’.”
ReplyDeleteHow did this work? Was there somehow also a live audio feed from the tower, that was under construction and not operating yet, being fed into the sound transmission? Or was it just that the technician at the old studio at 14th and Compton used a microphone and plugged into the transmitter feed without switching the video, and the sounds were from the other people working at the old studio? (Or was it fanciful memories of the people watching the soap opera?)
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