Jessica McClure

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Jessica Morales née McClure (born March 26, 1986), became famous at the age of 18 months after falling into a well in Midland, Texas on October 14, 1987. Between that day and October 16, rescuers worked for 58 hours to free "Baby Jessica" from the eight-inch-wide hole. The story gained worldwide attention (leading to some criticism as a media circus), and later became the subject of a 1989 ABC TV movie. As presented in the movie, a vital part of the rescue was the use of the then relatively new technology of waterjet cutting.

Contents 1 Media impact 2 After the accident 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Media impact

CNN, then a fledgling cable news outlet, was on the scene with around-the-clock coverage of the rescue effort and it was in part due to this coverage that they were able to begin carving a niche out for themselves in the global media market. This massive media saturation of the ordeal prompted then-President Ronald Reagan to state that "everybody in America became godfathers and godmothers of Jessica while this was going on".

The photograph of her being rescued fetched the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography to Scott Shaw of the Odessa American.

D. Lance Lunsford wrote The Rainbow's Shadow: True Stories of Baby Jessica's Rescue & the Tragedies That Followed, which was published in 2006. ^[1]

ABC made a TV movie of the story in 1989, Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure, starring Patty Duke and Beau Bridges.^[2] The film featured, as extras, many participants in the actual rescue and its coverage.

Kristi Lee of The Bob & Tom Show reported Baby Jessica's marriage in 2006 in a rural church outside Midland, Texas to Daniel Morales, to which sportscaster Chick McGee replied, "I bet they're on city water." The segment was recorded on their album Donkey Show.

On May 30, 2007, USA Today named Jessica one of the "25 lives of indelible impact," ranking her at #22.^[3]

An episode of The Simpsons, "Radio Bart," wherein Bart perpetrated a hoax about a child down a well, parodied the media circus that surrounded Jessica McClure.

[edit] After the accident

Following her rescue on October 16, 1987, surgeons had to amputate part of her right foot due to loss of circulation while in the well. She has had 15 surgeries over the years. She has no first-hand memory of being trapped in the well. McClure graduated from Greenwood High School, near Midland, in May 2004.

On January 28, 2006, Jessica married Daniel Morales at a Church of Christ in a small rural community outside of Midland. The couple met at a day-care center where his sister worked with the bride.^[4] Later that year, Jessica gave birth to a son, Simon.

On March 26, 2011, when Jessica turns 25, she stands to receive a trust fund of donations from well-wishers, rumored to be in excess of $1,000,000.^[5]

McClure's rescue was credited mostly to paramedic Robert O'Donnell and police officer William Andrew Glasscock Jr., both of whom received tremendous media attention. In 1995, after eight years of having suffered posttraumatic stress disorder from the ordeal, O'Donnell committed suicide.^[6] In 2004, Glasscock was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of sexual exploitation of a child, sexual assault, and improper storage of explosives.^[7]

[edit] See also

• Kathy Fiscus, a child who fell down a well in 1949

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Jessica McClure at the Internet Movie Database