Jessica McClure
Jessica McClure (now
Jessica Morales) (born
March 26,
1986), became famous at the age of 18 months after getting herself trapped in a
Midland,
Texas well on
October 14,
1987. Rescuers worked for 58 hours to free
"Baby Jessica" from an 8-inch-wide pipe. The story gained worldwide attention (leading to some criticism as a
media circus), and later became the subject of a
1989 ABC TV movie,
Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure, starring
Patty Duke and
Beau Bridges. [
1] As presented in the movie, a vital part of the rescue was to use the relatively new technology of
waterjet cutting.
After her rescue, she has had 15 surgeries over the years. She has no first hand memory of the incident. McClure graduated from
Greenwood High School, near Midland, in May 2004. She stated that her goals are to sing at the
Super Bowl, get married, and someday have a family.
In 1995,
Robert O'Donnell, a
paramedic rescue worker who had a crucial role in freeing Jessica, committed
suicide eight years after the rescue. This has been cited as a possible example of suicide due to
post-traumatic stress disorder.
On
January 28,
2006 Jessica (aged 19 years) married Daniel Morales, 32, at a Church of Christ in a small rural community outside of
Midland, Texas. The couple met at a day-care center where Morales's sister worked with the bride.
[People Magazine - Baby Jessica Marries]Jessica stands to inherit a 1-million-dollar trust of donations from well wishers when she turns 25.
This link (in .pdf format) says as an aside during a Christian
sermon that during the rescue, an underground rescue man
with no collarbones was called in to help, as his deformity let him collapse his shoulders to get through narrow holes.
The "Baby Jessica" story was spoofed in
The Simpsons episode "
Radio Bart". Unlike Baby Jessica, who was actually trapped, the story centered on the character
Bart Simpson pulling a
prank by placing a
transistor radio inside a well and uses it to claim that he is a young boy who had become trapped inside. Bart later realizes that his scheme will be exposed and he goes to retrieve the radio from the well, but becomes trapped instead.
"Baby Jessica" was also referenced in episode
US-604 of
Whose Line is it Anyway? during the Props skit.
On a fall 2005 episode of Will & Grace, Jack appears on a gay-themed TV talk show with "Baby Glen," who got stuck in a well when he was 12, but whined so much, he was nicknamed "Baby Glen." In a conversation with Jack, Glen is jealous of the attention Baby Jessica got, and calls her a bitch. Glen, who had recently come out as homosexual, had an article written about him, titled "Baby Glen: Out of One Hole and Into Another."
In the 2006 film
V for Vendetta, a clip of young Jessica just after she had been rescued, wrapped in cloth and being carried through a crowd, was used in a sequence of clips depicting suffering during a fictional war in a future United States. There were no direct reference to Jessica or her plight in the well in the film.
*
Baby Jessica Rescue Web Page including contemporary local newspaper coverage of the rescue
*
Disturbing legacy of Rescues*
Stuff fake interview - In the April 2004 issue, the magazine ran a hoax photo and mini-interview that purported to follow up on Baby Jessica. (fake photo taken down)
