The snow started falling over the Texas Panhandle on 1^st February 1956. Within hours it would herald one of the worst blizzards in American history as snow fell for four straight days over Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico; by the time it began to thaw, at least eighteen people and hundreds of cattle were dead. The little town of Vega bore the brunt of the storm, recording a staggering 61 inches of snow, but everywhere was affected. But life had to, somehow, go on and that meant Route 66 had to keep rolling.

If the road was open for business, then so were the companies that used it, among them the bus line, Continental Trailways. At 5.30am, John D Hearon, 38, pulled his Vista-Liner out of Amarillo, heading to Tucumcari. He knew that the conditions were dire, having already done a run in the opposite direction, arriving in Amarillo two hours behind schedule. There are varying estimates as to how passengers he had on board for that return trip – contemporary accounts state between 14 and 35 (although the lower figure is probably the correct one) but all agree that among the passengers was 21-month-old Patricia Henderson, travelling with her mother, Ruth.

All was well until around 9am when, John Hearon related; “I was going about 25 miles an hour when I hit this drift in a deep cut. Snow was about waist high and we couldn’t move the bus. No-one got excited, though. We had about a half tank of fuel, so there was no immediate worry about heat. We figured we’d just sit tight until help arrived.” But more than five hours passed with not a single vehicle in sight – the blizzard had closed down Route 66 and even snow clearing machinery couldn’t get through – and Mr Hearon started to worry that the bus was running low on fuel. Once that ran out, the bus would become a freezing metal box – and possibly a tomb. The only food on the bus was two sandwiches which the passengers gave to the little girl. Mr Hearon decided that he had to go for help. Norris Turner, a passenger from Houston, offered to go with him, but Mr Hearon urged him to stay behind and help keep up the morale of the other passengers. John Hearon opened the door and set off into the storm.

Adrian was the closest town, but John Hearon realised that he would be walking uphill and into the freezing wind and blowing snow, so he headed west for Glenrio. He was wearing only his bus driver’s uniform of low cut shoes, unlined gloves, woollen trousers and a light regulation jacket and within minutes he had to return to the bus to find a piece of cloth to wind around his head to protect his ears and neck. Then he set off again, finding his way by the telephone poles along the now hidden road, often slipping and falling. He came across a couple stranded in their car who tried to persuade him to seek refuge with them, but Mr Hearon was adamant his passengers, especially the little girl, needed help and he pushed on.

He would later tell John Phillips of the Reader’s Digest, “About nine o’clock my eyes felt strange. There was a beacon north of Glenrio I’d been using as a guide, but suddenly I stopped seeing it … my right eye had gone blind.” Not long after, his left eye began to cloud up as he began to succumb to snow blindness. Slapping his face to keep himself awake, he finally saw distant spots of light just after 10pm; he had been pushing himself forward for hours with thoughts of steaming hot coffee and he passed Joseph Brownlee’s gas station, stumbling towards the diner next door. But his strength finally failed him and he fell to his knees in the snow. He managed to whistle a couple of times and this saved his life. A young man in the diner heard him and found him in the dark, dragging him into the gas station. Joe Brownlee said; “He looked nearly dead. His face was blue, his eyes closed, his lips swollen. I’ve never seen anyone look like that.”

John Hearon had staggered through the storm for almost nine hours. Frostbitten and snowblind, he could barely speak, but he managed to tell his rescuers exactly where the bus was, how many passengers were on it, how long they had been without food and how much gas had been in the tank when he left. Joe Brownlee loaded up his Power Wagon with food and blankets and, putting chains on the wheels, fought his way to the bus, arriving at 2am. Thanks to John Hearon’s incredible bravery, everyone was well and in good spirits and the engine was still running, although they were no doubt pleased to see Joe Brownlee. Over several trips, all the passengers were ferried back to the diner where the town donated food for all of them.

Mr Hearon spent just four days in hospital. After six more days at home, he resumed his Tucumcari-Amarillo route. His courage was recognised with an all-expenses paid holiday to Treasure Island in Florida (Continental Trailways let him have the extra week off, which was mighty big of it) where he was feted and presented with an engraved medallion and his wife, Winnie, with an orchid and a pendant. Other gifts were a little odder; as well as money, the town of Sudan, Texas, presented him with a bale of cotton.

However, there was no long happy ending for John Hearon. On 12^th March 1965 he passed away from pneumonia while suffering from lung cancer. He was just 47 years old. But to his four children, the oldest of whom was just 12 when he died, to the passengers of that bus and to the people of Glenrio he was and always will be a hero.

 

 

 

 

The State Line Bar in Glenrio on the New Mexico/Texas border is today an unprepossessing building, but it’s actually one of the oldest commercial buildings in the town, along with the motel behind it and the neighbouring Broyle’s Mobil Gas Station. The State Line Bar was built in 1935 and some thirty eight years later, the bar would be the scene of a tragedy that saw it close forever.

Two men featured prominently in the history of both Glenrio and the bar; in 1939, Homer Ehresman – who would later build the ‘First and Last’ Texas Longhorn Motel – bought and ran the State Line Bar (which had been built by John Wesley Ferguson and boasted Texaco petrol pumps and a small post office on one side which Mrs Ehresman ran) before selling it to Joseph Brownlee. In 1960, the bar was remodelled and became a much plainer building with a concrete block veneer and narrow high windows.

A few years later it was purchased by Albert Kenneth and Dessie Leach, a couple who had come to Glenrio in the late 1950s and made their living ranching before purchasing the bar. Married in 1945, Albert and Dessie never had children of their own, but they raised a son, Nolan, and a daughter, Margaret, from Dessie’s first marriage to Nolan Terrill. 10^th July 1973 was probably much the same as any other day at the bar. No doubt the Leachs were concerned about the interstate which would cut Glenrio off in a few months, while they must also have been aware that any business was a target for criminals. Just a couple of months earlier, the Standard Service Station in Glenrio had been held up in an armed robbery – while hunting for the perpetrator near Vega, police got a little trigger happy with the result that they shot a hole in the door and the transmission of a Mazda pickup belonging to one Gene Putz, an innocent motorist who just happened to be passing.

But business is business and on that morning 58-year-old Dessie was tending the bar on her own. Her only customers had been a couple from Amarillo, passing through in their RV. While the couple chatted to Dessie, a blond young man in blue jeans and a flowered shirt came in and asked the husband to play pool. He then, as she said, ‘made eyes’ at the Amarillo woman and, thinking the young man was trouble, the couple left.

Some minutes later, in an apartment behind the bar, Cornelia Tapia was getting ready to go to work when she heard a noise. To her horror, she saw Dessie Leach stagger out of the back door of the State Line Bar holding her stomach, her dress covered in blood. Mrs Leach gasped that she had been robbed and shot, although when she collapsed to the ground it was found she had been stabbed, not shot. She died before she could be transported to hospital in Tucumcari.

Her murderer was apprehended just a couple of hours later in Vega, where it was found that, as well as a long sharp knife, he also had two guns in his station wagon. He was covered in blood and, it seems, made little resistance to arrest. John Wayne Lee was 31 and gave his address as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, although he was actually from Tennessee. He never explained why he had stabbed Mrs Leach – she was a small woman and neighbours described her as crippled with arthritis and unable to put up any struggle. In fact, they thought she would probably have simply opened the till and yet Lee stabbed her four times.

At that time, a new law in New Mexico allowed for homicide during the course of robbery to be charged as a capital offence. Yet Lee was charged with the lesser offence of second degree murder and, on 31^st October 1973 he was found guilty. He was sentenced to two consecutive 10-50 year prison terms for the murder and armed robbery which, you could imagine, would have keep him behind bars for some considerable time. How long do you imagine Lee served for the murder of Dessie Leach? I can bet that you’re wrong. For stabbing to death Mrs Leach, John Wayne Lee served less than four years. In May 1977, he was granted parole although that meant he then had to begin his sentence of 10-50 years for armed robbery. How long he served is not on record but if Lee is still alive, he has been a free man for a long time.

Dessie Leach’s death meant the end of the State Line Bar after almost forty years. Her husband moved to San Jon and spent the years until his death in 2004 raising race horses. The State Line Bar is now derelict, a few shreds of the carpet and furniture that Dessie had no doubt picked herself now mouldering away, and the terrible crime that took place here now merely a whisper on the wind.