Your continued donations help Wikipedia grow!

Jessica McClure

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A 1987 file photo of 18-month-old Jessica McClure after being rescued from a well in Midland, Texas.

Jessica McClure (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 it to sometimes being criticized 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.^[1]

Jessica stands to inherit a 1-million-dollar trust of donations from well wishers when she turns 25.

[edit]

Cultural reference

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.

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."

[edit]