Show courageous school teacher saves live of students elsie green courageous WEST JORDAN TEACHER SAVES LIVES OF PEOPLE so screamed the head lines of the late afternoon editions of september 15 on the morning of september 16 1 I was listening to the regular early morning program entitled the songs of harry clarke only this morning it the songs of harry clarke but the music of lowell hicks with the songs of harry clarke mr clarke then proceeded prece eded to say that they were honoring lowell after his fine and courageous performance of the day before mr clarke mentioned that lowell lowells s picture was in the paper and mentioned the west jordan mishap then I 1 could hardly wait to see the morning paper finally the paper came and I 1 grabbed it sure enough right smack on the front page was one of our local boys lowell hicks on september 15 while lowell was teaching music at the west jordan junior high school he heard a rumble and felt the building tremble he and the students could see pieces of plaster falling past the windows he thought that it I 1 was a minor earthquake and so he proceeded to get his class out of the building when he had got them well on their way he rang the fire alarm the rest of the classes figured that it was just a practice fire drill and filed quietly out of the build ing the building had hardly been cleared when the rumbling in creased and the roof of the music room began to drop A deafening explosion followed blanketing the music room with tons of cement and steel and leaving more than one third of the building uncover ed it was not until after all this happened that the pupils and tea chers realized what danger they had been in but thanks to the quick thinking of lowell hicks ap proximately pupils and teach ers are alive to tell the tale we are very proud of lowell and with good right too because he is a local citizen born and raised in grantsville Grants ville he is a grandson of mrs hilda erickson pioneer a son of mrs amy hicks and a brother of mrs gi russell of tooele thoele and jay U hicks of ibapah he is a very talented musician with the ability to play many instruments besides his teaching job he also plays on various programs over ra dio station he is now living in salt lake but we still like to recognize him as one of our native sons |