INDIANAPOLIS — Barbara Staten was just 9 years old when she lost her parents, a brother and her grandmother after a propane tank exploded during a figure skating show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum on Halloween night in 1963.
“We were watching the finale, and I remember somebody dumped some kind of a soft drink or something down my back, and I remember the actual boom,” Staten told WRTV reporter Greg Todd in October 1983.
“The next thing I know is I was on the ice,” Staten said. “I knew I was hurt, but I didn’t know how bad.”
Staten suffered serious burns and was hospitalized for several weeks. It wasn’t until the following month that the fourth grader learned about what happened to her family.
“When I would say something about where everybody was, they just said, ‘They were all together,'” Staten said. “It was around Christmas time before I was actually told the truth.”
The truth was that she and her brother, John, were the only members of the family who survived the blast.
“I can get angry because of the explosion,” Staten said. “I think it was something that didn’t need to happen, and shouldn’t have happened, but I learned a lot of things because of it."
"You have to remember, that’s the last place our family went together, and we were there as a family. I try to remember that because the last time before the lights went out, everybody was talking, having a good time, laughing, having popcorn. It was a good place. It was a good way to end that time of my life.”
In all, 74 people were killed and more than 400 were injured.
