Jessica McClure

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 the use of the relatively new technology of waterjet cutting.

Since 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. 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.^[2]

Jessica stands to be paid a $1,000,000 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.

"Baby Jessica" was also referenced in episode US-604 of Whose Line is it Anyway? during the Props skit.

In a 2005 episode of Will & Grace, Jack appears on a gay-themed TV talk show with a man who got stuck in a well when he was 12 but whined so much that 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.

In the novel John Dies at the End, Jessica's plight is referenced in an obscure fashion; a man is said to have been found dead in a water tower, the only access to which was an eight-inch-wide hatch.

On the US version of 1 vs. 100, a question was "What was the name of the girl who, in 1987, was stuck in a well for 58 hours?" The contestant guessed wrong, however, with Jessica Lynch.

Rescue footage of Baby Jessica was also featured in the 1988 music video of Michael Jackson's hit Man in the Mirror.

The media circus surrounding this event was satirized in the Invader Zim episode The Girl Who Cried Gnome.