From the time he was a youngster, Cody Broadway wanted to tell the story of Jessica McClure, the little girl who fell into a dry water well through an 8-inch diameter casing pipe in Midland 37 years ago.
The story captured the attention of people around the Permian Basin, nation and world. McClure was rescued after 58 1/2 hours.
Broadway, executive producer of documentaries and content series for NBC Local, grew up in San Angelo.
“It was a global event that happened. It was always one of the stories I wanted to tell ever since I was a young storyteller, but never really had the resources to do it. Whenever NBC gave me the opportunity to look for a story to tell in a documentary format, this was one that I pitched. They loved it and we decided to go with it. This is what we came up with,” Broadway said.
The documentary, titled “Beneath Midland: The Baby Jessica Rescue,” will premiere at 11 a.m. Sept. 8 on NewsWest 9.
They came out in November of 2023 and shot for three days in the Midland-Odessa area.
“We got several different shots there. We went to Levelland to get some shots of a rig they had that was very similar to the one they used during the rescue and then we spent two days in Nashville, Tenn., area where we interviewed Chip, the dad,” Broadway said.
They reached out to Jessica, but she respectfully declined to be interviewed, he said.
The documentary was a way to recognize the first responders in the incident, he added.
“That’s really what this story looks into. Yes, it tells the story of the rescue but then it looks into what happens after something like this, once the cameras leave, once the news is gone and things stop rolling; what is the aftermath that people are left with, not just first responders but the people who were there helping out with the rescue as well,” Broadway said.
One of the rescuers committed suicide and one wound up in prison.
Through his mentor who covered the story years ago, Broadway said he was able to get access to footage that “has never seen the light of day since that moment that we actually show it inside this documentary.”
“So this is brand-new footage that is seen from a different perspective. A lot of people remember the shots that were seen from the national broadcast that was happening and also the local broadcasts, but what we show is an exclusive look from a ground level of an individual that was just getting into videography and storytelling. … We were able to use his raw footage for this documentary,” Broadway said.
They also interviewed Mike Barker, a longtime TV reporter in Odessa and Midland.
Barker was at Channel 2, which was an ABC affiliate, at the time.
“I remember I watched the community go through a really interesting change. At first, there was interest in what had happened with Jessica but as soon they realized what the situation was going to be in the long term, which was a long-term project to get her out, a lot of people came forward to try to help out,” Barker said.
The fire chief at the time asked the TV station to ask its viewers if they could help in any way, and if they did, to call. People from all over the Permian Basin wanted to chip in. They got help from Odessa, Midland, Kermit and other outlying communities, Barker recalled.
“The phone lines were just jammed,” he said.
Around the second day of the story, he said they started getting a few calls from Texas news outlets wanting to know what was going on and if they’d give them a “telephone feeder,” Barker said.
“You could see the interest was picking up. It’s been a long time ago, but I’m thinking right about the third or fourth day it just opened the floodgates. They were calling us from all over the world wanting information. I don’t know how many times I did news stories for stations around the world, recording on the telephone, recording what was happening in Midland, Texas, which suddenly was the most important place around the world for at least a few days,” Barker said.
He added that the story had many aspects that appealed to people and tugged at their heartstrings. There’s a helpless girl down a well, it’s going to be a long-term rescue effort and it’s getting to be a life and death situation.
Barker said the McClure story was one of the biggest that he covered, but he’s also covered four Republican conventions and other stories of significance.
Broadway said the goal of the documentary is to go beyond the rescue.
“We have a really good therapist that is inside this documentary that talks about trauma … the amount of trauma that a lot of people went through,” he added.
Broadway said it was the story of a successful rescue and a community coming together, but there was also an oil bust at the time.
CBS 7 Anchor Jay Hendricks was Sports Director at the time of Baby Jessica’s rescue.
“I remember that I couldn’t cover high school football Friday because all cameras were on the scene. I had to go to Wink and Kermit the next day and get their game footage for the Coaches Show we taped that Saturday evening to air on Sunday. I talked with the two coaches during the show about how they found out about her rescue. They said it was announced at both stadiums. Since I couldn’t do a sports cast that Friday evening when she was rescued, I instead put together a music piece to video from the scene to end the show,” Hendricks recalled.
He also went to Arlington when the Texas Rangers honored her and she rolled the ball to the catcher.
“I did very little sports during the entire ordeal. No one wanted to see that because they were engaged with what was happening,” Hendricks said.
Lance Lunsford was just a kid at the time McClure was trapped in the well. His grandmother lived just down the street from McClure so they went to see what was happening every day.
It felt like a win with the mixture of things going on at the time — the bad economy and high unemployment rate juxtaposed with George H.W. Bush announcing his presidential candidacy and oilman Clayton Williams making a name for himself.
Lunsford is now a senior partner and co-founder of Groundswell Health, which started in 2019.
“We do marketing for hospitals and health systems, but we also do communications work for advocacy organizations, hospitals and health systems,” also public affairs work on policy issues like Medicare Advantage, Lunsford said.
He is the author of “Inside the Well: The Midland, Texas, Rescue of Baby Jessica.”
An updated version of the book was published in July.
