In 1979 Robert K. Murray and Roger W. Brucker published a book about it, “Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins.” The University Press of Kentucky just published a new updated edition. The release of this latest volume was timed to be available as a new version of the 1994 musical “Floyd Collins” is being staged at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York.
Roger Brucker is a renowned caver. At the age of 95, Brucker, who resides in Beavercreek, is enjoying the renewed attention his work about Floyd Collins is receiving. A century ago the Collins situation turned into a media circus as people flocked to the Cave City area to experience the excitement of the ongoing rescue efforts being devised to save him.
The book details the excruciating ordeal Collins endured. Once he was located and his situation became known there were several men who over the course of the first few days brought him food and drink. The authors detail the various plans made by hopeful rescuers to try to extricate Collins. They ran a cable down there with a light bulb to provide him with light and some slight heat.
Newspaper reporters from all over the country arrived to file dispatches. In Cave City they were doing a land office business feeding and lodging visitors. One reporter from a paper in Louisville was actually able to go down and interview Collins about his plight.
Eventually a collapse cut him off from rescuers. Before they lost the ability to go down and be with him one fellow wanted to attach a harness to Floyd to yank him out. That plan got quashed by one of the Collins brothers who feared such a maneuver could pull off his leg and probably kill him, too. The patriarch of the family was a deeply religious man. We observe his befuddling behavior and interactions with the thousands of people swarming the area.
The press kept getting things wrong. Headlines proclaimed Collins got rescued. It wasn’t true. Things got so chaotic that the military secured the site. The laborious process of excavating a new shaft to try to reach him finally got underway. They were tunneling down through rock alongside the cave. It was tedious, slow labor.
There is much more to this story. I’ll leave it to readers to discover on their own. The Floyd Collins situation became one of the most compelling sagas of the century. Eventually they sealed off Sand Cave. At the end of the book Brucker describes how he was able to get inside the sealed cave and retrace the route Collins had taken.
Vick Mickunas of Yellow Springs interviews authors every Saturday at 7 a.m. and on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, visit www.wyso.org/programs/book-nook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
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