Ohio Nurse, Injured in 1918, is Lauded

June 08--A young nurse from New Philadelphia, Ohio, became the heroine of rescue efforts following the Aetna Chemical Co. disaster.

Marlyn Ashelman, 22, was injured in the last of several blasts that tore apart the explosives plant near Oakdale on May 18, 1918. Her first name was spelled "Meryl" and "Marilyn" in other news stories.

More than 190 people are estimated to have been killed by the multiple explosions. The Aetna Chemical death toll was 2 1/2 times larger than the 78 fatalities, mostly young women and girls, from the Allegheny Arsenal explosion in 1862.

When Dr. Lee F. Milford, asked for volunteers at St. John's Hospital, in Pittsburgh's Brighton Heights neighborhood, to head to the Oakdale disaster scene, Ashelman was the first to step up. She had been acting as a private nurse to an appendicitis patient, but she "procured her release ... with a plea that it was her duty to go where she was needed most," The Pittsburgh Gazette Times reported on May 20.

"When the ambulance reached the plant, I ordered Miss Ashelman to remain with it on a hill while I went to see what I could do," Milford told the newspaper. "While I was dressing the wounds of some of the victims, Miss Ashelman left the ambulance, not being able to restrain the impulse to relieve the suffering of the bleeding men all around her."

The physician also noticed a man with a motion-picture camera nearby, taking pictures of the destruction.

"While I was attending one of the victims, a terrific blast shook the earth, and I was hurled about 50 feet into a gully," he said. Milford found himself shaken up but uninjured except for a few bruises.

People around him had not been as lucky. The camera operator and the metal tank on which he had been standing had disappeared.

"I found Miss Ashelman bleeding on the ground and saw that her right leg had been severed," Milford said. "I had exhausted my supply of bandages and had to use my raincoat as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. She never made a whimper, although she knew the extent of her injury." Her biggest concern, she told the doctor, was about how news of her injury would affect her father.

The initial story about the explosions in the Gazette Times on May 19 had mentioned Ashelman's efforts to help and her injury. By 4 p.m. the day after the explosion "16 boxes of cut flowers had been received by the injured nurse" at St. John's Hospital where she was being treated, the newspaper said.

"Nearly all the flowers were without any sender's name attached." Dozens of other people made phone calls or visited the hospital, expressing wishes for her speedy recovery.

On the day of the blast Pittsburgh had been the site of a Red Cross parade that drew 40,000 female marchers from all over the county. There would have been several hundred more, the newspaper said, but some of the Red Cross volunteers headed to Oakdale when they heard about the blasts. The women, "with their white veils and dresses, could be easily distinguished" as they walked or rode to the disaster scene.

Ashelman survived her injuries. She returned to her career, eventually becoming assistant superintendent of nursing at Union Hospital in Dover, Ohio. She died in 1971.

Len Barcousky: lbarcousky@post-gazette.com or 724-772-0184. See more stories in this series by searching "Barcousky" and "Eyewitness" at post-gazette.com.

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