Two years ago on a cold, windy day Elaine Bailey was watching a stirring anniversary remembrance ceremony of Villa Rica’s most tragic event when she realized that infamous day 50 years ago should be documented so future generations never forget.

That event was the Dec. 5, 1957, gas explosion at Berry’s Pharmacy that destroyed most of a city block, killing 12 and injuring many others. The day is one that is still etched in the minds of those who lived in the area, including many who were part of the rescue and clean-up efforts.

“When I was at the 50th remembrance ceremony I was listening to all the stories that people were telling,” Bailey said. “It was cold that day and I was coming in and out of the building and I kept overhearing all the stories of people who had just left Berry’s before the explosion and those who were on their way to some of the stores when it occurred. I asked the mayor if anybody had thought about writing a book and he said somebody should, but it would be a lot of work.”

Bailey continued to think about the book idea for a year while she was worked on a novel she had already started writing.

“Finally, I decided if I was going to do this I better get started,” she said. “The first person we wanted to interview was James Harrison (a pharmacist employed at Berry’s when the explosion occurred) but we found out he had just died. We knew then that there was an urgency about this because history has a way of disappearing and if we did not record all the information it would be lost in another generation.”

Bailey set out to capture the emotions and memories of that day through the written word, which has culminated in the first book ever to focus entirely on the Villa Rica explosion. Through interviews with those who were there that tragic day, as well interviews with family members and friends of those who were lost, Bailey chronicles the event from the first mention of a strange odor in Berry’s Pharmacy leading up to the explosion to the lawsuit that followed the destruction.

“This small Southern town was taken unaware and unprepared when a sudden, violent blast of a gas explosion ripped through the downtown business district killing 12 and injuring 34,” Bailey writes on the back of her book cover. “When the Associated Press picked up the news, the eyes and hearts of the world were focused on the survival of the town and its people.”

Bailey lives in Douglasville now, but she lived in Villa Rica until she was seven and both sets of grandparents lived in the city. Her husband, John Bailey, is a graduate of Villa Rica High School and was a part-time worker at Berry’s Pharmacy. Mr. Bailey had worked the night before the explosion and remembers telling James Harrison before he left that night that he smelled gas coming from a crawl space. He was pulled out of school the next day to help with the rescue efforts.

“John was my greatest resource,” Mrs. Bailey said. “He could tell me where the hot water heater actually was (in Berry’s) or how many steps there were, where the back door was. He knew the inside of Berry’s Pharmacy intricately because he had worked there for three years.”

Bailey admits that the mayor’s early statement that writing a book about the explosion would be a lot of work turned out to be true, but only because she didn’t realize there was so much information out there to be gathered. Bailey said to try and be as accurate as possible, she only used information she heard from two sources. She said everyone she interviewed would lead her to someone else.

“So many people were helpful and I could not have written this book if it weren’t for those ladies who loaned me their old newspaper clippings they had been saving in the tops of their closets,” she said. “I was shocked they were going to let me take those and they said, ‘Well, we trust you ... you’re from Villa Rica.’ That was my only qualification.”

Eventually, Bailey had to quit interviewing people because there were so many people coming forward and she had a deadline to meet. However, she said she is continuing to collect information from people with the possibility of an updated version of her book in the future. She also said she wants everything she has collected to be preserved.

“I’m sure I could write another book because there’s still plenty of information out there,” she said.

Bailey said the true-life characters in her book — those who survived and those who perished — became household names around her house while the book was being written.

“I think it’s sad,” she said. “I wrote it within a year because I expected it to be sad and it was. I tried to tell it truthfully without enhancing the sadness or the shock of it, but it was what it is. There were times, even when I read it for the last time before I sent it to the printer, when I felt a lump in my throat. I didn’t want to dwell more than a year on it.”

Fittingly, Bailey will hold her first book-signing event on Dec. 5, 2009, the 52nd anniversary of the explosion, at Berry’s Forever — the business that now occupies the rebuilt Berry’s Pharmacy building on Montgomery Street — from 2-4 p.m. Books will also be available for purchase at the Pine Mountain Gold Museum, Horton’s Books in Carrollton and the Douglasville Cultural Arts Center. Books can also be ordered by contacting Bailey directly at baileyelaine001@comcast.net.