Talk:Rescue of Jessica McClure

Biography assessment rating comment
WikiProject Biography Assessment

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 00:27, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Authenticity of Jessica's blog
I am not positive the blog at roadoflife.blogspot.com is truly by Jessica McClure. There are several reasonable links to the blog, and the content looks legitimate. One resource to double check is the Museum of Web Hoaxes, which apparently had something to say about this blog. Unfortunately that site is offline at this time, I will try to follow up later. Nelson 16:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

A lot of this article is word for word from People magazine.... plagiarism? 69.142.21.24 16:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I see you reverted my link; I think that's appropriate unless this can be verified. Particularly given this blog entry, "I'm really tired of being called Baby Jessica who fell in the well. ... Now I'm sooo tired of having people think I'm her." Nelson 16:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Morales now
If she's taken her husbands last name, do we need to change the title of the page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.136.116.213 (talk) 19:51, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, unless she becomes famous for something else after taking her married name. Compare Donna Rice Hughes, the activist against pornography on the Internet; we don't even have a redirect at her married name (although we should), because she first became famous for something else under her birth name. --Metropolitan90 05:02, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Note, the applicable guideline is Naming conventions (people) although it might not answer this question unambiguously. --Metropolitan90 05:08, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Let her go on with her life. She was the object of a media circus because as a toddler she fell down a well. She isn't currently a celebrity so let it rest.Two way time (talk) 19:49, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

How did she get down there?
Does anyone know how she got into the well? Did she just walk into it? Captain Jackson 21:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

If memory serves, she was playing in someone's backyard with other children. The well was covered with a flowerpot, but one of the other kids moved it. Yes, she just walked in. It was so narrow, no one assumed you could fall in.

Czolgolz 17:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Since I was only 1 when this happen, did anything ever happen with the parents? Like from Social Services? What kind of parents leave their child unattended when there is an open well at ground level in the yard? Sounds to me like they should have been investigated for neglect. TJ Spyke 20:43, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I think people back then had a little more sense and didn't go off the deep end with lawsuits and formal inquiries every time a parent had a minor lapse in judgement. Accidents are inevitable. Trying to send someone to jail or bankrupt them everytime they occur accomplishes nothing at all, and just ends up hurting families and costing money. QuinnHK 16:57, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * As mentioned previously, this "well" was incredibly small for even a toddler to fit into...15 inches as I recall. One of the other children moved the item that covered it and as petite Jessica walked in the yard she stepped on foot into it. As she decended into the well her other leg was pushed upward and she spent the entire time wedged in the well with one foot up next to her head. Her parents were very young (18 & 19)but appeared to be good parents. The mother kept Jessica calm by singing Winnie The Pooh with her throughout the ordeal. The parents chose to have no more children, reportedly because they felt it would be unfair to another child as Jessica was set to receive a large trust fund of donations one day. The parents later divorced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.161.98.16 (talk) 12:37, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

To the contrary, social services did exist and get involved with the family. It is a fair question to ask how her parents escaped media attention and attention from law enforcement. Have her parents ever given an interview about what happened? They were only 18 at the time, so social services would have looked at the case. It did turn the entire town into a tourist attraction, so it can be asked if that is why her family escaped questioning. All of this is speculation. But it is a fair question to ask how she got down there. She has made misleading comments defending he mother stating that she "will never forget her singing Winnie the Pooh," and she also has said she does not remember the incident. So does she remember or not? Eighteen months old is very young to remember anything. There were no witnesses to how the child ended up in the well and no record of her parent's demeanor after the fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1003:B10D:1F9D:11D:8781:1CA5:6388 (talk) 19:17, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Man with no collarbone
While it was discussed sending him in, I'm almost sure they ended up not using him.

Czolgolz 17:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds like the story about the sailor who was also afflicted, whose job it was to crawl into the 16 inch guns on the battleship to clean and inspect them. When he retired, they had trouble finding another worker of his caliber. 67.162.79.243 19:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and whoever did the well-wishers comment - brilliant. No mention of the historic fake nude photos of her a couple years back? Oh well. Tarkaan 23:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Caliber...ouch, that's some painful punny stuff, there! - Ageekgal (talk) 16:15, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Cultural Refs
I removed the 'cultural references' section as none of them were cited and most had nothing more than a passing relationship to the article. --Chuck Sirloin 03:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Broke/bad link
If you go to the external link http://www.caver.net/j/jrescue.html all you get is some stupid site saying you dont have permission to go there and your IP address is recorded. Walmartshopper67 00:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Relevance?
I have removed the reference to her husband being an "ex-convict" for two reasons. First, I do not know what that is. Once one is convicted, one is always a convict, even if no longer incarcerated. :)

More importantly, how is his history relevant to the facts of her life that make her worthy of a Wikipedia entry? Freesafetyblitz (talk) 21:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Robert O'Donnell into this article. Anything notable that can be said about him is already in this article. Do we need a permanent stub? --Elliskev 18:41, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * OK. Since there were no objections, I have merged and redirected. --Elliskev 19:38, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:BLP1E
Under WP:BLP1E, shouldn't this article be about the "incident" rather than McClure? Yes, McClure was (to all intents and purposes) the only person involved, but it was the event that is notable. It seems, surprisingly, that we have very little on the actual event – most of the article is either the media coverage or the aftermath. matt (talk) 12:05, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it should. To broaden the umbrella a bit, it should probably be renamed "Jesse McClure incident" or something like that. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:05, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Missing
There is a link to Missing White Women in the article, but Jessica seems to have many Spanish and American Indian ancestors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 10:59, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The link has now been taken out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 15:45, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Media
CNN may have been on the scene but I don't respect seeing them referred to as a fledgling cable news outlet. They had already earned their chops more than a year and a half earlier. Their cameras were the only ones to record the Challenger explosion for commercial media. (Of course, NASA had cameras.) Through Challenger, CNN went from near-obscurity and derision ("Chicken Noodle News") to a major player.

On the other side of the coin, CNN wasn't shouldering the coverage alone. At least three Midland, Texas, TV stations had crews on-scene and were uplinking practically continuous video feeds. In fact, CNN's coverage may have been from these satellite feeds. I know all about them; I watched them directly with my backyard dish. Wikipedia's rule against original research prohibits my placing that info in the article, which is why I'm saying it here. Make of it what you will. Kind regards to all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.137.136 (talk) 00:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

This Article Is Missing the Story
The article covers the media circus but not how she got down there and how she was rescued. The lead has been buried here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neovita (talk • contribs) 22:44, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree, I came here looking for the technical details how they did it. --Bluejay Young (talk) 18:08, 17 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm with you on that; but do you know of any references that provide that kind of information to be added? I get the impression that nothing really new happened here; it's the peril of the child that made it such a notable incident.  It make sense that most of the content of the article reflects most of the content on the subject.


 * I suspect that if anyone wanted to develop a section on the actual logistics of the rescue operation, they'd probably have to go through the daily news accounts from 1987. TJRC (talk) 22:41, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Robert O'Donnell, rescuer
I found this poignant article about Robert O'Donnell's tragic suicide. Would it be appropriate to mention it somewhere on this page? Perhaps under "See also" or External Links?

A Hero's Fame Leads to Tragedy

4.16.28.20 (talk) 04:56, 13 February 2016 (UTC) Darwin

External links modified
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Photos from the rescue
It would be good if someone could add photos from the rescue efforts -- 70.51.201.106 (talk) 08:57, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Incident
The article starts by discussing the rescue itself. There should be some "background" coverage (i.e., details on how she fell into the well). This case was a big deal in the media. There must be some info out there on how she actually fell into the well. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:22, 18 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Some details here ... .  Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:24, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe needs improvement, please feel free to change it.  We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, since wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse.   TJRC (talk) 05:27, 18 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I am not well-versed in this topic.  So, I don't want to add content myself.  Hopefully, another editor here is more familiar with this topic.  Thanks.   Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:28, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Popular Culture
Add “Jessica From the Well” Long narrative poem by Lucie Brock-Brodio 79.150.55.65 (talk) 17:12, 16 September 2022 (UTC)