The three teenagers tossed a baseball back and forth as they walked home from Allegany High School where they had been participating in an athletic program sponsored by the Cumberland Police Department. It was a Saturday morning in February 1945. Robert Milburn,14; Eugene Iames, 14; and Eugene’s brother, Allen, 12, started to spread out as they walked across the Valley Street bridge. Robert and Eugene were near the center while Allen rushed ahead of them to the end of the bridge. Two blasts sounded within seconds of each other. “The second blast was louder than the first and when I looked out the window, the whole middle section of the bridge seemed to bulge eight or ten feet into the air,” William Keegan, owner of the Shober Restaurant, told the Cumberland Sunday Times. The force of the explosion shattered many Read more…