CORBIN — By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

This Friday, The Betty Hamilton Center for the Performing Arts at Corbin High School will host one of a dozen screenings across the state of “The Very Worst Thing,” a documentary film that revisits the 1958 Floyd County bus tragedy, which claimed 27 lives in eastern Kentucky.

To this day, it remains the worst school bus accident in U.S. history.

“The story has so much legend and lore that almost every significant anniversary that comes up, even newspapers that are in Kentucky that don’t have any connection to the wreck, will run front page stories on it,” said director Michael Crisp.

Crisp was first inspired to make the film after reading a front page Herald-Leader article in 2008 about the 50th anniversary of the crash. He spent most of 2008 researching the tragedy and interviewing about 30 different people for the project. Filming began in January 2009 and the project was completed in January 2010.

The film features several interviews with those who were personally touched by the tragedy, including two survivors  who escaped from the bus during the accident. The film also features original pictures from the scene of the tragedy, most of which have been unseen by the general public.

The crash happened on Feb. 28, 1958 along a stretch of US 23, about three miles outside of Prestonsburg. Floyd County School Bus No. 27 was carrying 48 children between the ages of 8 and 17 on their way to school that Friday morning, when its driver came up to a tow truck that was pulling a vehicle out of a ditch. The bus driver swerved to miss the tow truck, and for reasons unknown, didn’t brake.

There were no guard rails to stop the bus from falling more than 80 feet from the embankment and into the Big Sandy River below.

When the bus hit the water, the weight of the engine drug the front into the water first, sending the rear straight into the air. Students were able to open the rear door, and about half were able to climb up the backs of the seats before the freezing Febuary waters swallowed the bus.

“The whole story is kind of like American Graffiti meets the Titanic,” Crisp said.

Twenty-two students escaped from the bus and made it ashore. Twenty-seven others, including the bus driver, did not.

The river was 30 feet deep that day, swollen and muddy from recent rains, making recovery efforts difficult.

 “The bus went in Friday morning at about 8 a.m. and it was completely lost for two and a half days,” Crisp said. “They pulled it up on Sunday. Only 15 of the 27 bodies were in the bus.... it took 67 more days until the last child was found.”

The crash had the highest death toll of any school bus crash in US history. Thirty years later, a bus crash in Carrollton, Ky. also claimed 27 lives and injured many more, though that crash didn’t involve an active school bus.

 “The state of Kentucky holds the distinction of having the two worst accidents involving a school bus in US history,” Crisp said.

Crisp makes his living doing standup comedy, leading an improv comedy troupe, DJing weddings, and singing in a Jimmy Buffett tribute band — not the sort of resume you’d expect from someone undertaking such a sober subject in his first film project.

But this story has special meaning for Crisp. Though he was raised in Georgetown, his mother grew up in Prestonsburg. She moved from the town three years before the wreck occurred, but  was deeply effected by the tragedy. In fact, four of Crisp’s distant relatives were on the bus.

“She was able to kind of open up the door for a really small handful of interviews,” Crisp said of his mother. But his big break came through Jackie Branham Hall, a classmate of several survivors who had written books on the crash, including “Portrait of a Disaster.” She shared her collection of photos, and put Crisp in contact with several survivors.

“Of the 22 kids that survived, 21 of them are still alive,” Crisp said. “I personally got to speak to and interview six different kids.”

Only two of those six agreed to on-air interviews — Winston Dillon and Martha Burchett-Marsh, who were both teens when they survived the crash and swam to shore.

In the film, Burchett-Marsh shares her vivid memories of people fighting, clawing and scratching to get to the back of the bus after the water burst through the front windshield and the bus began to go down.

It’s a memory most survivors don’t want to talk about.

“They have such huge survivor’s guilt that to some of them it’s just unbearable,” Crisp said. “...They are sort of like Vietnam War vets that have post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

Others interviewed in the film include two ministers who handled several of the children’s funerals; a man who lost his brother in the crash; and Walter May, CEO of Pikeville Hospital who at the time was a radio announcer broadcasting live from the scene of the crash.

The documentary is from Remix Films, which consists of filmmakers Crisp and Andrew Moore. It is slated to appear nationally at film festivals beginning this spring.

“The Very Worst Thing” premiered about three months ago at the Kentucky Theater in Lexington. It comes to Corbin’s Redhound Theater at 7:30 p.m. this Friday. Tickets are $8 and may be purchased at Hometown Bank locations throughout Corbin. For more information or to view a trailer of the film, visit www.theveryworstthing.com.