‘Baby Jessica’ Adapts to Living Normal Life as a First-Grader : Anniversary: Five years ago, nation turned its eyes toward toddler’s rescue from 22-foot-deep, 8-inch-wide Texas water well.

Jessica McClure is pondering her trick-or-treat costume while picking through crayons for a Halloween theme in her coloring book.

“I don’t know what I want to be for Halloween,” she says. “Maybe the Little Mermaid.”

The next minute she is darting off to play with neighborhood friends, tripping over Barbie dolls and her pet poodle on the way out the door.

“Baby Jessica” is now a 6-year-old first-grader.

It was five years ago, on Oct. 14, 1987, that Jessica dangled her feet over the edge of an uncapped water well and disappeared into the darkness in the back yard of her aunt’s home.

Twenty-two feet below the ground, contorted in a cavern only eight inches wide, Jessica, then 18 months old, sang quietly of her friend Winnie the Pooh while construction crews ripped through the resistant ground to reach her.

It is that image--of a toddler crying for her mother and bravely singing while trapped in a dank, narrow shaft--that captured the imaginations of millions of television viewers across the world.

Her dramatic rescue after 58 hours revived a depressed Texas oil town and gripped a nation.

When the networks broke into prime time to show the rescue live, the relief could be felt across the country--including New York, where Gov. Mario Cuomo declared a day in honor of Jessica, and Washington D.C., where First Lady Nancy Reagan stayed up late to watch the rescue on the eve of her cancer surgery.

Some of the euphoria was dampened after revelations that Jessica’s parents, only 18 in 1987 and now divorced and remarried, were spending thousands of dollars donated to the child.

And many of the rescuers and local residents say contract disputes over a made-for-television movie of Jessica’s retrieval also tainted the purity of the effort.

Five years later, Jessica remembers little.

“I remember they got me out,” she says.

Her mother, Rheba (Cissy) Porter, 23, insists, “She only remembers what she has been told.” Her father, Chip McClure, also 23, refuses to be interviewed.

While watching a rerun of Hollywood’s version of her rescue recently, Jessica wondered if the little girl in the well would be saved.

“She’ll say, ‘I hope they get her out. Is she going to be OK?’ And I tell her, ‘That’s you, Jessica. They got you out,’ ” Mrs. Porter says.

Flickering images of a massive parade in Midland, a visit with President Bush at the White House in 1989 and several public appearances over the past five years have given Jessica the sense that she is special.

“I know that people were worried about me,” says Jessica. “They were scared that I would be OK.”

Like most 6-year-olds, she craves Walt Disney movies, Saturday morning cartoons and has to be forced to come in from riding her pink bicycle.

A barely visible scar on her forehead and the amputation of the little toe on her right foot will always remind her of those 58 hours in the well, but there are no nightmares or signs of phobias, doctors say.

Still, Jessica’s mother fears that her daughter, who has endured dozens of surgeries to repair foot and facial scar tissue, will forever be surviving the accident.

Porter, who has custody of Jessica, only reluctantly granted an interview, saying, “I know everyone loves her, but I love her too, and I just want her to be a kid like all the other kids she goes to school with.

“If we keep writing the ‘Baby Jessica’ story, my child will never be normal.”

Unless Jessica brings it up, the accident is not discussed at home, Porter says. There are no photographs, clippings or any reminders visible in the Porters’ modest house just outside Midland, though 20,000 letters received from around the world are packed away in boxes.

Porter concedes, however, that the accident cannot simply be forgotten.

There’s the nearly $1 million trust made up of the donations received from across the globe that Jessica will inherit when she turns 25. The trust, which is monitored by a local bank, can be used before then only for medical and school expenses.

“She will be mature enough to handle it,” Porter says. “It’s nice to know that her future is taken care of.”

Court records from the McClures’ divorce two years ago show that they spent at least $80,000 of the money donated to Jessica, which prompted a sizable backlash from the community. Much of the money was used to start a tractor service company, which since has fallen on hard times, the records show.

Just as she is reluctant to discuss the rescue, Porter refuses to talk about the money or whether the overwhelming attention surrounding her daughter’s plight led to her divorce.

Folks in Midland, who celebrated in the streets when Jessica was pulled from the well--her eyes wide, her lips murmuring “no, no” over and over--likely will let the fifth anniversary pass quietly, Mayor J.D. Faircloth says.

He decided this year to discontinue a community spirit award started in honor of the rescue.

“We are real concerned about protecting Jessica’s privacy,” he says. “We did not want to cause her any undue psychological pressure.”