Down Wind
by Suzanne GreenI think back about going to the doctor when I was about seventeen; it was my first real independent trip to a doctor where I filled out my own paperwork, and when I got to the section on family history I ran out of room before I was even half way through listing all the different types of cancers that existed in my relations. I tried to start with the closest ones: parathyroid cancer in my grandmother, melanoma in multiple aunts and uncles, breast cancers in the aunties...jeez, I wish I could ask my mom what type Grandpa died of. Do I include my cousin Ryan’s bone cancer? Let me think it out. Is there a blood connection there, or just marriage? I could go on for several pages listing the types and the stories of those who battled the cancers. Looking back I see how unusual it is that a teenager would have such first-hand knowledge of so many illnesses and understanding of how they progress. Anyway, the history of cancers in my family can be traced back half a century.
In the 1950s, the small towns and picturesque cities of southern Utah were populated by families living in a seemingly idyllic setting. In these predominantly Mormon communities there was clean air and there were good neighbors; no one locked their doors. The major sources of income were from ranching, farming, the timber industry, and mining. Iron County, where I lived growing up, had been named for the iron rich lands that had provided tons of the raw materials for the steel that eventually made its way into the planes, ships, tanks, and guns of earlier wars.
That was before a multitude of radiation-related illnesses began to strike the area residents.
At nine seconds before 5:45 the morning of January 27, 1951, a one-kiloton nuclear device was dropped from the belly of a B50-D bomber. The bomb exploded as planned 1,060 feet above the Nevada desert. This first blast christened the Nevada Test Site where hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests would be conducted over the course of the next four decades.
The United States Department of Energy describes the modern day Nevada Test Site:
“A unique national resource, the Nevada Test Site is a massive outdoor laboratory and national experimental center that cannot be duplicated. Larger than the state of Rhode Island, approximately 1,375 square miles, the Nevada Test Site is one of the largest restricted access areas in the United States. The remote site is surrounded by thousands of additional acres of land withdrawn from the public domain for use as a protected wildlife range and for a military gunnery range, creating an unpopulated land area comprising some 5,470 square miles” (“Nevada Test Site”).Established as the Atomic Energy Commission’s on-continent proving ground, the Nevada Test Site has seen more than four decades of nuclear weapons testing. Since the nuclear weapons testing moratorium in 1992 and under the direction of the Department of Energy (DOE), test site use has diversified into many other programs such as hazardous chemical spill testing, emergency response training, conventional weapons testing, and waste management and environmental technology studies.
Larger than many small countries, the Nevada Test Site offers an enormous amount of space, including more than a 1,000 miles of completely undisturbed land available for new projects. The vast site also offers security. The boundary and security areas are guarded, and the area is isolated from population centers.
This description makes it sound like a great asset for the United States, and for matters of military testing and national security I suppose that it is. As a matter of fact, the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, in association with the Smithsonian Institution, has opened the Atomic Testing Museum. It is conveniently located near the Las Vegas Strip. That way the tourists who want a little break from the casino can pass a few hours placidly learning of bygone days when Americans learned about “our friend the atom” and how to “duck and cover.” For those families who live where weather patterns carry the radioactive fallout from nuclear testing and have it rain down upon their homes, the Nevada Test Site is a blight on the landscape, a literal generator of death and destruction.According to Janet Burton Seegmiller, “Scott M. Matheson, governor of Utah from 1977 to 1984...recalled life in Iron County during the early 1950s [as] ‘... people mainly concerned with making a living.... People were concerned about the sheep deaths that occurred in May 1953, but when the AEC said there was nothing to worry about, we all just shrugged our shoulders. No one really accepted the malnutrition rationale, but we were used to accepting whatever the government said, especially during that very nationalistic period’” (par. 5).
The sheep, and the ranchers who owned them, were some of the earliest victims of radioactive fallout that was carried on the easterly winds. Crossing from Nevada, where they had wintered, to the lambing yards at Cedar City, some 18,000-20,000 sheep were exposed to large quantities of radioactive fallout from tests in March and April 1953. Kern and McRae Bulloch said they first noticed burns on their animals’ faces and lips where they had been eating radioactive grass. Then ewes began miscarrying in large numbers, and, at the lambing yards, wool sloughed off in clumps revealing blisters on adult sheep. New lambs were stillborn with grotesque deformities or born so weak they were unable to nurse. Ranchers lost as much as a third of their herds (Wasserman, et al. 67).
There are too many stories to list of families who lost children, mothers, husbands, grandchildren. Diseases from the nuclear fallout that fell down upon the unsuspecting residents are nearly as varied and numerous as the victims. Young children died of leukemia; babies were born with almost unheard of tumors, teenagers died of bone cancer, and young women died of breast cancer. It became clear that the nuclear tests were the cause of the illnesses. It also became painfully clear that the agencies responsible for the tests had long been aware of the toxic effects and had scheduled the tests to correspond with weather patterns that would blow the fallout eastward, away from the more populated California, and over Utah and the mountain west.
Suits were filed for years after the testing began. The Atomic Energy Commission responded with what can most politely be called evasive tactics. Their denials infuriated citizens, who produced numerous written proclamations distributed by the federal government throughout the 1950s, claiming the radioactive fallout posed no danger. One widely posted statement, dated January 1951 and signed by AEC project manager Ralph P. Johnson, reads: “Health and safety authorities have determined that no danger from or as a result of AEC activities may be expected . . . All necessary precautions, including radiological surveys and patrolling of the surrounding territory, will be undertaken to insure that safety conditions are maintained” (qtd. in Wasserman 54).To make partial restitution to these individuals, or their eligible surviving beneficiaries, for their hardships associated with the radiation exposure, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was enacted on October 15, 1990. To date, over 1.2 billion dollars have been awarded to the victims or their surviving family members. Each proven case is valued at $50,000. More than eleven thousand claims have been approved. Over three thousand have been denied.
Fifty thousand dollars! It is a veritable slap in the face, though some are able to find some peace in the knowledge that the government had to acknowledge the great wrong that had been done to its citizens. I struggle to find much peace in that. I often think how insignificant that amount is when compared to what my children would have gained for getting to know their grandfather, or how much it would have been worth to be able to spare my husband the pain of losing his aunt, who was more like a second mother, when he was a little boy. More still to have spared her children that loss. When his father was dying of lung cancer, having never been a smoker, I’d have given most anything to have taken that pain from our family.
I was thirty-one when I had a tumor removed; my children were eleven, seven, and four at the time. I truly wondered whether I’d be around to raise them. So far things look okay for me, but cancer looms over our lives like an inexorable dark cloud. When will it come back? Who will it strike next? Which loved one will we lose next?
To end on a brighter note, seeing so many loved ones die before they should, and thinking I might join them, has instilled a sense of gratitude in my life that I doubt I’d have had otherwise. I don’t hold grudges anymore. I try to let things go and not carry them around like so much emotional baggage. I am much more aware of my choices and decisions and that I control my life. I am truly blessed and I try to take nothing for granted; but that doesn’t mean I will forget what was done to the people who came to be known as “The Downwinders.”
Works Cited
“Nevada Test Site.” Nevada Site Office. 06 Nov 2007. United States Department of Energy. 08 Dec. 2007. <http://www.nv.doe.gov/nts/default.htm>.
Seegmiller, Janet Burton. “Nuclear Testing and the Downwinders.” Utah History to Go. 2008. Utah State Historical Society. 8 Dec. 2007 <http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/ nucleartestingandthedownwinders.html>.
Wasserman, Harvey, and Norman Solomon. Killiing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation. New York: Delta Book, 1982. Ratical.org. 10 Dec. 2007
<http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/index.html#dl>.
Looking Down from
Ivy Hill
by David Robert BoyceIt ends with an incident I’ve memorialized in a poem:
“What do you got in your pockets!?”--WHOMP!
He never gave me a chance to reply:
“I just have napkins and all sorts of junk.”I was minding my business when suddenly this punk
started crossing the street to my side.
“What do you got in your pockets!?”--WHOMP!I had white shirt, necktie, I.D., backpack,
and grey khakis bulging at the sides
from just napkins and all sorts of junk.He wanted some weed to juice-up his joint
and thought it was cash swelling up my thighs.
“What do you got in your pockets!?”--WHOMP!To what kind of low had this punk sunk
if he thought I should pay for his high
(but I had just napkins and all sorts of junk!).If in the hereafter I meet this chump,
I will finally give him my reply
to: “What did you have in your pockets?”
“I just had napkins and all sorts of junk.”--Vailsburg, NJ 07106
The post office might get p.o.’d if you use “Vailsburg” in addressing letters to the part of Newark, New Jersey, that includes the Ivy Hill Park Apartments. For them, the proper name of the area is “Newark, NJ 07106” and everyone addresses their mail that way. Although the City of Newark thinks Vailsburg is just a neighborhood in its West Ward, it remains a separate place for me.
Newark, as a whole, is the largest city in New Jersey with a total population of over 270,000. It is also located five miles west of Manhattan in New York City. At one point, Vailsburg existed as a separate municipality. In fact, in an attempt by the Mayor of Newark to absorb some of the outlying communities in 1905, Vailsburg was absorbed into Newark. Today, Vailsburg stands out from the rest of Newark like a peninsula (some people refer to it as the “finger of Newark”) and is separated from the rest of the city by the Garden State Parkway.
I was acquainted with Vailsburg as a Mormon missionary in the first six months of 1995. The area a fellow missionary and I were assigned to proselytize included Vailsburg and East Orange. We were living in the second story of a house at 745 Irvington Avenue in Maplewood, New Jersey, near the place where Newark, Maplewood, and Irvington met. In fact, we could walk north on the sidewalk and be in Newark before we reached the next street corner.We had a nice apartment. Our landlady, Maria, was an Italian Catholic who spoke English with a thick accent. Her husband, Joe, hardly spoke any English. I remember leftover Italian food from what I think was her daughter’s restaurant. There was also the occasional “Tay-ka de Gar-beh-gey out (take the garbage out)” from our landlady and her husband. Also, there would be an occasional plea for “Boys, stop the noise.” Mind you, for boys our age, we did not make much noise. Her grandson (I think) on the third floor listened to heavy metal music and smoked pot. As missionaries, we were only allowed to listen to classical, church, and Disney music. Also, we could get chastised by some for drinking Coca Cola.
We lived just a quick jaunt from many of the things we needed. There was the Panda Chinese Restaurant on Parker Avenue we could see from a small window in our apartment; there was the Extra Supermarket, a few lots north at 741 Irvington Avenue; there was the Town and Country Pharmacy south of us at 747 Irvington Avenue; there was a gas station across the street (for the missionaries who used a car); there was also a bank across the street (too bad it didn’t have an ATM or MAC as they are called there).
Ivy Hill, which some sources call the largest housing complex in New Jersey, is comprised of five large apartment buildings, half of each being a separate street number in the City of Newark. Each building seemed to be its own neighborhood. There was the African-American enclave, the Spanish-speaking enclave, and the Russian and Ukrainian enclave.
There was one family, the Ellis family, who lived in a few of the apartments in the African-American enclave. They were an institution there. Grandpa Lal Ellis was the patriarch of the clan. He was mixed-race and had married Alma, who was part Native American. Their children married people of different races. One of their sons married an African-American Muslim, Karen, who was strength for everyone. I would grow to love these people.
During my six months there, we walked or rode the bus all over Vailsburg. There was a major bus stop at the intersection of 18th Avenue and Stuyvesant Avenue. It was there on June 30, 1995, that while waiting for the New Jersey Transit bus to take us north into East Orange, the events memorialized in my poem took place. It was not the first time that my friends or I had conflict with the locals. In fact, we once had a run-in with the owner of the gas station across the street from our apartment.
Our friend’s car was having some problems with its battery and we asked the people at the gas station to get it jumped. There didn’t seem to be any problem. We also set up an appointment for the following day to get the battery replaced at the K-Mart in Kearny (which was east of us). That next day when we needed the battery jumped again so we could go get it replaced, we were told we had to pay some exorbitant fee. The owner of the gas station then came out in his Italian New Jersey glory telling us to get our piece of junk (I remember him calling it that, although my memory may have bleeped out what he actually said) off of his property. We would have gladly gotten it off once we were running. Besides, we were going to get it fixed that day. He slapped Elder K., a fellow missionary, on the face. It must have been God that kept Elder K. from punching him back because, at that moment, a police officer showed up. The cop did not jump our car, but we did manage to get it back into the parking lot behind the gas station, where we waited for some female missionaries to come and jump our car.
Anyway, we were waiting at the bus stop to catch a ride north. Earlier that day, we had eaten at a McDonald’s in Irvington and I, as usual, had taken a bunch of napkins and stuffed them in my pocket. Including my friend and me, there were about ten people at the bus stop. Most of the others were older than us and all were of a different race. Across the street, there were teenage boys who believed as much in marijuana as we believed in God. One of them, who I had had a run-in with earlier, started coming over to me and asking what I had in my pockets. He would repeat his question a few times, each time punching me in the face. His friend asked him what he was doing.
After a few punches, he threw a punch at my friend. When the punk missed, my friend got into a fighting stance. That was when all the punks came over.
There were at least six boys punching my friend and me. My friend covered his head. I, a nerd even amongst my own, held onto my three-ring binder. I didn’t believe that this was happening to me, but I had no idea when it would stop.
I never watched much Dudley Do-right, but I can imagine that there may have been a time when the villain, Snidely Whiplash, was doing something of “ill will,” only to be scared off by Dudley who was going somewhere else entirely. Well, the Newark Police were Dudley, the punks were Snidely, and beating-up two white boys in ties was the “ill will.” A police car running with lights and siren was our savior, even if turned down a different street before it reached us. In any case, the punks were scared away. An older lady who was standing by us handed me some Kleenex for my bloody nose. There was a Number 1 bus waiting at the corner (which we gladly boarded) to take us west back toward Ivy Hill and our apartment on Irvington Avenue.
The next day, I was transferred out west to the New Jersey countryside. A short while after being transferred out of Newark, I was transferred back into a different part of Newark. This allowed me to keep up with Karen and her family for a short time. In fact, one time, a friend and I hopped on the Number 1 bus to Ivy Hill for a farewell party for a couple of our friends. I was a little nervous sitting in the bus as we went by the spot where I got my first black eye.
Two years later, while visiting New Jersey, I saw Karen. Her family was doing all right, at least as far as I probed. She still seemed to be strength for her family in such a place. I have since learned that Lal Ellis has passed away. The last time I set foot in Jersey was in 2001, just after 9-11, and that was only for a couple of hours in Jersey City.
I occasionally wonder what happened to the other people I grew to love in New Jersey. Sometimes I will send postcards that way, but I haven’t gotten anything back in a while. However, there is a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the Newark Campus of Rutgers University, and, someday, while working on that, I may return to Ivy Hill.