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By
Mark Shaffer EAGAR
- Nedra LeSuer fondly remembers life in the 1950s in People drank
their cows' milk, butchered their cattle and chickens for meat and
raised and canned vegetables from large gardens. The kids made ice
cream using snow and ran around outside from sunup
to sundown. Everyone was
oblivious to the mushroom clouds of more than 100 atomic blasts
400 miles away in the desert north of But they did
notice that many young adults raised in the area were developing
an array of cancers. Many died decades before their time. Half of
the 33 graduates from the Round Valley High School Class of 1953
have had the disease, LeSuer said. Her breast cancer was diagnosed
in 1999. "We all
used to joke that it must be something in the cheese," Eagar
resident Floyce Sloan said. "I guess we weren't too far
off." Now, nearly 50
years later, Why it took so
long to receive the $50,000 checks is a story of the government's
initial ignorance of the dangers of radiation, ponderous
scientific studies, an extended court case that eventually went to
the U.S. Supreme Court and how news just doesn't travel very fast
to residents of rural areas. The National
Cancer Institute finally said in a report four years ago that
fallout from the nuclear testing was far greater than had been
acknowledged by the federal government and that there could have
been as many as 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer among those
exposed. In 1979, a
Holbrook woman named Vonda McKinney filed suit against the federal
government - she eventually was joined by nearly 1,200 plaintiffs
- contending that radiation fallout from the atomic-weapons tests
from 1951 to 1962 caused numerous deaths and cases of cancer. But after nine
years, including a lower court ruling that the then-Atomic Energy
Commission was negligent in not monitoring fallout and warning
people living downwind, the Supreme Court upheld another lower
court ruling that the victims could not recover damages. Sen. Orrin
Hatch, R-Utah, continued to push the issue, however, and the
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed in 1990. But that
act didn't receive much publicity outside of downwinders in
southern Congress
updated the legislation in July 2000 and specified that residents
of Coconino, Yavapai, Apache, Navajo and Gila counties and their
immediate families were eligible for the benefits. LeSuer, who
said she had $80,000 in medical bills for her cancer treatment,
said she knew nothing about the compensation act, which also
applies to uranium miners in northeastern Arizona, until seeing a
notice on a bulletin board at a drugstore in neighboring
Springerville. Charles
Miller, a spokesman at the U.S. Department of Justice in To be
eligible, people must prove that they, or an immediate family
member, lived within the five-county area for two years between
1951 and 1959, or during July 1962, and had internal cancer or
leukemia. That includes
many people in "We were
getting a big dose from both directions," said Karen Madrid,
whose husband, Gary Joe Madrid, a It helped
contribute to the death of dozens of unsuspecting people, such as
former Eagar Mayor George Peņa, who died of brain cancer two
years ago at age 61. Peņa's widow,
Gladys, said tearfully that she had received a benefit check Oct.
1 for her husband, who worked in the forestry industry for 39
years, but that it did little to relieve the financial problems
and emotional heartbreak. "It
wasn't diagnosed early on, and he didn't have a chance," she
said. Preston
Truman, head of the Utah Downwinders Association, said the
government hasn't allocated nearly enough money to pay
victims in the area designated for benefits, nor has it designated
a large enough area. "It's
like Mohave County, in the studies done, was determined to be No.
8 on the list of counties receiving the most fallout, yet the
people there are not included for benefits," said Truman, who
added that his earliest memory as a child was going to a ridge
line at his family's ranch north of St. George, Utah, and watching
the bright flashes on the horizon of the nuclear testing 100 miles
away. Truman said he
developed lymphoma at 15 in the late 1960s. "The
other thing is where do you draw the line on a geographical area?
There was one example on Lile Stratton
of Eagar is testing the limits of how close to the Valley the
government will pay benefits. Stratton said
her late husband, who died three years ago of cancer that started
in his bladder, was working in road construction in southern
Yavapai County, near Cordes Junction, in 1962, a year in which the
United States tested 98 nuclear devices in Nevada and at other
test sites, according to the Department of Energy. "I filed
in June but they said there wasn't enough proof. So, I went to the
union he was a member of to get records of where he was
working," Stratton said. "I'm confident they will come
through on this from the communication I've had with them." Myrna
Sherwood, 66, lived on a ranch north of Eagar for years and lost
her grandmother to cancer. She was diagnosed with bladder cancer
in 1990. She said she fears for the future while looking at the
past. "I raised
five kids on the ranch and was here all the time from 1951 until
1962," Sherwood said. "It makes me worried, very
worried." Reach the
reporter at mark.shaffer@arizonarepublic.com
or (602) 444-8057. |
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