TMI 35 years later
"I was born in New York and grew up around the area for a while. My father was in the Army and then was in the Air Force. So we moved around, but Harrisburg Area— that was always a home base for us. I graduated from John Harris High School in Harrisburg, so the area is home to me."
"My first two years of college were actually in Germany. The University of Maryland had a branch college in Munich. When I came back to the States I finished up at Millersville [with] a degree in Elementary Education. I didn't go back right away, I waited until had a family and was married and had a family before I went back to finish up."
"Susquehanna Valley Alliance was interested in the water aspect of it and the [Concerned] Mothers were interested in that aspect of it in Middletown and then TMIA was the go-to that everybody knew about because they had been in business for so long. People were in the right place at the right time to do the job that needed to be done. Everybody had their own group but we got together, though, and sometimes we still do."
"Our kids were in school at that time— our youngest was in 5th grade. Our son had an appointment for the orthodontist the morning of the accident and I went up to school. I didn't have the radio on. I wasn't aware of the fact that this thing was happening. I had taken him out around 10 and brought him back around 11 and the secretary said ‘Oh, you’re bringing him back? Everybody else is taking their kids out because of the accident at Three Mile Island.’ And I thought, ‘I better start paying attention to this.’"
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"I didn't do anything further about it ‘til the next day when I really was listening carefully to find out what was happening. I thought: ‘This is just not right— we are leaving.’ So, George and I talked it over. He stayed home to take care of the cat and go to work, and I took the kids and went up to Massachusetts to my sisters’. I wasn’t panicked, but I thought we were getting out of here anyway because I knew enough about nuclear power to know that it was not a healthy thing to be exposed to radiation."
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"I was gone for a week. We were getting more information in Massachusetts than they were getting down here. My in-laws lived a few blocks away and they kept on saying ‘why are you still up there?’ I said ‘I just don’t feel safe.’ ‘Well, there is nothing to be worried about because the governor said…' In this area, the fact that [you] would bother to leave— they found it incredulous."
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"I was substitute teaching at the time and one of the teachers that I happened to know told me about this Susquehanna Valley Alliance. This was probably two months after we came back. She said ‘Maybe you'd be interested in attending this.’ So I went to a meeting and [thought]: ‘These people are talking sense.’ I joined the organization. It was once a week for quite a long time and then it cut to once a month for a while."
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"We met here in Lancaster and people were educating themselves on this subject. I knew a little bit, I knew how to be scared of the stuff but I didn’t really know as much. I learned and, at the time, I was able to speak intelligently about the Alpha, Beta and the Gamma effects of radiation on the body and what it affected and that type of thing. Everybody did their own educating [with] whatever avenues they had. They’d help, they’d tell you where to go and find information. If they found good information they passed it along. It was not all intellectuals that were involved; there were a lot of other people: construction workers [etc.] They were all people that were wanting to educate themselves on the subject and willing to work."
“Well, I had only been there for 5 weeks. I’d just gotten the job [and] moved here. No one was ordering me to cover [TMI]. For the first night I went down, I went down to see it— I had a friend and I asked him to drive me down. There were people in moon suits taking radiation readings the first night.”
"[SVA] had an attorney; her name was Jean Kohr. I knew Jean Kohr peripherally because both my son and the youngest kid and her son were in preschool together. I didn’t really get to know her, I just heard her speaking at parent conferences. But when I really got to know her and talk to her, she was a phenomenal woman. She invited me to go along with her down to DC."
"I went to one of the NRC meetings in Washington DC. I think it was one of the first ones that the NRC held, inviting the people from the TMI area to be there. I don’t remember what question I asked, but Jean thanked me for asking that particular question because I really put [the commissioner] on the spot. He did some fancy dancing around that question. We were talking about the effects of radiation on the body and I came up with something and I thought I sounded pretty informed on the subject. I surprised myself at the time."
"We went up to Harrisburg and it was the same. Thornburgh was there. Everybody got a chance to express their opinions about what was happening on why we should not be venting the radiation and he was listening politely until one of the men, Steve Snell, asked a question. It was [a] rather benign question and he blew up at him -- I mean absolutely shouted at him and I thought that strange. That meant that the session [was] over ‘cause he didn't want to talk with us anymore."
So Denton had a press conference at about 10 o’clock on a Friday night. They used to have an old media center— really small room up on top floor of the capitol. And I can remember waiting for that. The click of the cameras… in the old days, the cameras would make a clicking noise and it was almost intense the way he walked out there; no one had seen him [before]. He was able to start relaying information in a more folksy style. A calming style from the start. Denton was a real change in terms of just trying to understand it. I had no reason to doubt him.
The UPI, the United Press, was talking about a meltdown fear. It was later, I think, later on you were getting the [hydrogen] bubble story. [It] was developing later that day maybe even. So that might have been what Denton was addressing when he first got here, into that Saturday and Sunday.
"I thought, ‘I’m not wasting my energy trying to convert people. It’s just not gonna happen.’ I was careful what I said around the people. I wasn't proselytizing. If they asked me questions, I’d certainly answer them, but they’d soon lose interest if I gave them the wrong answers."
So Denton had a press conference at about 10 o’clock on a Friday night. They used to have an old media center— really small room up on top floor of the capitol. And I can remember waiting for that. The click of the cameras… in the old days, the cameras would make a clicking noise and it was almost intense the way he walked out there; no one had seen him [before]. He was able to start relaying information in a more folksy style. A calming style from the start. Denton was a real change in terms of just trying to understand it. I had no reason to doubt him.
The UPI, the United Press, was talking about a meltdown fear. It was later, I think, later on you were getting the [hydrogen] bubble story. [It] was developing later that day maybe even. So that might have been what Denton was addressing when he first got here, into that Saturday and Sunday.
"My husband [worked] at Wyatt Laboratories in Marietta. Those people out there were nuts; they were pro-nuclear and they ostracized him because his wife was involved in something like this."
"I spent hours with [SVA], working on projects or going to meetings. The kids pretty much took things in stride. As a matter of fact, it must have been 10 years later—there was something that happened at TMI because I remember my son was 16 and he agreed to get arrested at the gate at Three Mile Island. I have a picture, it was in the paper, of him being carted off to be arrested, but because he was under age then they didn’t keep him."
"I can't point to a person who has had cancer, but there are epidemics of cancer and I think they are still going on. I think it can be residual: 20, 30 years later it can manifest itself as cancer and I think that was happening. [The] State Health Department completely dismissed it. Completely dismissed any epidemics of cancer, even though they did the health survey."
"I thought [Denton] was just a politician. Just another politician. He had to keep people from panicking. Everybody was saying, ‘We can't get rid of nuclear power because all the widows and orphans depend on nuclear.’ You know they're invested in nuclear power. And you realized what's gonna happen to your real estate value if people think that nuclear power is dangerous in this area. That's all they could see. It was just a financial aspect."
"After I had my kids, I went to finish up [my degree.] In summer of ’75, I had taken a course down in Millersville. [It was] a small class, maybe 10 kids plus me. At that time, my father was in Texas dying of cancer of the pancreas. I had suspected that was because of his exposure in Nevada to the nuclear testing out there. This professor was talking to me about nuclear power and the affect on the body. Nobody else was particularly interested in this, so he and I would chat about that quite a bit. I did learn a good bit from him on the effects of radiation on the body."
Story of an Activist:
Doris Robb
"When George and I were married we had one car. We lived in Harrisburg and worked in Marietta and his parents were from Lancaster. Coming down 441 from Harrisburg to Lancaster, we saw this thing being created in the river at the Three Mile Island. I thought there is something ominous about that thing. I had this feeling, nothing you could quantify, but just this gut feeling. My sister was down visiting and she and I drove past there and she says: 'Oh aren't you progressive! Look at this wonderful nuclear power plant that they are doing there right here in Harrisburg.' And I said: 'Oh, okay.' I didn't know enough about it."
"I still think we ought to decommission the things. It’s gonna be so hard to change that around. There’s so much invested in nuclear and there's not much money to be made in solar. They buy out the patents for solar and sit on them so that they can't be developed to the fullest capacity. I think [nuclear is] too expensive. I think that is going to be the saving grace. It is too expensive and we have no place to put the waste. I think that even politicians are now aware [of] the fact that this is a problem. Until we address that, we really should not continue with nuclear. It all comes down to the money."
"I'm glad that I was able to participate as much as I did. I don't feel that was time wasted. I think it was important that we did what we did. I just wish that it would’ve made more of an impression on the general public than it did."
"Nobody even mentioned it outside the area. Nobody knows what you're talking about if you say Three Mile Island. It might register with them, but after all the years that's no big thing now. I learned that the government can do anything and cover it up. They are the ones that put the spin on things and there's not very much you can do to fight it. They can cover up anything."
"We had some good [rallies]. You met the nicest people in this business—good, sincere people. The people in the Lancaster area that started this were from the Lancaster Theological Seminary, Franklin & Marshall College and Millersville College. It seems the academia [sic] had started the organization."