My future husband and I were living in Lancaster at the time. He was then my boyfriend from Hawaii who was living here in the city with me. I had a job at the newly opened Lancaster Dispensing Company waitressing and he worked at Banta Tile and Marble. I had just been accepted into the St Joseph Nursing school to start the following September.
Ironically, March 28th, we went to see The China Syndrome at a Lancaster theater. The following day we saw the accident on the news. That evening when I went to work at the Dispensing Company and I asked Bradley Deforge (he worked in the kitchen and was an F & M student, he now owns the Dispensing Company) if he had heard that there was a nuclear accident at a power plant on the Pacific Ocean. He informed me that yes, however it was up the Susquehanna river. I had no idea!
The next day we decided to evacuate to Potter County, PA to our friend’s place until things became safe. Our perception was that it was not safe to stay here. Seeing that movie the night before made us very suspicious of what the government was telling us. We watched the news up north and became more concerned but I couldn’t convince my father to leave Lancaster with my little brother who was 17 at the time. My dad said he wouldn’t leave until the government told him to.
We picked central VT because there was no nuclear plant within 200 miles
We stayed in northern Pa for about 2 weeks and then my boyfriend (husband) came back to Lancaster to see how things were and became convinced that we needed to move. I came back we packed our bags and moved to Vermont and I called St Joseph Hospital and resigned from my nursing program.
We moved to Vermont and were interviewed by the newspapers up there for being evacuees from Three Mile Island. (I still have the poster) We picked central VT because there was no nuclear plant within 200 miles and because my husband had gone to college there and knew the area.
I always missed my home in Lancaster but we stayed in VT for almost 30 years and in 2006 we moved back and live here now. One of our children has also resettled here and we have 3 grandchildren here.
Thank goodness Lancaster was not destroyed.
Suzanne