Margaret or “Maggie” Reilly was a Certified Health Physicist and one of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Radiation Protection’s best thinkers at the time. Of more importance personally was that she was my friend, and a friend to countless others. What follows is a T.M.I. saga I heard from Maggie twice. The first time was in the presence of her Bureau Director, Tom Gerusky. The second time, Maggie and I were at hotel breakfast in Washington, D.C., prior to a radon meeting. As she retold told this saga in the hotel, the entire room fell silent and listened.
she was authorized to launch the Pennsylvania State Police helicopter gunships to shoot the windows out of the N.R.C. building
During the early stages of the T.M.I. event, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (N.R.C.) had no direct source of technical information as to what was happening on site. Maggie did and was upset with the feds making inaccurate pronouncements without having any data. With her Bureau Director she went to see Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh and explained the situation to him. Thornburgh recognized the problem and what it might mean for Pennsylvanians and immediately got the head of the N.R.C. on the phone. Governor Thornburgh told the head of the N.R.C. that he was going to put Maggie on the phone to speak for him and did. Maggie calmly explained to the head of the N.R.C. that if there was even one more ill-informed announcement from the feds about T.M.I., she was authorized to launch the Pennsylvania State Police helicopter gunships to shoot the windows out of the N.R.C. building.
the uninformed, pronouncements about T.M.I. during the event came to a screeching halt thanks to Maggie
The head of the NRC asked to speak with Governor Thornburgh once again. Thornburgh’s reply was a straightforward “You heard her.” Maggie’s clincher to the saga: “Even though I was in the presence of Tom Gerusky and on Gov. Dick’s red telephone, the feds didn’t know if I was bluffing or not. … Of course, that changed several years later on May 13, 1985 when a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter bombed the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia and burned down several city blocks.”
Anyway, the uninformed, pronouncements about T.M.I. during the event came to a screeching halt thanks to Maggie and the feds brought in better communicators.