I was working at AMP Inc. in Harrisburg at the time of the 1979 TMI incident and when evacuation was considered, a quick plan was made to get my family out of the area as soon as possible. Unbeknownst to me, my wife had already withdrawn my daughter from Maytown Elementary School while the principal could not understand why any student should be dismissed.
the only activity observed was one solitary Civil Defense-type vehicle
She drove quickly to Reading and our plan was to meet after I would arrive there with my father-in-law’s borrowed car. We would then proceed northward from Reading to our upstate hometown of Wellsboro and spend the evacuation time with relatives. As planned, we arrived in Wellsboro and oddly enough, some sites had already been established for evacuees in local churches and during the following week some people were encountered from nearby Elizabethtown and other parts of the tri-county area.
My family stayed with my mother-in-law and when everything seemed stable there, for some unknown and possibly irrational reason, I decided to return home to Maytown late Sunday because of my work. When arriving in town, I found no street lights…and no house lights anywhere, with the only activity observed was one solitary Civil Defense-type vehicle circulating around town occupied by two men in blinking-lighted hard hats…It felt like an eerie scene from some “fifties” movie like “On the Beach.”
I would drive to my Harrisburg work on RT 283, bypassing RT 441 in front of Three Mile Island
I drove to my house which was locked and remembered that my wife had the house key in her possession so I proceeded to break into my own house through a back window. Everything was pitch black except for moonlight, some snow reflections and the stove light that had been left on in the house.
Tpm Hayden (seated left) and Jane Fonda (at podium) speaking at the Penn Harris Motor Inn
After the whole TMI event stabilized and my family returned home with everything returning to normal as much as possible, I drove to TMI and took a few interesting pictures when Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden visited in protest to nuclear energy activities. I visited a subsequent Camp Hill protest rally at the (then) Penn Harris Motor Inn (now Radisson Hotel) and took more interesting shots of the same famous couple accompanied by iconic banjo-playing folk singer Pete Seeger.
Following the incident, I heard periodically about possible health issues resulting from the incident, but assumed those could have possibly happened under any circumstances. For two or possibly three years thereafter, I was still anxious about the event so I would drive to my Harrisburg work on RT 283, bypassing RT 441 in front of Three Mile Island as if THAT would have made any difference.
Peter Seeger – American folk singer and social activist