When TMI occurred I was a historian employed at the State Archives and living in East Park Gardens Apts. in Harrisburg. Both the Archives and adjacent State Museum were closed to the public and the staffs left free to leave. As I was leaving, the Director, the hard-working Bill Wewer, called me directly and said the Governor wanted to know why it was called “Three Mile Island.” Bill told me to sneak into the Archives tower and find the answer. As Bill and I had both worked in U S Army counterintelligence during the McCarthy era, I assume he thought I was the one for this gumshoe operation. The Archives were officially off limits.
Flash light in hand, I sneaked up several archival floors to the most promising map collections. The Island is far short of three miles long’ even allowing for additional length added by measuring over the elevated island center. Also it is not 3 miles from either shore or from any other recognized point in the river. There was no record of the river being lower in the past so that the Island could have had increased length at the water’s surface to make up the three miles. I could only imagine that someone in the past had made an inaccurate guess and the “three miles” then had became popular. (I still don’t know the definitive answer, and I’ve lost interest.)
all the cars were gone from the parking lot except mine
Back home a day later I noticed that all the cars were gone from the parking lot except mine, and no neighbors were in site. In the afternoon three smartly dressed young men knocked on my door and insisted that I must evacuate because of the danger of radiation. I said “Yeah, yeah” and dismissed them. But I did not leave. I think they had burglary in mind.
One of my fellow workers took his family and drove south of Washington D.C., not returning for two weeks. Two weeks later I drove to my sister’s home on the family farm in Greene County. She said “Oh, yes. I heard something about that. Now let’s go out and look at the horses.”
I remember the long period of disagreement about when and where there was real danger. As late as October an annual conference of the Pennsylvania Historical Association held in Harrisburg, was sparsely attended because many members were still afraid to spend any time in the city.
Louis