Letitia (LeFever) Weaver
That was the April I turned seven. We’d lived in Middletown for a little over a year–hilly country outside of town. You could see the TMI cooling towers from our yard, twin columns of steam rising into the sky.
I remember a beautiful afternoon, balmy, breezy, jacket-shedding weather. My sister and I ran from the bus, in the lane and ditched our lunch boxes. I remember I wanted to go back out to play. But my mother stopped us. I didn’t understand. The sun was shining, it was warm, but the windows were shut, the doors were closed and we were not allowed to go out. I remember that most clearly; the silent creeping menace of something dangerous enough to scare my mother–something invisible, and all the scarier because it just called to you to come out and play, a day looking so invitingly perfect.
It turned out we lived right on the five mile radius. We could see the TMI cooling towers five miles away, but were advised we had a choice, though evacuation was recommended within the five mile radius. I recall repeating this fact to my classmates at the private school I attended in Donegal. Some of them lived in Elizabethtown and were evacuating. I was puzzled by that because we lived on the “five mile radius” and didn’t have to leave. I thought they must be farther away and felt vaguely proud that we were such a brave family, sticking it out on the five mile radius. A news crew came to our yard, and relatives called to tell us they’d seen my mom on the news, hanging up wash with the cooling towers in the background. A man at our church worked at TMI. His family lived in a development right next to TMI. He was so convinced of the safety of the situation that they did not consider leaving, and his wife was expecting their third child. This also contributed to my sense of safety, my sense of inside information. Other people were panicking, but we knew better.
–Letitia