I was a senior at F&M during the events, but the reason I write is different.

I remember reading a NEJM ( New England Journal of Medicine) publication in the late eighties or so summarizing the health effects in the population surrounding the damaged reactor.  I recall distinctly reading the incidences of local cancers had not increased except for one, multiple myeloma.  This cancer is a relatively uncommon cancer.  It also the cancer that killed my father in 1987.

It was not until much later, in the early 2000s, when I returned to my hometown York, did I learn that multiple myeloma had been diagnosed in two other people that I knew along our section of Lewisberry Road.  One was my high school guidance teacher, and the other the mother of a friend,  ( This lady either lived with her daughter or very nearby.)  They all had lived below the little Conewago Creek in the Central York School District.

Of course, it struck me as odd, that in the small circle of people I know, that this many people were affected in a small geographic area.  I wondered how many more locals, that I do not know, also were diagnosed with this disease.   It brings up thoughts of causality.  This sense of being a Hanford WA downwinder in PA brings sadness, and opens a huge ache in my heart, again.

Anne