One week into spring, my family and I were already talking about the end of the school year, planning our backyard garden, and wondering if it was worth going to see the China Syndrome at the movies.

My husband Sandy was the Bureau Chief for Westinghouse Broadcasting, covering state government news for KYW and KDKA television and radio. Richard Thornburgh was governor. The nation was only a few years past the mid-70’s oil shock and energy security was on the minds of many.

we, like most people in the area, didn’t realize the significance of the event until about mid-day

At the time we lived in Camp Hill, on the West Shore of the Susquehanna. I was working at the first day care center on that side of the river, helping to enroll pre-schoolers who came from low income families. While the the incident at Three Mile Island may have begun early on the morning of March 28, we, like most people in the area, didn’t realize the significance of the event until about mid-day. Upon hearing the first reports that morning, the “wait and see” stance from officials sounded reasonable; we all waited to get more information about what was happening. By evening, things had begun to feel significantly more serious, and a dense tension descended on the area.

we, literally, had someone on the inside

On the 29th, my husband attended a quickly assembled news conference with Governor Thornburgh along with a packed room of other journalists. Even with the official statement declaring that threats of danger were now past, all eyes on our block had turned to our house to see what we were doing. “Were the Starobins staying in place? Preparing to evacuate?” People looked to us as leading indicators of how to regard the news, considering that we, literally, had someone on the inside.

When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced later that night that the damage to the core was far greater than initially expected, public anxiety rose immediately. People quickly lost confidence that the messages coming from Pennsylvania officials were not entirely reliable. My husband confided to me privately that he wasn’t confident that public officials were accurately portraying facts of the situation to the press.

On March 30th, when the Governor recommended that pregnant women and pre-school aged children evacuate within a 5 mile radius of the power plant, the world seemed to tilt sharply. My own children were in school in the East Pennsboro School District, but I felt responsible to contact all of the parents of the children at the day care center where I worked so they could come pick up their kids.

Sandy was issued a dosimeter, a radiation detection device to measure his own personal radiation exposure.

At the same time, my husband Sandy was chosen to be the “pool” reporter when President Carter sent a representative NRC expert to evaluate the situation. That role continued when President Carter himself came to tour the Island in person.

Sandy was issued a dosimeter, a radiation detection device to measure his own personal radiation exposure. Like everyone else working around the Island that week, he wore it every day and when we could steal a moment on the phone he would update us on its readings. Fortunately, those readings would turn out to be minimal, but at the time, we awaited a sharp spike to the right on its little black and white indicator.

I recall the days filled with an overarching sense of mistrust and unknowns. It felt unrealistic to simply stay indoors as we were instructed from officials; it felt simply silly to keep our windows closed. The question everyone wondered was if we were forced to evacuate, would any of us in the metro area even be allowed to return?

“You should evacuate. You should do it now.”

I managed to get all of the kids in the daycare back to their own families, and got my own children back home. I also got a call from Sandy, calling in a hasty rush from the Island. “You should evacuate. You should do it now.”

Concerns grew quickly about a possible hydrogen bubble that could explode with catastrophic results. Talk turned to the potential for a meltdown, which led to immediate concerns about about interactions with surrounding ground water creating a nuclear vapor plume. Sandy assured me that the National Guard would get him out on a helicopter, along with everyone else inside the reactor facility. And then, crisis mounting, he had to go, had to get back to covering the story from the inside, get back to the President and a public panic and a nuclear catastrophe.

Would I see my home again? Would I even see Sandy again?

I had to get my kids in the car with a few hastily packed things. We tumbled into our car, accompanied by a million worries and trepidations, and hit the road, headed for my parents home in New Jersey. Was it far enough if the worst case scenario happened? Would I see my home again? Would I even see Sandy again?

In my haste I left our English Cocker Spaniel Shana in our home, a presence we felt missing only after we were fifty miles away. Her absence reminded me of just how many other parts of normal life we left behind in a hot minute.

We rode out the crisis from Springfield, New Jersey, with trips to the public library to read up on the science of fission reactors and tiny scraps of private information that Sandy could share in rare phone calls while in the middle of the action.

The thing that remains with me most to this day is how little we all knew

He ultimately won the DuPont Columbia Journalism award for his reporting on that historic week at Three Mile Island, but that’s something we would only learn many months later. The thing that remains with me most to this day is how little we all knew, how unfamiliar we all were with nuclear power, and how in a time of crisis, the value of trust in our elected and appointed leaders matters as much as anything else. The fact that history would ultimately demonstrate the great deficiencies in our public leaders stays with me to this day. My family’s life, along with hundreds of thousands of others around me, depended on leaders to tell the truth. Not everyone has a spouse—and a remarkable one, at that—to provide trusted inside information. Now, forty years in the future, I am reminded that trust remains one of the highest civic virtues when society faces hard times.

Sharon