Every married couple should always remember their wedding anniversary date but we have good reason to never forget ours — we were married the weekend of the Three Mile Island accident on March 31, 1979 and nearly had the first wedding in history cancelled due to radiation.

We look back on it now and smile but, at the time, it was no laughing matter.  However, as two crazy young kids in love (22 years old), we were in a euphoric state and proceeded with our plans.

At the time, I was working my first professional job out of college (finished in December, 1978) in the Corporate Communications Department at Hershey Foods (now The Hershey Company) as the Community Relations Coordinator. My wife, Susan, was working in the Emergency Department at Penn State Hershey Medical Center as a medical secretary.

The plan was for a candlelight ceremony at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hershey with the reception at Carpenter’s Inn (no longer in business) in Elizabethtown.  As the crow flies, Hershey is 8.5 miles from Middletown and E-town is just over 8 miles from M-town, so we got even closer to TMI, which was, by then, nearing the “all-clear” stage from the NRC.

The rehearsal dinner the night before was supposed to be held in the Bear’s Den at Hersheypark Arena but the venue had been converted to a Red Cross Emergency Evacuation site.  Fortunately, my dad, who was then the Director of Operations at the time of Hersheypark/Arena/Stadium, was good friends with the DeAngelis family and the festivities were relocated to a private dining room (now Fenicci’s Restaurant) on Chocolate Avenue in Hershey.

I can still hear the DJ playing Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors”

Fortunately, the wedding went off without a hitch.  Of the approximately 150 invited guests, about a third were “no shows” as they had left the area with their families due to growing safety concerns.  We, of course, completely understood and appreciated their reasoning and rationale for not attending.  The only minor issue was the baker didn’t finish the wedding cake because of the tenuous situation and the reception facility made us a replacement.  I can still hear the DJ playing Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” as the first song of the evening.  After the reception, we spent our honeymoon night at a motel on the Carlisle Pike and then honeymooned at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, WV for three wonderful days.  By then, the danger at TMI had passed.

My wife, who’s dad ironically worked in helping to construct TMI, always jokingly said she thought it (the accident), was a sign. I also thought it may have been a cruel April Fool’s joke.  However, despite many challenges (the highs and lows all marriages experience), we’re still happily married four decades later and living in Wesley Chapel, FL (18 miles north of Tampa) on Florida’s west coast.  We moved here from Hershey in the fall of 2010.  Except for a brief period (1987-1991) when we lived in Boyertown, PA (close to another nuclear power plant in Limerick),  we both had lived in Hershey all our lives. We have two grown children – Kyle, 37 and Ryan, 35, both of whom are married.  We also have two beautiful grandchildren, Nolah, 2 1/2 years old, and Hobe, 2 months old.

We think our story is special but, then again, we’re biased.  We would be happy to speak with you more about this if you think it has merit and would like to include it as part of the series you are researching/writing about the TMI accident and impact.

Kim & Sue

Sue and Kim on their wedding day