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Newsletter Editorial Page – Nov. 11,
2008 It's a Bittersweet Birthday— by Kristi
Riddles
[As many community activists will tell
you, there are specific events that got them going. This retold story was one
that helped activate me.]
On
Wednesday I will turn 42 years old. Who would have known what an impact Nov. 13
would have every year for the rest of my life?
I was born the first
child of Bill Meadows and Karen Silkwood. They were young and in love and
against both families' wishes they married right out of high school. Mom was 20
years old when I came into her life.
The day after my 8th birthday, she
was taken from my life forever in a terrible car crash. She was 28 years old.
I say taken because the circumstances surrounding her death have never
been known to the people that loved her or the many lives her courage altered
back in a time when plutonium and nuclear facilities were unseen dangers. It
could have been your 17-year-old sons working in a plant, like many do here in
Cleburne.
But, in 1974, no one could imagine the horrors workers were
enduring without any knowledge of the harm radiation was causing.
My
mother was a straight "A" student in high school and had earned a scholarship
to attend college. She loved chemistry, and after she and my father separated
in 1972, she went to work at Kerr McGee, a nuclear power plant just 30 miles
from Oklahoma City.
Her job involved handling plutonium and preparing
it to build nuclear fuel rods, which were shipped all over the U.S. through
Kerr McGee's contracts.
It was not long before Mother began to notice
hazardous problems at the plant. The workers' masks and gloves did not fit
properly. After each shift the workers were monitored for radiation
contamination, and those who registered for exposure were scrubbed until their
skin was raw and then sent home. None of the workers had any idea what
plutonium was doing to their lungs.
Mom started asking questions and
was soon transferred to the fuel rod lab, where they looked at finished X-rays
of fuel rods. If there were no defects, the fuel rods were shipped out by
contracts.
One late shift Mom came in behind her supervisor and saw him
covering up a defective fuel rod X-ray with a black marker. It did not take her
long to see that Kerr McGee was putting a lot of lives at risk.
Mom
started collecting documentation with the support of Atomic Union
representatives in Washington D.C., and they set up a meeting between her and a
New York Times reporter to expose Kerr McGee's negligence and cover-up.
It was that very night, Nov. 13, 1974, on her way to meet with the
reporter, that Mom's Honda Civic was found crashed into a culvert, alone on a
highway. The police report said she had fallen asleep at the wheel, but private
investigators hired by our family found no documentation at the scene of her
accident, just her small-framed body crushed into the steering wheel.
Her hands were locked tight around the steering wheel as if she had
fought to stay on the road. There were unexplained dents in the rear bumper of
her Honda.
The answers to who killed Karen Silkwood are a mystery. Her
triumph for better and safer working conditions and exposure of Kerr McGee's
negligence, however, is a story that will be found in history books
forever.
Reprinted from a Letter to the Editor of
the Cleburne Time-Review |
