Swimming My Way Through The Manhattan Project.
An Olympic Trial Qualifying, Big Ten NCAA Swimmer from North County, Missouri. My lifelong “home” pool was steps away from nuclear poisoned Coldwater Creek.
Wedgwood Bath and Tennis club was my summer pool for 15 years. It’s where I learned to swim competitively. It’s where I had my first job, earning money as a lifeguard and swim lesson teacher. I held almost every record on the Wedgwood Swim Team record board for the better part of a decade. I spent 4–10 hours a day there.
This pool was steps away from a massive nuclear waste contamination site — Coldwater Creek.
Coldwater Creek is now becoming synonymous with improperly stored nuclear waste from America’s most notorious nuclear endeavor — The Manhattan Project.
Water, swimming, and the pool meant the world to me. As the daughter of a single mother, these tools gave me a chance at a life beyond my wildest dreams. What started as a summer league swim team, turned into a life changing career. Swimming paid for my college, and gave me access to a world I wouldn’t have been allowed in without my pool talent.
Flash forward a decade, and I was 33 years old living in Boston, MA, and far from St. Louis and my swimming career. I became sick with a mysterious autoimmune disease during my first pregnancy in 2015. It was never diagnosed in 2015, as doctors couldn’t figure out what it was before it remedied itself.
Two years later, however, during my second pregnancy - I got sicker.
In fact, as of May 2017, I was dying.
At 36 I was dying of Pure Red Cell Aplasia (similar to aplastic anemia / a complete shut down of the red cell production line) and Smouldering myeloma (form of blood cancer). Before they could even figure out what my diseases were this time, my second child, Jane, died of a strange in utero disease late 2017. When I gave birth to her, not only was she dead with strange coloring and sores on her, but my placenta was deformed, black, and bulbous — as though it had been poisoned by something horrible.
That is because it had been poisoned. By years of toxic nuclear waste.
There were strange parts of my disease experience from day one. First off — the mysterious nature of my blood issues — almost no doctor could even diagnose what my illness was, let alone cure it. Finally, a diagnosis was found (after 5 bone marrow biopsies), most of the documented cases were from Japan. Specifically Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At this point in 2018, there were a lot of strange illnesses popping up all around North County, MO. I lived in Boston, so hearing of these took longer, but even at a distance it seemed strange that so many of us were getting ill.
At this point, something was starting to take shape in my brain as I traversed medical hell — the intuitive KNOWING that my government, and private companies in St. Louis — KNEW MORE.
I spent the next 5 years trying to survive. I received 2 bone marrow transplants in 2019 and after long years of continued chemotherapy treatment and recovery, my illnesses are at bay for the moment in 2024.
During this time of illness and strange diagnosis’, I would try to explain to people what was happening. That SOMETHING was askew with my illnesses, and North County St. Louis.
But as most coverup’s go — no mass media covered our towns story. The US Army Corp of Engineers, the Department of Defense, private corporations, all denied that this nuclear waste was of any import, or any danger to civilian life. They lied to our faces.
Until grassroots movements starting making noise — people from our town were just DYING. At rapidly alarming rates.
Over the years, more has come out to confirm what North St. Louis County residents know — that we were being poisoned.
Then this month, April of 2024, The New York Times and writer Catie Edmondson did something amazing — they validated this story with a large piece CONFIRMING the NUCLEAR POISONING OF AMERICANS in North St. Louis County, MO.
They wrote of the tragic cover up that has made families ill for decades. They wrote of the horrible decisions by 1940’s leaders Arthur Compton and Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. to refine uranium without a long term disposal plan.
As Catie Edmundson reports:
“St. Louis’ radioactive fate was decided over lunch at the elite Noonday Club in the city’s down town in 1942 when Arthur Compton , a top administrator of the Manhattan Project and the former head of physics at Washington University, met with Edward Mallindckrodt Jr, a scientist who ran his families chemical and pharmaceutical company. Three other companies had already refused Comptons request to begin refining uranium for the development of the bomb. Mallinckrodt, a longtime friend of Compton’s, said YES.”
These men’s choices and plans have had unintended consequences on my life. They have altered the course of my children’s lives, and thousands of St. Louisan’s lives.
But it doesn’t end with them — decades of government, media, and private corporation collusion has gone on to keep this story from breaking into the mainstream.
After so much covering up of this story, being lied to by different government and bureaucratic agencies — I thought I would just try to forget it happened and try to live my life in Boston while I could. I was so exhausted of feeling like I knew the truth but no one wanted to hear it.
But after reading this story in the NYT, I remembered that I received a miracle in the form of a bone marrow transplant in 2019 (Donor: Ella Walker//UK), and I received a miracle as a child in the form of a pool in 1988.
These miracles require me to share the message of hope and change. I have 5 key points I’d like to share and ask of fellow citizens, friends, and media influencers:
1) Expand RECA to include St. Louisians. We need simple, low cost, state of the art medical help for the citizens in North St. Louis County, MO.
It’s really hard to fight when you are sick as many of us are/were. Dealing with America’s medical system can be a dehumanizing experience. Insurance can be exhausting and confusing to manage, and often makes you just want to die or throw the phone. There is an act on the government floor to expand RECA: Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Currently is is being WRITTEN OUT of government legislation by war hungry politicians.
We need excellent doctors in cellular therapy treating individuals there, on the ground in St. Louis. Representative Cori Bush and Senator Josh Hawley are doing a wonderful job rallying awareness and support for /our community. But please, let’s invest in this community with doctors, good health systems and financial support. I beg of you, don’t JUST make this a payout. That is fine if that is a start, but I once received a bill for $973,000 when my insurance tried to deny stuff for one transplant stay, so $50k is not a reasonable settlement for what many of these Americans will be dealing with to simply survive. We need to build a medical community there that is invested in healing this medical trauma. Go at it with the fervor we went after Covid with — care about it.
2) Just Moms STL and Cori Bush, are certified BADDIES. QUEENS. Highlight and help them.
These women have been fighting tooth and nail for validation, support, and care for people of this community. They’ve been fighting — like certified MOTHERS. They have gone through epic paper trails, years of lies, years of fake reports, years of gaslighting, and stayed ON THIS, while still acting like human beings.
Just STL Mom’s website is http://www.stlradwastelegacy.com/. Please check out their work and facebook page.
Cori Bush is taking this to the US Representative house floor time after time. Just last week, the House of Representatives passed a $95 Billion dollar aid package for Isreal and Ukraine, and STRATEGICALLY LEFT OUT RECA EXPANSION — any support for American’s being killed for our previous wars. Keep fighting Cori. Please to anyone reading his — support these two entities.
3) Mallinckrodt chemical should be fined and forced to pay citizens, find medical solutions, and create positive health experiences for the citizens of North St. Louis county. Call them to the mat.
This company is a bad actor through and through. Rather than remediate this issue upon awareness, they tried to lie. They spent millions of dollars covering up this issue, and using bad data to back up their decisions to let nuclear waste languish on American soil. They also pushed opiods on Americans during 1980–2000 at alarming rates when they could have been cleaning up their first mess from 1942. We should ask for them to pay for this — or at the very least — stop letting them trade on the NYSE. Treat them with the respect they treated North St. Louis county residents. None.
4) The American Government and Mass Media SHOULD NOT be trusted to act in the best interest of common, everyday American citizens. Vote independent in 2024.
This is just the truth. With the latest $95 Billion dollars in aid being granted to Ukraine and Isreal, we are now at a point where we can clearly see that American government is on a totally different plane of existence than typical American citizens. We are trying to survive in the wasteland of 2024 capitalistic America, and these fools are spending $95 Billion (we DON’T have) on a war in 2 other countries.
We can’t even get a bill through to support citizens in our own country. To add insult to injury, mass media toes the line sharing Ukraine and Isreal coverage day and night — but won’t even pick up the story of their own citizens being poisoned. It’s weird and sad. I recommend getting involved at the local level, voting for local people whom you know and trust, and voting against party politics in 2024. I personally am voting for Kennedy//Independent for 2024.
5) St. Louis Elites should be ASHAMED of themselves. They should create a fund to help people in North St. Louis county.
St. Louis is a highly bifurcated town. There is a very well established, intellectually and financially rich elite class that knew of this issue for decades. The reason they pushed for Section 8 housing in this area of St. Louis in the 1960’s-2000’s was because they knew it had radioactive waste in its soil. St. Louis elites do not like Black/African Americans, and they don’t like poor White/Caucasian Americans. They fear us. This class of St. Louisan’s keeps to themselves, sends their children to MICDS or Catholic high schools, and participates in the Veiled Prophet Ball or Fluer De Lis coming out gala’s. They have done NOTHING to support this sickened community of fellow St. Louisan’s and their legacy will be forever tainted because of this. Now is the time for millennials and Gen Z of this class of St. Louisan’s to step up. To those whom I swam with at Clayton Shaw Park — I implore you to raise your voice on this issue. Those who have more, have the responsiblity to do more.
I always knew water was my defining element. I always knew it was the “spine” to my story.
I never thought my love and need to be in water would take me to the center of an American government coverup regarding our biggest nuclear defense project.
That said, I’m one of the lucky ones. I got a bone marrow transplant. It took. I got best in class care at Massachusetts General Cellular Therapy and Cancer Centers. I get a few more years with my son who is now 9 years old. None of that is lost on me.
My childhood community deserves this chance to live as much as I did.
Please, if you’ve read this far — email your state representatives to vote RECA expansion in. Post this, or the NYT article on your social media feed. Speak up for people who are being KILLED for America’s past war efforts. If you are from St. Louis, Missouri, or USA — RAISE YOUR VOICE and help your fellow countrymen and statesmen
I write this in honor of those who have passed, specifically fellow swimmer Mark Finely who passed of bone cancer in 2000, and fellow Hazelwood Central athlete, Mike Maassen who passed of multiple issues connected to kidney cancer. I love you both from this side of the veil.
Until we meet again.
With faith, love, and respect,
ESG
