“While we were in the Max Pyne house in Orem, Utah, the atomic testing was going on in Nevada, with the testing of the Atomic Bombs. It was a big thing on the news at the time and there were soldiers that were put on the test site to see how the radiation would affect them. As we found out later, there were serious health consequences that came about as a result of the testing and the radioactive fallout. I look back and remember while playing in the streets around our home, that I would observe white government vans traveling slowly up and down the street by our house. They had a round antenna type detector revolving on the top of the vehicles. There were men dressed in yellow or white plastic suits that covered their entire bodies. They had a plastic, hard helmet on their heads that had a square plastic window that they could look through. As they were walking around outside their van, they were holding onto a metal wand like thing, and waving it around. We joked at the time that the Martians had invaded our neighborhood. No one ever gave us any indication that we might be in danger. I determined later that the real reason for that invasion was that they were tracking several radioactive clouds that had blown over our neighborhood from the atomic bomb testing in the Nevada desert. The data was being recorded as it passed over us and probably contaminated the whole area including the people that were unprotected by some type of coverings.

Mother had just had her teeth removed recently and was being fitted for false teeth and just a short time before that, she had given birth to twin boys. I can’t help feeling that because of her weakened body, and, that her weakened immune system had been compromised, I think she may have been contaminated enough by that fallout that added to the cause of the leukemia that killed her. There were 10 children that was surely affected by our mother dying. We lacked the supervision that was taken away from us and with a father that was an alcoholic, our family was on their own to try to survive. She was first tested in Orem, Utah.

Then sent to Utah Valley Hospital in Provo, Utah.

Then sent to the County Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah to die.”