Jeanette Gilpin.txt

-n -n -n >> What is the 13th we decided? >> Randy Norris conducting an interview for the Kentucky Oil History Society, Harlem, Kentucky, November the 13th, 1993. >> I'll go ahead and turn it over to you. >> Yeah, Chris. >> I am Jeanette Guilf and I live at Holiday Apartments in Harlem, Kentucky, apartment 73. >> Okay, if you could, Ms. Guilfren, just tell us when your people came to the region and where they came from, your father? Did he move here from somewhere else in the mother? >> No, my father was a native Harlem county and he lived at Martin's Fork. >> Born and raised. >> Born and raised in Martin's Fork. >> Okay, could you give us your father's full name? >> His name was Steve Hensley. >> Okay, and your mother's name and maiden name? >> My mother's maiden name and married name was Pearl Hebert Hensley. She's later married another man named Grant Powers. >> Okay, and how many brothers and sisters did you have? >> I only had one by my mother, my father when they divorced had three boys. >> Okay, so you've got one brother and three half brothers. >> Right, right. >> And what are their names? >> One name is named Charles Hensley, Don Hensley, and Ron Hensley. I was not raised with them. I don't know them very well. My other brother, he was by my mother was named Buddy Ferguson Powers. >> An older brother and younger brother? >> Younger brother. >> So you were raised with him? >> Right. >> If you don't mind telling us a year you were born. >> Matt, 1331. >> Okay, well, now you were born in pretty much the heart of the Depression. >> Right. >> And what are your first memories of, are they, when you were five, six, seven, you know, what's the first thing you remember about, and where were you all living at the time? >> I remember when we were, I was about five, we moved from Macbay, Kentucky. We lived over there, that's where I was born. And then we moved to Fairview and Harlan, and those are my first memory days. >> And how old were you then? >> I was around five to six. >> What do you remember, what's your first thing you remember? >> Well, first thing comes to mind is my grandmother. She lived with us. And I remember that she was always there. >> What was her name? >> Her name was Annie Hibbard. >> And when you say she was always there, was she telling stories, cooking? >> She was always cooking, watching the children. She had young sons at home and a young daughter at home. They all lived with the same house my mother and my brother may lived in. >> So the extended family that lived in the same house. >> Did you, your memories of her, of Granny? Was she, was she kind? >> Oh yes. >> Was she funny? >> She's strict, but she was kind. I can't remember her sense of humor. >> So that was like in the late 30s then. >> Right. >> The war years, do you remember the war years, what they were like in cold weather? >> Oh yes, I remember the war years. I was in the sixth grade when the war was declared. >> Pearl Harbor. >> Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning. >> Where were you going to school? >> I was going to Harlan School and I had two uncles in the National Guards. And the third uncle immediately joined them and went into the service. And then in my, I remember going on to school and stuff like that. But I remember that one of my uncles, the landing at Italy, that big landing. >> Slerno. >> Not Slerno, it was another one. He was taken prisoner then. So I lived through the world two years as a teenager. His name was Darrell Hebert. And then I had one of my uncles came out because of his health reasons. They didn't take him on into service. The other one wound up in Hawaii. His name was Earl Hebert. >> What was it like growing up in the cold fields in the 30s and the 40s? Was your dad a minor? >> My dad was a minor. But that time my mother had married Grant Powers. And when the union came into Harlan County, UMWA. >> In the 30s? >> In the 30s. I can remember he was the first president of that local union at Kitts. And I can remember men coming to our house and getting vouchers for food. That's about all I can remember of that time. But during that time two of my uncles were in the National Guards like I told you. And they were ordered on a hillside with machine guns, pointed down the hill toward the mines. I can remember all these things. And later years I think I said that was that my dad was there on Pickett line. And they were on the hillside with machine guns. >> Did they ever say anything about how they felt about that? >> No, they never did. Not to my knowledge. >> So you remember them, lots of union activity? >> Not a lot, bits and pieces. >> They had one big strike and then the union came in. >> Yeah, and at first there was a strike almost every year to get what they wanted. But I don't remember a lot about it. I do know that our families, my mother and my aunts, would always what they call prepare for the next strike by hoarding up groceries and things like that that women can do. I can remember that. >> Getting ready for the next strike. >> When did you, how far did you go into school? >> I went through the 11th grade and then later I went back and got my GED. >> Okay, did you get married in the 11th grade? >> I got married going into the senior. And he wanted me to go back to school and I did start and then I didn't. I quit. But it was sure my fault. >> And what year did you get married? >> I got married in September of 1948. >> And did you all have children? >> We have three. >> And their names are? >> Our oldest is James Michael and the middle is Gloria Jen. She's a Mitchell now. And our youngest is Crystal Gilfin Jones. I always say that, like that. But she lives in Northern Virginia. The other two live here locally. >> Okay. When you first got married, you say your husband had always done plumbing. That's what you've always done, man? >> No, not always. >> Not always? >> We were talking coming up and Gail thought that you were a good kind of an objective person who was close to the coal economy but not, you know, right in it. >> Not right in it. >> Right in it. >> Well, that is the closest I've ever been because when we married, he only did plumbing work outside of round mines. I was never involved with the mines again. You know what I mean? First only. >> After you moved away? >> After I moved away from him, I wasn't involved with it again. >> Did your stepfather retire from the land? >> He has retired on disability, I know. >> Okay. >> And that pretty much gets us up to what I call now the storytelling phase. If you've gotten any good stories, things that you recall, when the house burnt down or the flood or any of those types of things, any kind of events that happened. I had mentioned earlier to somebody one of the ladies we were interviewing about when the kids were born and she had had a doctor come in the first time and got mad at him and then she didn't have a doctor come in more. And when the kids were born, did you have a doctor? Did you go to the hospital? >> The first two were born at home. And the first one was, Michael was born in Fairview. And can I tell you in the tale when you ran down the railroad, did you really do that? See, I never asked him. We thought he was dead. They thought the child was dead and I did have a very hard time, but the doctor was there, had a good doctor. But back then you didn't go to the hospital for your babies. You had them at home if possible. And we lived next to a railroad track and they said that Jim was so upset that he just took off and went running down the railroad track. And that just came to my mind when you said that about the baby. >> I hear it. >> He really did. Well, my mother went in and she held him under warm water and then cold water. Warm water and cold water until he started breathing. >> Shocked him. >> Shocked him into breathing. And so he's still alive. He's a National Guard Sergeant recruiter now. >> But the doctor was there and the doctor never thought of doing that. >> Right. >> Well, it was me. I was having a time too. So he was working with me rather than the baby. And mother took the baby. >> The folk cure that brought the baby. >> That's right. I hadn't thought of that in years. >> See, that's what I'm supposed to do is come and make people think that things are dead and rotten. >> You know you do. >> Yeah, they're gonna hate me. >> You don't know what they're talking about. He ran it up the railroad track. >> No, we won't fight. >> We don't do that. >> What other, have you got any other stories, things that have happened that were important to you that -- >> Well, you know, we all, everybody in my whole family, Jim and me, my mother and dad, and all of our children lost everything we had in 77 Flood. Lost our homes, our cars, our furniture, our pictures, our belongings, everything. >> Now was this, as I, let me see, wasn't that the hurricane or something? >> That was the 100 year flood. >> Okay, it wasn't part of it. >> 77. >> It wasn't part of the hurricane that came up. >> No, no, no. >> You remember the one up in West Virginia where everybody drowned and it was part of a hurricane or something that went up in there? >> Yeah, but this wasn't it. >> What was this just, where it ordinarily flooded but not -- >> No, no, it didn't ordinarily flood where we lived, did it? >> It was. >> Uh huh. >> What happened is rubbish, rubbish and all this caught on the bridge at low and turned the water a different way. >> It rained for three days. >> Three, four days. >> And the ground was frozen when it started raining. >> No, that's not why they built the tunnels. >> Right, right, right. >> So it can't -- >> So it can't do that again. >> Yeah, and they were laughing when I was up here with James and Alpham. They said, well, they've not built them big enough for if a trailer gets hung crossways. >> Right. >> And I told them, yeah, they obviously have not seen what water does to things when it takes it full. And in France, they have pictures in France, you know, in that flood. And big motorhomes go to this little bridge and just eat them. It just goes -- >> And show them how Daddy's trailer did Jim in that gully. >> And how far did it go when you moved? >> But it washed across this gully and then the middle went down in the gut. >> Oh, you're talking about the old gully. >> It broke. >> Yeah, that's what it was. >> You know, the old gully. >> Right. >> Yeah, I don't believe those iron beams could even stand up the water pressure that was, you know, real right at it. >> Let him show you how that did. >> And this trailer floated over the crossway gully and broke right down the middle and trailer was right in the gut. >> And one of his houses washed away and he had two rental trailers that washed away. >> Did y'all have any insurance? >> We had no flood insurance because the flood had never been where we lived. Daddy did have a little bit. >> And so you thought that -- >> Our children didn't have any insurance. >> -- they looked and said, oh, it's not the flood, right? >> Right, right, right. >> And I think through state grants we got about $1,800 through state grants. Small business refused to loan us anything. We had just started a plumbing business, spending business about a year, year and a half, something like that, not long. And just enough to start making a little bit of money. And small business wouldn't even talk to us about loaning this money to go back in business. So we didn't go back in business. We all had to find jobs. But that's just one of those things, you know. >> But you'd all been working in the plumbing business. >> Right. As a family, we had -- had Gilpin, Mitchell and Gilpin. >> The edge of the fountain. >> We were -- okay, thank you for the word. >> So your whole -- your whole dream -- >> We were a corporation. >> -- your whole dream that you had to wash away in the flood. >> Right. Yeah, I did all the partools, all the trucks. We had gone and did it and bought some trucks and things like that, you know, for the business. >> Just didn't pay for the -- >> Nothing. >> Well, did you end up having to go bankrupt? Or did you -- >> No, no. >> Just didn't pay for the -- >> We took everything and paid all of our debts off. >> Yeah. >> Paid all of them off. So here we are. >> Just started going home. >> People don't realize how funny it is, you know, when I got out of the hospital, my first bill that I got was for $47,000, and I think my total bill ended up being like $150,000. >> What? >> Well, the insurance paid for all of it, but $2,000, $3,000. But what you don't understand is that while you're in the hospital, you're rent, you're car-paying, you're letting all that stuff still goes on, you know, whether -- and people don't understand that, that you miss one payday and you're broke. >> Well, I -- >> Well, we finally managed -- we were still paying on all those debts when our last one got married. >> Uh-huh. >> So that's when we bought our mobile home, and we lived in a house that belonged to my dad, and we wanted something of our own because we were getting kind of old, you know, we needed to buy something of our own. And we bought our mobile home and moved it in the Holiday Mobile Home Part. You know all about that contamination. >> Oh, this is your part of the -- >> Of that. >> Okay. >> So the first year we lived there, we moved in on '81, and in July of '81, and in June of '82, my husband was the plumber for the people that owned the park, and he took care of the surplant and the water treatment plant. So on June the 28th was his birthday, June the 29th, he was in explosion at the mobile home park in the water treatment plant, burned three-fourths of his upper torso. At that time, we thought it was methane gas. Now we know that vinyl chloride is a flameless, I mean, a tasteless, odorless gas, so we don't know which one burned him. So he was out of commission, he was in hospital 25 days then. And so we're just coming back all together. He's retired, and I would like to, but we've had to really find all this, you know. >> Well, if you're lucky, God will let you live to be about 100 and 10 to where you can -- >> If we can take care of each other, it'll be fine. >> That's a laugh. >> I feel like I've had so much bad luck, I'm going to live a long time, no, we're coming home. >> One thing about Ms. Gilpin that she will not say, she won't mind her own candle, about nine-tenths of it in the group looked to Jeanette Gilpin at the gym for strength as we go on every day. She carried the globe out of her shoulder, so she won't ever say anything about it. There's ones that have said, we get depressed, we get heart-sy, and we call her. And she knows how many times I've called her about my new grandbaby, about my son, about my husband, even just my own when I get very depressed or very quit and give up. And I call her and sit and talk to her, or I have come over here and sat and talked to her and Jim together. And Jeanette has an inner strength there and a stronger faith. She has enough faith that she can lend some of it to the rest of us. >> Thank you. >> And she won't never tell anybody about it. >> Now when you say the group was the official name of the group. >> Concerns, excuse me, concerns says, "Sins against toxic waste." Okay, and so you all have survived flood, fire, and I guess famine would be next. >> Pollution, the name. >> Pollution. >> And it's one of those wonderful. >> Well, have you, well you've heard that saying God never puts more on us. >> No, no, that's our theme. That's our theme. >> Do you feel when y'all started the group at the trailer part now, where if you would take us kind of through the beginning, the middle, and -- >> I really can't do that because I was on midnight at that time, and evening shift. I worked at the hospital. My husband went to the meetings. I didn't get to go then. Joan started them. And of course she invited us. And he got to go to the meetings. And I didn't get to go. For a long, long time I didn't get to go. But we were charter members. >> And so you've been part of the epidemiology studies. >> Right. >> And have they, I guess it's been about a year since I talked to Joan about it. Have they done any more tests to determine exposure levels and all those kinds of things? >> They're supposed to be starting that pretty soon, aren't they? That's what she's down there seeing about now. How is, what's a reaction in the community then? We were talking about some of these things we've been involved with. How do your neighbors and friends and neighbors and relatives, how do they all feel about, you know, because it's not real traditional for people to be politically active in the mountains. How do they feel about you, you know, being involved in controversy? >> Certainly it's controversial, I guess. >> You're talking about how I feel about the politics that was going on at the time that we found this contamination out. That's not a good question to ask me. >> Okay. The day that EPA came into the trailer park, is this what you want to hear? >> Just whatever you want to say. >> The day they came into the trailer park. I knew they were there because I had quit work to stay home with him. He had been real sick with, he'd been having lung infections. And I just quit work to stay home with him and I was there. So the manager of the trailer, the then manager of the trailer park at that time came to our mobile home. And he went over to Jim was at. I told him that he was at work and he was at Baxter. So he called the owners and had him to come down there. Well, I knew they were something wrong, very, very wrong. I'm telling you this to lead up to something else. So by that time, the people from London, the EPA people from London were coming in and out of my mobile home. He was down there. And just like I was living in a dream, it wasn't happening. Me, no, that happened over Union Carbide and all that. That happened to other people. It wasn't happening to us. That's what I felt. So then to make a long story short, I won't go into all this. This local health department, they sort of made our mobile home a meeting place. People that came in from Atlanta came there. They all met even in our yard and so on and so forth. But then it come up that was in first of March. Come May was election time. This is eventually a question. I'm going to tell you what happened and you tell me how I feel. We sat at that mobile home park all day with no water. At that time, the county employees were hauling it in Lowell's water truck and putting it in the holding tanks. Or the holding tank and my right, saying it right at the park because he had flushed it out and cleaned it according to EPA standards and so on and so forth. So that day we got no water. I went out and voted for Eric County judge executive. I thought she was doing a great job. But that day when I got back home, I had no water to get ready to take him to go to work. I had nothing. No water to cook him any supper with. Kept calling the office. Nobody there. So that night about midnight, I called their homes to lift messages. And about midnight that night, my phone rang and it was the county judge executive assistant. Assistant, right? Yeah, Dave D. Assistant, whatever they call him. He said, "Miss Gilpin, we're bringing some water down there." I said, "I'm sorry, I'm in the bed and I don't care." I will not call you again. I said, "You all have been out partying with your victory and we're sitting here with no water today in election day." It will be the last. So then they said, "Well, Mr. Gilpin, go turn the pumps on when we fill it up." I said, "No, he won't. He's in the bed. He's asleep and I'm not waking him up." "If you have the pumps turned on, you're going to turn them on." Now I can be rough when I need to be. I don't like to be. But that's how I felt that day. I have never voted for that lady again. She's still in. That's fine. She won't get your vote. She won't get my vote for community service. Let's put it that way. Well, how do you feel? I guess part of what I was trying to get at was, how do you feel like the community has reacted? At first, they've been supportive. At first, the community, I feel like, was very supportive. Now, John could probably answer that question or even get better than I can. Because they're out here with it every day. I'm stuck in an office. I'm not in contact. But I don't think after all of the first shock, I don't think the community has really, really supported us like they should. Am I right? They have not. Government has not supported us. I don't think our local government, no, our local county government. How do you feel towards what the state's done? At first, I didn't feel like the state had really, really helped us. But I believe now they're really trying to. They're working with us now. And so, see, you have to change your attitude as they change. But I think one thing that has bothered everyone about us, we have had our public meetings with the federal EPA and the state EPA. We have had our meeting with our experts. One thing that has really bothered me, and we've all talked about it as a group, we do not have locally elected officials at our meetings. Never. Never. Never have shown up. Last summer, we organized a rally on the Port Mount Square. We marched. We congregated in front. We had a couple of politicians who were campaigning for election show up for the first time. Getting out cards. Getting out cards. But the one person that I will have to say that has shown up any time that we have called him has been Senator Berger. Yeah, he has come. And Charlie Berger has really, there's not been anything he can really do except blend his name and presence to it. But I do really have to say that Senator Berger has shown up. Joan or I either one can pick the phone up right now and call him and say, "Charlie, this is Gail." And you would hear this long suffering sigh and then he would say, "Where do you want me to be at honey?" And he would be there with me too. We got response, written response from Roger Know. Right. And, but now Joan could answer that question, you know, and Gail better than I could. So you feel like then that the, by and large, the response from local government is either then non-existent or very poor. I think it's been very poor. A lot of the community members, which I can show you written proof, the level of contamination in my yard. The acceptable standard of land is 10 parts per million. I have 116 parts per million in my yard. We also have VOC. And the reason I bring up my yard is, is like Jeanette was saying about the community response. It is a case of the ostriches sticking their head in the sand. They don't want to accept it. They don't want to, to acknowledge the fact that it's there. I have one next door neighbor. I love deer. He and his wife both. His wife had had, uh, uh, growth, tumors removed from her uterus and her breast. But at the same time, I mean his yard and my yard joined like this. At the same time, he does not want to acknowledge the fact that contamination is there. He is getting ready to add an extra room and an extra story to leave home. But for the first time that I've known them, they did not grow a garden in their yard and they did not eat their apples. They picked all their apples and they closed up. And throughout the entire area, uh, both down in Gaycoyd and right around me through there and the Wailands, which where it's going downstream where the river flows downstream and even over in Gaycoyd, we have gotten out, we have handed out pamphlets, we have tried to get people to come to the meeting. We have begged people to come to the meeting, make their voice heard, find out what's going on, know what's going on. And it's like, what I don't know can't hurt me. And people don't want to acknowledge that it's there, do they? They don't want to acknowledge it. And this is the time when the cancer rate up and down through there is so high. It's also all of the birds are coming up, you know, all of the premature birds and the deaths that's occurring. And Jeanette can tell you we have a meeting and we have the same little core of workers and people who are active within the group. Everybody else ignores our existence because I think fear is behind it because once you acknowledge that this is there, there's no going back. And I don't think people want to know. The other attitude is that in Gaycoyd it cannot affect me. And I think that has made our... And once it's acknowledged, you have to live with it, you have to deal with it. And that has been very hard to do. But we've had to learn to do it. Just denial. No, we haven't denied it. It's there. The other people have denied it. We have learned to deal with it. Or we are trying to learn to deal with it. I don't think it's something you ever can really do. Now you said when you were working, where were you working at again? I work here at the office now at the Hallyu Apartments office. The same people that own this owned the trailer park. And who...the owner of the trailer park? The person's enterprises at that time. Now it's Don and Harold Parsons on this hall of the apartments complex. Don Parsons, the one that we played cards with at the Go Little Market, I think is...no it was... Don Parsons, no. We played cards with somebody down there that... Don Cox? Yeah, that you played the NEC plant. Yeah, yeah. And we were there playing... Before you. We were just there playing cards. They sent us out there to shoot bull. And we were waiting on Joan. And we were wondering that there was a guy out there that had hepatitis real bad. Whatever happened to him? Berlin Hawkeham, is that who it is? Berlin Hawkeham, he has chemical hepatitis. Oh. And he lived in the trailer park. Well he had told us that he went to the hospital and had surgery. And had gotten hepatitis as a result of getting some contaminated blood. Is that part of this denial process? Well now they found his through a routine checkup for a new job. And I understand they traced it back to living at the trailer park. You see this is one of the things that has created a lot of problems. Because most of the doctors in this area do not know what they're dealing with. Even away from here, a lot of doctors don't know what they're dealing with. Right. Right. The knots they took out of my husband's head at the time we didn't have a cat. But they told him it was caused by cat scratch fever. And the man hadn't been around a cat in five years. And the tremor and the head shaking the problems that my 25 year old son at 24 year old son had had. They were testing him for Parkinson's disease. And he had given up on his doctors and he is now going to Atlanta, COD. Well when we had the blood lead test done, just coming February of two years ago I believe. I may be wrong with my years, but about that. We did that at the Everett's clinic with Dr. Miller. My husband and I both showed five points, almost six points of lead in our blood. I went, no that was in November, I'm sorry, November. In February I went to Dr. Lins in Cincinnati and had the same test done again and it showed nothing. So we assumed it had already gone to my bone. Because that's what will happen. There's a doctor read that we had him, even though Fridge, who's been real active about contamination issues. And if anybody needs to see a doctor that's very sympathetic to the idea that you can get contamination and it can do bad things to your body. He's certainly one of them. I've been trying to find a lab that will do a chemical immune deficiency on Mr. Vupin because he, like I said, after this contamination was found, the state, since he was in charge of the chlorinator and the water treatment plant and blah blah blah down Turtle Park, they had him to flush all the lines and everything so they could use the holding tank and flush the lines so that from the holding tank in, you know, we could still have the same water hookup so we wouldn't have to change it. Okay, we worked out in that mist, they showed him what to do and then they took tests each time. And he worked out in that mist and that was from March and April approximately two months, wasn't it? Okay, the first week of May he started having asthma attacks. Had never had any in his life. But then when the state sent anybody down there to work, they had masks, they had on the spacesuits, but they didn't tell him to do this. And since then he has had lung infections one after the other, asthma attacks one after the other. He was in the hospital three times in three months and nine. That's why we moved out here. I just up and sit some men to get his bed one day, put him in an empty apartment. I said, "Hey, you know, we've got to get out of there." So it's not been better, but we've learned to deal with it. We're learning to deal with it. It's just one of them things you don't think will ever happen to you. But it will because we're going to kill ourselves. We're going to pollute ourselves, plum out of country, out of Mother Earth. Well, you've been exposed to the environmental pollution aspects of the coal industry. I understand what happened after that place was used to clean off mining equipment. Right. I understand. And movers. They're from Oak Ridge. There's no telling what they cleaned off from Oak Ridge. Right. Well, they burnt movers and transformers and all this. They burned that wire. I go home from work at morning eight o'clock and that blue LTD out there is when I drove to work then. And by the time I parked it, my driveway, he had one fixed right here. You didn't have to go but about ten steps to get to the porch. The time I get to the door, my car and myself were covered with black. I didn't know anything about this then. It was like in the early eighties. And so it's, you know, I understand that's what happens when they burn those transformers and things. How do you think the news media has been about it? Have they been supportive or...? They started out very supportive. And then I think they kind of came to a standstill and we didn't get any publicity or anything for a long, long time. We almost had to beg them to, to, uh, am I telling it right now? See, like I said, she and Joan dealt with, with the people more than I did. I asked kind of stayed in the background, helped them where I could there. But I think they just came to a standstill. I don't know whether it was just on the back burner for them, you know, but to us it's important. And in fact, a lot of us scale and I were talking about this the other day. We've had our lives on hold for almost five years. First of March. First of March will be five years. And the other thing that's so bad about that, that's why I'm with Jim, even Jeanette and myself, our children, especially our children, it's what most of us can deal with in the illness to ourselves. But your parent, you know what you would feel like if you were facing the thought that when your daughter decides to have a child, that she may, you're having a miscarriage. A stillbirth or a deformed child. And we don't know what effect that this will have on our children and our grandchildren. And the bad thing of it is, no one else knows. This is such an... Unchargated error. Unchargated error. That's the right word. That's the right word. That's the best word I've ever heard you describe it. And we know from our reading, it's like I told a federal environmental man at a meeting, I think, Jim, with Ed at night, that mountain people are a strong people. We are descendants of people who had to be exceptionally strong to survive in this area. And with all of the things that most mountain people have encountered, we are still a strong people. And when something scares us, it's bad. It's the contamination that's scared us. And when it affects our children, which we know it will affect our children, we just don't know how, we educate ourselves about what scares us. The core group of these people, we have gathered every bit of information we can from everyone we can about these chemicals and their effects. But even though we know what could happen and what can happen, we don't have it down in black and white, what will happen. Because the problem is they know what PCBs can do to you. They know what heavy metals can do to you. And they know what VOCs can do to you. And they know what exposure to each of these individually will cause. But the thing here is, we've got an exposure to all three of them. Plus, we have the added time bomb of dioxin added to these. Plus whatever radiation is brought up there from Oak Ridge, you don't even have any idea what they brought up there. So we live with this. It's just like Jeanette said, we have been trying to learn to deal with it. So don't forget, you've got the soil, the air, and the water. So you have multiple contaminants coming at you through all systems. All last support systems. And a lot of us have eaten vegetables grown in the ground. We've eaten the fish and we've swam in the river. And we've burned the river coal. Now this is my granddaughter that came in with her friend. She lived with us almost all the time at the home park. But we have a daughter over on the TV that has had one child since she lived with us at the trial park. And she's expecting another one. She has no idea of these effects. And I didn't tell her because I don't want her scared to do it. See, my grandchild was born 13 and a half weeks early. And my daughter-in-law was having a perfect pregnancy. The girl has never touched a drop of liquor or a cigarette in her life. Never in her life. She was having a perfect pregnancy. And all of a sudden, here she was. I mean, just the baby was born. I have an eight-year-old granddaughter who has a lump or her breast is going to be. I have another grandchild who is having blood problems. His platelet canal is to be totally out of place. And I'm not the only one. Because it can affect my family. You know, I'm not the only one that- Every family that lives in that trailer park could catalog that same- And once it's not only the trailer park, Randy. Is anybody that's been affected at all from any of the contaminants from NEC? Right. See, I live one-fourth of an air mile upstream from the plant. The girl next door to me, her baby was born 10 weeks early. The number of premature births in that area has been staggering. The number of deaths from cancer in that area has been staggering. And we don't- The effects of these chemicals can range from everything, from slow learners to central nervous system damage, to where they will diagnose it as multiple sclerosis. Only it's not. It's chemical. And this is what- Whatever, to a kidney to whatever. You name it. We can do nearly anything. Right. And see, this is what we all live with every day. Like Jeanette said, she's waiting for a new grandchild to be born. I lived in pure agony until our grandbaby was born. My other grandchildren, they'd spent so much time with me. And as you well know, being in the mountains, a mammal and a pep owl are a very important part of the children's lives. And I think the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was my 10-year-old grandson, whom I had kept for 50-50 years, he and Heather, the day school's out, they pick up the phone and call a mammal out of town and get them. And the hardest- One of the hardest things I ever had to do was hear him ask me, "Mammal, what have I done that I can't come to your house anymore? Don't you love me anymore?" And the second hardest thing I ever had to do, I buried a baby that lived 56 hours. And that was not as hard on me as the night I picked up the phone and my 24-year-old son was sobbing so hard that he could not talk. And they were losing his baby. And I sat for 20 minutes and held the phone and talked to him saying, "Son, mommy's here." And that was worse than the baby that I buried. And because, number one, he was my child, knowing what kind of agony you go through when you lose a child, knowing that he was getting ready to face that, the doctors had already told him they were going to lose the baby. And after -- I mean, it is just so hard to put into words. And when your friends are expecting children or grandchildren, and you know that, God willing, it's going to be a perfect child, a perfect labor, and a perfect delivery. But there's always that little, tiny, cold piece of ice right in the center of your heart that scares you to death because you know there's a chance that it won't be. And it's so hard to make people understand that, that this is a fear that we live with seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Forever. For the rest of our lives. You go to bed thinking about it, you wake up thinking about it. Up there are six examples. Their parents make six more. My mother and daddy, they were at our house four days out of seven. And the grandchildren, like she said, about live with us. There was some one of them there almost all the time. So you know this has affected them or could or will. I mean, you don't know which one of those words to put with it. Well, why? No. The company, what was the name of the company again? It was National Electric Coil with Cooper Industries as the mother company. And that's in Houston? Houston, Texas. Has anybody from here? Any questions? No, we haven't gone to Houston. No. You have to confront them? No. But not directly like that. Well, I can tell you, if you ever need any, if times get hard and you're not getting any press coverage, load up two or three vans full of people. And I'll call the Houston Chronicle and TV stations for you if they're and you can show up at the front door. And I guarantee they'll be a TV crew. They're saying we're here from Dayhoy, Kentucky. We had an expert from federal EPA. In fact, I think they were from from my ATSDR, the Atlantic Task Force. They looked us dead in the face and said we were not media viable. He was there that night, weren't you? And he said we were talking about all of the cancer deaths, the stillbirth and all that went on here. And when they're not trying to tell us that this is our minds and our imagination that we're really healthy individuals, then they tell us like that man did. And he stated right plainly, we were not media viable. Nobody cared. And I have him next. We could not have statistics because there was not enough to make statistics. The reason he didn't want you to have statistics was because with as high a rate as you had, it was probably astronomical. Right. In other words, what you are saying is we are just a bunch of poor ignorant hillbillies in a little eastern Kentucky town. And nobody gives a flag. And he said up, up, up, up, up, up. That's what he did. So after she said that, Mr. Gifford went out because I keep my mouth shut when he's around. I don't want to upset him. And so anyhow, I just told him what had happened to him. I said, nobody listens to us. You come in here and you listen, but you say then that you can't do anything. That's what they said. They couldn't do anything. I said, we don't want to hurt your feelings, but we need somebody come in here that can help us and give us some answers. They can do something. They can do something. Sure. I was -- Could I use the phone? Sure. No. By the fan. Oh, teasing. One of the things that I wanted to get clear was when you had the flood in '77, where were y'all living when you lost everything? And what all did you lose if you had been going ahead and -- Because I'm thinking how I'm going to do the story right now is start with the '77 flood and then go to the trailer park. '82. Right. Then the -- Then the contamination in '89. Jim and I lived on Maypother Street in Lowell. My mother and dad lived at Baxter. And our son lived on Chad Street in Lowell, which was just behind Maypother. Our daughter lived in Rivista on First Street. So, therefore, nothing we really -- that we had left was worth using. So, Jim and I and the two boys, our son-in-law and our son, had all the plumbing equipment. They had an international van. Tell me if I'm wrong, Jim. And you had a Chevrolet truck and they had a station wagon they used to for work. And our -- and well, whatever it was, the Ford Ranger. Ford Ranger, we got it out of the flood. We took the station wagon up to the highway, but the water came the wrong way. You remember, I told you. And washed the asphalt from under the station wagon right back down into the flood waters. Am I telling you right? Saved it once and lost it again. Lost it again. That station wagon was destined not to survive. Right. So, he and the boys lost all of their plumbing equipment, which was probably about $45,000 or $50,000. More. $180,000. See, I forget. And then we lost all of our -- maybe $50,000 was our inside of our house, our contents of our house. So, we got $1,800 back for that. But then our daughter and Rivista lost their car and all their furniture. And then -- What would you say your total dollar lost was? $180,000 for everything? No, that was the plumbing. That's your total? And that's -- and it took you -- Did that include our contents of the house? Okay. And you paid all that back? Well, we owe done. We didn't know all that. You didn't get a dime's worth of insurance on that because it was a flood? Right. The only thing we got was like he told you, $1,800 from the state. What the other question I wanted to ask you was now that you -- and that was in '77. Right. And when did you move to Petrilo phone? We moved in '81 and the explosion was in '82. And then the explosion where he got hurt was in '82. And then they came investigating in '89. '89. And now the question I wanted to ask was, since you've had such -- so many health things, how is that health care in the mountains? I mean, in terms of availability, accessibility, cost, quality, how would you assess what happened in terms of his accident, you know, the care that he received and everything? And then in terms of, I guess, the public health with regards to the -- you've already pretty well said that the public health was -- the late response was poor. How did you feel about his personal accident? Did he get good care? When he was burned, yes. His workman's comp did pay for that because he was considered on the job. Right. So that was a life sand if you want to know the truth. All the hospital bills were paid. He drew a minimal amount to workman's comp during that time. But there again was a battle. We had to fight the insurance company to get it. Not his boss now, but the insurance company. Right. But we did. I've heard horror stories about those. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. But there's just one little word that you have to say. I'll get it tomorrow. What was two words? Or else. It worked. It worked with us. But that is sad that it has to be that way. But, yes, we did have a rough time with that insurance company, but the workman's comp insurance itself paid all medical. We had no medical to pay. As you look ahead, looking five years, 10 years down the road, trying to put all this bad stuff behind you. I mean, you know, that's what we're sitting here doing. Yeah. Yeah. And in a way, although it's painful to talk about all this, I think in a way it kind of helps to get it out and, you know, say this is what it was and put it back there. Putting all that behind you. What do you see down the road? I mean, what's your hope, your dream, your vision? What do you want? What do you think you're entitled to? Just as citizens of the good old USA and Harlem County, Kentucky, you know? What was it all about? If I tell you our dream? If it's in the Lord's will, if it's in the Lord's will, I'll be 62 this month. He's 65. We still feel that the Lord has a work for us to do. And we're kind of being drawn toward doing mission work here in, if not this county, close by, we are thinking maybe Virginia. But we don't know. But that's what we hope. Monetary value, we don't know anything about that. We've never been approached with anything like that. But our health, we can't go back and change that. And we can't change what this is going to do to our health. We don't know. And it's probably good that we don't know. What church do you all go to? We're Pentecost. We go to church of God. But we're not churchy. We're just our children of God. Right? And we want to do something for him before we go out of this world. We've raised our children. We've done all we can do there. And so now we want to step back and do something that we can feel a satisfaction from. And you know, looking at it too from a positive point of view, on the one hand you suffer tremendous financial losses. You suffer tremendous health losses. You have health concerns. But as of today, as of this minute, y'all have survived. Everybody's alive. Everybody's making it. Right. That's the way we feel. That's what I'm telling everybody. All my family's intact. Yeah. Which is more than she can say. She has a history of tragedy apparently related to this incident. Well, we've just all been praying and putting the God in the Lord's hands. And we will come out on top because we serve a just God. And we'll end it on that note. That's a good place to end it. [BLANK_AUDIO]