The effects of atomic and nuclear testing form a bond of victimization that unites generations of military veterans, downwinder Elizabeth Wright says.
A regional vice president of the National Association of Radiation Survivors (NARS) and noted advocate of atomic victims, Wright doesn't speak often in public of her own family's plight.Instead, she prefers to work behind the scenes, struggling to earn compensation for downwinders in southern Utah, to advocate rights for those who suffer the effects of radiation exposure and to establish centers to research what government testing has left behind in its citizenry.
But Wright spoke out Tuesday.
As a second-generation downwinder, she watched her father - a former president of Dixie College - die of leukemia at a young age. The tragedy is only one of the many felt by those who observed the testing from a Dixie hilltop as though watching "the latest parade," she said.
The downwinders' plight is one also made familiar to Utahns because of a series of hard-won, high-profile battles with the government.
Wright has lived through the legacy of radiation poisoning, but not without pain. The results of the government's testing in nearby Nevada not only took her father, but robbed both her and a sibling of having children, she says. Her friends died, their children - angrily called "the sacrifice babies" - were born with grotesque deformities.
Now, Wright says, she's speaking out against a new generation of victims - those who served their country in the Persian Gulf War.
As more Persian Gulf veterans come forward with stories of hair loss, chronic fatigue and aching joints, teeth and muscles, their illnesses sounds awfully familiar, she says.
"When my daddy was dying, he made us promise that if we could do anything to stop this we would," she told an audience of fewer than 10 people gathered at the Inner Light Center, 3090 E. 3300 South. "He said, `Someday, they'll know what killed me out there in that desert.' "
She urged Utahns Tuesday to acknowledge that veterans of the Gulf War are the latest to suffer the government's policy of secrecy.
NARS members have a 20 percent birth defect rate - substantially higher than the nation's average of 3 percent. Some of its newest members are veterans of the Gulf War.
In March 1992, The Associated Press reported that doctors were baffled by symptoms experienced by about 60 Gulf War veterans in Indiana. Their illnesses resembled radiation sickness. The men had served in various capacities in numerous locations during the war.
The number of similar complaints soon multiplied.
By June 1993, national officials attempted to quell rumors of a widespread epidemic during testimony before a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on the strange illness reported by Gulf War service personnel. Officials reported no link to gulf service, according to The Associated Press.
Wright disputed the claims Tuesday, calling for attention to those who garnered an unprecedented degree of patriotism, but were all but forgotten once they returned home and asked for care.
"The problem is, our Gulf War kids are coming back sick," she said. "They're being told the same thing the atomic veterans were told. . .it's just a stress reaction about the war. They say, `It's all in your head; go back to your barracks.' "
Such scrutiny of the government's actions has been called unAmerican, she says. But Wright reports a patriotism as deep as that of servicemen she met decades after they unknowingly served on Bikini Atoll as bombs were tested nearby.
The servicemen later fell ill, only to admit they'd do it again for their country but wished they'd been told of the risk.
"We would willingly give what we had to defend this country,"
she said, "but don't make it so tough for us to get what we need to get well."