Wagner Electric

In 1973 Bob Daniels, Industrial Representative of  Mississippi Power Company of Gulfport, Mississippi contacted me and said that he had shown a site for a large plant in the new Industrial Park that I had built in Lumberton while I was said City’s Mayor.  He couldn’t give me the name of its prospect. 

About two weeks later I followed up and he told me that the prospect had eliminated Lumberton as a prospect for its new plant as it would not build its plant on property serviced by a Rural Electric Cooperative since its sales were exclusively to publicly owned power companies.

I then went to the Power Company and got a map of their territory.  The forty acres immediately North of the area embraced by the Rural Electric Coop was in Mississippi Power Company’s territory.  I got the City an option to purchase this land and then notified Mr. Daniels who then contacted the prospect.  He then called me and said the company was about to announce it was going to locate near Covington, Louisiana.  He said he was talking with their Engineer.  I requested he have the Engineer to contact me. 

The Engineer called me and I told him that I had optioned the land and that the City had a rail siding leading to the property plus sewage and water.  I impressed on him that the water line met the requirement of the top 500 corporations in America for underwriting insurance purposes which required a 12 inch line plus we had installed adequate ground storage facilities.  Gulfport had built a large industrial park but it only had an 8 inch line which ruled it out as a site.  He then said he would come to Lumberton and see if the site was suitable.

The Engineer was John Whitely and the Company was Wagner Electric Company out of Newark, New Jersey. Mr. Whitely swore me to secrecy and told me if anyone ever divulged his company’s name that would be the end of the matter.  Wagner had gone to a town in Tennessee and it got out they were locating there and they were besieged by hundreds of calls and it let their competition also be privy to their intentions.

They then told me that they wanted more land than we had optioned.  This additional land was owned by Max Jordan who then worked for Howard Hughes’ Company and he lived in Huntington Beach California.  Wagner then told me if I could get an option on this land and a survey and topographical map within the next seven days that they would build a large transformer plant on the land.  I got busy and went to Los Angeles and got the option and our City Engineer, Brax Batson. made the survey and topo map and the plant was later constructed and is now Lamar County’s largest employer. The plant facility later expanded and is a 15 million dollar investment and is now operated by Cooper Industries. I consider it a monument to my effort to get industry for Lumberton.   

Archeological Digs

My Father once owned some land 2 miles West of Bassfield.   It was once the home of Choctaw Indians.  I found hundreds of arrowheads on this land.  Nearby a lake was built and in about the middle of the 80 acre lake there once was an Indian mound. It has since been destroyed in the building of the Lake. 

I got interested in studying the locations of places where the Indians formerly lived.  When I was a small boy in the 1930s I remember some Indians came to Bassfield from Oklahoma to visit where they had buried relatives.  This was South of Bassfield on the old Williamsburg Road on Holiday Creek.   Later I was researching land deed records and found where some Choctaws had owned land in the area. 

Later in doing research work I found written articles stating Holiday Creek had many Indian antiquities along its banks.  About three miles South of Holiday Creek’s  Bass- Burkett Road, west of Bassfield,  there is an Indian Mound.  I located another Indian Mound on Black Creek on land once owned by Wince Lott who once drove a Trailways bus thru Bassfield on the Hattiesburg - Natchez run.  I also located another Indian mound  near Highway 589 Black Creek Bridge in Lamar County.  

Several years ago I attended the Choctaw fair in Neshoba Country, Mississippi and their display of Indian arrowheads were not as impressive as ones I had collected. The most impressive display of Indian Arrowheads I ever saw were in a building a few miles  Northeast of Seminary, Mississippi. I don’t recall the name of the man who owned them.  

After an antiquities law was adopted, I quit looking for arrowheads.

The Struggle for Democracy

In l987 I was contacted by Patrick Watson of Toronto, Ontario, Canada who told me that he had read a book named “Blood Justice” which was a history of the killing of Mack Charles Parker, who had been taken out of the Pearl River County, Mississippi jail at Poplarville, Mississippi and murdered by a mob. Mr. Watson further said that Wilson F. Minor, a newspaper columnist of Jackson, Mississippi had recommended that he talk to me. Mr. Watson wanted to talk to me and see the grave of Parker at Lumberton, Mississippi.   He explained that he was doing a ten million dollar television series on democracy that would be seen worldwide. I told him I would be glad to accommodate him.

I was the second person interviewed by Mr. Watson. His group first interviewed former President Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia and then flew to New Orleans prior to driving 90 miles to Lumberton, Mississippi where I then practiced law and had been Mayor of the City for 16 years.

We discussed democracy for some time.  Mr. Watson wanted my ideas on it and I told him I would study the Greeks, the Magna Carta and the American bill of rights. I had been involved in some school desegregation cases in State and Federal Courts and we discussed Brown vs. Topeka wherein the Supreme Court ruled that Miss Brown’s liberty superceded the white man’s segregation laws.   They also filmed me in front of City Hall in Lumberton, Mississippi. Mr. Watson wanted to know if my views changed during this violent period. I told him, “I think most southerners did. I was originally a segregationist. As events started unfolding, I started thinking. Number one, I was an American. I had gone to Korea in the Korean conflict. And then the rightness of things that are involved:  I didn’t like to see people taking law into their own hands…We had to be ruled by law, and I believe in the system, I believe in democracy. So I had to come around, change my views.” 

Mr. Watson and Benjamin Barber also wrote a book from their televised series bearing the same name “The Struggle for Democracy” published by Little Brown.  In the book in the chapter dealing with the rule of law and in reference to my comments they said,

“What this thoughtful American was saying was that taking the law into your own hands-as good a definition as we have!-must be curtailed if we are to live under the rule of law. That for him democracy does not mean people doing whatever they want, using the law to legislate their prejudices,  but doing what is lawful.  Doing what comports with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.”

I did not see the televised portion when I was on TV.  The night it showed my niece, Ann Washburn and her husband, Judge Kent Washburn, of Burlington, North Carolina saw the program and called me. Kent liked what I said about the rightness of things.  Thereafter, when I went to Ole Miss football games people would look at me as if they knew me.   Later, one of my clients who had gone to Germany, named Ann Todd, who was a school teacher, said that she attended a teachers meeting there and that the TV was on and she saw me in Germany. It’s a small world. Our eyes are now glued to TV.

Mr. Watson’s program was broadcast in five hour long programs.    I felt honored in being able to participate. It was the second time that I was on National TV. At the Democratic Convention in Miami in 1972, which I attended, ABC focused on me for several minutes as the convention commenced, I was unaware of this until I returned home and was so informed by friends.

Stennis Space Center

In 1960, in a national magazine I read an article about the large percentage (60%) of defense spending that was pouring into one state, California.  On the same Sunday afternoon I read an article in the New Orleans Times Picayune that the Army Corps of Engineers were looking for a site near Houma, Louisiana for a static test facility for launch vehicles to be used in the Apollo manned lunar program. 

Louisiana had already got a large plant in East New Orleans involved with the  manufacturing of the first stage launch vehicle in the Apollo program at a plant known as Michoud.  Michoud was a big plant with 40 acres under one roof. Tanks had been made there in the Korean War and in WW2 it was used for building ships.  Why should California get such a large portion of the National Defense Work?  Why should our neighbor, Louisiana get more rocket work and Mississippi none?  These were questions I asked myself.

 

At that time I had just been practicing law at Lumberton, Mississippi since graduating from Law School in 1957 and was not all that busy.  I was also President of the Lumberton Chamber of Commerce.  So I thought it would get the attention of our Governor and Senators to adopt a Resolution of the Mayor and Board of Aldermen of the City of Lumberton, Mississippi urging location of the test facility in our area. I mailed our Governor and U.S. Senators Stennis and Eastland a copy of the resolution.   On the day it was announced by Senator Stennis in the Clarion Ledger Newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi,  I was awakened by a phone call in October, 1961 from Hoyle Byrd, the local Chrysler Dealer, who congratulated me for getting action on the matter and he told me to read the newspaper. The newspaper announced that the facility would locate near Bay St Louis, Mississippi.  He thought my efforts had paid off.   That afternoon, I went to Jackson on business and entered the Heidelberg Hotel and there was Senator Stennis.  Senator Stennis came over to me and said “Bobby I got it within 45 miles of Lumberton.  It had to be accessible by water.”

The only way to move the launch vehicles was by water as they were too large to go by road or rail and they were put on roll on, roll off  barges.   After being tested they were then sent by boat to Kennedy Space Center. Senator Stennis was then on the Armed Services Committee.  The construction of the test facility was the largest construction project in Mississippi and the second largest in the United States at the time.  It was first named Mississippi Test Facility and was later named Stennis Space Center. 

I am convinced that the reason California gets so much Defense work is due to their concerted efforts to obtain same. Since defense work is less than during the Cold War, that  probably accounts for part of California’s now poor economy. 

Racial Cases

Forty one years ago, in 1964, I had a client named Langdon Anderson.  He was then engaged in the oil and gas business.   One morning he came into my law office and was greatly upset about three young people, who had been murdered and buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi for their efforts in getting Blacks registered to vote.  Anderson said that could have been a member of his family. He just didn’t believe people should take the law into their own hands.  Later he was selected on the jury in the Federal Court case dealing with said facts in which the Federal Government had indicted 18 suspects involved in regards to a civil rights violation.       

18 white men had been arrested.  They were tried in Federal Court on Federal Civil Rights charges.  Seven were convicted.   Langdon Anderson was selected foreman of the jury.  Prior to his being selected as foreman of the jury, I got a phone call from Wilson F. Minor, a newspaper reporter, and he asked me if I knew Langdon and I told him I did and that I represented him.  He told me that Judge Harold Cox had made inquiry about Langdon being made foreman of the jury and an FBI Agent wanted to talk to someone in Lumberton who knew Langdon.  Minor then introduced me to the FBI agent and wanted to know if Langdon was a good man.  I told him “yes” he will be honest, fair and impartial.  That if the evidence was presented, he would vote for a conviction. The FBI Agent then inquired about Nell Dedeaux, who lived South of Lumberton, and while I didn’t know her as well as Langdon, I told him I thought she would be alright and that her Father was the late Jessie Byrd who had run for Lieutenant Governor   Both of these jurors voted for conviction.

When the trial was over Langdon came by my Office and told me that the U.S. Marshals were watching his house at night. He also told me that if anything happened to him that he had seen a list of Klu Klux Klan members in our area furnished to him by the FBI and told me the one he was concerned about.  No one ever bothered him.   Those were tense times in Mississippi during integration.  I always admired Langdon Anderson for the courage of his convictions.  For sometime there has been an active effort being made to indict the remaining living participants in a murder trial in Neshoba County, Mississippi.  There is no statute of limitations on murder. Langdon was upset that a Preacher named Edgar Ray Killen who organized the murders escaped conviction because one woman said she couldn’t vote against a preacher.

On June 21. 2005, 41 years to the day from the 1964 murder of the three civil rights workers, the man who planned the KKK’s murder of James Chaney,  Andrew Goodman, and  Michael Schwerner, a preacher named Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter. The Judge sentenced him to 60 years.   Since he is 80 he in effect got a life sentence.

Another case that drew National attention involved a black man from Lumberton, Mississippi named Mack Charles Parker.   Parker and three other Black men had been to Poplarville and at night enroute back 14 miles to Lumberton on U S Highway 11, had observed a white woman with a child in a car parked beside the road.  While proceeding further, they saw her husband walking towards Lumberton. After Parker let his passengers out of his car in Lumberton, he told his friends that he was going to drive back to the car occupied by the lady and her child and rape her.  He did drive back and with a pistol and got the lady and her child in his car and drove onto a woods road and raped her.  The Blacks who had got out of Parker’s car told some older Black men that he said he was going to go back and get the lady.  They told the Lumberton Police and Parker was thereafter shortly arrested and incarcerated in the Lumberton jail. 

While Parker was in the Lumberton jail one of my clients, R. E. Easley, came to my office and told me that there was talk of lynching Parker.  I then contacted my Banker friend, J. V. McElveen and Ward Hurt, the Mayor.  We then contacted then Governor J. P. Coleman and suggested Parker be incarcerated in Jackson, Hinds County, Mississippi, because of strong feelings, which if carried out, would embarrass not only Lumberton but the State of Mississippi.  Parker was then transferred to jail in Jackson.    Later the Grand jury convened in Pearl River County and Parker was then incarcerated in the Pearl River County jail at Poplarville. 

While in jail there, a mob of white men went into the Pearl River County jail and took Parker out of jail, shot and killed him and threw his body in the Pearl River near Bogalusa, Louisiana.  This caused the case to be on national news.  I was glad that I was a good listener to my client who told me they were going to lynch Parker in Lumberton. At least it didn’t happen where I then practiced law.   His Mother, Liza Parker, came to see if I would represent her son and I declined.   The book, named “Blood Justice”, which is well written, tells about the lynching and gave the names of the participants. One was from Lumberton.       

Paper Mill

In the early 1960s a gentleman came to Lumberton, Mississippi where I then practiced law.  He had built a washer for a paper mill and convinced a lot of people he could construct a 500 ton a day pulp mill. A stock offering was made.  Subsequently, stock was sold.  However he wasn’t able to sell enough stock and the venture failed.

Apparently he went to Jackson, Alabama and tried to promote another mill there.  The Jackson, Alabama Chamber of Commerce group came to Lumberton and my Banker, J. V. McElveen urged them to talk to me which they did. I advised the group which included a Mr. G. E. Woodson, Vern Slayton, J. P. McKee and Jim Bledsoe that I felt it was too big an undertaking for them and that they would do better to hire someone to talk to executives of existing paper companies to locate in Jackson. 

Mr. Woodson and his group returned to Jackson, Alabama.  Later Mr. Woodson called me every few weeks.  He said he believed I was the man that they should hire.  I told him I didn’t know a single executive of a paper company. 

In 1961, my wife Cleo had an operation for kidney stone that was lodged in her urethra. The operation was at the Methodist Hospital in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The operation was not successful and we later flew her to New Orleans to Ochsner Hospital where a famous urologist named Dr. Edgar Burns operated and corrected the problem.  Mr. Woodson even called me while my wife was in the hospital. He told me that he had a premonition that I could get his Town a pulp mill.  That he wanted to hire me.

I was getting desperate for money.  My wife had been in a hospital for eight weeks and our Blue Cross insurance had expended its limits.  At that time I was representing J. P. and Roy Miles who had a sawmill in Lumberton where I then practiced law.  What impressed me about their operation was that they didn’t own any timberland. If they could do this, why couldn’t a pulp mill do likewise?

When I started my practice of law I figured that one way to get clients was to assist businesses in getting loans.   According to George Field, then head of Small Business Administration in Mississippi, I was one of the main lawyers in Mississippi in getting Small Business Loans. In the course of this I also studied bond issues for new plant construction.  At that time there was no limitation on the amount of the tax free bonds that could be issued for new plant construction. That being the case, why not use same as an inducement to get a pulp mill?

At that time, I contacted Nimrod Frazier who worked in a brokerage firm in Montgomery, Alabama and he explained their method of financing under their Wallace-Cater Act.  They could finance a pulp mill if the company had good credit.  Nimrod Frasier was later named man of the year by Time magazine. 

I also studied the problem of disposing of a pulp mill’s waste and concluded that a site near the Tombigbee River in Jackson, Alabama would resolve this problem and not place an excessive biological oxygen demand on the river.  

I then called Mr. Woodson and went to speak to members of their Chamber of Commerce.  When I got through Mr. Woodson wanted to know what I would do. I told them I would call on ten companies and try to sell them on locating in Jackson, Alabama. Mr. Woodson then wrote me a check for $6,000. He didn’t want any signed contract. 

Upon my return to Lumberton I did some research on engineering companies who worked with Paper Mills. I picked out Eastern Engineering Company in Atlanta, among others. The next evening I drove to Meridian, Mississippi and got on a Delta Airline’s plane and got to Atlanta about midnight. 

I got up early the next morning and was in the office of Eastern Engineering at 7:45 a.m. at 90 Fairly Street NW.  I asked the only Secretary there if I could speak to Eastern’s President, W.F. Hughes. Mr. Hughes was in his office.   His Secretary wanted to know the nature of my business and I told her I was trying to get a pulp mill to locate in Jackson, Alabama and that there was plenty of timber available and I could get the company financing.  Mr. Hughes told her I could have five minutes as he was getting ready for a Board meeting that afternoon.

I got my audience with Mr. Hughes. Five hours later Mr. Hughes and I ended our conference. He invited me to lunch.  I told him I would like too but knew that he had a board meeting and would go and he said “no”, you are the Board meeting.  In those five hours I had convinced him that Jackson was the place to go.

That afternoon I attended the Board Meeting. I again made the same presentation that I had given Mr. Hughes in the morning.  They excused me from the meeting for a few minutes.

When I returned to the Board meeting, Mr. Hughes explained they would make me privy to confidential information if I would promise to return to Mississippi, which I did.  Mr. Hughes then explained that they had spent over a half million dollars looking for a site for two paper companies and named them as being Great Northern and Allied Paper Company.  Further he thought that Allied would be the most likely to come to Jackson.

I returned to Lumberton from Atlanta that evening and the next morning Mr. Hughes was calling me as I put the key in the office door. Mr. Hughes said that I would get a call from Dr. Ward Harrison who was President of Allied Paper Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan in five minutes and good luck.

Dr. Harrison called and introduced me on the phone to a Mr. Daley and Howard Roxburough who was his assistant and I again pointed out what Jackson, Alabama could do.  Before I finished he told Howard Roxburough to schedule a flight to Jackson, Mississippi where I met him around noon the next day and flew him on a plane belonging to Frankie Lee to Jackson, Alabama.  Mr. Daley had at one time lived in Sumrall, Mississippi which is only fourteen miles from Bassfield. 

Mr. Woodson and I took Roxburough around Jackson and showed him, the site adjacent to the M.W. Smith sawmill.  Mr. Woodson had set up a meeting previously for the purpose of raising money to pay for my services. It was getting late and Roxburough  inquired if he could get some beer.  Mr. Woodson then got busy and got a bootlegger to get the beer.  Jackson, Alabama was then dry.  After drinking the beer and having dinner I invited Roxburough to the meeting and he blurted out to the audience that Allied was going to build a pulp mill at Jackson, Alabama. People employed by other paper companies were there. The next day it was in all the newspapers and a few days later Dr. Ward Harrison called me and he was very angry that Roxburough had made the announcement. It was a case of having drunk to much bootleg beer, but I didn’t tell him that.

In any event, while Roxburough’s announcement was premature, it ultimately became a fact.  Jackson passed a 25 million bond issue and the pulp mill was built. Governor George Wallace called me and said that the Jackson group felt that I should get the credit for having gotten the prospect and he invited me to personally come to Montgomery, which was his first industrial announcement as Governor.  However, I had a Court case set for trial and was unable to go.

Every now and then I drive over to Jackson, Alabama and look down from the high bluff above the Tombigbee River at the people getting off work from what is now the Boise Cascade Mill.  There is inner satisfaction to having known that you achieved your goal in getting that Town industry and was instrumental in getting those people jobs.

Nuclear Explosion

I was in the Chancery Court of Pearl River County, Mississippi on October 22, 1964, and had just begun to argue a motion to the Judge and said, “May it Please The Court…” when the three story brick Courthouse building shook violently and the window blinds acted as if someone was making them swing back and forth.  I stopped and told the Judge that disturbance must have been caused by the underground nuclear explosion at the Tatum Salt Dome, which, due to wind and weather factors, had been put off several times. 

We were over 25 miles from ground zero.  My office in Lumberton was about 10 miles away from ground zero. My wife was teaching commerce in the Lumberton High School.  Since the Atomic Energy people for over a year had briefed us that the explosion wouldn’t be felt over four miles from ground zero, I became concerned about my wife and two daughters. I asked the Judge to allow me to go to Lumberton, but he declined to do so. 

When I got home my wife told me that the school building shook and that you could feel the vibration under your feet. Many buildings in Lumberton had cracks from the shock waves.  A clock on the wall in her room fell as a result of the blast.

Some of the high school boys were outside on the grounds listening to Jimmy Swan at radio station WBKH in Hattiesburg talking about the shot that was about to take place and talked one of the girl students into lying down on the ground to listen and to see if she could see or feel any movement.  When the blast occurred, the ground shook so badly that it knocked her unconscious.

Webster Daniels Jr. lived about two miles South of ground zero.  Webster said he had forgot that they were going to try and shoot the bomb on October 22, 1964, as it had been put off so many times, and he went fishing about six miles South of ground zero.  That all of a sudden the ground shook real bad and that while standing he saw all the fish in the pond at about his eyeball level.

A few miles South of ground zero there was one of the largest oil fields East of the Mississippi River.  It was known as the Baxterville Oil  Field,  Gulf Oil Corporation had most of the wells in the field.  There was some drill pipe stored at one of the locations and when the blast occurred, it caused the drill pipe to move up and down as if it was toothpicks being tossed around. People noticed that the pine trees bent over from the shock waves fifteen miles away. 

One of the public relations men who had spoke before our Rotary Club in Lumberton some time previous to the shot explained that the purpose of the test was to determine if an underground nuclear explosion could be detected.  We were then in the middle of the Cold War.  Originally the Atomic Energy people planned to dig a shaft similar to a coal mine shaft down to about 2700 feet into the Tatum Salt Dome and then dig a sphere shaped like a basketball and place the nuclear device in it, seal it and the shaft and explode same.  Could this muffled explosion then be detected?  Later this approach proved not feasible due to water infiltration. 

Then oil field technology was utilized and a hole was drilled down into the salt.  Rather than mine the salt into a sphere I suppose the first nuclear explosion was to accomplish this objective by making a cavity.    Subsequently in 1966 there was another nuclear explosion and some tests involving explosions of natural gas were also conducted in the cavity formed by the first nuclear bomb.  None of these explosions were felt or noticed nor any reported leakage of radiation therefrom.

I was all for the test.  I felt that it would economically benefit our depressed area.  One of our Citizens, F. V. High, told me that he had heard from a Production Oil Engineer that the real purpose of the test was to fracture the oil wells in the Baxterville oil field.  He was opposed to the test. He had an interest in over 80 oil wells in the Baxterville oil field.

About fifteen years later, a Dr. Edmund Keiser in the biology department at the University of Mississippi did some work around ground zero and alledgedly found radioactive and deformed toads, and a lizard near ground zero and upon learning of same, Governor Cliff Finch urged families nearby to evacuate the area.  Later the public was told that the radiated frog was in such condition due to exposure to the sun in the lab. I talked to Dr. Keiser when visiting my Daughter Belynda at the Biology Department at Ole Miss.  Dr. Keiser indicated he was of the opinion that someone had tampered with his radiated specimens. 

Due to the fact that numerous buildings were cracked by the nuclear explosion, I did a booming business in settling claims against the Atomic Energy Commision thru their adjusters which were handled by the General Adjustment Bureau in Hattiesburg, but they were only authorized to settle claims 10 miles from ground zero for a good period of time.  Hattiesburg was 21 miles from ground zero.

After I was elected Mayor of Lumberton in 1968 I was apprised that our water was being tested for radiation by the Atomic Energy people.  This aroused my curiosity, why were they testing our water?

I had a mentor lawyer in Hattiesburg who was a genius.  His name was Dudley Conner.  He was one of the most brilliant lawyers I ever met or worked with in trials.  On October 22, 1964 when the first bomb was detonated Mr. Conner was standing in front of the entrance to his office and the shock waves were so intense that he noticed that his brick office building started cracking. Mr. Conner then contacted the General Adjustment Bureau and they repeatedly told him that they were not settling claims over 10 miles from ground zero.

Mr. Conner then shut down his office and spent many days in the library at what is now known as the University of Southern Mississippi.  He read everything he could find concerning nuclear bombs.  Then he filed suit against the Government for damages to his building.  He propounded interrogatories to the Government and they requested numerous delays in answering same. Mr. Conner said several people with the Government visited his office and wanted to know if the Russians were helping him.

Finally the Government filed their answer to Mr. Conner’s interrogatories and stated that the matter involved the National Defense and thus did not have to be answered.  Mr. Conner then filed a motion to cite the person who responded to his interrogatories for being in contempt of Court.  When Court convened Mr. Conner told the Judge that he had brought a book from the University library and he would show the Court that he got each question out of the book.  At this point the Government capitulated and told Mr. Conner that if he would dismiss the action that they would go to the Congress of the United States and get authority to pay him for the damages to his building. Congress approved the settlement and that concluded the matter.

I still was concerned about the Government testing our water.  I was informed by the Atomic Engery people that the water from the Tatum salt dome would pass about 5 miles North of Lumberton. I also was concerned that the trees on the detonation site had been cut and taken to the Joe N. Miles & Sons sawmill in Lumberton.  When the Government was testing the water I went to ground zero and was told there was a small amount of  Tritium in the trees, mostly in the bark.  The trees that had been taken to the Lumberton sawmill were cut and made into lumber but the bark was storied in a pile along with other residue bark.  It probably is harmless unless one breathes it.

I went out to the site of ground zero and a Dr. Black assured me that there was not any leakage of radiation from the hole at ground zero. Satisfied about this I put the test out of my mind.

A lot of people around ground zero have died of cancer. I suspect that when they drilled into the cavity created by the first bomb that a good bit of radiation escaped into the air  and people living downwind were affected by it.