Three families face leukemia:
Part II
"It was God's will"

(This was the second story in a series of stories I did not write until I had confirmation that there was indeed a very real cluster of childhood leukemia in Woburn. Other newspapers and TV stations had written anecdotal stories about the leukemia. But, even though I had broken a story in December 1979 which indicated there was an elevated level of leukemia in the city, that story was not confirmed until the following spring when the state's Department of Public Health cited the same statistics I had cited the previous year. The health problems in Woburn were being taken very seriously by the spring of 1980. There was another reason I had put off doing the story. It was a very difficult story to do and still respect the privacy and human dignity of the families involved. I had two children at this point. I lived in East Woburn, the area affected by the bad water, and I was worried that my own children might face the same future faced by Jimmy Anderson and Robbie Robbins.)

By CHARLES C. RYAN

(The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has said that no definite link between high rates of leukemia and cancer in Woburn and the toxic wastes in the city has been proven. While that may be the case, the incidences of these diseases take a human toll that cannot be conveyed by statistics. To tell the human side of the story, The Daily Times has interviewed three of the families affected by leukemia. In the following story parents, describe in their own words how they have dealt with that problem, and how they feel about it.)

WOBURN - "I never felt it was the environment. I felt it was God's will. How are you going to figure a child that age getting leukemia?"

Mrs. Margaret Swanson is 64; her husband Jake is 68. They were married for 10 years before they had their long wanted first child, Joseph. They preferred that their real names not be used. They agreed to be interviewed, "so you can help someone else."

Young Joe was diagnosed with leukemia in October 1968 at the age of 19. He died a month later. "They had drugs then," Margaret remembers, "but he was so far gone when they detected leukemia, his whole body was riddled with it, every part of him."

Jake and Margaret grew up in East Woburn and for the past 30 years they have lived off Montvale Avenue. They remember the smell from the tanneries always being in the air.

"We grew up in that environment."

Jake worked at several of the chemical companies in North Woburn - Consolidated Chemical, Stauffers and at a tannery - among the other jobs he held until he retired. Though he has a respiratory problem, he does not believe it is work induced. "I had it before we got married," he recalls.

Jake and Margaret are typical of older Woburn residents. They lived here almost all of their lives. They worked locally. Their children are grown. They don't make great demands of life. They are content with what they have.

Neither of them believes the chemicals found in North Woburn or in the water in G and H wells had any connection with their son's illness. Jake recalls in great detail the kind of work that he did at Consolidated and Stauffer. He remembers some days when it was so hot the men would take pieces of glue off the sides of the vats and chew on it to keep their mouths moist.

There is a bravado and manliness in his memories of work, of the stamina required. There is also gratefulness. In those days, it wasn't always easy to get work.

The chemical factories and tanneries in Woburn were a godsend in that respect.

As a child, Joe was susceptible to colds and had pneumonia three times. Other than that, "he was always a healthy child. He wasn't sickly. He never missed school," his mother remembers.

After he graduated from high school he worked two jobs and enrolled at Mass Radio and Electronics School in Boston.

That summer he began to have severe headaches. "He was leaving for work at 5 a.m. and he'd come home late and only get about five hours of sleep. He was tired most of the time. For two weeks he said he had a terrible headache. He was eating very little. I'd ask him, and he'd say he had a sandwich," said Mrs. Swanson.

That summer for a while, Joe decided he didn't want to go back to school and then when he did he was having trouble.

"I didn't know he was sick. I blamed myself, I pressured him. I thought he was just being lazy," she remembers with chagrin.

"I wouldn't even to this day say it was the water," she states.

"We always had good water," says Jake. "The last couple of years I thought it tasted worse since they tied into the MDC."

"Some friends on Pine Street had bad water. You could smell the water in the kitchen. They called their alderman and took some test samples, but they said there was nothing wrong with it," comments Mrs. Swanson.

She remembers, though, that the water at the small sandwich shop where she has worked part-time in East Woburn for the past several years did not have good water.

"You could see threads running through it. The things piled up in the tea water. There had to be something in it (the water) for the heat to solidify it," she states.

"My brother (who lives off Pine Street) was treated for leukemia just two years after Joe died," says Jake. "They gave him five years to live. He still feels great. He dug his own well."

Thinking of his first-born son, Joe (the Swansons have two other children, a son, 24 and a daughter, 21), Mr. Swanson asks, "Why couldn't it have been me. I'd lived most of my life."

"Jake," his wife intercedes gently.

"I'm not going to say it was the environment," Jake continues. "It might not have caused it.

"But I will go to my grave wondering why ...?"

(One of the things that I firmly believe is that in a democracy, everyone had a right to have an opinion and an obligation to understand and express that opinion. As a journalist I have always made an effort to tell both sides of a story. The couple above may have had a doubt or two, but in general did not believe that the hazardous wastes had anything to do with their son's illness and death. It was just as important that their story be told as it was to tell the stories of those who did believe there was a relationship between toxic wastes and illness. In the first several months in which this story was covered, the majority of people in the city were upset with the coverage, and felt it was "alarmist." By the time the federal trial began in 1986, the majority of opinion had switched to the other side, supporting the families.)