DIRTY SNOW 

My name is Virginia Wisdom, and my hometown is Gary, Indiana, where the 

coal plants not only power regular residential use, but also the steel mills. I thank 

you for this opportunity to tcii how we lived, and how we die. 

I was born on a farm and moved to Gary, Indiana as a small child with my 

parents. They believed city life would give me great advantages. Gary had wonderful 

schools. Gary had a world-class Carnegie library. My neighborhood in Gary had a sense 

of community where neighbors looked out for each other and helped each other as much 

as they possibly could. But there was one thing we could not avoid, one thing we could 

not help each other with: cancer. Cancer was the grim reaper that pervaded every aspect 

of our world in the form of the coal dust pollution that fell constantly in every corner. 

As young children, we liked to play outside. l lowever, when the sky got yellow, 

the rotten egg smell was so bad that our mothers called us inside in futile hopes of 

avoiding the worst of it. 

On warm days we had outdoor picnics. However, we had to keep the food 

covered, and we had to wash the picnic tables down every fifteen minutes or so, because 

that was how long it took for the pollution to cover everything with heavy black soot. 

In winter it snowed nearly every day. We had a lot oflake effect snowstorms in 

Gary that did not fall anywhere else. There was another thing notable about our snow: 

within about fifteen minutes, there would always be a black layer of coal dust on the 

cars, and if you wiped it off, it would scratch the cars' paint. If it would do that to 

paint, what did it do to our lungs? 

I moved to Illinois for college and eventually opened a chain of health clubs, 

where I took detailed health histories on thousands of people. I also stayed in touch 

with my Gary, Indiana community. In my experience as both owner of a chain of 

health clubs in the western suburbs of Chicago and as collector of vital statistics for 

my Gary, Indiana high school class, it is obvious that the cancer rates for my former 

classmates is drastically higher than for my health club clientele ofthe same age. 

The average American lives to age 87 and dies from heart disease or stroke. 

Nearly 25% of my classmates developed cancer in middle age--mostly those who 

were born in Gary and lived there all their lives. If I had not moved away from Gary, 

I, too, would probably have cancer. 

Many of those Garyites who got cancer at an early age represent the very 

brightest and best. Let me introduce you to some of them. My class valedictorian 

was Rosalie Berger. Rosalie became a lawyer and did extensive civil rights litigation. 

She developed cancer at age 52. She nearly died, but fortunately she is still here ten 

years later. 

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Doris Van Horne was not as fortunate. She was a world-class athlete. As a 

child, she stood up to bullies. As an adult she stood up for human rights. Even on 

her deathbed she was writing letters to her congressman asking for an end to the 

War in Iraq. She died of cancer at age 58. 

Marty Szymanski was about the handsomest boy I ever saw. He sang with 

me in the church choir. He sang like an angel, and now he probably is an angel. He 

died of cancer at age 57. 

Christine Davis was the president of the student council and also chairman of 

our church youth group at the same time. She had outstanding leadership skills. 

She died of cancer in a nursing home at age 55. Her family said she had been in such 

terrible shape and so much pain for so long that her death was actually a blessing. 

That's what it's like to live and die in Gary, Indiana. The cancer deaths are so slow 

and so painful that death itself is considered a blessing. 

These stories are but a few of the many who lived short and painful lives in 

Gary, Indiana, because of the coal dust pollution. I pray that their deaths will not be 

in vain and that this nation, under God, will eliminate coal dust pollution, so that our 

children will not perish from the Earth.