You Can Take the Girl Out Of Tonawanda, But Can You Take Tonawanda Out Of the Girl?

In June, 1963 my family moved from Tonawanda to my grandparent's house in Royal Oak, Michigan. Everything had been packed the day before and we slept on the floor with only pillows and blankets in the empty living room. The movers loaded up our possessions and then we piled into our car for the six hour trip from Niagara Falls to Detroit, across the flat Ontario farmland we knew so well from many other trips.

Most of our possessions were stored in my grandparent's garage but I had my Barbie doll case with Barbie, Midge, and Ken and all their clothes. Next door to my grandparents lived Doug and Mary M. and their children Larry and Gail. Gail was a year younger than I. A few years previous when visiting my grandparents I had seen Gail's Barbie and I asked Mom for one. I never cared for baby dolls, but I loved dressing fashion dolls. Gail and her friends from down the street and I played dolls on Gail's front porch all summer.

My Ramer Grandparents at the left in their back yard, the
sleeping porch can be seen on the second story

My Grandparent's house on Gardenia

My grandparent's house had a second story, screened summer sleeping porch off the master bedroom. I was first put in a bedroom at the front of the house near the street. Gardenia was on a hill and traffic came down the hill too fast and too noisy; I could not sleep. So, a cot was put on the sleeping porch and it became my bedroom. I loved, loved, loved it.

Pepper in her later years

The porch overlooked the yard, dense with tall trees. Blue Jays and Fox squirrels played among the branches. It was great being reunited with my dog Pepper who had been living with my grandparents for several years. Pepper loved to chase the squirrels up a tree, and they would chatter down and tease her, just out of reach. The sunlight penetrated the tree leaves in shafts of light, dappling the ground below. I was listening to the radio and playing on the sleeping porch when I heard that the Bald Eagle was endangered. It was an awakening.

my grandfather's bookcase in my house

I did not have books to read so I looked over my grandfather's bookshelf. He had a Globe-Werneke barrister bookcase, bought while at college; I've had that bookcase since 1972. Some of the books I found there was an illustrated children's book of Hiawatha and Bambi and 101 Famous Poems, which I read so often that Gramps gave it to me. I wrote about it here.

Mom would give me a quarter and I would walk down Gardenia and cross Main Street to buy comic books from the drug store. Although other comics were cheaper, I always wanted a Classics Illustrated Comic Book. I read them over and over. My favorites included Lord Jim, Les Miserables, and Jane Eyre.

Mom would take me to Frenz and Sons hardware, also at Gardenia and Main, where I would buy Barbie clothes.  And when Mom and Grandma went to the Hollywood Market near downtown Royal Oak I could choose a toy, plastic sets of model dogs or knights and horses, or glittery, plastic high heels that always broke, or a coloring book. Once when pondering my choices a nice lady stopped to talk to me. She said I would grow up to be a very pretty girl. That stuck with me because usually, I heard I would be "so pretty if" I lost weight! It was a cherished affirmation.

That summer the entire family, three generations, watched Sing Along with Mitch Miller, and we did sing along. I watched local Detroit shows like George Pierrot's Presents, a travel show, and Twin Pine's Milky the Clown. I hated Soupy Sales. I saw the first Outer Limits show at my grandparent's house that fall.

When school started Mom drove me to Northwood Elementary school. My parents were buying a house near that school, but we did not move in until several weeks into the school year.

Life had been busy and fun and like an extended vacation. But with school, the implications of moving became harder.

Northwood Elementary school was built in 1923, unlike my brand new school in Tonawanda. (Northwood was pulled down in 2008 and a new complex built on the site.) There were staircases to climb to get to my classroom on the second floor. Large windows filled the classroom with light.

At r, cess the kids ran up and down the large playground's hill. They played 4-Square, a game I had never heard of before. The kids chalked a large square on the asphalt or cement, divided into four smaller squares. A kid was in each square, and they bounced a ball into a square and that kid had to bounce it into some other square.

My Sixth Grade Class at Northwood Elementary School

I was shy and introverted, unable to just join in. I preferred to watch the bumblebees gather pollen from the wildflowers along the fence.

I really liked my first male teacher, Mr. Raymond Saffronoff.  We had "New Math" and for the first time I actually did well in math. We learned about Michigan flora and fauna in preparation for a spring visit to Kensington Nature Park; on the trip I saw a Pileated Woodpecker!I worked on a report about birds.

I enjoyed music class where we learned folk songs from around the world. I would gaze at the piano, longing to play it. I missed playing the piano so much.

My Sixth Grade year was punctuated by events I never forgot: The Kennedy assassination and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The Beatles because I did not like their music, which seemed inane to me: I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Yeah Yeah Yeah. But all my classmates loved them, making me feel even more of an outsider.  But several years previous, after hearing Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Tiny Polkadot Bikini on the car radio when Janet L.'s sister Ruth drove us to Summer Camp at Herbert Hoover Jr High, I had promised my Grandmother Gochenour I would never like Rock and Roll. I meant to keep my word.

On Friday afternoon our class visited the school library. From its stacks of older books I took home children's classics like The Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan, and the Oz books. At Philip Sheridan the library was full of newly published books, now become classics. At Northwood I discovered the vintage classics.

On that Friday of November 22, 1963, Mr. Saffronoff and took us from the library back to our classroom. He said that the president had been shot and that we were to go home early.

It was a long, frightening walk home. I did not know if the Russians would take over our country because our leader was dead. I did not know if our parents could protect us. I had not felt this dread since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Over the next days, the adults were all glued to the television set. On the day of President Kennedy's funeral my family gathered at my grandparent's house to watch it on TV. I saw young John salute his daddy and felt bad for little Caroline.

After we moved from my grandparent's home I still saw Gail but had not made new friends at Northwood or on Houstonia. I was growing more homesick all the time. Nancy Ensminger and I wrote letters, and I saw her and my cousins when we visited Tonawanda. But life was lonely and boring. I know I complained and Dad would suggest I go out and start up a baseball game. I thought he was crazy. I didn't know how to play baseball. We didn't have a ball or bat or glove. And I was too shy to start up anything.

I was too young to realize that my family were all dealing with homesickness and adjusting to their new lives, too. Grandma Gochenour missed her church friends, her lifelong friend Annie Hooverman, and her family. Mom's health was not good and Dad worked two jobs. Grandma finally decided to return to Tonawanda and live with Aunt Alice and Uncle Kenny.

My yellow bedroom

When we first moved into the Houstonia house Mom decorated a bedroom for me with yellow walls. I had a display case for my Beyer horse collection and a bookcase for my books. There was a walk-in closet with shelves where I stored my Classic Comic Books. The windows faced the east, and on summer mornings the sunlight streamed in. Grandma Gochenour and my little brother Tom had first floor bedrooms and my folks were in the other upstairs bedroom.

My Aunt Nancy and Uncle Joe lived in Lincoln Park and my cousin Sue was just a few years younger than me. So I did have one cousin nearby to play with.

Showing my cousin Sue my 1963 Christmas Presents

After Grandma Gochenour moved back to Tonawanda my brother could not be alone on the first floor, so he was moved into my bedroom and I was moved into the small, first floor bedroom. It was near the back of the house. The window faced the pear tree in the back yard. When it rained the gutter clattered and kept me awake. I had a transistor radio and would listen to it in bed in the dark, amazed to hear stations from all over the country.

Summer came. I had no friends to play with, there were no kids gathering for games of Mother-May-I or Red Light, Green Light, nothing to do. I discovered classic movies on Bill Kennedy's Showtime.

I had always loved television, but these old movies became my passion. Jimmy Stewart in Harvey and It's a Wonderful Life; Blood and Sand and The Sun Also Rises with Tyrone Power; Gregory Peck in The Snows of Kilimanjaro; Errol Flynn in Captain Blood! I didn't understand what was going on between 'men and women' but I loved the action scenes and the funny parts.

*****

At the end of the school year a mimeographed booklet was published by the student council. It included jokes, class prophecies, and such. My copy is faded and I transcribed it a few years back.

Highlights of 1963-1964 were listed as:

• Governor Romney is the governor of Michigan.
• President Johnson is fast becoming popular
• R. Nixon-B. Goldwater are the chief candidates for president (Republican)
• New York has a World's Fair this year
• Our class helped plant trees on the playground
• We had a big awards assembly out on the playground
• In November we collected 75 bundles for Bundle Days
• Alaska was shaken by a huge earthquake on March 27, 1964 (Good Friday)
• We collected 64 dollars for the United Foundation
• On Mary 25, 1964 we had an assembly honoring Michigan Week
• Another terrible tornado hit the Anchor Bay area in May 1964
• For Arbor Day '64; we planted ten trees, one of which is the Red Maple from Mrs. White.
• We had an assembly on May 17, 1964 honoring the Student Council, Audio Visual Club, Squad Patrols, and the Service Squad. Band and Stings played at the Assembly.
• We collected many, many cans for food for the needy over Thanksgiving last November.

The class will said I would leave my horse books to another girl in the class, and my prophecy was to become "an olive stuffer", which I found offensive. I figured it either meant I was too stupid to do anything else or that I would be stuffing the olives into my mouth to eat!

My Sixth Grade class did not all go to the same junior high school. Many in the booklet I came to know later in high school. It was just a one year stop on the way for me.

*****

1964 was the year of the elephant jokes.

How do you get an elephant out of a bowl of custard?
Read the directions on the back of the package.

What's big, gray, and lumpy?
Elephant Tapioca.

What was the elephant doing on the highway?
Oh, about 84 miles per hour.

Why do elephants lay on their backs in the water and stick their feet in the air?
So you can tell them from a bar of soap.

What happens when an elephant steps on some grapes?
It lets out a little wine.

What's gray and has a trunk?
An elephant leaving town.

When an elephant sits on your fence what time is it?
Time to get a new fence.

Old Lady: Must I stick the stamp on myself?
Post Office Employee: No, stick it on the envelope.

Patient: Every time I drink a cup of coffee I get a sharp pain in my eye. What should I do?
Doctor: Just take the spoon out of the cup.

Policeman: You are under arrest for speeding.
Motorist: I wasn't speeding but I passed a couple of fellow who were.

First Dragon: Am I late for supper?
Second Dragon: Yes, everyone's eaten.

What's giant, purple, and lives in the sea?
Moby Plum

What holds the moon up?
Moonbeams

What is green and flies in the sky?
Super Pickle

Why does a traffic light turn red?
You'd turn red too if you had to change in front of all those people.

+

Eugene Gochenour's Memoirs: 1963: Test Driving Chrysler Cars

Dad's memoir recalls his early days working at Chrysler in Highland Park. Here he talks about test driving new and modified cars, including the protoype Barracuda with a V-8 engine.

Dad and Mom around 1969. Yes, I had an Avocado green piano!

 My sister Alice and her husband Ken came to visit us during the summer and while they were there we got to talking about an interview I just had at Chrysler. I had previously been hired, but that job fell through because one of their existing workers was transferred to that lab. This time I was quite discouraged, though, because while they said they would hire me the starting salary was only $98 a week. But Joyce and Alice and Ken talked me into going back and accepting the job

So once again I told Harvel that I was quitting and went to work for Chrysler at their Road Test Garage. They pay was so small I would not even look at it. To make more money I got a part time job at a nearby Shell station as a mechanic where I worked evenings and Saturdays.

Road Test Garage* was in a very old building that was originally used by the Oakland Car Company at the beginning of the [20th] century. I enjoyed working there because all the cars were new, and before we worked on the, they had to be washed, and then road tested after we worked on them. No more rusty cars! When we took them for a road test would usually stop for a coffee break and on paydays we were allowed to take a care to cash our checks at the bank.

There were about seventy-five mechanics that worked at the garage, and there were two shifts. i worked the day shift. Some of the mechanics worked on boats at a marina on the Saint Clair River at Algonac, some worked at the proving ground at Chelsea, and many worked at Highland Park where I worked. Probably the total number of mechanics at that time was about 500.

The work was interesting because I never knew what I would be working on from one day to another. One day I had a job on a Chrysler turbine car and when I finished I got to road test it. Chrysler had made 250 of them as test vehicles. Before I took it out on the road I was told to turn it off if the temperature exceeded 1500 degrees. It was a strange car to drive and it got a lot of attention.

To me, the traffic at Detroit was quite intimidating. I had not worked there very long when they gave me a brand new car that had just came from the factory, and a map of the city of Detroit, and told me to drive the 22 mile course marked on it. The object of the drive was to put 50,000 miles on the vehicle as fast as they could. I drove the car all day in the city, then another driver would drive to Chelsea, drive it on the high speed track, then back to the garage so I could drive it the next day.

The first day I took the vehicle I had white knuckles from watching the cabs, buses, and other vehicles, and watching for the streets marked on the map. But after a few days it got to be old stuff, and I became at ease driving [in Detroit].

There were five other drivers with different model cars driving the same course, and most of them knew the city very well. Sometimes we would play follow the leader, and the leader would drive through back alleys and trucking lots, trying to lose us. Sometimes he would and we would find each other going in different directions, or coming from cross streets from which we could not follow. When we became too dispersed we would give up and go back on course.

Second Street was a rough area and prostitutes walked the streets and some of them would even call from the windows of their houses as you passed by. Some of the drivers would stop to talk with them and as the gal was to get into the car, drive off. They thought that was fun.

Every day we would go to Palmer Park where we would eat our lunch at a picnic table, feed the ducks, and take a walk.

Vintage postcard of Palmer Park in Detroit, MI

One payday I decided to cash my check at a bank on Grand River Street. All our cars had a device in the trunk that wrote on a paper disc to show that the car was in motion, so I hoped to just pop into the bank, cash my check, and get back on the route.

Well the line I was in had a lady in front of me, and in front of her was a man talking to the cashier. The man left, then the cashier left, and a man came from the rear of the ban and asked us to move to another line. In a few minutes a policeman came in and then I found out that the bank had been robbed by the man in the line ahead of us. The detective asked if I had seen anything, and I never saw a thing. I wanted to get back to the car because I was worried that the disc record would show I was not driving, and I was hoping the car had not been stolen. I turned the record in at the end of the day and nothing was said the following day, so I had gotten away with it.

It was summer and one of the cars I was given was a convertible and I put the top down and it was great! Each day we were given instructions to run the air conditioner, or the wipers, in an attempt to simulate real life use. If anything went wrong with the vechicle we were to report and repair it. This went on for a month, then we went back to work at Road Test. After a month of driving city traffic I was no longer intimidated.

One day I was given a work order and it said to install a special instrumented and modified automatic transmission into a new car that I was provided with. I was to remove the right front bucket seat, the floor mat, and cut a large hole in the floor board so that the transmission could be looked at. The transmission had a window of Plexiglas at the torque tube so its inside could be viewed. When I was done with the job two engineers and I took the car for a test drive. While I was driving each engineer would get on his knees and look at the window in the transmission. They were trying to find out when and how much oil was going to the real seal. After each of them looked we changed places and I looked. That job went pretty well.

Another job I was provided with a new Barracuda and asked to install a V-8 engine in it. It was the first V-8 engine ever put in that model car. When I was done with the job a different pair of engineers and I took the car on the road to test drive it.

We drove it down Second Avenue in Detroit. It was running along just fine until the driver kicked it into passing gear. When he did this, the car jumped, kicked, and shuddered. We stopped the car, opened the hood, and looked inside. The wiring harness was all burned up. What they had not thought of was that when the accelerator was depressed all the way, the rod in the engine compartment contacted the starter relay, which burned out the wiring harness.

Luckily we could still drive the car back to the garage where I repaired it.

* According to Marc Rozman the Road Test garage "was the first concrete poured-wall building in Michigan a high tech building" with forms in concrete walls. 

Tonawanda Stories a Hit in 2016

It was a huge surprise to find that my  stories of growing up in Tonawanda, NY were such a hit, drawing hundreds, and sometimes a thousand, readers to my blog. It all started when a post I created to celebrate my Aunt Alice Ennis's birthday 'went viral' weeks after it was posted. I snooped around and found a photo from that post had been shared on a Facebook group "Growing Up in the Town of Tonawanda."

I joined the group and shared some older blog posts I had written about Tonawanda history, which also had a wonderful reception.

My dad wrote a memoir of his childhood and I decided to share it with the Facebook group, and soon new friends were encouraging me with "more, please" comments. In the past few months I have added my own memories.

I have enjoyed reading about other's lives since a child, and still enjoy reading diaries and memoirs and autobiographies. But it amazes and humbles me to hear that people have relived and recalled their own experience through my sharing family stories and photos.

In January I will continue the family saga as our family moved to Detroit in 1963, sharing about my homesickness and Dad's new life. It won't be a Tonawanda Tale but the story of Tonawanda folk adjusting to a new community.

I have been amazed how many Tonawanda folk I have meet over my lifetime. In Philadelphia or Michigan I have discovered so many folk with Tonawanda roots, and my brother has as well. The Tonawanda settlers crossed New York State by land or the Erie Canal, and many continued west across Lake Erie into Canada or Ohio or Michigan. And of course work and career take many of us to places we never dreamt we'd go to.

Some, like my cousin David, have returned to Tonawanda from careers elsewhere. After all, there is no place like home, and home is where our family is.

Have a wonderful holiday season and may your hometown memories be warm and bright.

Stories by Me
The John Kuhn Family: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-kuhn-family-of-tonawanda-ny.html
The Sheridan Park Volunteer Firemen: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/07/dads-memories-of-sheridan-park.html
The Becker Family: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/11/eugene-gochenour-memoirs-becker-family.html
Happy Birthday, Aunt Alice: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/01/happy-birthday-aunt-alice.html
Halloween Costumes: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/halloween-costumes-of-1950s.html
Christmas Past (late 1950s): https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/12/christmases-past-1956-and-1957-photos.html
Building and running a 1940s gas station: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-station-building-and-running-1940s.html
Tom's Brook Massacre: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-rhodes-family-massacre-at-toms-brook.html

Emma and Al Gochenour
with Mary and Gene

Al and Emma Gochenour with
daughters Alice and Mary

Dad's Memoirs
Part I: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/07/memoirs-of-eugene-gochenour-part-i.html
Part II: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/08/memoirs-of-eugene-gochenour-part-ii.html
Part III: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/08/eugene-gochenour-memoirs-part-iii.html
Partk IV: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/08/eugene-gochenours-memoirs-part-4.html
Scouting: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/memories-of-eugene-gochenour-scouting.html
Alger Gochenour: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/11/alger-jordan-gochenour-today-i-share-my.html
Grease and Cars: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/eugene-gochenours-memoirs-grease-and.html
Boating Tales: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/eugene-gochenours-memoir-boating-tales.html
Floods and Subs: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/eugene-gochenours-memoirs-floods-and.html
Lives Cut Short: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/eugene-gochenours-memoirs-live-cut-short.html
New York State Theme Parks: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/eugene-gochenours-memoirs-new-york.html
Runnning a Coffee Truck: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/eugene-gochenours-memoirs-running.html
Pets, Fishing, and Hunting: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/eugene-gochenors-memoirs-pets-fishing_10.html
Gene Gets a Girlfriend: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/eugene-gochenours-memoirs-gene-gets.html?google_comment_id=z125uvtafzbywjdbi04cfbky4suhz5gyx3w

Aunt Alice and me

My memories
My Old House: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/12/my-old-house.html
Birth and preschool: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/11/my-memories-of-growing-up-in-tonawanda.html
Stories my Mother Told Me: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/12/stories-my-mother-told-me-and-other.html
Trash Picking: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2013/10/trash-picking.html
Lois Gibbs on my Green Heros Quilt: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2012/11/my-green-heroes-quilt-lois-gibbs.html
Songs My Mother Sang Me: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/04/songs-my-mother-sang-me-1940s-novelty.html
Houses: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/05/houses.html

Related Books Reviews
Love Canal: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-history-and-legacy-of-love-canal.html
1901 Pan American Exposition book: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/spectacle-and-assassination-at-1901.html
The Sky Unwashed: https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2013/09/mother-russia-and-sky-unwashed-by-irene.html

My Green Heroes Quilt: Lois Gibbs

After completing my First Ladies quilt "Remember the Ladies"  I decided to make a series of  quilts on American leaders. I did complete "I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet" which portrays women abolitionists and Civil Rights Workers. Life and several moves got in the way, but I finally  finished a quilt top for Ecology Heroes...Only because I found a wonderful website that offers information sheets and line drawn portraits for use in teaching, Better World Heroes (http://www.betterworld.net/heroes/ ).  I wanted to focus on American heroes, so I had to forgo using some favorite leaders, including Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall. I added a few that were not included on that website, such as Annie Dillard, whose Pilgrim at Tinker Creek impressed me so much when it was published.

I wanted to try a modern color scheme, and so chose green fabric and black embroidery thread.

I found a leaf print that added colors, including red, and set in a small border of red and green woven plaid. The blocks sat and languished for a year. I hope I get it quilted before another year goes by!

One of my favorite people on this quilt is Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal mom and activist.

Love Canal is not far from where I grew up in Tonawanda, NY. On Sunday afternoons we would drive to Niagara Falls and be back in time for dinner.

This part of New York is an industrial center. When we went to visit my cousins on Grand Island in the Niagara River,  we passed the Ashland Oil refinery which lined the road near the Grand Island Bridges. It smelled! In front of our house was an Ashland gas station which my grandfather had built in the late 1940s. My family sold the house and station in 1963, and several years later they were torn down and an apartment building was built on the site..

We'd go boating on the Niagara River and pass industrial sites of all kinds. The Tonawanda dumps, where my dad used to go as a kid, was full of hazardous waste. Uranium from  the Manhattan Project, the development of the atomic bomb, was dumped there! (We actually own a painting found in the Tonawanda Dump in the early 1970s.  I wonder if we should get it tested for radioactivity!)

The Linde Air Products plant was near the housing project in Sheridan Park where my mom grew up. Known as 'the Projects,' the duplexes housed the influx of workers for the war plants. My grandfather was an engineer at a Chevy plant. A 2001 report by Don Finch of F.A.C.T.S. states that  the Tonawanda problems  is not "as bad as the Love Canal findings of the 1970s" but he sees the entire Western New York area as a chemical wasteland. "If you move here you have a choice. Do you want to live on top of radioactive, toxic, or heavy metal materials?" The area's cancer cases were 10% higher than expected.
 http://factsofwny.org/fundmtls.htm; http://westvalleyfactsofwny.org/chrono.htm



Love Canal began as a scheme to connect the Niagara River with Lake Ontario. Money ran out and water filled the site. In the 1920s, the canal became a City of Niagara dump. In the 1940s, the U.S. Army used the dump, including for waste from the Manhattan Project. Hooker Electrochemical Company also used this site as a dump until 1953. Hooker sold the property to the City of Niagara for $1. In 1955 the City of Niagara built a school on the property, and a second on was built a year later.And in 1957 the Love Canal housing project was built.

In 1976 reporters found toxic chemicals in sump pumps in the area. Birth defects and health problems were reported at higher than normal levels. On August 2, 1978, Lois Gibbs founded the Love Canal Homeowners Associations. The activists fought for four years until President Carter allocated government funds to Love Canal clean up. Nearly 900 families were relocated, and reimbursed for their lost homes. Congress passed the Superfund Act because of Love Canal.

In 1981 Lois created the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice.She proved that through activism, people can change the world.

Hooker Chemical also left behind a polluted area in Montague, MI, where we lived for four years. The site was fenced off, but it had not been cleaned up  Residents there were concerned that in the future people would forget its history, and build there.

My parents both died of cancer. When mom was diagnosed in 1990, at age 57, she was asked if she had been exposed to toxins, and she thought of Love Canal and the polluted corridor of Western New York.

For more information on Lois Gibbs:
http://chej.org/about/our-story/about-lois/
http://www.fredonia.edu/convocation/gibbsbio.asp