Patrick Reedy died Saturday at home in Falls Twp., nearly 40 years after he was killed on a tiny island in the South Pacific.
Spc. Reedy was 17 when he was shipped to Enewetak Atoll in June 1978. The all-American kid from Clarks Summit was one of 8,033 soldiers the Army sent to bury the radioactive remains of atomic bomb tests on the Marshall Islands.
The brass assured Patrick and his brothers-in-arms that shoveling tons of radioactive waste was as safe as skiing in the Rocky Mountains.
“They said it was as safe to go there as it was to go to Denver (about 350 miles from atomic test sites at Los Alamos, New Mexico),” Patrick told me in 2015.
That, of course, was a damned lie. The 40 islands that make up Enewetak (“any-wee-tock”) were ground zero for hydrogen bomb tests. One failed test rained a deluge of plutonium down on Runit Island, rendering it uninhabitable for 24,000 years. In T-shirts, shorts, and combat boots, Patrick Reedy and his comrades hauled innumerable loads of radioactive waste to a dump on Runit Island.
A hand injury got Patrick shipped home in November 1978. Tests showed he was exposed to high levels of radiation and the Veterans Administration rated him at 30 percent disability. Heart problems and a degenerative disease that devoured his connective tissue eventually robbed him of his post-service career in construction and masonry.
Patrick was lucky. Many veterans he served with have been denied VA health care. The federal government recognizes “atomic veterans” as those who served between 1945 and 1962. If you were there for the mushroom clouds, you’re covered. If you mopped up the poison they left behind, you’re not.
“It’s not a conspiracy or a cover-up or anything,” Patrick said in 2015. “It’s just that the rules were written before we went out there.”
Patrick spent years advocating for his fellow atomic veterans. Attempts to change the rules have stalled in Congress. When I spoke to Patrick two years ago, a House bill was stuck in committee. A Senate version introduced by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, and supported by Sen. Bob Casey is also in legislative limbo.
In 2015, Sen. Pat Toomey called for a study on the Enewetak veterans’ exposure to toxic radiation. I can’t say where that study stands. I was unable to reach a Toomey spokesman Tuesday.
“Outrage” is among the most overused words in today’s politics of perpetual grievance, but it fits here. Patrick Reedy and his brothers-in-arms put their lives at mortal risk in service to the nation. They deserve every American’s thanks and respect, and the medical care they earned while toiling knee-deep in the ashes of atomic history.
Patrick Reedy was 17 when he landed at Enewetak. He was 58 when he died for his country.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, salutes our veterans and the families that sustain them. Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com, @cjkink on Twitter. Read his award-winning blog at blogs.thetimes-tribune.com/kelly.