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Op-Ed Columns
Philip Tudor: Our fears, our future, our stockpile
By Philip Tudor
Commentary Editor
03-28-08
Ask Chip Howell about the importance of ridding Anniston of chemical weapons.
It's 1962, when Howell was perhaps a little precocious and a little curious, but he was not mayor -- yet. He was a second-grader in Mrs. Williams' class at Anniston's Tenth Street Elementary.
Life may have seemed numbingly normal.
But amid those halcyon days were the realities of Cold War America, a place of which Cold War Anniston could not escape.
Chip Howell, the Anniston mayor, can't forget Chip Howell, the second-grader, taking part in duck-and-cover drills that came prepackaged with education and recess. Study English and mathematics in the morning, practice nuclear bomb survival skills in the afternoon. A searing recollection.
Tenth Street Elementary, like all of Anniston, was perilously close to the city's vast military complexes: Fort McClellan. The depot. And especially those chemical weapons storage igloos.
The harsh reality -- even for an Anniston child in JFK's America -- was that our stockpile of Cold War-era munitions made the city one sizeable, undeniable military objective in the early 1960s, especially when Soviet missiles on Cuban soil brought the Earth to the precipice of a nuclear showdown.
More than four decades later, Howell still recalls what his teacher said that day.
"If we don't come back tomorrow," she told her class, "remember that I loved you."
How's that for an impression? For a second-grader, for a mayor.
"I've carried that target on my back since 1962," Howell said. "And I'm thankful that target has gotten smaller and smaller."
* * *
Ask Eli Henderson about the importance of ridding Anniston of chemical weapons.
It's anytime in the decades he spent at the depot, working alongside the mortars and mines and projectiles filled with sarin and mustard agent and VX that the U.S. military made for killing, not for storing in Alabama's red clay.
It's the 1990s, when the question of the decade -- whether to incinerate our stockpile or choose an alternative form of destruction -- tore apart many of the longstanding political and personal relationships built within Calhoun County. Some remain frayed.
And it's the summer of 2003 -- the most tumultuous summer in Calhoun County's modern history -- when tense, 11th-hour negotiations between Anniston, the county, Goat Hill and the Pentagon eventually led to a historic moment in our time.
Aug. 9, 2003. A Saturday, warm, humid and bountiful with Alabama sunshine.
The day the first chemical weapon stored in Anniston went to its death.
The day our future began.
"I was just glad that we finally got started," said Henderson, the county commissioner and former Marine. "I just thought it was a great day."
* * *
Ask Tim Garrett about the importance of ridding Anniston of chemical weapons.
It's a simple issue, always has been for him: safety over deadlines, the same sermon, every time. His words are careful, calculated, potentially tedious. But the Army's point man at Anniston's incinerator is, as he describes himself, a "native Alabamian" who sincerely recounts how he wanted to help this community rid itself of its chemical-munitions blight.
If that weren't happening, if Anniston's stockpile was still what it was, "there would be a lot of disappointment. I'd be very disappointed."
And in classic Garrett fashion -- calm, without hubris or vanity -- he offers this reminder:
"They (the weapons) were not going to get better."
* * *
I say all this for a reason.
The decision to build an incinerator and spend years cremating the legacy of America's Cold War military buildup will forever remain entrenched in controversy on the foothills of Mount Cheaha. Vehement critics of the U.S. Army and our leaders' decisions still exist. Unlike the munitions themselves, they haven't gone away; they never will.
Nevertheless, the coming months will mark the fifth anniversary of the Summer of '03, a summer this county somehow survived. Politicians fought with politicians. Commissioners fought with commissioners, then argued with FEMA. No one was safe. "It was awful," Henderson recalled. The incinerator was staffed, ready, needing the necessary go-aheads. The governor needed convincing. The Pentagon grew impatient. And other "plates were spinning with the Army," as Howell described it: The depot's future. Another round of base closures. The early stages of McClellan's next phase.
Out at the depot, the leakers continued to leak.
On the morning of the virgin burn, Howell was in Chicago, working. His phone rang with the news.
"It was a mix of emotions. It was satisfying that we finally were getting started. I was at peace with it, knowing that I had done all that I could do."
Today, the Summer of '03 seems all too distant. More than 40 percent of Anniston's stockpile is destroyed, as is a majority of the public risk. There are miles and years to go, and we can see our future once free of this Cold War legacy. But we should not forget from where we came.
Think of it this way: Where would Calhoun County be if our stockpile remained so many igloos of death?
"It would be a nightmare," Henderson said.
Who wants to live through that?