by Michael Rigert
Staff Writer

The Tooele Transcript-Bulletin recently declined to run an obituary in which a widow claimed her husband’s cancer was the result of exposure as a youth in Tooele County to chemical, biological and nuclear contaminants.

While this newspaper planned to do a story researching the claims, the Salt Lake print media reported the woman’s claims as fact and The Salt Lake Tribune even went so far as to imply that the Transcript-Bulletin’s refusal to run the obituary constituted a “conspiracy of silence” regarding harmful materials in Tooele County.

Alan Vorwaller, 42, passed away Feb. 1 after a four-year struggle with cancer. At the end of February, his wife, Bonnie Adamsson-Vorwaller, contacted the Transcript-Bulletin about publishing an obituary that included claims regarding the cause of her husband’s cancer and death. Adamsson-Vorwaller stated in the text that her husband passed away “from complications due to repeated exposures to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons as a child.”

Though allegations have been made in the past about illnesses contracted from chemical and biological warfare testing at Dugway Proving Ground and nuclear radiation fallout downwind from testing in Nevada, Adamsson-Vorwaller alleged in the obituary submission that her husband died from exposure to all three. Shortly after relocating to Austin, Texas, in 2000, she said her husband was diagnosed with fourth-stage lung cancer that resulted in tumors throughout his body.

“Before (the family) had completely settled in, the damage Alan’s childhood exposure to nuclear, biological and VX gas suddenly manifested,” Adamsson-Vorwaller stated in the obituary submitted to the Transcript-Bulletin.

Furthermore the obituary states Vorwaller “insisted that many, many people including soldiers in the Gulf and Iraq had been exposed to the same chemical weapons that he was exposed to as a child.”

Adamsson-Vorwaller states her sister-in-law, who lives in Tooele County, has physical disabilities which “are most likely” related to exposure to harmful toxins in this area. Her obituary text also implicated the Deseret Chemical Depot’s weapons incinerator.

“Alan’s brother, Stevan, now goes to work every day at the retooled Depot where he is helping to destroy the chemical weapons that killed his brother,” she stated.

However, Alan Vorwaller’s parents and family in Tooele dispute many of the allegations Adamsson-Vorwaller attempted to publish in the Transcript-Bulletin. They submitted their own obituary, which was printed March 2.
Karen Vorwaller, Alan’s step-mother, stated in an e-mail that, “Bonnie does not speak for our family.”

“From our point of view, she is a distraught widow who is determined to politicize Alan’s illness and death and will say whatever she needs to accomplish her agenda,” the step-mother added.

In a Feb. 25 Deseret Morning News column by Lee Davidson, Adamsson-Vorwaller claims her husband frequently had nerve tingling, shooting nerve pain and temporary paralysis as a youth and was exposed to harmful toxins when camping in the West Desert and eating rabbits.

Donald Vorwaller, Alan’s father, said his daughter-in-law’s allegations are not true.

“As his parent, I must tell you ... he was a very healthy young man, and if he had ever experienced (those ailments), I would have known about it,” Don Vorwaller stated in an e-mail sent to the Deseret News and later to the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin.

Vorwaller added that Alan had never eaten rabbits. “Many of the statements included were strictly conjecture by Alan’s wife ... (and) many were complete fabrication.”

“He was age 42 at his death and no more experienced ‘repeated and continual exposure to nuclear, chemical and biological warfare agents’ than anyone else in northern Utah,” Vorwaller said.

Though Davidson’s initial opinion column presented only Adamsson-Vorwaller’s side of the story, a second column published March 3 was much more balanced and included arguments from both Vorwaller’s widow and his father, who said his son’s cancer and recent death was a tragedy but he did not believe it was due to exposure to nuclear, biological or chemical substances in Tooele County.

Though the Transcript-Bulletin was questioned by Tribune reporter Christopher Smart in his March 4 article about not running Adamsson-Vorwaller’s obituary “as-is,” officials at the Tooele newspaper said there were legitimate reasons for doing so.

Clayton Dunn, the Transcript-Bulletin’s associate publisher, told Adamsson-Vorwaller the obituary she submitted contained “unsubstantiated claims and litigious language,” and as such the newspaper couldn’t print the text in its original form.

“We felt that an obituary was not the proper forum for a political agenda,” Dunn said. “We indicated what could be eliminated” so that the obituary could be run.

“She did change it, but not enough,” Dunn added, noting she later told him “unless you run my obit as-is, then I don’t want it to run.”

Smart replied that he didn’t feel the obituary’s original text in any way libeled the U.S. Army.

Mike Call, the Transcript-Bulletin’s managing editor, told Adamsson-Vorwaller the newspaper would research her claims as a news story and would seek to verify her statements by contacting independent sources.

Adamson-Vorwaller also contacted other Utah newspapers about running the obituary. Though Provo’s Daily Herald published her version of her husband’s obituary Feb. 29, elements of the potentially libelous language were heavily edited.

Susan Hessler, a classifieds manager with the Newspaper Agency Corporation which accepts obituaries for both of the Salt Lake daily newspapers, said submissions are accepted on a case-by-case basis.

“If a (submitted obituary) puts us in danger of libel, we have the option to run it or not to run it,” she said.

But after Hessler was e-mailed a copy of Adamsson-Vorwaller’s original obituary text by the Transcript-Bulletin, she replied that after speaking with higher-ups, “it is determined that we will not comment on the obituary you sent to us.”

Smart inferred in his article that the Transcript-Bulletin’s refusal to run Adamsson-Vorwaller’s obituary was evidence of some type of cover-up of the proliferation of harmful materials in Tooele County.

“When the Tooele newspaper refused to print Alan Vorwaller’s obituary, his widow saw a conspiracy of silence shrouding a sensitive topic: exposure to biological and chemical weapons,” read Smart’s lead paragraph.

But Dunn said nothing could be farther from the truth.

“We weren’t trying to hide anything,” Dunn said. “If (the obituary) had contained substantiated facts, then yes, it would have run in our newspaper, but as a news article. I feel that (the Salt Lake print media) have an agenda of their own.”

Both Dunn and Beverly White, a former Tooele County state legislator and the spokeswoman for 250 former Dugway employees who suffer from various illnesses, said Smart did not accurately portray comments they made — and in some instances put words in their mouths.

Smart said he asked Dunn if running Adamsson-Vorwaller’s obituary claiming toxins killed his husband was like screaming “fire” in a theater. He maintains that Dunn agreed, so he included it in the article.

But Dunn said he never said anything about “shouting fire in a theater” or that Tooele County residents were tired of being labeled as a hazardous waste zone.

“(Smart) said those things, not me,” Dunn said.

When asked specifically what White meant when she used the term “conspiracy of silence” in her comments to Smart, she said the reporter used that term and she simply agreed with it. However, Smart attributed the phrase directly to White in his article.

But Smart said he interviewed White for 45 minutes and he stands by what he reported her as stating.

Smart said he had received two e-mails and a phone call in response to his article. They were from individuals who had family members or relatives who had been employed at Dugway Proving Ground and “died of some disease.”

“Though they worked there, there was of course no link or evidence that proves (they got the illnesses through their employment),” Smart said.

When asked specifically what she meant when Smart referred to the “conspiracy of silence,” White said as a victims rights’ advocate, she is specifically concerned about individuals’ health affected at Dugway, and not the chemical weapons incinerator at Deseret Chemical Depot or private waste storage companies.

Though she is all for public disclosure events and operations that have negative health impacts on society, White said she is not at all surprised and would not expect a newspaper to print Adamsson-Vorwaller claims of blame as it was submitted in the obituary.

“It seems funny that a newspaper would just print it as the person wanted,” she said. “There’s a lot of lies in obituaries.”

White believes there may be some validity to Adamsson-Vorwaller’s claims simply due to the many instances of unexplainable cancers and other diseases employees and residents have gotten from working and living around hazardous materials.

“I know people who have had the same thing (as Vorwaller),” she said.

She said her husband has a form of lung cancer that people get from working with asbestos even though he’s never been around it. White herself has a specific type of cancer despite no family history of the disease.

“If it’s not hereditary, it’s got to be environmental,” she said.

e-mail: mrigert@tooeletranscript.com