Atomic Sailors suffering for service

The Atomic Sailors
Tampa Bay Times
William R. Levesque
December 21, 2013

It was the Navy's dirtiest job. The crew of the U.S.S. Calhoun County dumped thousands of radioactive barrels into the Atlantic Ocean from 1946 to 1960. The Navy says the work was safe. But 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the ship's sinking. The Calhoun County's own Navy ordered it scuttled because it was a radioactive hazard. Now a Pasco County widow fights to prove her husband's death is tied to the vessel.

ABOUT THIS STORY
The Tampa Bay Times examined thousands of pages of documentation and interviewed more than 50 former crewmen of the U.S.S. Calhoun County for this story. Bernice Albernaz of New Port Richey provided the Times with all Department of Veterans Affairs reports and correspondence she and her late husband received starting in 2001. Albernaz also provided letters the couple wrote to the VA, government officials and others and allowed the newspaper to review George Albernaz’s medical records still in her possession. Albernaz also provided a copy of her daily diary from the time her husband first became ill in 1988.

The Times examined the file maintained by the U.S. Court of Veterans Appeals in Washington, D.C. on Harvey Lucas’s VA claim and examined ship records at the National Archives in College Park, Md. and New York City, including the ship’s deck logs and muster rolls. These logs documented where the U.S.S. Calhoun County traveled and often noted when the ship dumped radioactive waste.

The Times interviewed Deborah Derrick, a former aide to U.S. Rep. David Skaggs, D-Colo., by phone and at her Arlington, Va. home. She also generously answered numerous questions by email about her research, which began in 1998. Derrick last week published a book about the ship, Half Lives: The True Story of an Atomic Waste Dumping Ship, a Government Cover-up, and the Veterans’ Families Shaped By It All. For more information about the ship and her work, visit HalfLives.com.

Derrick is president of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Times researcher John Martin and photographer Joseph Garnett contributed to this story.
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