Note—58 years ago this week the Cuban Missile Crisis
riveted and terrified the American public, including a 13 year old in Cheyenne.
This is my recycled memoir of that.
I was in my father’s car.
I believe it was his official State
of Wyoming 1962 Chevrolet station wagon. We had the radio on. Dad was doing me a
favor. He was a man of infinite patience
that way. We had just visited the Quonset hut that served as the official
headquarters of Wyoming Civil Defense. I had in my lap a box stuffed full of literature on how to build a bomb shelter, plan an emergency evacuation, explanations of
the public shelter program, blue tri-fold brochures emblazoned with the triangle-in-a-circle logo of Your
Civil Defense!
The literature was destined for the
Civil Defense office that I had set up on folding tables outside my basement bedroom. Ever since the election in 1960 when John
Kennedy kept talking about the missile
gap I had been obsessed with what seemed like an inevitable nuclear war.
In Cheyenne, where America’s first ICBM base had been built at Francis
E. Warren Air Force Base, it was hard to avoid. It was a matter of some civic pride that the missile base made us “one of the top ten
nuclear targets.” Students at Eastwood Elementary School regularly
conducted air raid drills. Sometimes we
were instructed to duck under our desks and cover our heads
with a thick textbook. Other
times we were taken out to the empty field across the street and told to
lie face down with our hand interlaced behind our heads. This was so the atomic blast could
“roll over us.” We were also told not to look up lest the flash of the exploding bomb burn
our eyeballs out.
Other kids might have shrugged it
off. But I was a patriot. I wanted to do
something for my country, just like President Kennedy had said. I was informed. I read both the Wyoming Eagle and the Tribune
and got my own copy of Time every week in the mail. Ok, it may have been a little unusual
for a thirteen year old boy, but that’s the way I was.
At some point I had gotten a hold of
New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s
report on Civil Defense and actually read it. It was meant to shore up a proposal
that the state of New York build public shelters, but it had become the inspiration
for the fall-out shelter craze that
was sweeping the nation. I was among
those swept. For some months I had been
visiting the CD Quonset hut and gathering literature. I obtained a nice Civil Defense decal which I put on the glass of our front storm door. I even found a real white Civil Defense helmet from World War II at an Army
surplus store. I buttonholed
everyone I could think of to promote preparedness.
And my Dad took in stride. Maybe he knew that I just felt better
thinking that there was something that I could do. He drove me on my trips to the Quonset hut
and probably used his clout as a member of the Wyoming cabinet to
get them to give me all the literature I wanted. They had plenty.
Despite his tolerance of my obsession, Dad refused to build a backyard fallout shelter.
But despite my pleas, Dad would not
build us our own shelter. Not for him
the trouble and expense of digging a big hole in the backyard, lining it with re-enforced concrete, installing a blast proof steal door and an efficient
ventilation system, stocking it with
food and water for our family of four for at least six months,
and, yes keeping a good rifle on
hand to shoot the improvident neighbors
who had not planned ahead. No, he just
wouldn’t do it. Secretly, looking back
on it, I suspect that he knew an atomic explosion in the neighborhood with
either not survivable or not worth surviving.
Anyway, that’s what we were doing at
5 pm Mountain Standard Time on
October 21, 1962 when Kissin’ KIMN
out of Denver, Colorado interrupted
their regular broadcast of top 40 rock ‘n’ roll “to bring you the
President of the United States.” We drove home in silence listening to
details of our confrontation the Communist
Russia over those missiles in Cuba.
Except for school time, I was glued
to the TV set for the next two weeks
eager to hear any glimmer of news. Late
at night I used Dad’s old Atwater Kent table
radio which could pick up short wave
broadcasts from just about anywhere,
including the BBC and even English language broadcasts from Radio Havana. We all breathed easier when we got the
word that the Ruskies had folded and were shipping their rockets back
home.
But what about next time? There was sure to be a next time. I got to thinking about those school drills
and decided that they were not enough.
The school needed a real Civil Defense plan. So, I started writing one. I typed copies out on my new Sterling Smith-Corona portable with several sheets of onion skin and carbon paper. Each homeroom, I proposed, should have an elected
student Warden to help the
teacher with evacuation plans and
keep order. The Wardens should be
equipped with helmets, webbed belts
with a water canteen and first aid kit, and police night stick just in case there was panic. I went down to the
Army surplus store and priced helmets and clubs. In addition, each classroom was to have a box containing emergency supplies, which students would be required to bring from home—things like toilet paper and bags for excrement,
bandages and first aid supplies, a flashlight,
a transistor radio, and plenty of batteries. In case of an attack the Warden and teacher
were to scoop up the box and guide the class in an orderly manner to a
designated shelter, which would adequately be stocked with K-rations and drums of water.
One morning I took my bundle of
papers and presented them to the Principal, who solemnly accepted them. He told me he would take the matter up with
the School Board. And
he actually did! A few weeks later I was
told that my plan had been approved not just for Eastridge, but for the entire school system. Of course, they made some changes. The helmets and night sticks were out, but
they would allow the student Wardens to have nice official looking arm bands.
They had students in the Junior
High shop classes make boxes from galvanized
sheet metal. Every home room got one
and kids got lists of what to bring from home to fill them.
Sometime the next spring there were elections for student Wardens. Everyone in the school knew that the whole
thing was my idea. But in my homeroom, I
was not even nominated. One of the popular kids, one of the guys who were always picked first in gym class, was elected unanimously.
The next week when the student
Wardens had their first meeting to organize and learn about the program after
school, I just went home. The
Principle asked me why I had not come to explain my plan. I told him that I wasn’t elected and didn’t
feel I should. He shrugged and
went about his business.
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