More members of the Johnson family have been touched. Through the years, Blaine Sr. had malignant cancer on his parathyroid removed and the couple's middle son Bruce, had cancerous glands in his parathyroid removed.

"There's a difference between knowing for sure and believing they are too coincidental not to be," Blaine Johnson said.

The government has acknowledged Sybil was a victim of winds from the tests. Decades later, many residents of Cedar City and St. George are on a list to be formally compensated for their illnesses and hardship, but the government has allocated little money to pay.

The $50,000 the Johnsons received does little to alleviate the painful memories of Sybil's last weeks.

"We'll all go on a trip," the family told Sybil the summer of 1964. "Anywhere you want." She chose Disneyland and Laguna Beach because she'd been there before and loved the ocean, the waves and the sand. Heavily dosed with prednazone, Sybil was a bundle of energy. It was a good trip, her father recalls.

A month or two later, after school started, the cancer returned. Blaine wrote about it in the family history of Blaine Hart Johnson and Loa Claire Mathews.

"From there on, from the time we played together in Southern California, it was downhill all the way for Sybil D. Little by little she lost some of her wholeness."

Over the next months, she gradually lost her reflexes, then her balance. She began to fall a lot. She returned week after week to doctors in Salt Lake City. More examinations, more transfusions, more of the painful bone marrow tests where doctors drilled into Sybil's breast and hip bones with no anesthesia.

In the last days, Sybil had just returned from Salt Lake City and had just fallen into bed, exhausted, when doctors called again and wanted her to come back.

"They wanted to do another transfusion and another bone marrow test," Blaine Johnson said. "At that point I said no more bone marrow tests. They were too painful."

Soon after, Loa woke in the middle of the night to quiet. Without the rattling sound of her daughter's breathing, Loa Johnson knew Sybil was gone.

Then and now, the girl's death leaves her family and friends stunned.

"The day before her funeral, her girlfriends came by," Blaine Johnson said quietly.

"I remember it was a Sunday afternoon, and they just sat there. They didn't say anything. They just sat there on the couch and cried, and pretty soon they got up and left."