As more and more children died, however, more and more people started to question. If the tests were so safe, why then did the military feel it imperative to send passing motorists to the St. George Texaco to get their cars washed after each blast? If there was nothing to worry about, why were government officials monitoring fallout dressed in protective clothing?

Suspicious of the government for years, Truman's leap into activism occurred in the seventh grade during a mandatory civil defense class. Students were being lectured on how to properly evacuate if Los Angeles were to be struck by a Soviet nuclear bomb.

"I raised my hand and asked why we had to evacuate to a cellar for two weeks if Los Angeles was bombed, but it was OK for our own government to bomb us over and over," he said.

He repeatedly raised that concern in subsequent letters to television stations, newspapers, congressmen and even President Lyndon Johnson.

"Everyone thought there was something red besides my hair," he recalls. "They were very suspicious of my politics."

Although above-ground tests ended in 1963, Truman began organizing other youth in town to protest the nation's nuclear policies. In 1969, as a high school senior, he met Utah's grand dame of anti-nuclear activists, Irma Thomas. She mentored Truman on the finer points of activism, inspiring the college-bound young man to look beyond the carnage in his own community to the havoc being wreaked by nuclear testing around the world.

"Me and Irma were fellow travelers," he laughs, referring to a "red baiting" term common at the time. After attending Dixie College a short time, Truman enrolled at the University of Utah to study microbiology, immunology and radiobiology. And to continue organizing fellow students to protest the nation's nuclear policy. Few students seemed interested, and those that got involved usually did so because they had a friend or family member who was a victim of the testing.

Those that did took the name "downwinders."

Truman eventually abandoned his studies and any hope of a career in science to embark on full-time activism. He and his ragtag contingent of supporters went door-to-door throughout the state asking people fill in maps showing which neighbors had cancers and thyroid diseases.

The downwinders story generated little interest in the United States, but the tide turned in 1977, he said, because of two events: First, the Deseret News published stories comparing the astronomically high leukemia rates in southern Utah to the much lower rates in northern Utah. And second, Scott Matheson, a downwinder himself who would later die of cancer, was elected governor.

"From then on, it was open season," he said. "Everyone wanted a piece of the story."