Toxic Utah: Ghosts in the wind

The Washington Post article from 1965 was the first to say what many had suspected. "Schoolchildren downrange from the Nevada nuclear test site show nearly twice as many thyroid abnormalities as found in schoolchildren generally."

Then in 1997, the National Cancer Institute, under pressure from activists and the media, released findings from a study Congress ordered in 1982 that showed all Americans in the 1950s had been exposed to at least some iodine-131 from atomic bomb tests.

According to the findings, 10,000 to 75,000 of them could develop thyroid cancer from it — if the iodine-131 they absorbed, mostly by drinking milk, causes cancer the same way it does when bombarding people through X-ray exams or other external sources.

"We were assured that the bombs would not have any toxic effects. There were articles in the paper. There were civic meetings. Military leaders came to speak, and they all said not to worry about a thing. It was all safe." — Blaine Johnson, of St. George, whose daughter Sybil died at age 12 of acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Then and now, everyone knows the golden-haired child as Sybil D.

It's been 35 years since her parents saw her last, lying at peace finally after all the months of sickness and exhaustion. After that last week when her body oozed and wept in a futile effort to heal itself, when Loa and Blaine Johnson could not bear to bring their child one more time to Salt Lake City, where doctors would drill again into her breast and hip bones for marrow tests.

Sybil D.

Now 82 and 85 respectively, Loa and Blaine still refer to their little girl that way.

She was a little taller than average, and she had beautiful hair, a perfect blend of red and gold, touched with "just enough curl to add a little grace," according to her dad.

She was the peacemaker among her four siblings, two of whom were elementary age during atomic tests. All of whom were ushered outside school classrooms to watch the pink fallout clouds pass overhead. She was learning to play the cello. She taught her brother ballet. She united a group of girlfriends — Liz , Lynette, Janice, Ardis and Terry — who still deliver flowers to her grave today.

"She mothered everybody," says Loa, who remembers most details of those days nearly 40 years ago. Memories that don't come easily are jogged by a dusty box of memorabilia and a scrapbook:

• Sybil dancing with red records at 18 months old.

• A pencil drawing of Mary and Jesus, and a sleepy green watercolor of a tree painted in the fifth grade.

• The Iron County Record newspaper article dated April 23, 1964, that listed all of the Johnson children in the Piano Ensemble Festival. It was two months before Sybil was diagnosed.