After graduating from Florida State University with a journalism degree, William J. P. Smith, Jr. served in the USMC from 1956 until 1959, stationed at Camp Lejeune, NC, the majority of the time with the Globe as sports editor and acting editor of the largest Corps newspaper at the time. While there, he married, residing at the trailer park on the base and later in Midway Park, while fathering two girls.

In 1994, Bill was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had a radical modified mastectomy with 30 lymph nodes removed from his left side. He was treated with Tamoxifin for five years, and has had no reoccurance. It should be noted that there was no history of any kind of cancer in the Smith family. His former wife and two girls have had no symptoms of the disease.

On behalf of women, Bill has been a fund raiser and is the subject of two books, Living with Breast Cancer, the Story of 39 Women and One Man by Perry Colemore and Lisa Adelsberger, and Messages from Somewhere, Inspiring Stories of Life After 60 by Harriet May Savitz. He has also written an autobiographical screenplay on his experience. The irony of all of this is that Bill was part of the team at Xerox Corporation that introduced xeroradiography for the early detection of breast cancer in 1969 at Hutzel Hospital in Detroit. Every once in a while, he takes the press kit from his library shelf and shares it with his students, who find it hard to believe that men can contract the horrific disease.

Today, Bill resides in Tallahassee, FL with his wife Kathy, teaches at FSU and runs an integrated marketing communications consultancy, Huckleberry Finn Tomorrow.

• What are the odds of finding 4 cases of male breast cancer from the same contaminated military base?
• How many other military men have developed breast cancer?

Poisoned at Camp LeJeune, snookered by Uncle Sam

Bill Berlow
Associate Editor

Mike Partain, son and grandson of Marine Corps veterans, grew up steeped in traditional American values — a rock-solid Reagan Republican whose life, even before birth, began among the few, the proud, at Camp LeJeune, N.C.

But for the past year, the 40-year-old Tallahassee insurance claims adjuster's faith in his government has been shaken to its core.

He'd always assumed that Uncle Sam, first and foremost, had the health and welfare of U.S. citizens at the top of his priority list — especially if they'd worn the uniform.

Now he's much less sure.

Partain's crisis of doubt began a year ago, when his wife gave him "a hug that changed my life." She found a lump, which turned out to be a cancerous tumor. A 14-inch surgical scar where Partain's right breast used to be is the physical evidence of his breast cancer.

Less obvious is the psychological scar — both as a cancer survivor still undergoing treatment and as one who feels his government betrayed a trust.

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Not long after he learned he had cancer, Partain found out that his recurring rash since birth and his breast cancer — rare among men, particularly those with no family history of the illness — probably stemmed from his exposure during fetal development and the first year of his life to water contaminated with tetrachloroethylene, a solvent used in dry cleaning.

Just two months after Partain's wife felt the lump, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry acknowledged that Marines and their families who between 1957 and 1987 lived in the LeJeune neighborhood where his family lived, drank water contaminated with extremely high levels of the carcinogenic chemical.

Partain and a network of former LeJeune residents who believe their serious health problems are due to the poisoning point out, however, that the government first knew of the contamination in the early 1980s — but did little or nothing to let the former Marines and their families know they were at risk.

"At this time last year, I was dying and I didn't know," Partain said. "The government knew I was dying and didn't tell me. That burns me up."

The LeJeune families can't sue the feds, since the government hasn't waived its sovereign-immunity protection. The military, meanwhile, is protected by the Ferris Doctrine, a 1950s-era ruling that protects the armed services from legal action by the men and women who serve — the idea being that if a soldier was wounded in battle because of a commanding officer's dumb decision, the country would be worse off if the government had to battle personal-injury lawyers as well as foreign enemies.

I first met Partain in the fall of 2006, several months before his diagnosis. He was the adjuster for an insurance claim we filed. A former teacher from Winter Haven, where he grew up, he and I talked of his deep regret about having to give up teaching to support his wife and four children. That conversation even helped inspire a column about ex-teachers in November of that year.

Last year, after he told me his illness motivated his involvement in a crusade to reveal the truth behind the LeJeune environmental debacle, the Tallahassee Democrat reported his story on July 9, a few weeks after a congressional hearing on the LeJeune families.

A congressional investigation is still under way, and Partain has gotten help from U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Monticello, who called Partain's story and that of other LeJeune families "deeply troubling, to say the least."

Boyd's office, which has tried to navigate the federal and military bureaucracies for Partain, said he is one of seven constituents in the congressman's North Florida district who are seeking more information related to the LeJeune contamination.

Now Partain reluctantly acknowledges that he's an activist, a word he's still not comfortable with because of his conservative upbringing and beliefs.

When I likened the experience of the LeJeune Marine families to military victims of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, Partain agreed.

"Defend, deny and delay," he said, describing the government's strategy in the face of claims that Agent Orange was responsible for a slew of veterans' illnesses. "And that's what they're doing to us."

Partain (strashni@comcast.net) was to share his story last night with vets at the American Legion post on Lake Ella. Even though he doesn't realistically expect compensation from the government, it's part of his personal commitment to spread the word about those exposed to the poison, estimated to number upwards of a million Americans.

It's one more example of a government's betrayal — always shocking, but, sadly, no longer surprising and, as Partain says, quickly forgotten.

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Update:

- The town's public water supply (serving just over 20,000 pople) suffered from 16-30 years of ongoing TCE contamination;
- TCE contamination found in the town's private water supply over past 20 yrs. No add'l sampling ordered. Past and current health risk unknown;
- Known contamination sites, discovered over 20 yrs ago, may still be contaminated;
- Cancer rates (multiple types) elevated with statistical significance and some with rising trends;
- Official conclusion: Past exposure to TCE in the public water supply presented No Apparent Public Health Hazard;
- No follow-up recommended.

Mr. Fischbein:

The TCE Subregistry cancer outcomes analyses are slated to be released under a separate study. The results are not publically available at this time. Please do keep tabs on our publications for future releases.