“They’ve been lied to. Like us”
The story of Nora Foltz.
By Joshua Wheeler (Text) and Reto Sterchi (Photo), 16.10.2021
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Nora was one day shy of 2 years old when the bomb went off about 50 miles west of her home in Nogal Canyon. She was one of four children at the time. Her father worked at Holloman Air Force Base. He brought home some groceries from his job at the commissary, but most of their produce came from a big garden they kept. “No telling what the vegetables had, after the ash and all that from the bomb.”
Her brother died from leukemia at the age of 5. But at that time they didn’t think to connect an illness to the fallout because no one told them about radiation. “My oldest sister, Helen, was diagnosed with kidney cancer maybe 30 years ago. Another sister, Arcenia, died of multiple myeloma in 2006. Another sister, Virginia, was diagnosed with colon cancer about 15 years ago and then had breast cancer several years later.”
All this illness, she says, made them question what caused it. And then when the true story of the fallout from Trinity started to get publicized, everything made sense. “I’ve been part of the protests at the Trinity Site. People honk or boo. I don’t mind. I know they just don’t understand. They’ve been lied to. Like us.”