Answers Continue To Be Elusive in 1959 LANL Death

Clarence Lithgow was a sturdy, stoic man who made his living as a sheet metal foreman at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He had been so strong that he could keep his muscled arm outstretched even with his teenage son hanging from his bicep.

But days after inhaling plutonium-laced smoke from a fire at the lab July 15, 1959, Lithgow was as weak as a baby, his hands too limp to write a check, his body too frail to work, his voice silenced.

On Christmas Eve that year, less than six months after the fire, Lithgow died, his lungs obliterated by cancer.

An autopsy report indicates that the cancer had metastasized to his brain and tumors had infiltrated his liver.

He was 48.

“He went fast,” daughter Hilda Ripley of Santa Fe said. “But it was an awful death.”

That he died so soon after the fire is no accident, Lithgow’s children contend. Their father’s job was often more dangerous than even they knew then.

A 2010 report by the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment project, commonly referred to as LAHDRA, found that the lab’s early plutonium processing facilities were crude and lacked emissions controls and that lab officials had significantly underestimated the amount of airborne plutonium released before the 1970s.

Son Clarence Lithgow Jr. of Santa Fe and his siblings have searched for years to discover what happened to their father.

They have not found much.

But what has emerged is a story of courage and of how their father very likely saved others from his fate.

The fire began when sparks from a welding torch used by a member of Lithgow’s sheet metal crew dropped into an exhaust duct on the roof above Room 501, Building 5.

The building was located in an area of the lab known as DP West, constructed in 1944 as a place to produce plutonium metal and manufacture parts for nuclear weapons. The area was shut down in 1997.

The sparks ignited a filter, releasing radioactive alpha particles throughout the room below and the air above.

The sheet metal worker scurried quickly off the roof to safety while Lithgow scrambled up to the roof to seal off the duct.

“He knew what he was in for with that plutonium,” Lithgow Jr. said. “But he felt it was his duty to seal off the duct to prevent more plutonium from escaping into the air.”

An office memorandum dated July 17, 1959, titled “Fire in a plutonium contaminated CWS exhaust filter” details how firefighters, most without respiratory equipment, extinguished the blaze. They were later showered and scrubbed down, their clothing decontaminated, nasal swabs and urine samples taken.

The memorandum lists the names of the firefighters and other exposed personnel at the site that day.

All the names are redacted but one: Clarence Lithgow.

Yet the memorandum’s narrative does not mention him.

Records from Los Alamos Medical Center’s Occupational Health Group indicate Lithgow was seen on the day of the fire. A handwritten note reads, in part: “Inhaled contaminated smoke.”

Lithgow, the report says, had nasal swabs and a urine sample taken.

On Aug. 11, less than a month later, he returned to the medical center complaining of spitting up blood. But records, again handwritten, are illegible and thus it’s unclear what, if any, care he received.

“He knew something was wrong,” Ripley said. “He was having trouble speaking by then, as if he could not find the right words. It was really frustrating to him.”

On Aug. 13, Lithgow was seen by his private physician, who diagnosed him with pneumonitis, a lung tissue inflammation, and admitted to St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe, hospital records show.

Lithgow was admitted twice more to the hospital — Sept. 15-17 for pneumonitis and a “mild cerebral accident” and Oct. 6-13 for pneumonitis.

Finally, on Nov. 10, Lithgow was admitted to the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center in Albuquerque.

By then, it was too late.

“At the end, he couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything,” Lithgow Jr. said. “One time I brought in his little nephew to see him at the hospital, and all he could do was look as the tears rolled down his face.”

The memory still brings tears to Lithgow Jr.’s eyes.

Lithgow’s children say they are not placing blame or seeking further financial compensation — in 2007, five years after they filed a claim with the Department of Labor, they were awarded $150,000 from the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, with an additional $125,000 for Ripley, who of the four Lithgow children was the only one under 18 when their father died.

“We’d just like to see some recognition for what he did,” Lithgow Jr. said. “He put his life on the line for others, and he lost it.”

There’s more to be learned about Clarence Lithgow. And surely, there is more recognition due.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to ABQjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal