Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger, who drilled new marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, is loyal to the core—and to the Corps. Mike Partain, an insurance-claims adjuster, was born at Camp Lejeune; both his father and grandfather were Marines. Ensminger and Partain were drawn together by a Lejeune cancer link and by a need to right a wrong.
For Ensminger it began in July 1983, when he learned that his precious six-year-old daughter, Janey, had leukemia. Ensminger was shocked, crushed, hopeless, angry, and querulous. How could she have leukemia? There was no history of leukemia in either his or his wife's family. After a horrible two years fighting the disease ("Janey went through hell . . . and my wife and I went with her."), Janey died.
Ensminger searched for answers and found nothing—until 1997, when he saw a television newscast about a report of water contamination at Camp Lejeune: Leaking underground storage tanks and chemical spills had put benzene, vinyl choride, and trichloroethylene—all carcinogens—in the water. The chemicals, said the report, might be linked to childhood leukemia. Ensminger was both astounded and relieved.
For Mike Partain, it began in April 2007. At the age of 39, Partain was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer for men—breast cancer. Several months later, after increasingly depressing diagnoses, Partain is planning his chemotherapy sessions and seeing doctors and worrying about his health and the wellbeing of his family, when, again, a television newscast delivers a shocking truth: Partain sees Jerry Ensminger testifying before a Congressional committee, and hears him say that children born at Camp Lejeune between January 1968 and December 1985 are being studied for their exposure to contaminated tap water. Partain was born in January at Lejeune in 1968.
Partain phones Ensminger, and they join forces. Partain, at first nearing death but then slowly recovering, joins Ensminger on the Camp Lejeune Community Assistance Panel at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. They get to work. They provide a timeline of events linking the contamination with documentation they find posted by the Navy and the Marine Corps.
They have no funding, and they pay for their travel out of their own pockets. They take on extra jobs, and they work long nights (Partain: "Almost all my vacation time has been spent traveling to Washington with Jerry to meet with Congressional staff or to testify in Congress about Camp Lejeune."). For years they lobby politicians, they testify before Congress, they try to contact the 37,000 people who have lived at Camp Lejeune during the critical years and who may have suffered diseases, miscarriages, and deaths, and they speak out about not only the contamination but also the Marine's total failure to warn people about the contamination.
Eventually, they develop a website (www.tftptf.com: The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten) and help make a film (Semper Fi: Always Faithful) that explains the contamination and reaches out to those affected by these toxins.
Command officers in the Marines were not pleased with all this. Representatives of the Navy and Marines provided investigators with incorrect data, hid relevant information, and lied about the contamination. One officer in the base command said, "Government regulations on clean water are an undue burden on the running of the base." The base needed water and lots of it, and that was all that mattered.
Undeterred by the wrath of the service they revered, Ensminger and Partain discover that there were no guidelines for disposing of chemicals at Camp Lejeune until the mid-1980s. They discover that in 1980 toxins and carcinogens were detected in the well water, and described in official documents. They discover that the building at the camp containing a day care and nursery had been previously used to store a toxic insecticide. They discover that transformer oil with carcinogenic PCBs was routinely spread on roads to keep down dust. They discover 72 other Camp Lejeune men, Marines and their sons, with breast cancer, the largest cluster of male breast cancer cases ever recorded.
Slowly, they make progress. With help from key legislators and from people like Mary Blakely—who lived at Camp Lejeune, whose mother died of brain cancer, and who gave the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2500 death certificates of people affected by the contaminated water—the two men turn the gears of political movement.
Finally, in 2012, a victory: After two years stuck in Congress, an act is passed and signed by the President, establishing the connection between illnesses and the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune. Affected family members are now "eligible for hospital care, medical services, and nursing home care through the Department of Veterans Affairs for any condition or disability associated with exposure to such contaminants."
The legislation is called the Janey Ensminger Act. "This is a culmination of 18 years of work for me," says Ensminger. "While this is not over by any means, this is a great step in the right direction."
The victory, of course, is bittersweet. Nothing will bring back Janey or the other victims. Nothing will make Mike Partain forget the fear and the pain that accompanied his cancer. And nothing will restore the trust that Ensminger and Partain once had in the Marines.
"The Marines may have forgotten their motto, 'always faithful,' but I have not," says Master Sergeant Ensminger.
You can follow their work at their website below. The letters stand for The Few The Proud The Forgotten.
