Cancer comprises a complex range of diseases with varying triggers, including old age. Connecting individual cases to environmental exposure is problematic, a fact acknowledged by Bernadette Patrick, who helped organize Citizens Acting to Restore Endicott's Environment.
Patrick said she has never been "a save-the-planet kind of person." But that changed after her daughter, Nicole Brinsko, was found to have Hodgkin's lymphoma at 17, which announced itself with a large swelling on her neck.
"I have a heightened awareness now," said Patrick, a nurse whose mother worked for IBM. "I see how bad it can get."
Patrick began to ask questions after she contacted another mother whose teenage daughter also grew up on Tracy Street and who developed bone cancer. Nicole is now in college and is growing a head of baby-fine black hair.
"Having cancer when you are 17 and wearing a wig to the senior prom is not normal," she said. "The whole situation isn't normal."
Today IBM's once impressive campus has a deserted look. But people have not forgotten the good old days.
"In the '60s and '70s, IBM took care of the area," said Edward Blaine, a Deacon at St. Ambrose Catholic Church in downtown Endicott and a member of RAGE. "We had things other communities didn't have: weekly concerts, the carousel and the golf course. We went from being a great place to raise a family to where we are today. Now that choice has a dark side to it."
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