Speculation on Grace makes blood boil

Dear Editor:

Boy, I’m getting tired of the rhetoric from the W.R. Grace supporters that they “don’t believe the managers at W.R. Grace would send their sons and daughters up on the hill if they believed the tremolite asbestos was dangerous.”

I’ve heard this garbage from various people and if they want to live in denial, then go ahead, but please don’t try to convince me to join in your head-in-the-sand technique.

First of all, this speculation flies right into the face of sworn testimony by W.R. Grace manager Earl Lovick. He states, under oath, that W.R. Grace was aware of the dangers of dust on the hill, was aware of the adverse lung function problems working at the mine was causing the mine workers many, many years before it became public.

When asked if he told the employees, his answer under oath was “no.”

So, please, read the transcript of the deposition and quit trying to revise history because of your friendships with the previous Grace people.

Since we are speculating, let me try this reason for them putting their children into the dangerous area. Most of their children were going to college. Usually it takes years for any problems to start to develop.

Maybe the managers figured that since their children’s exposure would be short term and sporadic, they wouldn’t develop any problems down the road.

Or, maybe, they made sure their children were not working in a high exposure area. They were the bosses, weren’t they?

Another speculation is that we could just chalk it up to poor parenting skills. After all, how would their children explain to their high school friends that good old dad wouldn’t let them work up at the mine because of all the deadly dust?

I guess if you don’t want to believe that, then you could just throw Lovick under the bus and believe he was the only one who knew.

Do these speculations make your blood boil? Your speculations about how the managers were innocent in causing the illnesses and deaths of hundreds of Libby residents sure made my blood boil.

Don W. Wilkins, Libby