The year 1949 permanently changed American society. In mid-August, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon, ending the American atomic monopoly and significantly escalating the Cold War. While American officials expected that a nuclear Stalinist Russia was inevitable eventually, the USSR had done so far sooner than expected. The United States responded to this dramatic development by accelerating their own weapons program, testing the first hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb in 1951. As the arms race continued through the 1950s, both countries were forced to confront the potential realities of a sudden, devastating, nuclear war that could kill massive amounts of civilians and destroy whole cities. By the end of the decade, the United States, both on a national and federal level, had developed contingency plans for nuclear Armageddon. For those living and studying in the Morgantown area in the 1960s, the newly-built West Virginia University Hospital was central to the survival of many should the Cold War turn hot.
In the classroom, WVU’s medical students were trained to prepare for a catastrophic conflict. From 1959 until the late 1960s, WVU was a part of the Medical Education for National Defense (MEND) program.[1] MEND was described in the November 16, 1957, Journal of the American Medical Association as a program “for introducing into the regular medical school curriculum information about the special problems of military and disaster medicine.” The program began in 1952 with five pilot schools but expanded to 45 schools with approximately 14,000 medical students involved in the program by 1957.[2] MEND was the product of cooperation between the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the medical departments of the US Armed Forces, and US Public Health Service and Civilian Defense.[3] In each participating medical school, a part-time coordinator served as a liaison between faculty and the Armed Forces and arranged symposiums and short courses to instruct faculty of the military’s cutting-edge medical information.
This information was then integrated into medical school curriculums. For example, the Radiology Department began to teach students how to monitor radioactive fallout, and the Physiology Department taught aviation and space medicine. These departments are representative of the larger WVU Medical program, which largely shifted to reflect America’s Cold War necessities. MEND also organized WVU Medical students and faculty participation in national seminars and disaster drills, bringing in visiting speakers, and established a Medical Center Fallout Shelter Plan, among other initiatives.[4]
While the medical curriculum was designed to prepare students for treating soldiers during a potential conflict, WVU’s medical campus was instrumental in the local civil defense plan. In late 1961, Morgantown, Monongalia County, and University officials designed a coordinated civil defense plan where abandoned mines and other university buildings, including the Engineering Sciences Building and the newly-build Medical Center were designated fallout shelters.[5] The large concern of these officials was not a direct nuclear strike upon Morgantown, but rather, fallout from a nuclear attack on nearby Pittsburgh’s industrial mills.[6] Especially after the US came terrifyingly close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Americans in both Morgantown and across the country had to reckon with the reality that nuclear war was just a push of a button away.
Boxes of survival supplies are stacked in an unidentified warehouse in Morgantown, West Virginia. (West Virginia & Regional History Center)
WVU’s School of Medicine began preparing for nuclear disaster a few months before the Cuban Missile Crisis in August 1962. The University established their Medical Center Fallout Shelter Plan Committee on July 31, and the committee began to develop their plan in August. The Medical Center was, at the time, the largest building in the state, and thus, able to hold a significant number of people in the event of nuclear war. The building was rated to hold 27,849 people, and the fallout plan was designed to support their life for two weeks, potentially (and likely) without electricity, water, or gas. The Medical Center was divided into 19 separate areas: the basement, ground, first, second, and third floors of the Basic Sciences Building and the basement, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh floors of University Hospital.[7]
All students, faculty, and staff were given small green cards with instructions preparing them for the worst-case scenario, nuclear war. Should the dreaded nuclear apocalypse happen, the following procedure would occur:
A warning would be made via radio on CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation, the emergency broadcast system), with the estimated time that fallout would hit Morgantown.
Citizens would find their way to the Medical Center or their respective assigned fallout shelters. If possible, they were to walk instead of drive, and if they had to drive, they were to park the car “well away from the building” with their keys still in the ignition.
They would enter at one of four locations: the University Hospital Lobby, the Basic Sciences Building Lobby, the Emergency Room, or Central Receiving. Anyone who entered would have to be monitored for radioactive fallout and decontaminated if necessary.
Students, faculty, and their families should go to the shelter area nearest where they worked, keep quiet, and wait for instructions from those in authority.
Either University or School of Medicine administration would assume the roles of authority in this shelter. Depending on who arrived first, either the University Vice President, the Hospital Administrator, the Dean of Dentistry, Medicine, or Pharmacy, or any department head of the Medical Center would be appointed the initial “commander-in-chief,” (once everyone arrived, the existing administrative structure continued) and depending on the area, various faculty chairs served as “shelter area commanders.” The Central Command Point was to be first in the Telephone Office, but if the radioactivity there was too high, then it was moved to the Outpatient Clinic. All telephone lines but those leading to the Area Command Post on each floor, which communicated with the Central Command Point.[8]
A 1969 review of University Hospital capacity altered and reallocated the shelter plan. With this new plan, the hospital could continue to function and treat patients while serving as a fallout shelter. As opposed to the capacity determined in 1962 (34,396), this new capacity, shrunk to include for increased equipment acquired over the decade, was now 24,641 (19,843 for the public, 4,698 for hospital staff and patients).[9] In addition to the use of the hospital as a use for treating patients, WVU had Civil Defense Emergency Hospitals on campus. These were mobile hospital units that could easily be set up and give medical and surgical care to patients surviving nuclear attack or another disaster. CDEH units featured 200 beds, 400 different kinds of supplies and equipment, could serve 1500 meals and run up to 200 pounds of laundry per day, and had a generator for power and a pumping unit to ensure clean water. In other words, these CDEH units were basically supplementary hospitals in the instance that so many were injured by a disaster that the University Hospital was unable to treat all of them in their own facilities. In May 1965, a CDEH unit was brought from Charleston and set up behind the Medical Center as a public demonstration of emergency capabilities, likely to ease people’s concerns regarding disaster preparedness.[10]
While, thankfully, none of these disaster plans were implemented, nevertheless, the Medical Center remained prepared. Until the 1970s, stockpiles of 164,000 pounds of crackers (10,824,000 individual crackers), 4,533 water cans (79,327.5 gallons), 656 Sanitation Kits, and 101 Medical Kits were stored throughout the building, mostly in the Medical Center’s ground floor hallways. These barrels and cans were always problematic for Medical Center operators; they frequently rusted, occasionally burst and made a mess or a flood, and rolled through the hallways, creating walking hazards or obstructions.[11]
Even disposing of excess supplies proved to be difficult. On May 18, 1970, Harold Harper, the Assistant to the Provost, wrote William Overbey, director of Monongalia County Civil Defense. Harper intended to follow up on his October 1969 letter to Overbey’s predecessor, Paul Gribble, requesting the pickup of excess civil defense supplies; it appears that Gribble did not respond. From the correspondence, it seems that the supplies had been moved into the underpass for the Basic Sciences Wing on November 1 and spent the winter and spring there, not picked up by county officials.[12]
"Civil Defense Director and Supporters, Morgantown, W. Va." Three of the men are from right
to left: Glen Liston, LeRoy Zirkle and Mr. Fetty, the Monongalia County Director of Civil
Defense. Ca. 1960-1970. (West Virginia & Regional History Center)
Citizens would find their way to the Medical Center or their respective assigned fallout shelters. If possible, they were to walk instead of drive, and if they had to drive, they were to park the car “well away from the building” with their keys still in the ignition.
They would enter at one of four locations: the University Hospital Lobby, the Basic Sciences Building Lobby, the Emergency Room, or Central Receiving. Anyone who entered would have to be monitored for radioactive fallout and decontaminated if necessary.
Medical Center Fallout Shelter Plan
Much less evident than the supplies in the Medical Center was the secret US Navy installation on the ground floor of University Hospital. In 1962, the Navy and WVU held “confidential discussions” about the Navy proposal to acquire the right to use and occupy WVU facilities in the event of an emergency. As soon as possible after the outbreak of emergency, the United States Government planned to enter negotiations for a formal lease.[13] However, ultimately, the Navy and WVU entered a formal lease of their property without an emergency to precipitate negotiations. An April 1971 Daily Athenaeum article described the May 19, 1966, agreement made between the WVU Board of Governors and United States Government that leased “5600 square feet of office and storage space identified as Room G-091” as a Navy administrative office. Double doors marked “RESTRICTED AREA” delineated the entrance to these offices, which the Navy paid $6,720 per year to rent. According to Harry Ernst, director of University Relations, the Navy used the space as a Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) station, which primarily served as an emergency backup for naval communications.[14]
MARS is a Department of Defense-sponsored program that utilizes Amateur Radio operators to support the DoD in times of emergency. It is comprised of citizen volunteers and supports the DoD in instances such as international Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, supporting the National Guard, or other Federal Government agencies. However, its primary goal is to provide contingency communications support to the DoD in the instance of a catastrophic event or cyber attack that shuts down other means of communication. Until 2015, the US Navy-Marines had its own MARS service, and since then, the Navy has transitioned to coordinating with Army MARS and Air Force MARS to consolidate communications. In the event of a Cold War-era nuclear strike on the United States that could destroy large sections of the electric grid or communications lines, radio systems such as MARS were important to ensure that the military still had the infrastructure to function.[15]
Lyell Chapman, the DA reporter who investigated this story, interviewed shift managers and was told next to nothing because everything was classified; upon asking Admiral Earl Crawford, the Commander for Training of the Atlantic Fleet for comment, Crawford denied any knowledge of a Navy installation in a civilian hospital. The claim that the leased space was a MARS station would have supplemented Crawford’s statement since MARS was, indeed, a civilian volunteer-run operation. However, the restricted area, need for security clearances to gain entrance, and classified nature of the space suggested that, perhaps, the area was used for something more clandestine than MARS.[16]
According to Chapman, this operation violated Section 2, Chapter 1, Article 27 of the Second Hague Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land (signed in 1899). This section of the Hague Convention, which America signed, stated that “In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps should be taken to spare as far as possible edifices devoted to religion, art, science, and charity, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not used at the same time for military purposes. The besieged should indicate these buildings or places by some particular and visible signs, which should previously be notified to the assailants.”[17]
Chapman wrote that the Navy intended to keep the installation in the event of a “national emergency,” which he argued was a violation of international law.
The Navy’s lease expired in June 1971. Locals presumed that the Navy was moving their operation to the Morgantown Airport; according to Chapman, the Navy already had some sort of installation that involved an “experimental war machine.” Despite the expiration of the lease, Chapman wrote, rumors around University Hospital were that the Navy planned to stay in the building. These rumors began after several new microwave antennas were installed on the roof of the hospital in October 1971. These antennas did not belong to WWVU-TV, the local television station. Since, Chapman wrote, nobody at the hospital used microwave, he surmised that these antennas belonged to the Navy. According to Chapman, these antennas had a direct line of sight to the US Bureau of Mines Research Center (now the National Energy Technology Laboratory) on Collins Ferry Road, which he claimed was also part of the secret Navy installation. [18]
While Chapman’s claims of a continuing Navy communications operation are unsubstantiated, what is certain is that in 1972, the University Health Service was moved to Room G-091, where the former Navy installation was. The end of the physical naval presence in University Hospital echoed larger societal and political trends. As the Cold War cooled down in the mid-1970s, the fear of nuclear war became significantly lower and there was no longer a necessity for fallout plans. The unique and fascinating period in the Medical Center’s history where the apocalypse could occur at any moment and the University Hospital had to prepare for treating casualties of nuclear war had ended.