Saving our Planet from Lead, the story of Clair and Laurie Patterson

By Joni Johnson with help from Pat Robins and Cameron Patterson

     Laurie Patterson

We are currently under threat of a nuclear war.  Medford is planning to remove lead from contaminated buildings. Other than interest and fear, how do these two things weave themselves into the history of the Rogue Valley Manor? Through the charm of one of our past residents, Laurie Patterson and her fascinating husband Clair. I am sure that many of our residents from Sea Ranch and from Cal Tech either knew of them or knew them directly.

In college, Clair (usually called Pat), was very tall and thin, with a great sense of humor and known to be extremely honest.  He met his wife, Lorna “Laurie” McCleary, at Grinnell, and together they raised four children, two boys and two girls.  Laurie’s degree was in chemistry, and according to several sources, she did better than he did at academics.  He said he wasn’t as good at finishing the homework.  They attended the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago, and then both worked on the Manhattan Project in Chicago and then again in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, helping to develop the atomic bomb.

From the *book, The Toxic Truth, the story about Clair Patterson and his efforts to remove unnecessary lead from our every day life, Laurie Patterson comments that “Oak Ridge was silent when they dropped the bomb.  When we left, they gave us lapel buttons that said, Oak Ridge.  We threw them away”.  Later in life, Clair Patterson called the atomic bomb, “a hideous crime that we were committing”.

After the University of Chicago, Clair and Laurie moved to California and he spent his working life at Cal Tech, where much of his effort had to do with the contamination of lead in our systems.  He noted that the levels of lead in our atmosphere had begun to increase steadily after Tetra-ethyl lead was used in fuel to reduce engine knock.  In 1965, he published an article, Contaminated and Natural Lead environments of Man, which tried to draw public attention to the problem of increased levels of lead in the environment.  Until the work of Patterson and his colleague, Herbert Needleman, a pediatrician dealing with inner-city children, people in charge chose to call the amount of lead in the environment “normal”.  What they really meant by “normal” was that the amount of lead found in the environment was acceptable.  Unfortunately, that view was typical, but this amount was not acceptable.  It was in fact, toxic.  And it took Patterson and Needleman to bravely stand up to the men in power with their facts and figures.  After their explanations to Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency and various other places, lead was finally removed from gasoline, food cans and paint.

Of course, Patterson’s opposition to the enormous tetra-ethyl lead industry made him extremely unpopular, and there were many times that his family was in fear of being hurt or even assassinated.  His son Cameron remembered that this conversation took place often at the dinner table during those times.  Clair was, as his son says, “naturally courageous and pigheaded”. These are two necessary traits to have in order to take on this kind of powerful enemy. But he did it with grace and guts and achieved his goals.  However, it wasn’t until he won the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement that he felt that he had really succeeded.  The Tyler Prize is the industry’s version of the Nobel Prize, and Tyler Laureates receive a $200,000 cash prize and a medallion.

There was an article in the Mail Tribune on Friday, March 18, that Medford is working with Habitat for Humanity to remove lead from contaminated buildings.  The wheels of progress sometimes turn slowly, but they do move. There is hope.

While Patterson worked on his project with lead at Cal Tech, Laurie raised their four children.  She was able to help him in the clean lab at times, but also worked for her secondary teaching credential, and when her oldest son, Cameron, left for college, she was able to finish the credential and start teaching chemistry at La Canada High School in La Canada, California.  She became head of the science department, and according to her son Cameron, even had a chance to teach several of her own children.

                     Patterson Family

After Patterson’s retirement from Cal Tech, he stayed on as an emeritus.  He and Laurie built a home at Sea Ranch, where she lived permanently after her retirement and he would come up periodically to be with her.  Unfortunately, Patterson became more frail with time.  During one of his projects retrieving gas samples at a volcano, there was an accident where his lungs were badly damaged.  This led to asthma and finally to a severe asthma attack and death at the age of 73 at Sea Ranch in 1995.

 Laurie continued living at Sea Ranch until 2002 when she, along with many others from the area, were wined and dined by RVM and came to live at the Manor. Laurie was further supported in her move to southern Oregon by the fact that her oldest son, Cameron, had moved to the Ashland area three years earlier.

According to those who remember her here at the Manor, she was charming, friendly, brilliant, a wonderful pianist, and interested in needlework, among other endeavors.  She was a member of a book club and on the board of the symphony.  And, of course, the Sea Ranchers would periodically get together for a meal.

Cameron remembers her as the social one and his father as the ultimate nerd.  As we say, the perfect couple.  How lucky we were to have her here at the Manor and to have him here at all.

*(The book, Toxic Truth by Lydia Denworth, will soon be available in our library)

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