EUREKA, Missouri — You can lose your town and home and pretty much everything you own and become part of a nightmare story so big it’s on all the TV networks, and then four decades later people won’t even remember your town’s name, much less the heartache and loss you endured.
Forgetting the bad stuff is our national pastime. In the case of Times Beach, Missouri, once considered one of America’s most toxic sites, the forgetting seems almost malicious. All of the homes and buildings and streets and people are gone. There’s no marker describing what happened there, no plaque with names and dates. It’s like an unmarked grave.
It would be an impressive act of erasure if not for Marilyn Leistner and her insistence on remembering. Marilyn lived in Times Beach and, perhaps more than anyone, shaped its trajectory in the final days. When she speaks about Times Beach, the town emerges as a vibrant yet tragic place, a vital part of the American story. She speaks as an act of defiance against those who’d rather we just move on and not worry about the lessons Times Beach may teach us.
Marilyn lives in Eureka, Missouri, a few miles from the footprint of her old town, so the presence of Times Beach is never far. One night in 2023 she received a late-night message from a stranger — Christa Graves, an Ohio resident concerned about the health of her community after the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Graves had learned about Leistner from a 1992 documentary she’d found online.
For hours the two shared stories and concerns and forged what’s become a growing connection between two contaminated towns separated by 600 miles and four decades. Marilyn deepens that bond this week by traveling to the Ohio/Pennsylvania border and telling her story to those wrestling with fears and frustrations she and her community wrestled with years ago. She’s scheduled to speak at two events: one in Ohio and another in Homestead.
Marilyn was always a worker, and at age 87 remains so. In late March she spent a day setting up chairs and preparing for an upcoming memorial service at the Eureka funeral home that employs her. She worked more than 12 hours. The next day she awoke weary and occasionally coughing. Still, she took time to once again immerse herself in the past.
She walked slowly to a bedroom in her home and opened a cardboard box. Inside were documents and manuscripts and framed pictures and out-of-print books impossible to find these days. Marilyn pulled them out one by one and once again unspooled the often difficult moments that shaped her life and thus the arch of the Times Beach story.
* * *
Cancer took its sweet time killing Helen Stoff. For nearly 10 years the disease tortured her as it crept through her body. You can see her pain in a picture shot sometime in the late 1940s. Helen presses her hands against her lower abdomen, a pose that helped her deal with the agony. By 1952 she was confined to bed, where she lay flat on her back. Three times each week a visiting nurse arrived at the Stoff home in Valley Park, Missouri, and stuck a needle in Helen’s hip, a shot to help dull the pain. Helen was 49 years old and mother to 10 children. Her 14-year-old daughter, Marilyn, provided most of Helen’s care. Marilyn cooked potato soup, her mother’s favorite, and made sure Helen always had something to drink.
October approached; green leaves turned orange, red and yellow. Helen’s end grew near. Her husband, John Stoff, a barber and a good Catholic, offered a bargain God: spare Helen from suffering in her final days, and John would send a daughter off to a convent to begin a life of service as a nun.
Death arrived Oct. 24, 1952. The Stoffs had no family pictures, so the owner of the funeral home propped up Helen’s body in the open casket while the 10 children and John gathered around. A photographer captured a moment saturated with grief.
A few months later, Marilyn entered the motherhouse of School Sisters of Notre Dame in St. Louis. The massive convent cast a giant shadow over her life. She awoke every morning at 5, attended Mass and basic high school classes, she swept floors, cleaned laundry, learned to square dance. For more than two years she continued on a path to fulfill her father’s wishes. Then her older sister, Catherine, married, and it all came to an end. The marriage meant Catherine could no longer help John care for the three youngest Stoff boys. Marilyn returned to Valley Park to take her sister’s place. The move shattered John’s dream of seeing his daughter in a habit and thus fulfilling his promise to God.
Marilyn finished her education at a Catholic high school in nearby Glendale, Missouri, and after graduation went to work as a telephone operator, a job that earned her $45 each month. She made extra money as a part-time waitress at a restaurant called the Coffee Pot, where one day in 1956 she met a young man named Jerry Akers. Jerry was on a two-week leave from the U.S. Marine Corps. Marilyn thought he looked handsome in his uniform. Plus, he liked the chili Marilyn served him.
Jerry became Marilyn’s first boyfriend. The couple dated for two weeks. Before heading to Camp Pendleton in California, Jerry proposed, and Marilyn accepted. Jerry sent a ring in the mail. A few months later, Marilyn hopped on a California-bound bus with Jerry’s mother, Lena. It was time to tie the knot. Lena especially looked forward to the wedding.
Plans changed abruptly shortly after they arrived in the Golden State. Jerry told Marilyn they should elope with another couple he’d befriended. The four of them drove to Tijuana, Mexico, where each couple paid a man $50 to perform a wedding ceremony. Jerry’s mother learned of the quick marriage a few days later. The news broke her heart. She returned to Missouri alone and Marilyn stayed in California to live as Jerry’s wife.
The couple’s bliss proved short-lived. A Marine chaplain informed Jerry his Mexican wedding wasn’t legally binding; therefore, Jerry didn’t qualify for an increased housing allowance. He and Marilyn were now in a jam. They struggled to pay bills. Jerry and a few friends came up with an idea. They’d rob a sailor.
Marilyn knew nothing about it. One day she looked out a window of her apartment and saw police searching her trash can. They found the sailor’s wallet and ID. Jerry went to jail for 10 months, and Marilyn, four months pregnant, returned to Missouri and moved in with her in-laws, then living in a tiny home in Times Beach. She looked out the window of her bedroom, saw a bunch of ramshackle homes built in the 1920s and thought, “This is the most godforsaken place I’ve ever seen.”
* * *
It’s difficult, all these years later, to get a sense of Times Beach. Old maps show it as a fan-shaped town splayed out along a bend in the Meramec River, 30 miles southwest of St. Louis. The St. Louis Times newspaper founded the town in 1925 as an advertising stunt. A six-month subscription, plus $67.50, bought a plot of land in what was billed as a summer resort. The Great Depression ended the weekend parties. Times Beach evolved into a working-class community.
The Beach, as its approximately 2,000 residents called it, became a place of modest homes, mostly one-story structures clad in aluminum siding, and three trailer parks. The men worked in nearby auto factories or as mechanics or truck drivers or in construction. Some of the women were stay-at-home moms; others worked in office jobs or maybe as waitresses. Service industry gigs. Retirees loved the town. Life there had an easygoing pace. You could walk a few blocks to the Meramec River and fish or watch deer stepping from the woods for a drink. Eagles sometimes swooped down from a bluff across the river.
Even folks who lived there, however, admit Times Beach wasn’t much to look at. It had a reputation as a poor, run-down place famous for its junk cars. “A junked car was something that everyone seemed to love,” said one former alderman. People in wealthier communities such as Eureka tended to look down on Times Beach residents, whom they called “river rats.” Marilyn felt the weight of the town’s reputation. When people asked her where she lived, she’d reply, “right outside of Eureka.” She wouldn’t mention Times Beach.
* * *
In 1958, Marilyn gave birth to a son she named Scott. Jerry returned to Missouri a few months later, and he and Marilyn bought a small house on Blakey Street, on the southern edge of Times Beach. Marilyn’s father pitched in a few thousand dollars to help replace the furnace, clad the home in aluminum siding and lay white ceramic tile on the kitchen floor. Marilyn painted the exterior green.
John Stoff wanted his grandson to be baptized in a Catholic church. Marilyn knew this wouldn’t go over well with Jerry. Like his parents, Jerry despised the Catholic church. Marilyn was in a jam. She wanted to please her father but not anger Jerry and his family. In the end, she decided a priest would baptize Scott, but her family would have to keep the news secret.
A few weeks later, Jerry arrived in a car to pick up Marilyn at work. She was then packing shoes at the Brown Shoe Co. in Pacific, Missouri. Jerry had brought baby Scott along for the ride. Marilyn could tell her husband was drunk. He also was furious.
With his family in the car, Jerry pressed his foot on the accelerator and the vehicle roared ahead. Jerry told Marilyn he knew Scott had received a Catholic baptism. As revenge, Jerry said, he was going to crash the car into a telephone pole and kill all three of them. Terrified, Marilyn pleaded with him. She lied and insisted Scott had not been baptized. Her words calmed Jerry. She and Scott survived the night.
Marilyn decided to join the Times Beach Bible Church. She wanted to please her husband and in-laws, who were members. Marilyn threw herself into church life. She taught Sunday school and worked as the church secretary. Jerry never attended but wanted his wife there.
All the while, Marilyn and Jerry kept their own secret. No one knew their marriage was bogus. Marilyn begged Jerry several times for a proper wedding. Jerry wouldn’t do it. He figured the news that he and Marilyn had lived together all this time without a marriage license would crush his parents.
Years passed. The couple’s family grew to include three daughters. LaDonna arrived in 1959, Tammy in 1961 and Jerilyn in 1963. Family life didn’t sit well with Jerry. He drank heavily and became abusive. Sometimes he’d disappear. In 1969 he was gone for three weeks. Marilyn and her father-in-law searched but couldn’t find him. Finally, on a Saturday morning, Jerry appeared at the front door on Blakey Street. The children were watching cartoons on TV.
“Well, you finally figured out where you lived,” Marilyn said.
Jerry lunged at her. LaDonna tried defending her mother, as did son Scott. Jerry backed off, threw his hands in the air and said, “I can see I’m not wanted here.” Then he stormed out of the house.
Still, the union endured another two years. A tipping point arrived in 1971. Marilyn returned home early from work one day to see a Lincoln parked in her front yard. That was odd, Marilyn thought. She reached to open the back door of her house, but the storm door was locked. Again, Marilyn was puzzled. The back door was never locked. She climbed into the living room through a window and heard muffled voices. Marilyn figured one of her children must have left a radio turned on. She walked to the back of the house and opened a bedroom door and saw Jerry in bed with another woman.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jerry yelled at Marilyn. The woman on top of him looked at Marilyn and demanded, “Who are you?”
“I’m just his wife,” Marilyn replied.
Marilyn closed the door. She wanted to get out of the house. Jerry came running after her. He was now crying, pleading with her not to leave. Then the woman came roaring out of the room. She attacked Jerry. “Get out of here,” Jerry yelled at Marilyn. “I don’t want you mixed up in this.” Marilyn headed for the door, but before she could escape the woman pounced on her.
Bleeding from a bite wound on her thumb and with chunks of her hair yanked out, Marilyn fled the house and ran across the street, where a neighbor was working in his garden. Marilyn could hear Jerry screaming inside the house while the woman attacked him with a steak knife. “Can I use your phone?” Marilyn asked. “I need to call 911.”
County police showed up and took the raging woman into custody. She kicked the windshield out of a county police car, so officers placed her in the back seat of another vehicle. She broke out the side windows of that car.
When her children arrived home from school, Marilyn took them to her in-laws’ house. She didn’t want the kids to see their father’s blood splattered in the Blakey Street home. The woman’s Lincoln remained in Marilyn’s yard for a week. Son Scott smashed the headlights with a baseball bat.
Marilyn told Jerry to leave. Because they were never legally married, the couple didn’t need a divorce. Marilyn was on her own with her children.
* * *
Marilyn’s view of her town changed as the years passed. To her, Times Beach became more than a collection of ramshackle houses. She developed friendships and grew to love the people in the community. She saw residents sprucing up their properties and planting gardens. To her it was looking more like a middle-class town.
Still, life there came with challenges. In dry months, for example, dust rose from the town’s unpaved roads and dirt lots. Fine particles of airborne dirt covered cars and seeped into houses, settling on furniture and floors and clothes. In August 1971, while her relationship with Jerry lurched toward its end, Marilyn teamed up with her neighbors to do something about all of that dust.
They pooled their money and paid local oil hauler Russell Bliss $50 to spray a barrel of waste oil on dirt areas around their houses. This was a common practice in the region. Bliss sprayed oil to control dust at horse arenas, trailer parks and other private property.
Bliss’ business included picking up used crankcase oil from gas stations, garages, trucking companies, taxi firms and airports. He sold most of the oil to refineries for reprocessing, but some he stored in tanks on his property about 12 miles north of Times Beach. Sludge settled at the bottom of those tanks, the sludge he sold as a dust suppressant.
A few months before spraying Marilyn’s property in Times Beach, Bliss got a call from Judy Piatt, the owner of Shenandoah Stables, a horse arena in Moscow Mills, about 50 miles north of Times Beach. She and her partner had scheduled a horse show in late May, and they did not want dust to be an issue. Dust made breathing difficult for horses. Piatt hired Bliss to spray the arena in late May 1971.
Problems emerged within days. Bodies of dead birds littered the arena floor. Piatt’s family dog became sick and died. Then a dozen stable cats fell ill. Piatt watched as one staggered up the driveway, its head swollen to twice its normal size, its body oozing a yellow liquid. Howling, the cat staggered beneath a porch and gasped loudly until it died. Piatt wrote in her book “Killing Horses” that it was like watching a scene in a horror movie. Over the next two weeks, the wails of distressed cats grew so loud Piatt turned up a radio at night to drown out the noise. She didn’t want her young children to hear the animals suffering.
Horses in Piatt’s stables got sick, too. They refused to eat, lost their hair and struggled to maintain their balance. Some developed convulsions. They’d fall and struggle to get back up. Green foam drained from horses’ nostrils. Ulcers erupted in the animals’ mouths and tongues. The illnesses puzzled veterinarians.
On Aug. 20, a favorite stallion named Louis collapsed. Louis had lost so much weight its bones showed through the skin, which had become covered in open and bleeding sores. The stallion convulsed and moaned in pain, then suddenly erupted in a burst of energy, throwing itself into the air and then crashing to the ground and breaking a leg. There Louis died.
Piatt and a friend loaded the horse’s body into a truck and drove it to a facility in Columbia, 90 miles west. Hours later, she returned home to find her sister standing at the front door with grim news. Piatt’s youngest daughter, Andrea, 6, seemed close to death. She’d been listless since June and suffered from flu-like symptoms and diarrhea. Urinating was extremely painful for her.
Andrea began hemorrhaging shortly before Piatt arrived home. The house was a bloody mess. Piatt drove Andrea to a St. Louis hospital, where doctors were able to control the bleeding. Piatt told physicians her daughter often played in the arena where so many animals had fallen ill and died. Whatever was killing those horses, physicians figured, now plagued Andrea.
Piatt suspected the oil. She confronted Bliss, but he denied his oil contained anything toxic. Piatt didn’t believe him. Determined to learn the truth, she began secretly following Bliss trucks as they made their rounds. To avoid detection, Piatt drove borrowed cars and wore disguises. She discovered that, in addition to oil, Bliss picked up waste from industrial facilities, including a chemical plant that once produced Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. That waste contained highly toxic dioxin.
Piatt’s detective work revealed that Bliss was mixing this toxic waste with oil and spraying the deadly mixture at several locations in the St. Louis area. This included Times Beach. Elected officials there in 1972 had paid Bliss $2,400 to spray streets throughout the town. Piatt put Times Beach on the list of places Bliss had contaminated and gave it to the EPA.
* * *
A few years after Marilyn’s split with Jerry, some friends stopped by her house for a visit. They brought along a friend, a truck driver named Bill Leistner. He and Marilyn got along well and began dating. In 1975, Bill and Marilyn married.
Marilyn and Bill lived in a manufactured home in a Times Beach trailer park called Easy Living. Bill seemed Jerry’s opposite. He had steady work and cared for her four children, as well as three of his children from a previous relationship. Marilyn liked to say that, while her relationship with Jerry was a disaster, her marriage to Bill was made in heaven.
Problems arose, however, with Marilyn’s children. Jerilyn began having seizures. Doctors speculated they were due to a psychosomatic reaction to a traumatic experience. LaDonna loved the outdoors, but when she’d go outside her lips and hands would swell and she’d develop hives on her body. She’d have trouble breathing, so Marilyn would put her in a car, roll down the windows and drive up and down a nearby highway until LaDonna could breathe more easily. She ended up in a St. Louis hospital for several weeks. Doctors suspected an allergy to dust found on bird feathers.
Tammy’s blood pressure shot up to dangerous levels and her pulse rate reached 122 beats per minute. Doctors diagnosed her with a thyroid condition. Tammy spent five weeks in a hospital while doctors tried to manage her health.
Marilyn had her own health problems. In 1980, she began experiencing excessive periods. They lasted for weeks and sometimes kept her home from work. She developed endometriosis. Doctors performed a hysterectomy and removed seven tumors from her body.
People throughout Times Beach were getting sick. Children who lived across the street from Marilyn developed bleeding and urinary tract problems. One developed leukemia. A 13-year-old girl was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Illness and tragedy haunted Linda and Lewis Biermann after the couple moved to Times Beach in 1975. Linda became pregnant a few years later but suffered a miscarriage. Another pregnancy followed in 1979. Linda gave birth to daughter Melissa, who died at 3 months of neuroblastoma, a rare cancer.
Doctors told her neuroblastoma was extremely rare — it strikes about 800 children in the U.S. each year. So the Biermanns tried again to have a family. In 1980 Linda gave birth to daughter Jessica. She, too, developed neuroblastoma. A physician told Biermann the chances of two children in the same family developing the cancer were astronomical.
* * *
For years, Times Beach residents remained ignorant of the possibility their town was poisoned. No government agency informed them. Then, in November 1982, reporter Ken Walk called Times Beach City hall. He told the city clerk the town was on a list of sites suspected of dioxin contamination. A whistleblower had leaked the list to the press. Walk, writing for a regional newspaper called the Tri-County Journal, wondered if city officials wanted to comment. Stunned, the city clerk asked, “What are you talking about?”
The Journal published its story Nov 10, 1982. In Times Beach, the news sparked memories of Bliss’ trucks and the spraying. Some residents recalled the streets turning purple and smelling like paint thinner.
One day Walk drove to Times Beach, parked at a four-way intersection in the center of town and began knocking on doors. He visited at least half a dozen homes on each street, asking residents if they’d experienced any major medical issues. Nearly every household answered yes. Residents reported liver damage, miscarriages, premature births, a skin disease called chloracne, nosebleeds. This can’t be coincidental, Walk thought.
Marilyn was then serving as an alderwoman — she’d won the seat in a 1981 election. News of a possible contamination caused her little concern. Few people had even heard of dioxin. Small towns such as Times Beach had enough problems to deal with — political infighting, arguments over flood insurance and an emergency warning system, to name a few. Plus, everyone was busy working and paying bills.
One day a furious young mother who happened to be a neighbor confronted Marilyn. The woman was furious. Her children were sick, and she knew other people in town were sick, too. She’d read the newspaper stories and suspected Bliss’ contaminated oil was the cause. She told Marilyn to wise up and do something about it.
By then the EPA was taking action. A team wearing protective gear that residents called “moon suits” arrived on Nov. 30. They’d spend the next several days collecting water and soil samples from drainage ditches, road sides, municipal wells and drainage sites. They sent those samples out for testing and told anxious residents it would take months to get results.
That wasn’t good enough for folks in Times Beach. Marilyn thought about Bliss’ trucks rolling through town and spraying all of that contaminated oil a decade earlier. Her children had playfully chased after those trucks. She remembered the mud her kids tracked onto the white tile of the Blakey Street home. She thought about the angry mother and her sick children. It was all coming together for her.
Marilyn collected $2,700 from residents and hired a private lab to test the soil and water. The results came back quickly. In early December, Marilyn received a phone call from the lab. There was a problem. Something was jamming the company’s testing device.
“Why is that happening?” Leistner asked.
“There’s only one thing that would do that,” she was told. “PCBs.”
Polychlorinated biphenyls possess toxic properties similar to dioxins and are included under the term “dioxin.” The lab determined dioxins were present, but they didn’t know at what levels, and residents couldn’t afford another test.
* * *
Things were about to get much worse for residents of Times Beach. While the EPA team continued to collect samples, heavy rains began soaking southeastern Missouri. By Dec. 4, four days after the arrival of the EPA team, officials warned Times Beach residents the rising Meramec could inundate the town. Few heeded warnings to evacuate.
The flood arrived with shocking speed the next day. At times the water rose by as much as 4 feet an hour. Marilyn and Bill were among those who had remained in town. Now they were rushing to stash their most valued belongings as high as possible in their home while keeping a wary eye on the muddy water as it crept closer and closer.
When the water rose to the level of the house, Marilyn and Bill and daughter Jerilyn stepped in a small fishing boat Bill had tied to the front porch. The three began a perilous journey up flooded Maple Street. The swift current carried debris, some of it hidden below the surface, and at one point the propeller of Bill’s motor struck a wood pallet, damaging the engine’s gearing. Now the motor would function only in reverse. Marilyn, Bill and Jerilyn slowly made their way backward through town.
A woman standing on a porch called for help. Bill backed the boat into position for a rescue. Marilyn saw a propane tank bubbling nearby. She feared a spark would cause an explosion. The woman slipped while stepping into the boat and tumbled into the turbulent water. Bill and Marilyn hauled her in and motored to the highway, then tied the boat to a Times Beach sign. Marilyn looked out over the town and saw little but rooftops.
Water receded after a few days, revealing a town devastated. Residents returned to find clothing hanging from tree limbs and bodies of dead possums and raccoons tangled up in chain-link fences. People entering their homes stepped into inches of stinking mud that covered the flooring. Rooms were a riot of upended furniture. People began a grim cleanup.
Beleaguered residents got more bad news two days before Christmas when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that preliminary tests showed dangerous levels of dioxin in the samples taken before the flood. The agency recommended nonemergency cleanup cease. Any cleanup deemed necessary should be done only by people wearing full protective gear and who had notified authorities. In addition there was this: The CDC said residents should not move back into the area.
The news didn’t go over well with acting Mayor Sidney Hammer. “The only way my family and I are leaving is if they carry us out forcibly,” he said. He wasn’t alone. The town quickly split. Some residents, concerned about contamination, wanted out. Others were determined to stay.
Over the next few weeks, hundreds of people attended public meetings at a school in nearby Eureka. Residents had questions, and they didn’t like the tentative answers offered by government officials. Folks in town were traumatized. A historic flood had driven them from their homes, they were living in temporary housing, uncertain of their futures, trying to manage work and family obligations. And what about this thing called dioxin? Some news stories called it the world’s most toxic compound. Was it sickening the people of Times Beach?
During one tense exchange, a neighbor slapped Marilyn. An attorney urged Marilyn to sue the woman, but Marilyn said no. She understood residents’ concerns, yet she had no idea what to say to them. She couldn’t send them to doctors for answers. All the doctors seemed to say the same thing: They didn’t know what was causing the illnesses in Times Beach.
When the EPA announced yet more testing, residents lashed out. The agency functioned with a seeming indifference to the stresses crushing the people of Times Beach. Residents felt like pariahs. Dry cleaning operations refused to accept their business, and restaurants wouldn’t accept their checks. Some outsiders even refused to shake the outreached hands offered by folks from Times Beach. Everyone feared contamination. Teachers separated Times Beach children from others. Residents driving through nearby towns saw signs reading, “Times Beach people go back, we don’t want you.”
Under pressure to make a decision about the future of Times Beach, EPA administrator Anne Burford traveled to a Eureka Holiday Inn on a balmy Monday, Feb. 22, 1983, to make what she called an important announcement. News leaked that federal and state officials were going to buy out Times Beach homeowners and businesses. About 200 residents showed up but were locked out of the room where Burford held a news conference. They watched behind glass doors, listening closely to an audio system set up so they could hear Burford.
When she officially announced the buyout, cheers arose from the crowd. Even Hammer, the acting mayor who said he’d never leave, was on board. He’d had a change of heart. He’d move out “just as quick as possible,” he said. But he acknowledged the pain of many longtime residents who’d soon be watching the disappearance of a town they loved. That included his parents, who lived with him.
“I’m going to see them in just a few minutes,” he told reporter Ken Walk after the announcement. “And I’d imagine we’re all going to have a crying spree.”
* * *
Marilyn and Bill moved temporarily to a condominium in nearby Pacific, Missouri. By then a series of resignations, including that of Hammer, resulted in Marilyn serving as acting mayor. With an election coming up, people asked her to run for the office. Marilyn didn’t want the job. She and her family were safe. She didn’t need the stress. Residents called Bill and told him they needed his wife. Would he talk to her?
Marilyn continued to resist. She and Bill argued about the job for nearly three weeks. “We should just get on with our lives,” Marilyn pleaded. One night Marilyn went for a long drive to clear her head. Crying, she returned home and told Bill she wanted a divorce.
“That’s not what you want,” Bill replied. “Let’s do this: You run for mayor and I’ll run for marshal. We’ll do it together.”
The two won the election and worked as a team. Marilyn had to quit her job as a dental assistant. It was a financially painful move because the job paid well — $18 per hour.
Marilyn paid a price for her deep involvement in the town during its moment of crisis. A small group of residents remained opposed the buyout. Some threatened Marilyn. For a while a police officer accompanied her to town meetings.
“There are days when I wish, back then, I would have gotten out of it,” she told a reporter in 1983. “I guess somebody had to do it. I felt I had so many friends there I did owe it to them.”
The town disincorporated in 1985, and then-Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft appointed Marilyn trustee for the Times Beach properties. She was a logical choice because she’d been at the forefront of efforts to solve the town’s dioxin problem from the beginning.
Marilyn spent her days in an office across the river from Times Beach. She worked with Ashcroft and the state’s attorney general to wind down the city’s affairs, pay outstanding bills and expedite the buyout process. She also monitored access to the town, now a collection of abandoned homes on lots overgrown with weeds and brush.
When former residents arrived for brief visits to their old homes, Marilyn asked them about their health issues. She wrote the names, symptoms and illnesses on a legal pad. It contains more than 1,300 handwritten entries that include fatigue, vaginal bleeding, leukemia, seizures. Nosebleeds were common. Marilyn’s were so persistent they eventually required surgery.
In the mid-1990s, workers built a temporary incinerator in a field not far from the lot where Marilyn and Bill once lived. In 1996-97, more than 250,000 tons of soil and debris that included tree stumps, carpet, brush, rocks, sawdust and gravel arrived from throughout the town and 20 other contaminated sites in eastern Missouri and were reduced to ashes. Everything else from Times Beach — the broken remnants of homes, playground equipment, stereos, Christmas trees, toothbrushes, underwear, the pews of the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church — was bulldozed, smashed and buried in a giant pit known as the “town mound.”
Once cleared, Times beach was redeveloped as Route 66 State Park. The EPA assessed the park in 2012 and concluded visitors faced no significant health risks.
* * *
Arena owner Judy Piatt, who uncovered the contamination by following Russell Bliss’ trucks, sold Shenandoah Stables in 1973 and, under instructions from the CDC, burned all of her belongings except a television set. She and her daughters were diagnosed with “chronic systemic chemical poisoning from the inhalation, skin absorption and ingestion of dioxin” and suffered from a range of disorders. Piatt died after a lengthy illness in July 2013.
Throughout his life, Bliss continued to claim he thought the waste oil he sprayed at Times Beach and other locations was harmless. For this he was mocked — bumper stickers in the 1980s proclaimed “Ignorance is Bliss.” Not everyone blamed him for the town’s dioxin woes. Some residents felt he was taking the fall for corporations who knew the dangers of dioxin and were using him to solve a waste problem. He was never held criminally liable for the contamination, although he did serve a year in prison after a 1983 conviction of federal tax fraud for overstating his business expenses. In April 2024, Bliss died in his sleep. He was 90.
Marilyn and Bill moved to a house on a hill in Eureka, a short distance from the park that was once Times Beach. Some of their old neighbors lived nearby, including the woman who’d slapped her years earlier. The two became good friends.
Bill developed prostate cancer but soldiered on until Aug. 31, 2005, when he died of a heart attack.
Marilyn occasionally drives through the park that was once her town. She can point out the location of the town’s streets — some remain as narrow trails under a canopy of trees — and identify the mobile home lot where she, Bill and Jerilyn saved themselves by stepping off a porch and into a boat during the flood of ’83.
“The Chicken Coop restaurant was over there,” she said during one recent trip. She drove past the location of the Blakey Street house, which was demolished in the early 1990s. “See that tree?” Marilyn said. “My dad put a swing in that tree for the kids.” Names came to mind. “Lorraine was my best friend until the buyout happened. She was opposed to the buyout.” Marilyn recalled illnesses, arguments, good times, odd moments and laughter as she continued her act of defiance.
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Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.