ABSTRACT BLAZICH, FRANK ARTHUR. Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow: The North Carolina Civil Defense Agency and Fallout Shelters, 1961-1963. (Under the direction of Nancy Mitchell.) From 1961 to 1963, the administration of President John F. Kennedy attempted to create a vast network of public and private fallout shelters across the United States. The North Carolina Civil Defense Agency (NCCD) during this period focused instead on emergency preparedness. Fallout shelters were a façade, providing funding that allowed the NCCD to quietly focus its efforts on emergency preparedness. While the state managed to provide fallout shelters for only eight percent of the population, this failure was not as damning as most scholars have assumed. In fact, the state agency used available federal funding to prepare the state for natural disasters and isolated, minor emergencies. State civil defense officials implemented improvements in communication networks, emergency rescue squads, and the professionalizing of fire and police departments state-wide. Citizens did not criticize the civil defense agency in North Carolina; following the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was no public backlash against the state agency. The crisis, on the contrary, validated the state’s approach to civil defense. By focusing on emergency preparedness instead of investing in fallout shelters, local civil defense agencies were able to operate in accordance with the specific demographic, geographic, and financial needs of the county residents. Most people assume that the fading yellow and black “Fallout Shelter” signs are the only residue of the civil defense program in North Carolina. In fact, the professional development of the state’s rescue squads, police and fire departments harkens back to the efforts of civil defense offices in the early 1960s. © Copyright 2008 by Frank Arthur Blazich, Jr. All Rights Reserved Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow: The North Carolina Civil Defense Agency and Fallout Shelters, 1961-1963 by Frank Arthur Blazich, Jr. A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts History Raleigh, North Carolina 2008 APPROVED BY: ___________________________ ___________________________ Joseph Caddell James Crisp ___________________________ Nancy Mitchell Chair of Advisory Committee DEDICATION To my family and friends who supported me in this endeavor, and to those who made this document necessary. ii BIOGRAPHY Frank A. Blazich, Jr. is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina. From 1996 to 2000, Blazich attended William G. Enloe High School in Raleigh. He earned a bachelor of arts in history with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004. His thesis titled “Part of Us: The Relationship between Hoffman, North Carolina and Camp Mackall, North Carolina from September 1942 to September 1945,” won the George C. Marshall Research Library and Foundation Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Paper Award in 2004. Following graduation he served for two years in the U.S. Air Force. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The seed of this thesis was planted back in 2003. While researching my undergraduate thesis, I made a mental note of the many holdings in the North Carolina Archives concerning “civil defense.” Years later in uniform, I worked as a historian in an office that once served as a vault for documents of the Strategic Air Command. In a corner of the office was a pile of fallout shelter signs that had once been posted around the corridors of the building. In June 2007 all of these memories returned to prompt me to begin researching civil defense in North Carolina, a topic that has taken me across the state. Mr. David Chiswell at the Old State Records Center for the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources has been a constant companion in my research. He helped me with my searches through the records of the North Carolina Civil Defense Agency and remained a constant ear to my discoveries and inquiries, about the untold thousands of document photographs I amassed. The staff of the North Carolina Archives, the State Library of North Carolina, and the Outer Banks History Center answered all search requests promptly with the utmost professionalism. The archivists at the Southern Historical Collection and North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University helped me with the records of Senators Sam J. Ervin, Jr. and Benjamin E. Jordan. Thanks go out to Ruth Sheehan of The News and Observer for generously mentioning my research in one of her weekly columns. Without her article, the oral interviews in this thesis would have not happened. From across North Carolina, the United States, and even far iv off in Europe I received emails from citizens telling their stories and willing to let me interview them. I traveled from western North Carolina to the Outer Banks to talk about civil defense, fallout shelters, emergency preparedness, and life during the Cold War. I am forever grateful to all of the interviewees for the hospitality, warmth, and generosity. I hope my work does justice to the men and women I interviewed. This is their story. Professors Joseph Caddell, James Crisp, Craig Friend, Joseph Hobbs, and Carolyn Pumphrey provided intellectual and philosophical perspective on this research project. Their input redirected my research to new source material, corrected gaps in the logic, and listened to the troubles, tribulations, and discoveries of the author. My family and friends deserve a huge thank you. I received tremendous input on the countless chapter drafts, ideas, and hours upon hours of conversations about civil defense, fallout shelters, nuclear warfare, and North Carolina. My immediate family endured more than their share of my musings about civil defense. To Mom, Dad, Joan, I thank you for seeing me through with this. A big thank you goes out to Tom and Sharon Reilly and Marcia and Joseph Caddell. Without their guidance and mentorship through an extremely difficult time in my life, I doubt I would have been able to write this history or see the sun rise another morning. I am forever in their debt for the help they have given me in life. Last but certainly not least in the slightest, I wish to thank my adviser, mentor, and master editor Dr. Nancy Mitchell. She agreed to serve as my adviser after I described my preliminary work with her in September 2007. Since then she has remained the one constant with this project, always positive, optimistic, and unwavering in encouraging me to continue v analyzing what all the puzzle pieces meant. Her editorial commentary and recommendations have been invaluable and helped me uncover a new perspective on how to research and write. No simple thank you is enough for what she has helped me achieve, but I know I would never hesitate for a second to work with her again given the opportunity. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………….. viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………………xi INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………... 1 CHAPTER 1: New Funding, New Visions Kennedy, North Carolina, and Civil Defense Plans, 1961 ……………………………….. 12 CHAPTER 2: Survey and Access The National Fallout Shelter Survey across North Carolina, 1962 ………………………. 58 CHAPTER 3: Accelerated Action NCCD and the Cuban Missile Crisis, October – December 1962 ……………………….. 95 CHAPTER 4: At the Brink of Success The Shelter Incentive Program, 1963 …………………………………………...………141 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………178 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………184 vii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1.1 Fallout shelter supplies in basement of the Executive Mansion, Raleigh, NC, 23 October 1959 …………………………………….…………55 FIGURE 1.2 Major General Edward F. Griffin, Director, North Carolina Civil Defense Agency, 1954-1967 …………………………………………………56 FIGURE 1.3 Map of North Carolina Civil Defense Agency Civil Defense Areas …...……57 FIGURE 2.1 Distribution of fallout by wind following a massive nuclear attack …………92 FIGURE 2.2 Urban versus rural fallout shelters and “Gun Thy Neighbor” ………………. 93 FIGURE 2.3 Fallout shelter sign placed as part of the National Fallout Shelter Survey on the building that houses the NC Archives and State Library of North Carolina ……………………………………………………………. 94 FIGURE 3.1 Civil Defense’s appeals for action finally were answered during the Cuban Missile Crisis ……………………………………………………….. 138 FIGURE 3.2 The Lee County Civil Defense Rescue Squad, circa 1962-1963 ………...…139 FIGURE 3.3 NFSS Map of NC with Percentages of Acceptable Fallout Shelter Spaces per County as of 15 February 1963 ………………………...………140 FIGURE 4.1 Sign post by the Elizabeth City – Pasquotank County Civil Defense Agency to promote home fallout shelters ………………………………….. 175 FIGURE 4.2 Map of Potential Targets in North Carolina, 1 June 1963 …………………. 176 FIGURE 4.3 Photographs of the entrance and lobby of Dr. Page’s Underground Motor Apartment / Fallout Shelter as it exists today in Yanceyville, NC ……………………………………………………………. 177 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AEC – Atomic Energy Commission BEJP – Benjamin Everett Jordan Papers CD – Civil Defense CONELRAD – Control of Electromagnetic Radiation DEFCON – Defense Readiness Condition DoD – Department of Defense EMS – Emergency Medical Services FCDA – Federal Civil Defense Administration FEMA – Federal Emergency Management Agency FOSDIC – Film Optical Sensing Device for Input to Computers GPO – Government Printing Office GTSP – Governor