Patricia P. Hoover papers

Patricia P. Hoover was born in 1947 in The Dalles, OR, which was 125 miles from Hanford Nuclear site, where she lived until she was 6 years old. Her family relocated to Hermiston, OR in 1955, 40 miles away from Hanford, where she lived until she was was 18. Growing up, her family often fished the Columbia River and hunted wild game; deer elk, salmon, sturgeon, pheasant, duck, and geese were all part of the family's diet.

Hoover attended University of Washington and University of Hawaii before graduating from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism in 1969. She worked in the radio and television industry in both commercial and public broadcasting.

Hoover began experiencing health issues from birth. In 1958 at age 11, she became ill when her thyroid gland stopped functioning. In 1977 a large tumor and her thyroid gland were removed. In 1990, Hoover was recovering from a year-long illness and hospitalization when she watched a "Nova" program on PBS titled "The Bombs' Lethal Legacy." It was then that Hoover linked her chronic health problems with her childhood proximity to the Hanford Nuclear site near Richland, WA.

For a time she attempted to work with government efforts by serving on the Oregon Advisory Board and as a Resource Center materials reviewer for the Hanford Health Information Network (HHIN). She resigned the from the board in 1994 with four other to protest inadequate efforts by HHIN on behalf Hanford Downwinders.

Afterward, Hoover participated in many activist groups and grassroots efforts adovocating for government transparency and justice for those affected by the production of plutonium and resulting pollution at Hanford. She was involved in a Hanford lawsuit with nearly 6,000 litigants, against the companies contracted to run Hanford, including DuPont and General Electric, that took over 25 years to resolve. She attended conferences and events such as the Healing Global Wounds Conference, in 1992 which was the first radiation health conference she attended where she met others who identified as Downwinders. She went to an event where Japanese Activists visited Richland, WA to discuss the legacy of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She attended an Initiative for Social Action and Renewal in Eurasia (ISAR) event where the U.S. and former Soviet Union citizens exchanged anti-nuclear ideas and activism. She presented several times for Womens Action for New Directions (WAND; 2011, 2017, 2018).

She participated in leadership or was involved with several activist and grassroots groups. These groups are numerous but were essential in exchanging information and organizing Downwinders from across a large geographic area that incompassed the inland northwest (Washington, Oregon and Idaho). The groups Hoover participated in included:

• The Hanford Education Action League (HEAL) which was based in Spokane, WA and was very active in 1990s
• The Handford Downwinder Coalition (HDC) started by Judith Jurji and Lois Camp
• The Hanford Downwinders Health Concerns (HDHC) broke away from HDC in 1992 and led by Lois Camp
• The Northwest Radiation Health Alliance (NRHA) formed in 1993 by Hoover and Dr. Rudi Nussbaum and was active until the early 2000s
• The Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibilty (PSR) which had a Hanford working group that helped form and later collaborated with NWRHA
• Hanford Watch chaired by Paige Knight out of Portland, OR
• Hanford Challenge chaired by Tom Carpenter out of Seattle, WA
• Columbia River United (CRU) chaired by Greg deBruler out of Hood River, OR