A Cancer Lurking in Streator is Killing the Most Beloved of Us

A Cancer Lurking in Streator is Killing the Most Beloved of Us

At first we were five:  Billie Arbogast, Billie Cox, Mark Ganzer, Robin Watson, and Greg Williams.

Kindergarten and first grade were the best - we played sun up 'til sun down in the summer, and just loved being in school together, then Billie Arbogast moved away, and it was down to four.  A part of us had departed, and, at some intuitive level we could sense it, but four boys, braving the wilds bounded by Greeley School to the North, Kleaver's Grocery store to the South, along Everett Street, had plenty enough to keep them from getting philosophical, or looking too deeply into the meaning of being a part of.

We played basketball almost year round.  Two on two, or we'd go to the grade school out east, over the bridge across the wide swath of railroad tracks and play teams - the four of us together.  Softball in the summer time - four was plenty for a team - pitcher, shortstop, two outfielders.  If need be, we could substitute a runner.

We'd even watch a little TV.  The American Basketball Association had just formed, and they were exciting!  They dunked!!  They shot three-pointers!!!  They had a red-white-and-blue patriotic basketball, but, mostly we played, ran, and rode our bikes, all over the North side of town, up and down, and down and up, and back again; exploring the streets, and the bridges over the stream that run past the glass factory where we'd find floating six packs of empty cans of beer.

Greg Williams bet me I wouldn't last a month when I got my paper route.  I lasted four plus years 'til we moved.

Billie Cox, so handsome, the tallest one of us, the one we all wanted to be best friends with.

Billie Cox is dead now too.  Didn't make it past '95.  There is something toxic in that little farming community that formed and shaped me.  It might be from the coal mines, it might be from the glass factories, it might be from the DDT, but it certainly kills those whose immune systems are not strong enough to fight off the toxins.

The lives of Streator's children, and my grade school class mates are at risk.

Oh, Billie Cox, if you have not died in vain, then we MUST uncover this killing agent and rid it from the sacred ground of our youth.