These Shining Lives Performance by Furman University Theatre Arts
The Furman University Theatre will present “These Shining Lives” by Melanie Marnich Feb. 12-15 and Feb. 20-22 at 8 p.m., with matinees at 3 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 16 and Sunday, Feb 23. All shows are performed in the Furman Playhouse on campus. Tickets are $16 general admission, $13 for seniors, and $8 for students. In the 1920s, The Radium Dial Corporation provided job opportunities for young women who might not otherwise have the chance to earn an income. The job was simple – painting glowing numbers on watch dials, but the outcome over the years was far from simple.
Mae Keane at her Middlebury, CT home, shortly before her death at age 107. Mae Keane did not care much for the job she had during the summer of 1924, painting radioactive radium onto watch dials to make them glow in the dark. Little did she know that poor job performance would save her life. Keane, 107, died Saturday at her home in Middlebury, CT. Keane's family believes she was the last of the so-called radium girls from Waterbury, CT Mae Keane’s life was saved by not doing her job well. Keane isn't quite sure what led her to work at the clock factory. The pay was $18 a week for a 40-hour work week, and 8 cents a dial. That was a good salary for a woman back then but Mae disliked the work more than she liked the paycheck. As it turned out, Keane, then 18, was not as fast as her supervisor wanted her to be. "I made 62 cents one day," Keane said 10 years ago. "That's when my boss came to me and said I better find another job." The foreman probably saved Keane's life. She worked in the dial painting room for eight to nine weeks, then transferred to another job at the company Keane and her co-workers at Waterbury Clock Co., all young women, were told they could paint faster if they dipped their brushes into the radium-laden paint and then sharpened the bristles with their lips. But the paint was bitter and Keane would not "lip-point," as the practice was known. The watch factory in Waterbury, CT Mae was a Waterbury radium girl. She was among the women dubbed the Radium Girls after the greenish radium paint used to make the watch dials glow in the dark. It later caused significant health problems for many. Though Keane worked at the clock factory just a couple of months, she lost her teeth, developed numerous skin ailments, eye problems and suffered through two bouts of cancer. Doctors could never pinpoint the exact cause of her ailments. "I don't think the bosses even knew it was poison," she said. "The foreman would tell us it was very expensive, and to be careful. We had no idea. But when they did find out, they hid it" she once said. Radium girls began to die several years after exposure. Keane recalled learning of radium's deadly affects when her co-workers from that summer began to die in 1927. Later, a friend warned her not to have a tooth pulled because her mouth would never heal. About 15 of the young dial painters in Waterbury died from radium poisoning during the 1920s and '30s. Scores of women died later after suffering for years from crumbling bones and rotted jaws. "We were young. We didn't know anything about the paint," Keane said in 2004. She eventually left Waterbury Clock — now Timex based in Middlebury — and held office jobs until her retirement. She married a Waterbury police officer, but never had children. Keane lost all of her teeth in her 30s and suffered pain in her gums until she died. She also survived breast and colon cancer. "I was one of the fortunate ones," Keane told an interviewer in 2004. The green glow of radium was deadly. We now know that radium causes cancer and damages skin and bones. Radium is a naturally occurring radioactive material used from the 1900s to the 1940s to paint glow-in-the-dark dials on clocks, watches and aircraft navigation equipment. Significant exposure can cause leukemia and anemia and has been linked to cancer of the bones, mouth and sinus cavities. About 20 Waterbury Clock factory workers, mostly women hired because of their smaller fingers, died from exposure to radium in 1927. "The girls sneaked the radium out of the factory to paint their toe nails to make them glow," Keane said. Mae Keane’s humor and laziness helped her to reach 107. Perhaps it is her sense of humor that has helped her live a long life. The only prescription medication she took was to control her blood pressure, though she was diagnosed with breast and colon cancer during her life. "The doctor wanted to give me chemotherapy," Keane said. "I told him 'no.' After five weeks of radiation, she was on the mend. In 2004, Keane and the late Josephine Lamb, another Radium Girl, were featured in a dance and video production that explored the work done by young women in clock factories. Josephine Lamb was bedridden for 50 years from the radium poisoning. She died in 1974 at the age of 79. Keane, a Red Sox fan, laughs when asked about her secret to longevity. "I'm lazy," Keane said, adding she never smoked, loved to walk and dance, and enjoys caramel candy, chocolate and an occasional apricot sour or Bailey's Irish Cream. "I didn't get old until I was 98," she once said.” That’s the key to longevity – a youthful attitude. Keane and her co-workers at Waterbury Clock Co.,were told they could paint faster if they dipped their brushes into the radium-laden paint and then sharpened the bristles with their lips. But the paint was bitter and Keane would not "lip-point," as the practice was known. Her refusal saved her life. Nancy Burban 2014 Funeral fund
Original publish date: January 2, 2015 2014 has come and gone and along with it, the passing of many notables whose time on this earth has run out. Lost among them is a woman you may …
During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws.
Part 1: Radium poisoning took the lives of perhaps thousands of female factory workers, many in Ottawa, Illinois, in the last century.She was among the…
Throughout history, women have often been treated like second class citizens. Women have had to fight for the right to be legally independent from their husbands and for the right to vote. Few cases demonstrate just how undervalued women have sometimes been than the experiences of the young women who worked with radium paint in the early 20th century. In the early 1920s, a position as a dial painter was considered excellent work for a young, working-class woman. The girls were skilled at the fine work, and the companies paid well to have the luminescent paint applied to small watch faces and instrument dials. Once girls obtained a position, they helped friends, sisters, and cousins get into the company as well. Then girls started dying. But no one took much notice. When Mollie Maggia died in Orange, New Jersey, it was attributed to syphilis. Girls sickened with a variety of symptoms: loose teeth, fatigue, tumors, joint pain, headaches, and countless other complaints. The broad array of symptoms made it easier to ignore the common cause, the radium infused paint that the girls used daily. The fact that "only" working class girls were getting sick and dying also made it easier to dismiss. Few besides the girls' families were concerned about the dangers of radium until it claimed a prominent, male victim. Sabin von Sochocky was the founder of US Radium Corporation and creator of radium paint. A young, successful doctor, he had learned about radium from the Curies who had discovered it. He was considered an expert on the substance and delivered a blow to the legal cases of the women suffering from radium poisoning when he testified in 1928 that the paint was not harmful. He denied that he had ever warned the dial painters about lip-pointing their brushes while using radium paint. However, later that year, Sabin von Sochocky himself lost his battle with radium poisoning. Even after Von Sochocky's death, companies like US Radium Corp and Radium Dial continued business as usual and did not inform their employees of the dangers of the substance they used each day. Girls continued to sicken and die, and the companies continued to deny liability. It wasn't until Eben Byers died in 1932 that the dangers of radium were made public knowledge. Byers was rich and had enthusiastically supported radium as a miracle cure-all. He drank Radithor, radium infused water, on a daily basis and recommended it to his friends. Before he died, he testified before the US Federal Trade Commission that he believed Radithor was killing him. He was right, and the Food and Drug Administration finally began an investigation into the substance that had been killing young women for at least a decade. Yet, dial painting was still going on. Companies utilizing radium paint began instituting minor changes, most significantly discouraging the practice of lip-pointing paint brushes. This did slow the progression of illness and death in dial painters but did not stop it. Use of radium paint continued until the 1970s, increasing the rates of cancers and other diseases in Orange, NJ and Ottawa, Illinois. The waste and spread of radium in these communities created Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites that have cost millions in taxpayer dollars to clean up, a process that continues to this day. The number of dial painters who died of radium poisoning is unknown due to the fact that their symptoms were often attributed to other causes, but studies of their experience helped update workers compensation laws and safety standards for dangerous substances that protect workers today. Read more about Catherine Donohue and the Ottawa, Illinois dial painters in Luminous: The Story of a Radium Girl. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Suggested reading: The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
Helmed by award-winning director Lindsay Eagle (Rocket Man, What Once We Felt), Flat Earth Theatre presents the first all-female professional production of D.W. Gregory's moving play inspired by the true story of the factory workers of the U.S. Radium Corporation. RADIUM GIRLS concludes Flat Earth's 2015 season 'Progress and Peril,' stories of scientific progress and the lives it has ruined, which also featured critically acclaimed productions of Ted Tally's TERRA NOVA in February and Aaron Sorkin's THE FARNSWORTH INVENTION in June. Scroll down for a sneak peek at the cast!
Catherine Wolfe Donohue is not a well-known name, but in the late 1930s newspapers featured her as she lay dying. She was among the women who painted luminous numbers on watch, clock, and instrument dials using radium-laced paint in factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut. Dubbed “Radium Girls” and “Living Dead,” they suffered radium …
In 1917, the harmful effects of radiation were still largely unknown, and radium was used as a glow-in-the-dark paint. The Radium Girls were watch-dial painters at the United States Radium factory in New Jersey. They were told that the paint was harmless, and so they would lick their paintbrushes to give them a fine point, which over time caused fatal radiation poisoning, anaemia, and horrific necrosis of the jaw.
Sisters Albina Maggia Larice, Amelie Mollie Maggia and Quinta Maggia Mcdonald , Edna Bolz Hussman, Eleanor Ella Eckert, Genevieve Smith and her sister Josephine Smith, Grace Fryer, Hazel Vincent Kuser…
The factory girls were told the radium they were ingesting was safe, but it turned out to be their demise.
One of the last of the so-called Radium Girls passed away at the age of 107 in late 2014. These were women working in factories tasked with painting the numerals and other markings on watch dials with a luminous paint comprising glue, water, and radium powder. Little did they know the consequences this job would have.
During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws.
During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws.
EXCLUSIVE: Kate Moore from Northampton has told the personal stories of US factory workers who died horrifically painful deaths from radium poisoning for the first time in her book, Radium Girls.
Radical movements often espouse the most conservative of values. Dada claimed it was radical, anti-bourgeoise, and anti-capitalist in its aesthetics. But two of its key members (George Grosz and John Heartfield) refused to include any women (or their work) in the movement. Women, they said, were there to make the sandwiches, pour the beer, and … Continue reading "Hannah Höch, The Artist Who Wanted ‘to show the world today as an ant sees it and tomorrow as the moon sees it’"
Clipping found in Decatur Herald published in Decatur, Illinois on 5/21/1928. face death - Radium Girls
The Radium Girls were so contaminated that if you stood over their graves today with a Geiger counter, the radiation levels would still cause the needles to jump more than 80 years later. They were small-town girls from New Jersey who had been hired by a local factory to paint the clock faces of lum
Catherine Wolfe Donohue is not a well-known name, but in the late 1930s newspapers featured her as she lay dying. She was among the women who painted luminous numbers on watch, clock, and instrument dials using radium-laced paint in factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut. Dubbed “Radium Girls” and “Living Dead,” they suffered radium …
In 1917, glow-in-the-dark watches were all the rage. But the girls who painted them with radioactive paint weren’t told how dangerous it was.
The Skidmore College Theater Department is kicking off their Spring 2020 season with Radium Girls , opening this Friday.
“I immediately connected with Grace’s story. She was an incredible, intelligent young woman who dedicated what time she had left to making sure what happened to her wouldn’t happen to a…
The Radium Girls were so contaminated that if you stood over their graves today with a Geiger counter, the radiation levels would still cause the needles to jump more than 80 years later. They were small-town girls from New Jersey who had been hired by a local factory to paint the clock faces of luminous watches, the latest new…
Catherine Wolfe Donohue is not a well-known name, but in the late 1930s newspapers featured her as she lay dying. She was among the women who painted luminous numbers on watch, clock, and instrument dials using radium-laced paint in factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut. Dubbed “Radium Girls” and “Living Dead,” they suffered radium …
The factory girls were told the radium they were ingesting was safe, but it turned out to be their demise.
The factory girls were told the radium they were ingesting was safe, but it turned out to be their demise.
During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws.
Sometimes Your Knight In Shining Armor
