The eyes of the nation were on the Soviet Union, but in New York, people in Albany and Jefferson County were keeping an eye on a family in Watertown.
The Walker family.
Tensions were building in the Cold War, as all humanity feared the push of a button would set off a nuclear conflict that would annihilate civilization.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev raised the ante on Aug. 31, 1961, by ending a moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons. The next day, the Communist empire kicked off a series of tests that set off the largest "explosive yield" in history.
And there was the wall, the divider of Berlin, the symbol of the Iron Curtain separating a free world from a Communist regime. Construction on the wall began on Aug. 13 that year.
New York's governor, Nelson A. Rockefeller, had for some time been advocating the construction of public and private fallout shelters. The idea had initially drawn sneers, but now that President John F. Kennedy was saying the same thing, people were taking the proposal seriously.
The Watertown Daily Times agreed, saying in an Aug. 28, 1961, editorial:
"There is the very important survival reason for fallout shelters. There is secondarily a reason, and that is national defense. A people which knows how to survive and is prepared is a more courageous people. Presumably many of the nation's citizens believe that the United States must continue regardless of what an enemy might try to do. Presumably they also believe that there should be retaliation, but there will be no retaliation, nor will there be any survival if no one bothers to make the effort to protect himself from the destruction and aftermath of the first attack."
By the end of August, requests for information on fallout shelters from contractors, architects and individuals had more than tripled, the Jefferson County Civil Defense Office reported. Inquiries, which formerly averaged about 15 to 20 a week, increased to about 100.
Such was the environment when Gov. Rockefeller contacted a 25-year-old advertising executive living in Watertown, William D. Walker, to ask him and his wife, Patricia, to spend a trial week in a fallout shelter. They would be taking their 3-year-old son, David, with them.
"Since I had been involved with civil defense, and I had (previously) met with the governor, he contacted me and asked us to do it," said Mr. Walker, now of Myerstown, Pa.
The governor met with him in Watertown.
"He wanted to pump it up a bit. I had an appreciation for the country's situation, and for what would happen if we had to go into fallout shelters," Mr. Walker said.
Both graduates of Watertown High School, class of 1955, the Walkers had been married four years when the governor asked that they spend a week in a fallout shelter, without reimbursement. State and local civil defense officials wanted to assess how a family, especially with a small child, would endure the confinement and the separation from society.
The announcement came on Sept. 25, 1961. The family, who lived at 220 Clinton St., would spend a week in a shelter constructed that summer by Parkhaven Realty Inc. in a new house at 1114 Harris Drive owned by Rupert Wager and John B. Harris Jr.
"You're a fine example to the rest of the country," Gov. Rockefeller said at the time of the announcement.
Henry J. Fikes, director of Jefferson County civil defense, said the family would be supplied with food, water, a telephone for emergency use only, a television and a radio.
"We want to bring out the fact that people can live safely and under fairly normal conditions for a period of time in a properly constructed fallout shelter," Mr. Fikes said.
George A. Bonadio, who was identified as project chairman, added that the experiment would provide answers to questions that "all of us who have children may have to ask ... in due time."
Mr. and Mrs. Walker followed civil defense suggestions in stocking up on canned fruit juices, vegetables and meats, nonfat dry evaporated milk, preserves, beverages, crackers, sweets and salt.
Their home for the week was a 10-by-16-foot room partitioned off from the rest of the basement by a concrete wall. The windowless room was entered through a passageway with a door at either end. The structure included an L-shaped baffle equipped with a chemical toilet. Air was fed into the shelter by a fan or a pump at the top of the structure. The shelter would be under 24-hour surveillance to keep out visitors and to ensure the authenticity of the project.
Except for daily progress reports by telephone, there was to be no contact from the outside, officials said. The couple would be keeping a day-to-day log of their experience and measuring the amount of power they used.
Gov. Rockefeller would be receiving those daily reports.
Thursday, Oct. 5, 1961, was a pleasant autumn day, with the temperature reaching 62 degrees. It was opening day of the World Series in Cincinnati, with the Yankees, fresh off Roger Maris's record-breaking 61-homer season, taking on the Reds.
Bill Walker was a baseball fan, but he was not for the Bronx Bombers. He was a man without a team.
"I was a former Dodgers fan who was lamenting their move from Brooklyn" back in 1957, he said.
So he wasn't overly concerned about missing out on the Series. A week later, he would tell reporters that "little things like preparing the menu ... were of greater concern than anything so big as the World Series."
According to plan, the Walkers were with dignitaries at the Hotel Woodruff when the alert was given to take shelter. A motorcade, including cars transporting Mr. Fikes, Watertown Mayor William G. Lachenauer and other city and civil defense officials, left the hotel en route to Harris Drive.
At 5 p.m., husband, wife and child stepped into the room that would be their home for a week.
"I have a lot of reading to catch up on," Mr. Walker said, "and Pat is planning to knit me a sleeping bag."
David will have games to play, he added.
After the door closed, they were subjected to a 4 1/2-hour blackout, the first of two or three planned for the family's trial.
Mr. Bonadio said the power would be cut off during a meal for an indefinite period, forcing the Walkers to go through the meal time without heat or electricity. They would use flame heat and batteries or candles for light, Mr. Bonadio said.
The first report from seclusion was made about 36 hours later. After getting off the phone with Mr. Walker, his boss, William C. Hartman, reported that the parents' biggest problem was keeping David amused. But they were doing exercises twice a day, the duration depending on how they were feeling.
Mr. Fikes said he was working on a simulated radiation schedule to identify periods when it would be "safe" to allow the family to leave the shelter for short time periods in the basement area for exercise. The periods would last only about five minutes.
But after that first day, Mr. Hartman predicted, "it will begin to get monotonous."
A different kind of fallout — not simulated — was developing, both inside and outside the shelter, as the project entered Day 3.
On the inside, "there were two or three times during the week that I thought we wouldn't make it," Mr. Walker recalled. "David was great, but his mother was upset with me for getting us into the thing. One time I talked her out of walking out."
On the outside, there was a bit of politics.
"The project is too important to be jeopardized by political or commercial gain," said Mr. Hartman on Oct. 7, as he explained why Mr. Bonadio had been abruptly ousted as chairman.
Mr. Bonadio was a candidate for City Council.
Apparently Mr. Hartman and Mr. Fikes had thought that the other had named the council candidate as project chairman.
"I did not learn that he was apparently self-appointed until about 1 Friday morning," Mr. Hartman said.
Mr. Bonadio had been issuing press releases and performing other functions as chairman, but had ignored the county civil defense office in connection with the shelter program, the Times reported.
The report of his dismissal was a "distortion of facts," Mr. Bonadio replied.
"The assigned duties were completed to the satisfaction of my appointee, William Walker, at 7 p.m. Thursday," he said. "Forty-three hours later, with Mr. Walker inside the shelter, a distortion of the facts was published. The story said that I was being removed from an assignment, which had already been completed."
Day 4 of the experiment, dubbed by Mr. Fikes as "Operation Information," found the family experiencing a "much more monotonous" stay, as Mr. Hartman predicted. And with little David running a fever, his parents were reported to be "on edge."
The World Series ended that day, with the Yankees winning in five games.
"We had the phone line, and the security people were giving me the scores," Mr. Walker said. Nineteen auxiliary policemen, all with regular jobs, acted as guards.
According to the arrangements made for the project, the guards should not have been on the phone with the family.
A day later, on Oct. 10, as the family approached the 120th hour of seclusion, the child was said to be "feeling much better." The guards said they could hear David running around the basement during the family exercise period.
Mr. Walker, who was awakened by a 9 a.m. phone call, reported he was "bored stiff." Food and water supplies were "holding out good," he told his caller.
Meanwhile, there was some actual fallout in the air, somewhere over Earth. A news report on Oct. 10 quoted a physicist's concern that fallout from the Soviet Union's nuclear tests had exceeded the "safe annual limit."
"They have sent up over 10 megatons of weapons," the scientist said, asserting that "this in my opinion exceeds the safe level that a number of scientists, some of them from the Atomic Energy Commission, agreed upon as a safe level back in 1957."
Wednesday, Oct. 11, was bringing anxiety. The following afternoon, the ordeal was to conclude.
Mr. Walker asked to have his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Walker, 1220 Huntington St., and his wife's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Carl R. Harter, Massey Street Road, and the Rev. Lloyd W. Clarke, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, on hand for their liberation.
Still ahead for them, however, was another blackout, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12. Shortly after their lighting was restored, Dr. Vincent J. Battista, county medical officer, became the first person to join them in the shelter. He was there to examine them as he had before the project began. He later reported they were in very good condition, and David "is better than when he went in."
At 4 p.m., after 167 hours of sheltered life, the three emerged.
Donning sunglasses as they got their first breaths of fresh air on a bright 67-degree afternoon, they were greeted by an applauding crowd of about 100, including relatives, the rector, Mr. Fikes and Gen. John Jackson, area representative of the state civil defense commission.
David was "a little cross," the Times reported, and all three looked drawn — and perhaps a bit thinner, a woman in the crowd suggested.
"It's my cooking," Mrs. Walker quipped.
Reporters were allowed to inspect the shelter after it was vacated. They found it to be clean, but the air was described as "musty."
Shelves were still lined with canned food and cases of gallon jugs filled with water. Furnishings included a bed, a card table and two portable chairs. There were stacks of magazines and a gas lantern.
The shelter was then sealed off until its contents and the data accumulated during the stay could be analyzed by civil defense authorities.
A police escort took the Walkers to the Woodruff, where a suite and a hot meal awaited them.
During a press conference, they said they had watched very little television, but listened to the radio, with particular interest in what kind of weather they were missing.
"If necessary we could have spent another week in the shelter without undue discomfort," Mr. Walker told reporters. What they missed most, he said, was being with other people.
Forty-six years later, Mr. Walker admitted to one problem: "I smoked then, so that was a little difficult. I had to cut way down for my wife and son."
The exercise sessions in the basement gave him opportunities to have a quick smoke.
The marriage of William and Patricia Walker ended in divorce about a year later. Both have remarried. Patricia Harter Conboy, Schoharie, declined a request for an interview.
Mr. Walker became a disc jockey for WOTT radio, left Watertown in 1968, and later did radio and television work. He retired from ABC as a producer-director and now operates an antiques business in Myerstown.
The whereabouts of David Walker were not disclosed.
New York state established standards for shelter construction and provided property tax exemption for having shelters.
Gov. Rockefeller's counterpart in New Jersey was unconvinced about the shelter-building boom.
"I think the people are kidding themselves," said Gov. Robert B. Meyner. Quoted on the same day that the Walkers exited their shelter, he continued, "I think it is a cruel deception to tell that any number of us in substantial numbers could survive in the event of an all-out nuclear attack."
Houses at 1127 and 1133 Harrison St., built a couple years after the Walker experiment, were constructed with fallout shelters. The builder, John M. Reff, who lived at 1133 Harrison St., owned a construction company.
Do you have a fallout shelter on your property? If so, we ask that you let us know to give us an idea of how many exist in the north country. And what do you use it for? Your information can be e-mailed to dshampine@wdt.net, or drop me a note at the Watertown Daily Times, 260 Washington St., Watertown, N.Y. 13601.
We thank Robert M. Wilson for introducing us to his shelter at 1127 Harrison St. Timothy J. Abel, director of the Jefferson County Historical Society, assisted with photo reproduction.
