Victims of toxic Camp Lejeune water are holding meet-ups

[unhappycamper]

Victims of toxic Camp Lejeune water are holding meet-ups
By Barbara Barrett | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2010

ROANOKE, Va. — Advocates pushing for answers about water contamination at Marines Base Camp Lejeune, N.C., have taken their documents on the road.

Mike Partain, a male breast cancer survivor from Florida, and Jerry Ensminger, a retired master sergeant in White Lake, N.C., whose daughter died in 1985 of childhood leukemia, have held three informational gatherings in the Southeast in recent months.

The men want to bring together Marine veterans and their family members who might have been exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejeune from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s.

"Our biggest problem is we don't know who each other are," Partain said this past weekend to listeners at a meeting in Roanoke, Va. "We've got to network out."

The next meeting is scheduled for this Saturday in Virginia Beach, Va., from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Another is scheduled for July 31 in Charlotte, though the venue hasn't been set yet.