Atomic Ed Died This Week

You could say Ed Grothus was a man of many stories. Whether you agreed with him or not, the Los Alamos anti-nuclear activist and owner of the Black Hole was a likable guy who was always quick to use his sense of humor as a way of engaging those around him, community members said.

Grothus died Tuesday after a prolonged battle with colon cancer. He was 85. "I only met him in person once, but it was impossible not to like the guy," said Frank Young, who runs a popular blog about Los Alamos National Laboratory called lanl-the-rest-of-the-story.blogspot.com. Young stopped by Grothus' store a few years ago, and was treated to a warm welcome and in-depth tour of the Black Hole, which resells computers, lab equipment and other old junk no longer used at LANL, he said.

One of the things that struck him right away was Grothus' sense of humor, Young said. "You had to meet him to realize he wasn't serious," Young said. "He talked about holding 'critical Mass' at the church." Grothus was also a bit of a notorious prankster, a habit that got him in trouble with the authorities more than once, said his daughter Barbara Grothus.

One of the more famous stories is when Grothus sent cans of "Organic Plutonium" to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, she said. Her father replaced the label on an ordinary can with a fake label for Organic Plutonium designed by a Santa Fe artist, then sent them to the White House, Grothus said. "That got the attention of the Secret Service, who came to pay him a visit," Grothus said. "When they came they called me and asked me if I would vouch for my dad."

Grothus also kept a "Top Secret" stamp in his store, which he used on various disks that he picked up at yard sales, a habit that also got him in trouble, his daughter said. "He got a little visit from the FBI for that one," Grothus said.

Although he's probably best known for his anti-nuclear musings and for running his store, Grothus also had a lengthy history in the town of Los Alamos. Grothus was born on June 28, 1923 in Clinton, Iowa. He grew up in the state and graduated from the University of Iowa, then went to work as a machinist in Los Alamos in 1949, not long after the Manhattan Project.

He worked in the lab's R-Site, where his job was to help make "better" atomic bombs, his daughter said. But by 1968, he had changed his tune and become an anti-war activist. He left the lab in 1969 because he had become so opposed to the nuclear work done there, she said. As a man who always had several projects going at once, though, Grothus was able to settle into his business, the Los Alamos Sales Company, which he formed in 1951 to buy and resell "things" — mostly surplus equipment from the lab.

That company later became known as the Black Hole because "everything went in, and not even light could get out," an obit written by the family said. Grothus also kept himself busy writing countless letters to the editor to various newspapers, and he was featured in several stories in magazines and newspapers because of his activism.

In 2006, he got a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Indigenous World Uranium Summit for his work to promote a nuclear-free future. He also was an integral part of the Los Alamos community, and somebody it was pretty much impossible not to know if you lived there, said Susan Musgrave, former president of Community Bank's Los Alamos branch. "He was a valued member of the community, always very outspoken and he never wavered in his position," Musgrave said. "You might not have agreed with him, but you always respected him."

Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, an anti-nuclear organization, said Grothus' sense of humor and history in the town helped him get his message out in a way that was not overly offensive. "It gave him a way to speak within the context of Los Alamos that would otherwise have been too tense for anybody to handle," Mello said. "Whenever I would see Ed, he'd say 'Greg, we're not reaching them all yet. How can we reach them better?' Ed was always working to get his point across."

Grothus was diagnosed with cancer several years ago, and while he did have a few surgeries to slow the progression of the disease, he never did chemotherapy or took Western medicine for the problem, his daughter said. "He didn't like doctors and he didn't want anything to do with Western medicine at all," she said. But he also wasn't one to dwell on the illness, she added.

"When he was dying he was making jokes up to the end," Grothus said. "He didn't think dying was very interesting. He thought it was boring." Grothus is survived by his wife of 57 years, Margaret, their children, Barbara Grothus, Tom Grothus, Susan Burns and Mike Grothus, and grandchildren Casey and Michelle Grothus.

Friends can visit DeVargas Funeral Home at 623 Railroad Ave. in Española from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday for an informal memorial. Following that, there will be a private interment at Guaje Pines Cemetery. A formal memorial service will be announced at a later date, the family said. Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.
***************************************************************************************************************************
I posted this two years ago when I visited him with Nancy Holt:
We visited The Black Hole in Los Alamos. This amazing collection of used war material was collected by Ed, known as Atomic Ed. Ellen Spiro did a wonderful film about him and his struggle against atomic weaponry.Ed has stacks of obsolete media stock.
The Pied Piper of Atomic Mountain...

Someone posted this comment on the blog:
Once he worked for the Pied Pipers of Iron Mountain
But the dreams
The dreams
Rattled around his mind
Until he could do it no more.

God Bless Ed Grothus and his guts - guts to stand-up to the war machine in Los Alamos. The entire town should be torn down and everyone up there sent packing just as they did to the old families who really owned that area. Only The Black Hole should remain and it should be named a National Monument to the waste of a militaristic society.

BODY OF WAR OPENS IN DC

On Friday Body of War opened at the E Street Theater in Washington, DC. A great squad of Iraq Vets Against the War showed up, along with directors Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue and of course Tomas Young.Phil says I am the yenta for this movie-- meaning matchmaker. I gave Phil Ellen's phone number and she thought it was a crank call. But I think he also means yenta as in sort of a nag-- making sure it kept its amazing radical edge and that it got out there, hopefully to be used by peace activists all over the country and especially in the military. Actually the 2 CD set that Tomas and Eddie Vedder did is probably what will get to the military quicker. It's already a best seller. Everyone should go to see this very moving intimate film.People waited in line for over an hour.
The audience was standing room only.
The CD set of Body of War music which includes sets by many great musicians was on sale in the lobby and hundreds waited in line for the sold out show.

Body of War Wins Top Doc Prize at NBR

Joel and I went to the National Board of Review award dinner for the film I have helped with by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, staring Tomas Young, anti-activist and wounded Iraq vet.

Body of War Opens at Toronto Film Festival!

Just came back from Toronto where Body of War premiered at the Film Festival. It was a huge success. We all were put up at a very fancy hotel, where a VIP suite was decked out with chocolates and fruit and exquisite pastries. The whole event was surreal. Tomas wore his Iraq Vets Against the War tee shirt everywhere.
As they say, the film got a lot of ink. This is from the first review:
It's easy to convince a people to go to war, one political leader wrote. "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifist for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." Robert Byrd declaimed that quote to the Senate, as Congress was debating whether to authorize the President to go to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Then Byrd read the source: Hermann Goering, 1934....In the 60s, America's participation in the Vietnam war had a readymade counter-insurgency: the young people who might be drafted to serve in it. This time, the most articulate opponents are not the young people eligible to go to war. It's the ones who came back. The ex-GIs who now serve in antiwar groups are not natural radicals, not lifelong pacifists. They love their dogs. They love their wives (and wish, the ones most severely wounded, that they could make love to them). And they luvvvv the gung-ho war movie Top Gun. They just think the Iraq occupation is a shame on our conscience, a killing field for their buddies. They believe they have the right to speak up, and that the rest of us have the obligation to listen.
Body of War, directed by docu-doyenne Ellen Spiro and Donahue, intercuts the 2002 war debate with the postwar life of Tomas Young, a soldier who was paralyzed with a shattered spine within a week of arriving in Iraq. Now, after months recuperating at Walter Reed Hospital, Young is back home with his fiancee, annoyed by the mundane aspects of confinement: how, constantly, "my body shows how much it disagrees with me." He's about to be married, and is worried that his leaky bowels will embarrass him during the ceremony. At times, this gentle, articulate guy shows the pressure of a film crew's crowding presence. "You wanna film my fridge?" he asks Spiro. "What are we on, MTV Cribs now?"
Young is not just a poignant survivor; he is a persuasive proselytizer. He speaks at rallies with a quiet authority seared in experience. And because he had comrades killed in Iraq, he tells Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes that he'd protest the war even if he hadn't been paralyzed: "I would still speak out — although I probably wouldn't have as firm a leg to stand on." Then, instantly correcting himself: "Or chair to sit in." The contrast of the Congress' surrender to political dictates and Young's heroism, in Iraq and back home, makes this superb documentary almost unbearably moving — as pathetic as it is inspiring.
Donahue got involved when Young said he wanted to meet Ralph Nader, and Donahue, a Nader friend, came along. But the political hero of Body of War is Byrd, nine-term Virginia Senator and, in his 20s, an Exalted Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan. Though the Senator and the soldier might seem to have little in common, they are bonded by their opposition to the occupation, and their meeting serves an apt climax to the film. Byrd is near 90 now, and he walks with difficulty; as Young says, "I see we've both got some mobility issues." Together they read the names of the senators who in Oct. 2002 voted against authorizing the war — "the immortal 23," Byrd calls them.In the ears of the other 77, Byrd's call back then must ring in their ears like the angry voice of a conscience ignored. "Wait!" he shouted in the echoing chamber. "Slow down! Don't rush this through."
The ghosts of 9/11 still stir.---- by Richard Corliss at Time/CNN on line. .Eddie Vedder brought his wife and kid. Here they are talking with Tomas at the pre-movie dinner. The dinner before the show was a warm family affair. More like an Irish wedding than anything. There were extensive representatives from three families: Phil Donahue's, Ellen Spiro's and Tomas Young's (the star of the film). Here's Ellen with Tomas's family.Here's Phil with Ellen and her mom and her sister and me.Here're me, Bernadine Colish, the editor, and Ellen spiro.
To find out about the origins to the film, go to http://www.observer.com/2007/phil-donahue-strikes-back?page=0%2C2

Atomic Ed and the Black Hole

We visited The Black Hole in Los Alamos. This amazing collection of used war material was collected by Ed, known as Atomic Ed. Ellen Spiro did a wonderful film about him and his struggle against atomic weaponry.Ed has stacks of obsolete media stock.