Barry Harrison was a Blytheville schoolboy when he learned to “duck and cover” under his desk to prepare for possible Soviet nuclear attacks that terrified America in the Cold War.
He found out later, after becoming a businessman and mayor, that Blytheville Air Force Base made his city the No. 5 U.S. target for Russia’s nuclear planners.
“Getting under that desk would give me about an extra 100th of a second” of life, Harrison said.
Mary Gay Shipley was a college freshman in October 1962, the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the risk of nuclear conflict was most profound in history.
Diplomacy averted disaster, but Shipley recalled fears so dark that officials issued dog tags to some schoolchildren in towns near Blytheville to help restore the kids to their families in case of nuclear evacuation. But Shipley also knew the reality of growing up in Blytheville. “Duck and cover was absurd,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been evacuated; I would have been evaporated.”