Karen Silkwood died on Oklahoma Highway 74, 50 years ago this month. ABC Audio’s new podcast, “Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery,” is hosted by two Oklahoma journalists, one of whom, Bob Sands, is a former colleague. I nominated Bob for an award many years ago and he ended up winning it. I’ve always had so much respect for him, and I think he’s done an excellent job with this podcast.

I’ve been interested in the Karen Silkwood story since I saw the movie in Tulsa in 1983. Today, I live 36 miles from Crescent, Oklahoma, the site of the old Kerr McGee plant. In the mid-1990s, “Kerr McGee was Oklahoma…a Goliath.” In fact, they were a major stakeholder in a Department of Energy program I managed. I learned pretty early on in Oklahoma that if you want to survive you better not rock the boat. This can be a very punitive place and unless you have lived here for a very long time — long enough to bear witness and gather accounts and see things unfold for yourself — you cannot understand it. Outsiders rarely last here.

I think from time to time about how cruel life has been and can be in Oklahoma. It was very cruel to Karen. Did someone run her off the road that night and kill her? When I was young, I didn’t think so. But, now, I am not young, and I do not know.

Karen Silkwood’s son, Michael Meadows, is around 55. He’s interviewed in the first episode of the podcast. In speaking about the mother he didn’t get to know he said, “She was out of the picture when I was really young…I think it’s about what I missed…what could have been affects me more than the actual sadness…I don’t have any memories of us together…My heart knows there’s a hole there.”

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