'A toxic nightmare': 4 people share how Camp Lejeune destroyed their lives

When George Diaz was hospitalized with leukemia in early 2010, his sister told him about people who had served at Camp Lejeune getting sick from contaminated water.

“That’s it!” Diaz told his wife, Kristin Diaz. “Anything that happens to me – that’s it!”

Kristin, who also was a Marine but had never served at Camp Lejeune, was skeptical.

“They wouldn’t let that happen,” she told him.

“It seemed conspiracy theory to me,” Kristin recalled during a recent interview at her Akron home. “That couldn’t possibly be it.”

George Diaz died in July 2010, and Kristin is now certain he was right about what caused his illness.

Kristin, 62, regrets that she ever doubted him and has dedicated her life to trying to get justice for him and raise awareness about the water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

“Somehow, we have to get this all out,” she said. “I want to shock people into awareness about what happened.”

Kristin is among numerous people in the Akron area who have filed claims under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, a federal law passed in 2022 that allows people who served at the Marine Corps base in North Carolina and their families to sue the federal government.

The water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated by an off-base dry cleaning business and leaking underground storage tanks, industrial spills and waste disposal on the base. The Marine Corps discovered the contamination in 1982, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry .

People who served at Camp Lejeune from the 1950s through the 1980s have been sickened and died from a long list of illnesses, including bladder, kidney and liver cancer; leukemia; non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; and Parkinson’s disease. Many women with ties to the base have had fertility issues or lost babies or had children with birth defects.

'A dog fight for the truth': 2 national advocates explain Camp Lejeune plight

More than 227,000 people have so far filed claims, according to court records.

To be eligible, a person must have been at Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days between Aug. 1, 1953, and Dec. 31, 1987.

The deadline for filing a claim is Aug. 10.

Here are the stories of four people with connections to the Akron area who say their lives were forever changed by what happened at Camp Lejeune.

‘We did not ask for this,’ says Akron native who served at Camp Lejeune

Crystal Jackson Dickens, who grew up in Akron, joined the Marines after college when she couldn’t find a decent job.

“I wanted to go and see the world and serve my country,” said Dickens, who enlisted at 20 and is now 66.

Dickens served in the Marines and Marine Reserves from 1978 to 1998.

From 1978 to 1984, she was at Camp Lejeune, where she worked as a diesel mechanic.

Dickens said they didn’t wear masks or gloves and used chemicals, including trichloroethylene (TCE), which is now known to be a carcinogen.

“They got on our hands and our feet,” Dickens said during a recent phone interview while undergoing dialysis. “The water ran, ran, ran through the motor pool. We didn’t know that it was contaminated.”

However, Dickens said they were aware the water had issues. She said she had to run the water for a while before bathing because it came out brown and smelled like diesel fuel.

“We mixed baby formula, swam in it, and the kids played in it,” Dickens said.

Dickens married a fellow Marine in 1979. She had three miscarriages, then got pregnant with twins. One of the twins died in the second trimester while the other – a girl – was born healthy.

“They didn’t tell you anything,” Dickens said. “They just let you know your baby’s dead.”

Dickens is among five mothers who served at Camp Lejeune and lost babies or had children born with birth defects who were featured in a recent NBC News show called “ Baby Heaven : The Buried Stories of Camp Lejeune.”

The show’s name refers to a special section of the Jacksonville cemetery that was set aside for the many women who were losing babies at Camp Lejeune. It was dubbed “Baby Heaven.”

Camp Lejeune: 5 things to know about Camp Lejeune, what happened there and how to file a claim

Dickens said Black women on the base weren’t treated the same as white women, most of whom were officers’ wives. She said they didn’t get to bury their babies. She has been unable to find out what happened to the twin she lost.

Dickens first learned about the base’s contaminated water in a letter she received from the IRS in 2010. She did some research, then helped found the National Association of Black Veterans .

“I still help other people get their benefits,” she said.

Dickens, who now lives in Georgia, married two more times and had two more children. She has so many health issues that they fill up three pages. They include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure and kidney failure.

Dickens attributes the loss of her babies and her health problems to the base’s contaminated water. She has filed a claim and a lawsuit.

Dickens is angry, especially because documents show the Marine Corps was aware some wells were contaminated by October 1980 but didn’t shut any down until late 1984. Those who had lived and worked there weren’t informed about the water for decades.

“We did as we were told,” Dickens said. “We served honorably. I could see if we did something wrong, but we didn’t. We did not ask for this.”

‘I owe it to him,’ says Stark County woman who is fighting on behalf of her late husband

Cherise Kennell and her first husband, Paul Azemopoulos, had just started their lives together in 2001 when they received devastating news.

Paul, who was only 34, had colon cancer.

The couple, who got married in 2000, was living in Arizona and had just had their son, Jared.

Paul was working at a factory that agreed to hold his job while he went through chemotherapy and radiation. Cherise, who carried their health care, continued working for a software company in a job that required her to travel.

Though Paul was going through treatment, his symptoms continued. Doctors determined he also had bladder cancer.

“He did not have a lot of good days,” Cherise recalled during a recent interview at her church in Alliance near where she now lives.

Cherise and Paul didn’t understand how he could have these illnesses, especially at his age.

Then, they remembered a letter Paul received in 2000 from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry about the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune. Paul served in the Marines from 1985 to 1989, including two years at Camp Lejeune.

After Paul became ill, he and Cherise requested treatment at a Veterans Affairs hospital but were told he wasn’t eligible.

With his health continuing to deteriorate, Paul applied for and received disability benefits through the state. Cherise said this was difficult, especially when the agency asked how he wanted to improve his health.

“I just want to play with my son,” he responded.

Jared, who was 6 by this time, said he wasn’t sure what was happening but knew that his dad was gone a lot. He said they built a bird house together during one of the rare times his dad was home.

Paul died in 2008 at the age of 40. His family had $80,000 in debt from medical bills. They lost their house and had to rely on help from others.

Cherise applied for federal Dependency and Indemnity Compensation but was told colon cancer wasn’t among the illnesses linked to Camp Lejeune’s contaminated water. She appealed, noting that Paul also had bladder cancer, which is one of the diseases associated with the base’s toxic water.

Two years ago, Cherise married Jim Kennell, whom she met through family friends, and moved to Marlboro Township in Stark County. She said her second husband is very kind and is supportive of her continued efforts on behalf of Paul.

Cherise, 51, hired a law firm to help with her Camp Lejeune claim but received a letter from the firm in February saying they could no longer represent her and suggesting she hire a new attorney.

Concerned that this could happen again, Cherise instead filed a claim on her own. She had to open an estate for Paul in Arizona.

Jared, who is now 22, has joined the U.S. Space Force, where he works in intelligence. He said he admires his mom’s dedication to his father.

“It’s hurt me to watch,” he said. “She’s strong to keep fighting.”

Cherise plans to organize an event bringing together local family members of Camp Lejeune victims. She said she’s not giving up.

“It’s wrong what happened to Paul,” she said. “We have to stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves. I owe it to him to get that vindication.”

‘It blows your mind,’ says Wooster woman with five family members who served at Camp Lejeune

Jill Dilgard had five family members who were Marines and served at Camp Lejeune.

All but one are now dead.

Her father. Her uncle. Two of her cousins.

Another cousin is now being tested for prostate cancer.

Dilgard, 60, of Wooster, blames the base’s contaminated water for their illnesses that didn’t involve diseases that run in her family.

“The base was a toxic nightmare,” Dilgard said during a recent interview at a Wooster park while holding a cup inscribed with “The Forgotten Camp Lejeune” and “Remembering Sgt. Larry Lee Steen,” her father who died in 2018.

Larry Steen served in the Marines from 1952 to 1955 and was at Camp Lejeune on and off during those years. He settled in Wooster, where he raised four children and a grandson and worked as a supervisor at Bosch Rexroth, a manufacturing company.

Dilgard said her father’s health issues started on Father’s Day in 1978 when he had a heart attack at age 45. He had two more heart attacks within 48 hours in 1993.

Next, the family learned Steen had prostate cancer. He went through radiation and surgery. Then, in 2000, he was having back pain, and they found out he had bladder cancer. He had chemotherapy.

Dilgard first heard about the base’s toxic water in early 2017 from a Marine who asked how her father was doing.

“He does know about Camp Lejeune, right?” he asked her.

When Dilgard got home, she started doing research and was shocked by what she read. She said her father had wondered if he’d done something that had caused his many illnesses. She said his mouth dropped when she told him what she’d learned.

“He loved the Marine Corps – loved serving,” she said, wiping away tears. “He was never notified that he was poisoned. He was angry, hurt, betrayed.”

Steen died in February 2018 at the age of 84.

His grave at Wooster Cemetery has a Marine Corps insignia on the stone. A Marine Corps flag flies next to it.

Dilgard hired an attorney and filed a Camp Lejeune claim on his behalf.

She’s helped other family members and veterans through several Facebook sites dedicated to this issue, including Camp Lejeune Toxic Water Victims. She’s also assisted with awareness campaigns in Cincinnati and Kentucky over the past several years.

Dilgard said anyone who is having trouble getting the military records they need to file a claim should reach out to their Congressional representative. U.S. Rep. Max Miller helped her get copies of her father’s records that were lost in a flood.

Dilgard is concerned that the effects of the base’s toxic water could be trans-generational. She thinks this could be to blame for health problems she and her siblings and her two children have had.

“I think their health issues are connected,” she said. “Dad was the youngest of nine. I have an abundance of first cousins. When you go back, there is no history of this stuff. It blows your mind.”

‘You fight,’ Akron man tells his wife before his death

When Kristin Diaz first met George, the man she’d one day marry, she wasn’t impressed.

“Stand back, boys – that woman is mine!” George told his buddies when he spotted Kristin in the chow hall of the Marine Corps headquarters in 1981.

“I thought he was an ass,” Kristin recalled, laughing, as she sat in the living room of her Akron home on a recent morning.

“The love of my live came from under that ass,” she added.

The two dated off and on until 1995 when she married him – after he asked for the third time.

Kristin was in the Marines from 1981 to 1983, while George served from 1978 to 1982. He spent two years at Camp Lejeune where he drove a truck in the motor transport division. Kristin was never stationed at this base.

After George and Kristin were married, they bought a home in Green and had two boys, Jacob and Caleb. George continued to drive a truck for several private companies.

Jacob Diaz said his dad was on the road a lot and would sometimes come home at 3 a.m. and tell his sons, “We’re going fishing!” The boys would sleep in the car on the way to their destination.

“This was when I got to see him,” said Jacob, who is now 27 and in college.

In October of 2009, George was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), which involves a low blood cell count. He had a bone marrow transplant. At first, this seemed to help, but there were complications.

By July 2010, George wasn’t getting any better, and they learned that he had leukemia. At the age of 51, he died after a day in which dozens of friends and family visited him. He also had a brief phone conversation with his sons, who were at their grandparents’ home.

“I love you,” Jacob, who was then 13, recalls his dad telling him. “You know I love you.”

He said the same to Caleb, who was 10.

After George’s death, Kristin sold their house in Green and bought a smaller home in Akron on Mission Drive, which she thought was appropriate, considering how she had decided to make getting justice for George her mission.

Kristin applied for and received Dependency and Indemnity Compensation in 2017 when this was extended to family members of Camp Lejeune victims. She said it would have been hard for their family to get by without this support.

Kristin recently filed a Camp Lejeune claim and is now among the 1,700 people who have pending lawsuits. She often networks with other family members on Camp Lejeune Facebook sites.

Kristin keeps the binders with George’s records stored in a hall closet where she also has a collage with inspirational phrases and photos of George. In one, George has his fists in a fighting pose.

“Whatever happens to me, you fight,” Kristin recalls George telling her.

She plans to do just that.

Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com , 330-996-3705 and on Twitter: @swarsmithabj.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: 'A toxic nightmare': 4 people share how Camp Lejeune destroyed their lives