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It was Wednesday, and they were wandering around the modern steel-and-glass museum that stands as a tribute to America’s nuclear age. It explains the unique place in history St. Louis holds as a key processer and refiner of the uranium that was developed during the Manhattan Project.

The museum sits adjacent to in St. Charles County, a massive gray pile of rock and rubble that contains some of the byproducts of uranium, buried by the federal government as part of its solution to the waste that had poisoned so much of what it touched: air, water, dirt, the workers who were near it.

It’s those workers that concerned West — who made with uranium — and Kleba, a Catholic priest who officiated too many of the funerals of men who died of cancer before they could see their grandchildren grow up.

What’s missing in the fancy new interpretive center in Weldon Spring is the tribute to those workers. It existed in the first such museum that opened in 2002. That tribute featured a 10-by-10-foot replica of the St. Louis Arch made by local iron workers and a wall that explained the workers’ important journey, including a book of names of those lost too early to diseases. The tribute was put in the old interpretive center thanks to the work of Denise Brock.

Brock is the tireless advocate who lobbied Congress for the legislation that created the program, which has paid out billions of dollars to the workers or their families, who all gave so much to America’s nuclear age. They include those who worked at the various Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. plants in St. Louis, or at Los Alamos in New Mexico, or Rocky Flats in Colorado, or Hanford in Washington state. For years, that those workers were dying and their families weren’t being compensated. Congress eventually passed the legislation to rectify that. To date, nearly $22 billion has been paid out to the families whose loved ones died.

Brock’s father, Christopher Davis, was one of the workers who died too young. She fought for years to make sure that the interpretive center had a tribute to those workers.

Now, in the new center, it’s not there, at least not yet.

“This is an important part of St. Louis history,� Kleba said. “And it shouldn’t be overlooked.�

For months, the small band of advocates has tried to make sure the workers and their stories aren’t hidden in a storage room.

An advocate’s journey

Brock knew last fall that the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management, which runs the interpretive center, had no plans to include the workers’ tribute in the new museum, which opened in April. They called her then and asked if she wanted it. They had no room in the center, they told her. The display didn’t fit with the museum’s new themes and design.

Nevermind that when the tribute was unveiled in the old center, two decades ago, there was much fanfare, with former Missouri Sens. Christopher “Kit� Bond and Jim Talent in attendance.

“I felt like somebody ripped my heart out of my chest and kicked me in the stomach at the same time. I was very hurt,� Brock told me.

She called from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she’s being treated for her own health issues. “I was crushed for the workers and for my parents. I felt dismissed. The workers did so much for this country and I just wanted a tribute to them.�

Brock, knowing she didn’t have the strength to stage a battle on her own, got the old band back together. She called West, Kleba and others who had worked with her long ago to advocate for the workers. Longtime St. Louis journalist Jeannette Cooperman in June about the missing tribute in the Washington University journal “The Common Reader.� A mutual friend of mine and Brock’s who is a retired journalist in Washington, D.C., called me and asked me to look into it.

I visited the Weldon Spring Interpretive Center on Wednesday, about an hour before West and Kleba. The history there — at least as it relates to the workers who died for their sacrifice to America’s nuclear age — seems whitewashed. There is no mention of the cancers; no mention of Brock’s long fight with Congress to make sure the workers get compensated; no mention of the ongoing uranium legacy in St. Louis, such as in and around Coldwater Creek, or at the West Lake Landfill, where another generation of activists is pushing the federal government for more cleanup efforts.

There are display cases with the safety equipment workers wore. “Safety first,� says one sign. “Help us make this a banner year for no accidents.�

There is no mention of the thousands of St. Louisans who qualified for health care aid and compensation because those safety efforts were woefully inadequate.

It’s a travesty, Kleba says.

“The Department of Energy has delivered a tragic slap to the face to all the nuclear workers who have suffered and died there in the service of our country,� he wrote me. Brock “argued and won before Congress, met with thousands of workers and their families and filed a mountain of government forms so that these valiant workers can live with some dignity and their heirs have a modicum of comfort.�

A federal flip-flop

On the day I visited the center, I asked to see the worker tribute that wasn’t transferred from the old museum. Employees there declined. They told me a public relations person would be in touch. Later that afternoon, I heard from the Department of Energy.

Officials in the nation’s capital had changed their mind. Because of pressure from Brock’s army of advocates, the memorial to workers would be installed in the new museum.

“In response to feedback DOE received from stakeholders and the community, we are proud to announce we will be installing the memorial to Mallinckrodt uranium workers at the new Weldon Spring Site Interpretive Center,� said an emailed statement from a spokesperson. “DOE remains committed to honoring former workers, their important contributions, and their sacrifices. We are currently exploring options on where to position the arch at the new center and will have a decision soon.�

Brock was ecstatic when she heard the news. She couldn’t care less whether her name is anywhere in the museum — the Department of Energy promised her a plaque on a bench outside when they told her the workers’ memorial wouldn’t be part of the new center.

The workers, and their deaths, are not just part of the historic story of uranium processing in St. Louis. They are part of an ongoing story, with the next generation of those who lost parents still paying the price, still wondering what happened.

That’s why Kleba and West hope this snafu by the Department of Energy, and the resulting flip-flop, spurs more interest in the history of uranium enrichment in St. Louis and the waste that was left behind. They had been to the old center when the workers’ memorial was there, and watched as tours were conducted for schoolchildren. The tours didn’t make note of the memorial. It wasn’t part of the story the Department of Energy was highlighting about Weldon Spring.

“The story they want to tell,� West says, “is that workers were doing some work out here, and it got a little messy, and then we came and cleaned it up, and that’s the story.�

The real history is more complicated. Perhaps, Kleba says, by dismissing that part of the story, they’ll actually give it new life and teach a new generation about the perils of the nuclear age.

“Maybe it’s a blessing,� Kleba says, hoping the press coverage can reach folks who didn’t otherwise know this part of St. Louis history.

That history, Brock says, has affected thousands of families. It is woven into the fabric of the region, for better or worse.

“It’s something to be very proud of,� she says. “These workers gave their all to this country.�