Sunday, March 05, 2006 - Toivo “Whitey” Puro ’33 (left) spent more than 30 years building chemical weapons for the government at what is now part of Aberdeen Proving Ground. He recalls co-workers who would expose themselves to nerve gas in order to get a few days off. The medical team was prepared, and there were never any fatalities or accidents. These and other intriguing stories appear on his self-published memoir “Nerve Gas: The Quiet Peacekeeper.” Puro, 93 years old, advocates building a stockpile of chemical weapons as a deterrent to other countries.
Toivo “Whitey” Puro ’33 (left) spent more than 30 years building chemical weapons for the government at what is now part of Aberdeen Proving Ground. He recalls co-workers who would expose themselves to nerve gas in order to get a few days off. The medical team was prepared, and there were never any fatalities or accidents.
These and other intriguing stories appear on his self-published memoir “Nerve Gas: The Quiet Peacekeeper.” Puro, 93 years old, advocates building a stockpile of chemical weapons as a deterrent to other countries.
“If we don’t have them, we’re pretty easy prey to get attacked by someone,” he says.
Puro leans back in an easy chair, his fine white hair still in a military buzz cut and his big blue eyes fixed far away, as he recalls the College during the Great Depression.
“We were there in very poor times. The Depression was on and we were all alike – we had no money.”
In his book, Puro writes that the College’s first president, J. T. Ward, eliminated unnecessary costs by turning out all electric lights at 10 p.m. and growing food on the College farm.
As a member of the boxing team and a water boy for the football team, Puro looked up to athletics coach Dick Harlow, who famously led the Green Terror to five Maryland State Intercollegiate Championships and guided the school’s first undefeated untied team to an 11-0 mark in 1929.
“He told some of us who were on the boxing team, ‘I’ll teach you about boxing here because you’ll always be able to defend yourself.’ He said sports are not just to win a game, they’re good for something. Good for the body. I’ll always consider him a champion coach.”
Fresh out of college, Puro was tapped to learn drafting at the Glenn L. Martin Company, one of the original predecessors of Lockheed Martin, in Middle River.
“They had contracts for building airplanes but nobody knew how to do it,” Puro says. “I don’t think there were any real experts.“
He helped make parts for a French bomber in 1939, but by the time it was finished, Hitler had already conquered France and the plane was never used. After a stint making anti-aircraft ammunition at Triumph Explosives in Elkton, Md., Puro accepted a job at as Ordnance Design Engineer with the U.S. Chemical Corps at Edgewood Arsenal.
“We designed crude weapons containing nerve gasses, which were brand new.”
Puro and a team of 20 built grenades, land mines, riot-control weapons, flame-throwers and smoke screens for hiding big targets like cities. Chemical weapons were frequently tested at the arsenal, without incident. Puro and his team amassed chemical weapons until the end of the Cold War. Since then, the chemical stockpiles have been destroyed.
Puro hopes his memoirs will dispel the many popular misconceptions about chemical weapons and the current plans to destroy our nation’s remaining stockpiles, in order to replace them with new weapons. He believes maintaining a strong chemical stockpile will keep America safe for the next hundred years.
The late Helen McKinney, a volunteer at The Cecil County Historical Society, helped Puro research his book, through their extensive collection of resources related to local industries. McKinney and her husband both worked at Triumph Explosives during World War II, which gave her a special interest in Puro’s project.
“Nerve Gas: The Quiet Peacekeeper” is available for $18.75 through the Cecil County Historical Society’s Web site: http://cchistory.org/index_files/Page1000.htm.
93-year-old alumnus pens memoirs