Lillian Freiberg stocked, secured Cold War shelters

Throughout the top of the Chilly Conflict within the Fifties and ’60s, Augusta’s Civil Protection effort was led by a slender Philadelphia native with a bachelor’s diploma in music schooling.

The College of Pennsylvania won’t have ready Lillian Freiberg for such obligation, however her crowded résumé of native civic management confirmed her to be a pure on the process.

After shifting to Augusta in 1947, she obtained very busy.

She was president of the Perrin PTA, president of the Langford Junior Excessive PTA, chairman of the Crimson Cross First Support Committee, president and vice chairman of the League of Ladies Voters, and president, vice chairman and treasurer of the Augusta Girl’s Membership. She was even treasurer of the German Shepherd Canine Membership and secretary of the Augusta Kennel Membership.

Additionally:Augusta beloved President Harding, historical past’s not so positive

Monday Thriller:The curious loss of life that led to a gold rush

Extra Augusta historical past:4 troopers save a colonel from the underside of a lake

In 1952 the mom of two was chosen deputy director of Augusta’s Civil Protection effort, and three months later, the governor appointed her director.

She would maintain that job for greater than 20 years, converse to scores of civic golf equipment and be interviewed by a parade of newspaper reporters who saved asking her how she coped with the accountability defending Richmond County residents from the specter of nuclear battle.

“Once I first took the job,” she stated throughout a 1965 interview, “I could not sleep at night time. I anxious on a regular basis. However then, you’ll be able to’t do your greatest work that manner, are you able to?”

Managing Augusta’s civil protection effort out of her household residence at 1019 Oleander Drive (her husband George was a J.B. White’s credit score supervisor), Freiberg managed the county’s public fallout shelters, ensuring they had been stocked with meals, water and medical provides. 

The 47 licensed shelters supplied room for 91,129 individuals – every granted 10 sq. ft. Every inhabitant would survive given one bundle of high-calorie crackers per day, in addition to a quart of water.

Every shelter had a “shelter man,” a upkeep man, an info officer and a deputy for operations.

They had been set as much as shield their inhabitants from a nuclear assault for as much as two weeks.

After which?

Freiberg advised reporters a number of issues may occur.

First, complete destruction. “We’ll don’t have anything to fret about …” she stated, “as a result of there might be nothing left.”

Second, partial destruction with radioactive contamination. Timber down, wires down, buildings crumbled, shattered glass.

Third, undamaged however contaminated with radioactive fallout.

And final, undamaged and uncontaminated.

She stated skeptics complain there’s not a lot constructive about rising from a shelter right into a broken world, however she reminded them they’d nonetheless be alive.

Freiberg stated she needed to overcome the reluctance of some when she obtained the job within the early Fifties as a result of she was a girl, however that did not final lengthy. She started taking her message to area people and civic golf equipment, in line with newspaper accounts. In a single yr, she counted greater than 250 talking engagements, typically 4 a day. She additionally submitted detailed plans and organizational approaches to metropolis and county authorities. She supplied a prolonged 13-point strategy that concerned public security departments and volunteers.

The plan by no means had for use. 

Within the Seventies, nuclear disasters appeared a distant reminiscence and Augusta and Richmond County governments misplaced curiosity in civil protection funding.

Freiberg stepped down and her alternative lasted 9 months earlier than the mayor fired him for asking for a much bigger price range.

Within the late Seventies, Richmond County started a revitalized concentrate on pure disasters similar to tornadoes, hurricane and floods, a shift Freiberg had begun early within the decade. She mentioned that change in a 1973 interview, shortly earlier than her departure.

She referred to as civil protection curiosity “… the identical right here as in different cities and cities – very, very low. There’s nothing a lot you are able to do about it.”

Her 1973 price range was $15,000, and greater than a 3rd of that got here from the federal authorities, with town and county placing up the remaining.

Within the Nineteen Eighties, Lillian Freiberg did one thing she had not executed in 40 years – she lived quietly. Her husband George died in 1987 and he or she moved to Brandon Wilde in Evans till she handed away in June 1994. Her modest obituary on web page 8C of The Chronicle talked about she was a retired civil protection director, however had no picture of the girl who as soon as made 253 speeches in a single yr encouraging public security preparedness.

Invoice Kirby has reported, photographed and commented on life in Augusta and Georgia for 45 years.