Staff reports |  When James Island resident Rose Ann Boxx’s brother turned 32 in the late 1970s, he was diagnosed with colon cancer.

The diagnosis for Robert Thomas, came as a surprise — because of his age and also because there was no history of cancer of any kind on either side of the family.  But another surprise loomed for kids like Rose Ann and Robert who spent formative years in the late 1950s at Camp Lejeune where their father was a Marine — the water was toxic, poisoned for more than three decades by chemicals that leaked into the water supply. Thousands — including Robert and, eventually, Rose Ann — got cancer. 

She recalled last week how her older brother Robert went through several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatment to try to reverse the disease’s spread. In the throes of the disease, he managed to make jokes, she said, likening himself to a large Pac-Man, his body being slowly gnawed away by a foreign, floating enemy.