Angela White: Personal Choice 1: Mount St. Helens

Mount Saint Helens used to scare the crap out of me. When I was a child I had an irrational fear of Mount St. Helens, thinking it would erupt again. At the time, it seemed completely rational, I mean, it was volcano. Everyone should be afraid of volcanoes. What I did not really realize is that I really should have seen Mount Rainier as more of a threat. Almost my Dad's entire family lives spread out around the Tacoma area in Washington state, so I spent many nights visiting family laying awake in bed, paralyzed with fear that Mt. Saint Helens would erupt again. During one of my trips to Washington state, my uncles took my sister, my cousins and me to a museum in the area about the eruption of Mount St. Helens. In this museum, we watched a video about the affect that the eruption had on the city of Vancouver. It told the story of a man that I will never forget. Mainly because the sound of his voice was the cause of countless sleepless nights. I have just researched the man of which I speak, and it turns out his name was David Alexander Johnston, and he was a volcanologist. He was doing an observation about 10 kilometers from the volcano, and he was the first to report the eruption. Shortly before he was killed by the volcano, he transmitted through his radio "VANCOUVER! VANCOUVER! THIS IS IT!!". I spent many a night lying awake in my cousins' tree house, imaging hearing that voice screaming in the distance. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the late David Alexander Johnston for warning Vancouver about the eruption, and for being the cause of my childhood insomnia.