In 1985, an explosion at a Newtown chemical plant killed four men in their 30s. Now, Albemarle County is searching for anyone with a claim on the 33-acre property, now a Superfund site, to pay back taxes by October 30, before the parcel is auctioned off. WMRA’s Christine Kueter reports in the first of a two-part story.
If you’re cruising Interstate 64 on Afton Mountain near the scenic view, or traveling 250 west of Charlottesville and spot three carved wooden bears in a roadside field, you’re pretty close to what’s left of the Greenwood Chemical Company.
It’s now a Superfund site and is expected to be auctioned off more than 40 years after an explosion killed four men, shuttered the plant, and traumatized the tiny community of Newtown, in western Albemarle County about a mile from Greenwood.
[excerpt from freestyle by T G’Sus, “Newtown, a history in song”]
Antoine Sims grew up right next door. He scouted for Christmas trees with his mom near the plant and remembers a waste lagoon there.
ANTOINE SIMS: I remember seeing fish just kind of floating. I remember there being, like, dead, like, animal that was just kind of dead, floating in there, too. And, then the barrels, like three or four that were just up out of it.That water color, I would never forget, that color, just because, you know, in my head, I’m thinking, as a child, I’m just like, “Oh, wow. I didn't know water was that color.”
The plant was built way before Sims was even born. Cockerville Chemicals opened its doors in Newtown in 1947. It was owned by DuPont chemist F.O. “Neil” Cockerville, who blew off a thumb and part of his leg doing experiments.
Cockerville later sold the company tohttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/150985568/clarence-arnel-hustrulidClarence Hustrulid in the late 1960s, who renamed it Greenwood Chemical Company. It had between seven and 12 employees who made sprays for fruit trees (naphthalene acetic acid), chemicals for developing photos (naphthoic acid) and metal plates (1-napthaldehyde), and pharmaceutical agents.
Accidents at the plant were common.
According to the Daily Progress, a foreman died in 1966 when toluene vapors caught fire. Two more workers perished in explosions in the 1970s. A pair of plant workers was injured in 1981, and, in 1983, a boiling container of ethyl acetate started a fire that leveled a building and caused $20,000 in damage.
Emergency responders dreaded calls from the plant, Progress reports say. Sims remembers the low rumble of explosions, smoke, and, sometimes, stuff falling from the sky.
SIMS: If the wind would catch there would be like silvery metallic looking stuff that would fall from the sky that fell down into, like, yards, on cars, and on people’s houses. There was talk of that and kinda just like, “You kind of want to get that off of your car, or whatever, because you just don’t know what it is.” But there was sense enough to actually know that this probably isn’t something that we want on our cars or, you know, in our yards, you know, and don’t touch.”
By 1984,https://www.mcdowfuneralhomeinc.com/obituaries/albert-charles-cereghinoAl Cereghino Jr. became Greenwood Chemical’s last president. He’d have the job seven months.
It was an already-humid April afternoon in 1985, about 3:30 p.m., when an electrical spark ignited several gallons of hot liquid toluene. Four men inside the plant were set alight. Three died within hours of the blast: John Harper and Maurrie Clark of Afton, and Keith Wood of Waynesboro. The fourth, Charles Ward, of Staunton, lingered 11 more days with burns across most of his body. Ward died of sepsis in Norfolk April 29.
The dead left behind four wives and nine children. According to a Daily Progress account, the last day of April, not two weeks after the explosion, Greenwood Chemical Company president Cereghino announced in little more than a whisper that the plant would close.
Today, nearly 50 years later, the nearly 34-acre site is poised to change hands again.
