Sometimes you leave a place of work, but the place of work doesn’t leave you.

I was a teacher at Colonia High School in New Jersey for 31 years, a place that has now attracted national media attention because of a significant high number of staff and student brain cancer deaths and benign brain tumors that have occurred over that same time period.

In March, Al Lupiano, a former CHS student, posted on his Facebook page a request to past alumni and students if they knew of anyone from the school who had died of glioblastoma multiforme or acoustic neuroma, two very rare forms of brain tumors.

Lupiano’s sister died this year at age 44 from GBM after a malignant tumor was discovered on the left side of her brain. His wife has acoustic neuroma, a very large benign tumor that’s also on the left side of her brain, and in 1999, Lupiano himself was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor when he was 27 years old. The odds of both spouses having similar brain tumors have been calculated at 1 billion to 1.

While generally not life threatening unless untreated, radiation and surgical removal typically leaves patients with any one or some of these problems: chronic headaches, facial paralysis, balance issues, deafness, slurred speech, and the inability to blink.

After his sister died, Lupiano made a promise to honor her by trying to find out the cause of his family’s brain tumors, and the common thread to his research is that they all had attended Colonia High School.

The snowball of tumors has been rolling downhill ever since into an avalanche of concern.

On April 10, Lupiano made this post about his research “… I recorded the 100th case of someone having a primary brain tumor. I never in my worst nightmare envisioned ever hitting this milestone. That’s 100 people with their life forever changed, 100 families having to be told the terrible news.”

That possible malignant and benign tumor number was last reported to be 117 and is expected to still keep climbing. All of the afflicted were either staff or students from CHS.

I had contacted Lupiano in late March and gave him the names of three friends of mine who had taught at the school, and all had died of brain cancer. Bob Clark retired after 32 years of teaching to enjoy the rest of his life. I used to kid him that he would live to be 100 because his uncle and father were still breathing in their late 90s. Bob was a healthy man and couldn’t remember the last time he went to a doctor. He had a headache for three days and then he blacked out while driving his car and hit a street sign. To the doctor he went and he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and was immediately sent to a hospice.

I recall asking him, “Bob, are you afraid of dying?”

“Not at all,” he replied. “I’ve lived a good life.”

At the young age of 55, Bob passed. I was honored to be a pallbearer at his funeral.

Miki Hyatt was a wonderful guidance counselor for many years at CHS. We became friends and sometimes I would bring my personal problems to her. She had the sweetest personality, and her wisdom helped so many people resolve their issues. One day, Miki passed out in her office. She too was diagnosed with brain cancer. With treatment, she was on the road to recovery, and I went to visit her and I asked her to come to my wedding. She was delighted with my request. A week later, she passed out at home. I saw her that night in the hospital, breathing from a ventilator. She died the next day.

Pat Barbato was the head varsity football coach at Colonia. I was his head freshman team coach. We had a lot of great times together on the sidelines during many successful seasons. He retired in his 60s, and one day I found out that Pat was in the hospital with brain cancer. He was a big New York Yankees baseball fan, and the night he died, he and his son were watching them lose a game. His father’s last words were, “Those damn Yankees!”

The good news is that Lupiano’s mission to find a cause has prompted an environmental study of the school building and surrounding area. The testing includes the placement of radon catching canisters inside classrooms while teachers and students are present. Although these canisters are harmless to humans, their presence is creating a growing anxiety that something causing these cancers will be found in the school. Testing of localized air, water and soil is expected to be completed next.

The bad news, in my view, is that even if the study finds nothing, few people will trust the results because that will suggest the brain cancer deaths and tumors will be coincidental, something even I would have difficulty believing based upon the very large number of cases.

A very good friend of mine teaches at CHS now and he tells me the concern is significant among the 119 full-time teachers and the 1,335 students. It’s expected that no matter what the outcome of the environmental study, several teachers will be requesting transfers to other district schools. There’s a high probability that few teachers will want to transfer into CHS to replace those who want to leave, which will then necessitate the denial of some or all of the transfer out requests.

Who knows what the aftereffects will be, but there is a majority who believe that they could be catastrophic. If a cause is found, CHS will have to be closed and possibly torn down, sending a split of the 1,335 students into the other two district high schools or sending them all back home to distance learning. The families of those afflicted may file lawsuits against the school district. Home values in the surrounding area could plummet and the economy in Woodbridge Township, where the school is located, may suffer for years to come. Even if no cause is found, suspicion about the truth of the results might still bring some or all of these consequences.

I have been retired from Colonia High School for 11 years and I have some concern for my own well-being because symptoms of brain tumors sometimes take 15 to 30 years before they occur.

But for now, I’m thinking about my friends, Bob Clark, Miki Hyatt and Pat Barbato, who had wonderful influences upon thousands of students who attended our school. Their voices and the voices of hundreds of others silenced by this terrible disease are now being heard.

We are all listening and waiting impatiently for an explanation.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.