We Were Shining: McKendree Theatre Tells Story of Women Who Sued Radium Dial
By Madison Rohn, Lead Editor
Photography by Michelle Magnussen
“This isn’t a fairy tale, though it starts like one. It’s not a tragedy, though it ends like one.” This line begins the play These Shining Lives, which McKendree Theatre will perform from February 29th to March 3rd.
The play, written by Melanie Marnich, tells the compelling true story of Catherine Wolfe Donohue, one of the thousands of women hired by the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois, during the 1920s to paint watch faces with radium. As told in the play, Radium Dial ensured their watch painters that radium was safe, even though the company knew otherwise. After Catherine and her co-workers contracted radium poisoning, they sued the company. Catherine’s eventual legal victory changed worker safety laws in Am...