People

By Sara C. Medina

Immediately after the Chernobyl nuclear accident last April, the Soviets spurned U.S. offers of aid. But they did allow Millionaire Industrialist Armand Hammer to dispatch his friend Bone Marrow Specialist Dr. Robert Gale to help. Two weeks ago Hammer became the first known nonmedical Westerner to meet with those hospitalized by the disaster. Accompanied by Gale, Hammer visited Kiev's Hospital 14, where 259 Chernobyl victims have been treated, and talked with two heroes, S.T. Milgevsky and N.E. Fedorenko, bus drivers who ferried firemen and workers to and from the reactor area after the explosion. Why did they do it? Hammer asked. "Someone had to," they replied. Would they do it again? "Sure." Hammer also met V.D. Dznenko, who had been visiting her daughter in the area at the time of the accident. Afterward Hammer and Gale took a low-altitude flight over the damaged reactor and nearby deserted villages. "It was an eerie sight," Hammer said. "I wish that anyone who . thinks that a nuclear war can be won could see what I've seen."