At a memorial service in 2022, veteran Air Force Capt. Monte Watts bumped into a fellow former Minuteman III nuclear missile operator, who told him that she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Watts knew other missileers with similar cancers. But the connection really hit home later that same January day, when the results of a blood test revealed that Watts himself had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. “I don’t know if it was ironic or serendipitous or what the right word is,