4 50 4772 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Feaffdba6eb85d327d3752eeb0b145f4f.jpg 91411fd67fa3fa6486529aee6826ef94 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F486861acfd5501c812a8507407fc59fd.mp4 f8067ad3743d7a4d5cc770ea8ac84100 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dade Moeller Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dade Moeller Description An account of the resource An interview with Dade Moeller conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb783427493c5c68449d906f688784556.jpg 8cbfd9bca8f00f4b3513930894ac2938 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F365bcfcd8a4bdce38fcb5f3289c01ee2.mp4 d84121935fbf3d14aa14e0f4ec7e8c40 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dillard Shippler Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dillard Shippler Description An account of the resource An interview with Dillard Shippler conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fdfa2883690d66b46458994015cf91064.jpg a77b57018d78894c9909a7f7c3d9a971 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ffabfb4537fb2ff3a948c8b9538c13b31.mp4 537166055b8bb91638bc7a8bcac26543 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Frank Hungate Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Frank Hungate Description An account of the resource An interview with Frank Hungate conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F02810d702f80567e73bb7ee843f5d015.jpg 87fe49b1bf94bfc3d4cd7a41b81ff20d https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F8a9ec2adb318ccde68126847e0e8f26c.mp4 d293cc135dbea65ad2f7c4c35b5e8110 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Gary Troyer Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Gary Troyer Description An account of the resource An interview with Gary Troyer conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe89337f17648ff5d967249f8a688323a.jpg 7ce9ddd94cf4fa9bc9175424df0e032a https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1b44dc153ee9aa83b00664a85e51da27.mp4 bdf8c02aab0663cd4777599c643d7541 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed George Anastas Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with George Anastas Description An account of the resource An interview with George Anastas conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc6a7e1f7db432308475f174aed93dc4f.jpg 272042587632c1efff00cc76b027a17f https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff3f8245c6bccea0b3313f809d4f0d87c.mp4 f9183e12b58135e7ec45689068738d68 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed John Decker Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with John Decker Description An account of the resource An interview with John Decker conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb75b99a2f45f614b69928ea76009cb60.jpg 1df693ddde5d1f0d0411fab76e3f0456 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa1cb0908841d6b0482b712c66682f79e.mp4 47087687241c3de93b1ef2affd5f7181 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lane Bray Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Lane Bray Description An account of the resource An interview with Lane Bray conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb18fb8fb02595a53328f455b2d79a27a.jpg f3a236bf9ada805363e05abe6aa81860 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc4c95f1520ceebd3f3bdc6179328dd2e.mp4 128d8b59c705821b5fe16e0833a3731d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lee Burger Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Lee Burger Description An account of the resource An interview with Lee Burger conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc92ffffd868b83f7803db6c6623efe0f.jpg e058f845bd51e15cd49b579eda0c2435 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F7f99a36b1e3e178709664ecfb5986abf.mp4 61f347ece4bde47c951d5f718ce9554b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Loren Schmid Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Loren Schmid Description An account of the resource An interview with Loren Schmid conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe66c2781443260c517a80cce624804bf.jpg 5455cca1947d0f928a663f2aed18dd1c https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe110a9b7dd0d3eebf004b4a8a3798715.mp4 80a58b2b2f13039e2ea2be3a627364c6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Shirley Hankins Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Shirley Hankins Description An account of the resource An interview with Shirley Hankins conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F99bf6416dfe576c46dbcbb1001023759.jpg 4676c74b09d2c7af2e4ce59f792542c4 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F3049ab6d2e24c396c3492efac8ecc593.mp4 02df9a4e32472997cae175080babcd6a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Mr. McDonald Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Joseph C. McDonald Description An account of the resource An interview with Joseph C. McDonald conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F7650e6d1fa8429d026db5e62d31f726b.jpg 339ba7257a11e3e03a5c79ca2465207d https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0b6396cce1f99bfc3337e41454a1291c.mp4 cbf5dd6b74ffbc33a51db1e8105690ae Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Parker Foundation Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Nuclear science; Richland, Wa.; Hanford, Wa.; Parker, Herbert, 1910-1984 Description An account of the resource "The Herbert M. Parker Foundation collects valuable personal perspectives from key individuals who worked in radiological and environmental protection at the Hanford site in the early years of its development. Since 2004, student interns have recorded interviews from health physics and related science professionals. These historically valuable interviews document their personal experiences, observations, contributions and ideas. Several of the distinguished professionals who have spoken at the Annual Herbert M. Parker Lecture are also included. The videotaped interviews and accompanying biographical sketches will be made accessible to the public." See https://tricities.wsu.edu/parkerfoundation/ParkerHistory Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Diane Aungst Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Diane Aungst Description An account of the resource An interview with Diane Aungst conducted by the Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Herbert M. Parker Foundation at Washington State University Tri-Cities https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe562453b5a9810bb8400e0a780749652.jpg 19c463c013a7a2ea8e9413b017cfd710 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd4988a2f752925db95342438fe97dd91.mp4 7a3c130b03e6994e51dc0c9d0d65fb73 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Okay, great. So let’s start off here. First of all, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, my first name is Delbert L. Ballard. Leo for center. D-E-L-B-E-R-T, B-A-L-L-A-R-D. And I go by Del, commonly. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: All right, thank you. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview here on February 18th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I’ll be talking with Mr. Ballard about his experiences working on the Hanford site, living in this community. First of all, can you start us off just—walk us through your life in sort of a brief term before you came to this area. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I was raised on a dryland wheat farm in Montana, so I know what work is all about. And I was a student in a little high school that was only seven of us in our graduating class. So I was sort of a country boy, and went to college at Montana State University. And I graduated from there in 1951. Just prior to that, the General Electric Company, of course, had been there to do interviews. They were scoping for—recruiting for engineers and I was a civil engineer graduate. There was other recruiters through, too. I had an offer from a San Francisco shipyard, and another from the Soil Conservation Service in Montana. But I wanted to get a job with GE. So I’d had the interview, but no really positive award or recognition that they were going to give me an offer. They were interviewing a large number of people. So graduation day came around and I still hadn’t gotten a letter from GE. But the mail came that morning, and lo and behold, there it was. So I was really pleased at that. So my initial job right out of college was coming to Hanford and working for General Electric Company as a rotational training—in the rotational training program. They had hired that year, the previous year, actually ’49, ’50 and ’51, they had hired about 300 or 350 tech grads. And I was one of the later ones getting here; I didn’t get here until July. So most of the good jobs were assigned. But in the rotational training program, my first assignment was a rather mundane assignment to the transportation department. Next one was a more interesting job with the inspection department. That was over in the shipyard in Bremerton. At that time, Hanford was undergoing I believed what they called the Korean expansion. The Korean War was underway and in full force at that time when I got out of school. As a matter of fact, I thought I was going to be drafted, but I tried to enlist and—I’m diverting here a little bit, but—tried to enlist in the Air Force to be a pilot, but my eyes weren’t good enough, so I got rejected for that. [LAUGHTER] So when I knew that the GE job was a deferred job, I thought, well, that’s an alternate I’d just as soon pursue. So anyway when I got here on the rotational training program, that’s what it was. Individuals were assigned to different locations for training purposes and for filling job needs. The second assignment was, as I said, inspection department in the shipyard in Bremerton. At that time, they were fabricating—the shipyard was fabricating the biological shield blocks for the C Reactor. It was one of the expansion efforts at Hanford, increasing the production capacity. So that was an interesting job over there at the shipyard doing inspection and learning a lot about inspection techniques and components and so forth. Another month after that, I was rotating around the Seattle area inspecting other components that were being manufactured for the C Reactor. C Reactor, as you know, was the one that was built right alongside of the B Reactor out at Hanford. It started up in ’53, I believe. But out of the rotational training program, I was assigned into construction area out in the 300 Area. They were fabricating laboratories for building the laboratories out there. Radiochemistry, radiometallurgy, pile tech, machine shop, and a library at that area of the Hanford—300 Area was just under construction. So I got assigned to help in the field engineering in that job. It was an interesting project. I learned a lot there in that job. And from there I went into other project engineering work, including in later years, the K Reactors were under construction and I was involved in laying up the graphite of that reactor, K East Reactors. I stayed in project engineering with GE all my life—or all my employment time was with GE. They left here in ’64. Yeah, Battelle came in ’65. Two of the projects that I followed after K Reactors, one of them was the critical mass lab in the 300 Area, which was a facility for evaluating critical shapes and sizes for plutonium missiles. It was a research job, research facility. That project was a lump sum construction and plant forces for the completion of putting the process equipment in. The next job I had was the High Temperature Lattice Test reactor in the 300 Area. That’s a reactor that probably hasn’t gotten much publicity. It was a small graphite reactor. But that was a job I was very proud of, because I was the sole project engineering function at the time. The design was done by an organization that was just brought on as GE was being phased out. It was the Vitro Engineering Company. They had a detailed design of the job, and the construction was done lump sum, and then J. Jones did the reactor installation. I can tell quite a bit of detail about that reactor, if you’re interesting. [LAUGHTER] But it was an experimental facility also for evaluating different lattice spacings for graphite moderator reactors. It was electrically heated—it operated up at 1,000 degrees centigrade, so that graphite, looking through the peepholes in the reactor, you could see white hot graphite, which is sort of an interesting thing to see. But that project was not large in comparison to today’s funding levels. But it was a three- to four-million-dollar project. I finished the job and closed it out with less than $200 left on the books and no overrun. [LAUGHTER] So I got a commendation for that job, which I was quite proud of. But from there, then I diverted into other project engineering jobs. One was in Idaho Falls. We had a test facility over there, putting in test loops in the engineering test reactor. That was closer to reactor operations type work. We had to modify an operating reactor. But that was some of my interesting project years before I got into jobs later on, which was the FFTF and the FMEF. Fuels and Materials Exam Facility. I always make the statement that every project, or every job that I worked on up until the FFTF was completed and put into operation. Every project after FFTF was shut down and closed down before it was completed. [LAUGHTER] So that was kind of a breaking point for me. Hanford, of course, reached its peak in production, and I can talk something about that as far as reactor operations is concerned. But I wasn’t really in operations, I was in engineering, and had jobs all over the Project. So I never was tied down to one location. It was interesting. So I had an interesting career in a lot of different projects. I enjoyed my work, and had a good time and a good married life and I can go into that, too, if you wish. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: So you say you were with GE this whole time? You didn’t switch over to different contractors as they came in? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, yes—no. I just with GE until they left. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: I see. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: And then Battelle came in ’65. So I was with Battelle for ’65 until ’70 when Westinghouse took over the Breeder Program. Initially, Westinghouse was just brought in for the Fast Flux Test Reactor, to manage that. And I happened to be working on a development job. That’s one I haven’t mentioned yet. [LAUGHTER] When Westinghouse came in, I was assigned—that was my first manager job. I had a group, or a section in the 321 Building in the 300 Area, and a job which was identified as the hydraulic core mockup. And we designed, built and operated models to evaluate the design configuration for the FFTF. So we built water models to look at a lot of different features: the reactor vessel arrangement, and the core arrangement and the structure. And the inlet planning and outlet planning. We built several models. The two biggest ones were the inlet model, which evaluated the sodium distribution in the inlet planning and feeding characteristics for the fuels channels. I worked on that job for seven years. And then during that time, of course, FFTF came under construction. Our group actually influenced the design which was being done by Westinghouse back east. There was a lot of the features in the arrangements and shapes of the vessel and the flow distribution and the core that was determined by that hydraulic core mockup test facility. Then when they started putting the reactor together, I was assigned to construction out in 400 Area. I spent the whole year inside the reactor vessel, helping the engineer put the parts together. One of our humorous comments about FFTF was, from our perspective was FFTF, do you know what that stands for? Yeah, it sounds for feel, file, to fit. [LAUGHTER] Fill all the tight tolerances and all the arrangements necessary to make everything fit and throw it together. It was well-engineered and well-designed, but it was still—engineering problems had to be resolved in the field. So that was another interesting project. Following that, then I spent seven years on the FMEF, the Fuels and Materials Exam Facility, designing and coordinating the design—the management of the design, which was done by an off-plant architect engineer. And there, again, that was a project that was not completed. It was shut down when the Breeder Program was curtailed. So, following that, I could go into more details where we did for various and sundry work, but it was all toward the new mission for the Hanford site, which was cleanup, starting in that field in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I retired, officially, in ’89. But I worked consulting for four years after that. So my career actually spanned from 1951 to 1994. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: How disappointing was it when FFTF got canceled? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Pardon me? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Was it disappointing when FFTF got canceled? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: It was very discouraging, yes, that they were going to close it down. When they drilled a hole in the core support structure, like drilling a hole in my heart. [LAUGHTER] Matter of fact, I’ve got some pictures to show that I was the last person in the FFTF vessel before they closed it up and started it filling it with sodium. Matter of fact, after that closure—after the photograph that I have, I’ll be happy to show you—they had an accident with the fuel charging machine which went up to the top of the travel and the upper limits which failed and it dropped down on the core and broke some of the components that I was so—[LAUGHTER]—proud of getting installed properly. Core support structure. And we had to go in there and do some repairs. But then I, after that, I left the FFTF and went to work on the design of the FMEF. [SIGH] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Did life sort of change day-to-day when you switched these contractors? How different was it working for these different companies? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: The only change that I could see was the difference of the color of the paycheck. [LAUGHTER] As a matter of fact, when we transferred from—let’s see if I can remember which contract that was—was it GE to Battelle or Battelle to Westinghouse? I don’t remember, but the end of that day, we were terminated and I happened to be at a party down in one of the local pubs which I didn’t very often frequent. But somebody said, who do you work for? And I said, at the moment I’m unemployed. Because that was the day we left one contractor and started with the next one. But the transitions were quite smooth, I would say. I mean, of course, policies changed and your managers changed. At one time, in a two-year period when Westinghouse came in, I think I had 13 different first level and second level managers above me change without in those two-year period. So there was a lot of personnel changes. But a lot of us working closer to the ground floor, there was very little change. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: So, let’s back up a moment. What were your first impressions of Hanford and the area? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I came here in the summer—it was in July. I got here on July 3rd of 1951. I was assigned to the barracks out in North Richland—women’s barracks as a matter of fact. That’s when all the dormitory rooms were filled up in Richland for the men’s dorms. So I was assigned out there for my quarters. The next day, I learned that you didn’t have to drive the buses around, you could ride the city buses or the plant buses. Plant buses, to ride to the area was five cents, and city buses, I don’t remember whether they were five cents or free. I rode that bus the next day that I went to work, and it was 105 degrees that day. And I thought, my lord, what have I gotten myself into? [LAUGHTER] This is horrible temperature! But I was young and willing to accept anything that came my way, so I guess I didn’t think it was too serious a problem. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: How aware were you of the mission of Hanford before you came here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Very little, probably. I knew that it was working on the war effort, but at that time, nobody really—well, yeah, I guess it was known they were producing plutonium or weapons for atomic weapons, but as far as the details concerned, I knew very little. As any engineer—young man right out of college might be. Because I didn’t know what the plant—the structure was. But they gave—they told us and we got the information from the co-workers and the other students. It was quite interesting, because all the youngsters that were working, everybody—not the majority of people, but a large percentage of them—were fresh graduates. The older bunch were the 30- and 35-year-olds working on the site. That’s when I met my wife shortly after that in ’53. But we were married in ’53. But I met her in ’52 at a social that was put on by YWCA, Young Women’s—YWCA organization. They had church-sponsored dinners one night a week and that’s where we met. So we’ve been married for 62 years now. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Were there a lot of those sort of social events? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: A lot of those that happened. As a matter of fact, the organization—I was the third set that the president and the secretary of that organization got married. [LAUGHTER] She was the secretary when I was the president of the organization. [LAUGHTER] Which was sort of comical, I guess. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: What sort of things did you and your wife do in your spare time in the ‘50s and ‘60s? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I guess bridge playing was one, and social events. We went—there was—they had a group that she was involved in called the Fireside Group that had functions and went camping and things like that. But we played a lot of bridge then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Where did you live? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I was living in the dormitories, of course, when we were married. I lived in North Richland in the women’s barracks for a short time until the rooms became available in the dormitories in Richland. That’s where I was living when we got married. Of course, housing was another whole story. You had to put your name on a list to get a house. They were all assigned by the government. All the housing was, of course, controlled and owned by the government. So you had to get your name on the waiting list to get a house. We were fortunate; we got a duplex, a C house up on Wright Avenue. I got that assigned in less than a month before we were married. So when we were married, we had a two-bedroom duplex house up there available. That’s where we moved in and lived there until 1957 when the government decided to disperse the property. They started selling vacant lots in 1957. We were a junior tenant in the duplex, so we couldn’t make an offer on the duplex. The senior tenants had the right to buy the duplex. So I was quite aggressive in my ownership philosophy, decided to buy a lot. We purchased the lot on Newcomer, the first property that was sold. And we built a house. I started building in March of 1958. As a matter of fact, we built—our house was the third privately built house in Richland. We had a house and were living in it before Richland was incorporated. They incorporated the city in July of ’58. That was of course the second official designation as a corporation because Richland, of course was a corporation—I mean an incorporated city before the government took it over in ’43. We built that house and I have pictures that I brought of the fact it was one of the first ones in Richland. And we’re still living in the same house. I don’t know what that says, but [LAUGHTER] I guess stability for one thing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Were you involved in local politics at all? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: In what? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: In local politics at all? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard; No, not really. They asked me a few times if I wouldn’t run for the city council, but I never did. No, I’m not a politician. I didn’t want to get involved in that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: So you described a number of different jobs you were doing over the first two decades or so that you were here? Could you walk us through, at least for one of those, what was sort of an average work day like? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, let me see. There was one—I guess all of them were similar in a lot of respects. I was doing—on those jobs, I was doing project engineering. And that meant the coordination of, and the I guess you’d call it management, although there was, of course, the organization like GE, there’s so many levels of management that comes through that it’s a little hard to say you managed it, because you have so much supervision and overhead actions that are taken on a project, for example. But on most projects, the engineer—the project engineer would write the project proposal based on what the technical department would have as input for a required facility, for example. Like the high temperature lattice test reactor, the physics department had specified the programs that they were involved in would want to look in more detail at the lattice spacing in graphite reactors, for example. So they would write a document which would specify what their objective was and what their basic criteria was for that facility. And project people would issue—maybe take that and issue an order for another group to do the detailed process—conceptual design, or do it themselves. We’d do it sometimes on small projects. We had projects all the way from modify one laboratory all the way up to a whole facility. So it’s hard to describe the same process for all of them. But it was office work, engineering work. Some of the times I was in a design group where we actually doing detailed design work. But most of my work was in the project engineering field where we were seeing the work done by others. Or specifying details or managing the people that were doing the detailed design work. But it was office work, and of course when construction started, that’s when the project engineers were more in control, because they were directing the contractors as far as the field work was concerned. It was always an interesting job, an interesting challenge, I thought, preparing contract bid packages. Office work, lots of times the projects were out in the field, of course, out in the Area. We’d drive government cars to go to work. That was an advantage. Of course being in engineering rather than operations where you had more control of your time from the standpoint of individual management. Because we’d use government cars for transportation. We didn’t have computers in the early stages, obviously. When they came out with DSIs, Don’t Say It In Writing, that was a big move, too. [LAUGHTER] But certainly a lot of progress and a lot of technology changes over the years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: How much were security or classification a part of your work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, it was certainly in overview all the time. All the documents, if a job had classified work on it, you had to get the documents classified, and follow the restrictions for those particular elements or documents, whatever’s involved. Most of the time, of course, construction was not too rigidly controlled or administered, I guess. In later years, because the, for example, research work was not really high classified. Most—a lot of it wasn’t. But it was something that was always there. Of course the badging was always—I remember one time incident I had which was funny—rather humorous. I was in a meeting out in one of the hundred areas, in a back room in some building and we were having a discussion. All of the sudden a door burst open and two patrolmen came in and said, where’s Del Ballard?! I’m over here. [LAUGHTER] Hey, come with me! They took me by the arms and whisked me outside and outside the badge house. I said, what’s going on? What’s the problem? They said, you don’t have a badge! I said, what do you mean I don’t got a badge. I looked at it and it was somebody else’s badge—name on it. They had given me the wrong badge! [LAUGHTER] So they were, I guess, vigilant in their control. But some of the times you thought it was a little overreach. It was always there, that’s for sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: You mentioned a couple jobs not necessarily at Hanford—I think you said Idaho Falls at one point, or other locations around? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Yes, we had a project—I guess I sort of skipped over that—in the Engineering Test Reactor in Idaho Falls. The fuels people here—research people—wanted to do some testing in the Engineering Test Reactor with certain issues or problems that they were trying to develop from the fuel technology. So we put in two high pressure loops over there. Again, I was the project person on it. I didn’t do the design work, I did the procurement and the construction management. Philips Petroleum was the operating contractor over there at the Engineering Test Reactor. So I went over there and saw that those loops were completed and put in place and in operation. It was in 1958. I spent, well, most of that year over there, back and forth. My wife was really unhappy, because that was the year that we had started our house. So I had—coming home on weekends and trying to keep that sorted out. Because we had a foreman working with the carpenters building the house. So it was kind of stressful for her. Yeah, and then I had to go back for the next year after that for some cleanup work on the project. It was another project that was managed by Hanford, but installing a reactor over there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: I’m curious how sort of insular Hanford was, versus how much it was common for people to get advice from outside of the Area, or to travel to different facilities and learn what they were doing, or share what you were doing with others? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I think that’s probably more prevalent in the technical field than it is in the construction area. Yeah, there certainly was in a nuclear complex, there was—and we did have travels. I did visit some other sites. Occasionally the laboratories on some of the projects we had. But most of that was done by the technical department, not the engineering department. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: How much has the community changed, and in any particular ways during the time you’ve lived here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, it’s gone from a small community to a much higher-traffic area than it used to be. But the people say it’s still pretty mild. Of course I’ve traveled to Los Angeles quite a bit; I had relatives in Los Angeles. And I’d grow accustomed to that mainly down there too. But it’s still—the Tri-Cities is still a nice place to live, I think. It doesn’t have a lot of the big city hubbub that other places do, but it certainly has changed a lot from what it was when I came. My wife came in 1944. Of course that was when it was sand and dust piles and no trees and no grass. It was a lot like that when I came, too, although it was developing. But the first few years that the Manhattan Project workers were here, they had some pretty rough goes. Of course the government would operate a city was an entirely different situation than we have now with private ownership and private management of the company—or local management of the company there. When the government operated the city, it was—you’ve heard these stories before, I know. Even lightbulbs were changed by the employees of the government. [LAUGHTER] So that was a big change. But when we got married we were renting from the government but as soon as they sold the houses we built our own and were on our own. So we’ve lived pretty much as a private city in all of our married life. So that hasn’t been a major change. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Anything else—nothing else in particular I’m fishing for here—did anything else come to mind, as far as changes in, I don’t know, spirit of work at Hanford or changes in the communities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, the government management of the Hanford site has certainly undergone lots of changes, much as our society has, I think, over the last 50 years. When GE operated the plant, I felt and a lot of us felt that the program was defined in general in scope and the contractor was given a block of money and there they went. They did the job. They didn’t have the oversight or the detail management or the daily exchange as much with the government, I think, as they do now. I think that’s been a change in philosophy or change in detail of management more. A lot of it is because the public’s been more closely involved. Like the different committees that are involved in the oversight with the DoE that they didn’t have at that time. Of course when the Manhattan Project started, it was even further away than that. Nobody outside the Project knew what was being done. They were building the atomic bomb and nobody knew was done except the organization involved in it. Now, anything the government does it’s public knowledge and has 100 different reviews over a period of a decade before they get anything done. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Of course all these decades we’re talking about here are during the Cold War, and nuclear weapons are wrapped up in a lot of that and nuclear power. Was that ever something that was on your mind, or that were you aware of? Or was that just something that was going on far away? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: No, I think the Cold War and the conflict with Russia was well-known because of all the cautions and concerns about the atomic weapons and people—during the crisis that peaked in the early ‘60s and we were in hard conflict with Russia. A lot of concern about what might happen. It was a different era and there was a lot of awareness of the potential that there could be a nuclear conflict. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Did it ever impact your life, or your wife’s life more or less directly? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I don’t think we—we thought we were protected, we thought we had the national security to take care of it. And I guess we didn’t really worry about it—it was something you didn’t really dwell on, I don’t think. Although they told the students and the kids—some people did build bomb shelters. My neighbor, Dr. Petty, they had one at their house under the lawn in the front yard. When they built the house, they put in a bomb shelter. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: [INAUDIBLE] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Nobody knew about it but them, but I knew about it. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Did you ever see the inside of the shelter? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: I never was in it, no. But I know it’s there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Let’s see. So I guess we’ve sort of covered this. Could you describe the ways in which security and or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I guess from the work that I did in the engineering specifications and drawings and documents that related to projects, we had to worry about the classification on them. You had to worry about the access—access to different projects at different facilities. Of course you had to have the right clearance. So it was a restraint on work in some respects. But it wasn’t a major impact, I don’t think. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: In more recent years—well I guess I don’t know how long—you’ve been working with the B Reactor Museum Association and other groups interested in the history of the local community. Can you tell me how you got involved with that and sort of the history of that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Sure can. I retired in ’89. And then as I said, I went back to work on a part-time basis. But during that period, the Environmental Impact Statements had been written, and the mission at Hanford was changing from production to cleanup. All the documents and all the philosophy that was being disseminated was, we were going to tear everything down and dispose of everything in the Project. I was the representative to the Tri-City Technical Council. It was a group of only local affiliate—all local agent—sections or groups from the technical society’s engineering—civil, mechanical, electrical, nuclear, women’s organizations—all the technical organizations had what they called a Tri-City Technical Council. And we met monthly and addressed the issues for technology dissemination or issues that might affect the community from what we might recommend or so forth. From that group, we learned—we knew what the DoE was getting into, transition-wise into the cleanup of the site. They were going to tear everything down. And we said, well, we don’t want that to happen to some of these historic facilities. The B Reactor, for example, was the world’s first production reactor. And it was very consequential from the history, both of our nation and the world, as far as that. And also the kick-off for nuclear power. So we said, we ought to do something about that. So we formed a committee. I was one of the people of that committee. And we met in July of 1990, was our first meeting. We talked about an organization and how we might form a group that would lead toward the preservation of B Reactor. We decided to form an association. So we had an attorney draw up our bylaws and we formed an organization called the B Reactor Museum Association. We got our state corporate action—I forget what word they use to describe the initiation of the organization in January of 1991. But I consider the organization being formed in 1990. And our objective was to educate the public about the historical significance of B, and to do what we could to preserve the reactor, to see that it was preserved. To gain access and to develop exhibits and so forth for the exhibits. So that was where we started, was way back in 1990. And all during the decade of the ‘90s, we were meeting and fighting with the Department of Energy because they had milestones after milestones that were established on the cleanup and disposal of all the reactors. B was put into the list later on, but it was always on the list for cocooning, as all the reactors would be. We got those milestones extended over the years. And finally, with persuasion and meeting with legislators, Sid Morris and I met with Sid Morris and—I don’t remember the year now, but it was one of the first times that he was sympathetic for the theme that we preserve the historical relic. And of course, later on Doc Hastings. We had many meetings and persuasions with all the legislators. Of course, Cantwell and Murray got on board over the years. It later progressed into the fact that we want to have a study to see if the Parks Service could preserve it. One time during the late ‘70s, I believe it was, several people thought that the REACH would be the only chance of preserving the B Reactor. They would be the ones that would sponsor the tours and provide for the access and so forth. I said, no, I said, I don’t believe that. I said, I think we want to get the Parks Service involved because I don’t know that even the REACH is going to have the muscle to do it. So we got meetings with the legislators and we got a study authorized for the Parks Service study. That was after two or three years of trials and tribulations. It was finally approved. When the Parks Service first came out—you’re probably aware of the fact that they didn’t have—they just had Los Alamos as the sole main site for the park. And we said, that would never sell. It had to include all the sites: Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Hanford. So they revised their study and made it a three-site park. It was eventually approved and then later legislation—Doc Hastings and Cantwell got the park legislation authorized. BRMA of course has been involved—has been the agency chipping at their heels all the way through all this. [LAUGHTER] We finally got credit for it. For many years, they didn’t really recognize BRMA as the organization that made it happen, but I think we had an awful lot to do with what made it happen. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Were you ever associated with any of the other local history-related groups? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, yes. We were affiliated with the CREHST museum. We worked with them and the REACH also. But we were the ones that were pushing—BRMA—the B Reactor specifically. We still have a lot of partnerships. We had memorandums of understanding with DoE and the CREHST and with—I guess we don’t have one with the REACH but we still meet with them. Matter of fact, they’re working on this new exhibit for the Cold War exhibit. Of course they’ve got—there’s four of us from BRMA that are on those meetings, but there’s a lot of other community leaders involved, too, obviously. And that was what happened is we were the—BRMA was the organization that was in the trenches early on. But later on, the whole community and the region and the legislators all got on board. So there was a lot of emphasis and support for getting it preserved and getting it converted, or made into a national historic park. Have you seen the plaque out there at B Reactor that says we’re the ones that initiated the plan to preserve it. So, yeah, I’m quite proud of that. I was one of the founding members of the organization. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Why did it matter to you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, it’s important, I think, to preserve the history. It’s a significant part of the nation’s history. And if it’s going to be educational for the—a good place for the students, the young kids to come up and learn what the nuclear industry’s all about. I still say—and I’ve said for twenty years—that—I don’t know how many years down the road it’s going to be, but I think nuclear power’s going to be a major source of energy. Commercial electrical as well as all the other fields—medical and research. It still has an important place to play in our total nation’s history, I think. And we need to know how it started and what problems it caused. Let’s not generate those again. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: What would you— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: So that’s the story that’s going to be told in the park, and I think a lot of people—that’s some of the emphasis. People come out and see the comments in the paper, all the negative comments. Well, that’s true, but the story’s still there and needs to be told. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford or living in Richland during the Cold War? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I don’t know. It was a challenge, I guess. The success—I’m glad that we developed the bomb rather than Hitler. Like how Fermi said, he said when he was working on fission in Italy in the late ‘30s—the 1930s, yes. He always said he was eternally grateful that he didn’t learn how to control fission then. He said if he had have, Hitler would have started the war with them, rather than us ending the war with them. So I think they need to know what the conditions were at the time that the Manhattan Project was built and what the world was undergoing at the time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: What else should I be asking about? What else is there that we should discuss? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: I don’t know! I think I pretty well spilled everything I know. Unless—I don’t know. I could mention about my—as you know, I was not here during the Manhattan Project. It was over when I came in 1951. My wife and her family was a different story. They came with DuPont in 1944. So her dad was a DuPont employee and he came out here at that time and saw the conditions in employment problems that they had at that time. He was a machinist and had actually directed the tech shops out there for many years. So he probably—that family has more history of the Manhattan Project than I do. Mine is just history. It was—I’ve had an interesting career and I guess I’ve enjoyed it here and it’s been a wonderful place to live. I think it will continue to be if we have people that keep our city from growing into something that it shouldn’t be. [LAUGHTER] But I guess I don’t have any new subjects to talk about unless you have new questions. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: I think—that’s my list for now, but thank you so much for being here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, it’s been a pleasure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: All right, great. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Tom Hungate: I had a question. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Please. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Hungate: One of the jobs you had—you had a wide variety of jobs; all of them sound fascinating to me. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Oh, they’re interesting, yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Hungate: One caught my ear, because I’ve seen these. Tell me what it was like when you said you worked on the K Reactors to lay—you said you were laying up the block. Tell—describe what that process was. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I wasn’t involved in that deeply as a lot of the fellows were. I can’t remember his name right now, but the primary engineer that had the graphite technology. That graphite was machined in the 101 Building. Well, actually the old reactor’s was in the old 101 Building in White Bluffs. They built a new building, the 2101 Building in the 200 East Area which was specifically for the graphite machining and layup—test layups. Those blocks were built to very tight tolerances. The graphite came in in square blocks from the manufacturers and they had to be machined to the final configuration. Those tolerances were very, very tight, like plus or minus two mils or five mils at the most. The blocks were basically four-and-three-quarters inches by four-and-three-quarters inches by 40-some inches long—the main block. After they were machined to very close tolerances, they were test stacked in the 2101 Building, laid up ten tiers to be sure that the tolerances of the assembly were precise. And from there they were packaged on pallets in sequence that they would go in, in reverse sequence, so when they took them off they were ready to be stacked up. And then they were shipped—brought into the reactor vessel, lowered down into the open process area in the center part of the core and pulled off the pallets and just stacked, piece by piece. There’s pictures available that you see of the old reactors. There may be some of K Reactors too, I don’t know, but show inside the reactors when they’re laying up with the blocks. Of course everybody’s in whites. Your cleanliness control’s very important. And of course, obviously, sequence was very, very important, to have all the blocks in there. But from my perspective, I just watched—I wasn’t doing the work, I was just part of the process that was putting them in there. It was very closely controlled and very temperature controlled—well, no, I don’t know about the temperature. The building was under limited temperature control. But the cleanliness was strictly controlled, and the workers of course had been assigned with each pallet that came in, they knew where it went and how it was to be laid. But that was the same process that was used in all the reactors for graphite layup. But that’s amazing, the way they built those things. You have all the penetrations, like—I can’t give you the numbers. K Reactors were bigger than the old original reactor. The original reactor had 2,004 process tubes. You probably all know the story of that, too. [LAUGHTER] But what I started to say was, the alignment of the holes in the blocks, of course, had to line up with the holes of the penetrations of front and rear faces precisely when they put them in. So it was like putting a watch together on a 40-foot-square [LAUGHTER]—40-foot cube. Very precise work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Were there any mistakes? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Pardon? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: Did you ever see any mistakes? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, no, but if there were they were corrected as they went, because they had two or three levels of inspection verified that they were going in properly. There may have been some, I don’t know. I was not in direct control of that job. I was more on the K Reactor, I just was in oversight. I don’t remember what my position was at that time, but—the B Reactor, for example, you know what happened there when they started it up? It died because of the xenon poison. They didn’t have enough neutron flux levels to override that poisoning effect. That’s when they had to add the additional fuel channels outside the original 1,500 that they had that the physicist said was adequate to drive the reactor. So that was an interesting job. They had to—the later reactors, they had more knowledge of what the requirements were. So the design wasn’t—it didn’t create a problem on initial startup like B Reactor did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: We were trying to outline or highlight—what sort of innovations came out of Hanford, what sort of inventions did you see—what new knowledge or techniques did you see created at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, there again, you need to talk to the physicists and chemists and people that were in the fuel design areas. There were so many changes made to the fuel designs. They went from—of course these were only applicable to the graphite reactors the modern fuel originally were eight inches long when the distortion that occurred in the graphite, that was because of the structure change due to the radiation in the graphite. The channels were distorted to the point where some were so crooked that the eight-inch channel—the fuel wouldn’t go through the channel. SO they went to four-inch people—four-inch long fuel assemblies in some of those bad channels. And then of course another knowledge was the design of fuel assembly, you went from strictly external core where they just had an annulus of water around the outside cooling the fuel assembly. It went to a center core; they had internal cooling—a flow channel through the center of the element. But as far as the physics of the elements, they went from totally natural uranium, originally 238, all naturally derived with 0.7% 235. They went to some enrichment in the reactors to increase the power level. But there was physics changes all along, as far as being able to control and just knowledge of impurities and what the effects were in the nuclear physical—the physics involved in the reactor. But of course, then the Breeder Program, we didn’t talk about that. There’s a lot of advancements made there. FFTF was a marvelous machine and it produced a lot of new information from greener technology. That FFTF was—I spent ten years on development—seven on development and three on construction, so. But I wasn’t—I’m not a physicist and wasn’t into the technology as much as the people—I was more into construction, design and construction. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: A lot of knowledge there, too, that you—hands-on knowledge. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Well, I always pride myself on being able to fix problems. We had a lot of things on assembly or putting the stuff together that just—problems or interferences or arrangements that weren’t thought of in design that we were able to resolve in the field, and that’s why I got into—I’ve been building houses for Habitat now for the last 15 years. [LAUGHTER] It’s a little different from putting reactors together, but I get a lot of comments from the instruction people in Habitat. This is not a reactor; we don’t need to have those tolerances. [LAUGHTER] But I say if you make it right, it looks a lot nicer and it goes together better. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> O’Reagan: All right, I guess that’s the list of questions I’ve got. I guess we’ll end it once again. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX9056486"> Ballard: Okay, well, appreciate. </div> Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Douglas O' Reagan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Del Ballard Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:52:34 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 249 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 300 Area 321 Building 400 Area 200 East Area 2101 Building 101 Building C Reactor B Reactor K Reactor High Temperature Lattice Test Reactor Engineering Test Reactor Fast Flux Test Facility Fuels and Materials Exam Facility Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1951-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1951-1989 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Morris, Sid Hastings, Doc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Del Ballard Description An account of the resource An interview with Del Ballard conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Richland. Nuclear instruments & methods Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2/18/2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-10: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. 101 Building 200 East Area 2101 Building 300 Area 321 Building 400 Area B Reactor C Reactor Engineering Test Reactor Fast Flux Test Facility Fuels and Materials Exam Facility General Electric Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) High Temperature Lattice Test Reactor K Reactor Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff94d2996a41bb42451cb4c2277070e99.jpg f3dfb8cfffc8a88f464ad65796b1208b https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F2f0d6a8c9fc260c9cd52ec998cdd8d60.mp4 c73deb8f268f89a07d4b7cfe5cc47900 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. Well, thanks for being here, first of all. To start off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Sue Olson: Sue, S-U-E. Olson, O-L-S-O-N. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Okay, thank you. And I am Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral interview here as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. It’s February 5th, 2016. This interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So just to get us started, would you please tell us something about your life before you came to Hanford? Where you were growing up and so on. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: I was born in Claude, Texas. I graduated from Panhandle High School as valedictorian in my class. I went to Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. Then went to University of Texas in Austin, Texas. I was—[COUGH] Excuse me. I was in college in an accounting class at the University of Texas in Austin when World War II was declared. I heard the President declare World War II. So at the end of that year, I took a civil service test as clerk typist and I started working for US Corps of Engineers. I first worked at Pantex Ordnance Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and I had to transfer to Tyler, Texas to an army replacement training. And then after that, I received a teletype that I was to enter in for Hanford. We had received a teletype from a lady who had transferred up here, and she had said, don’t come here. It’s rattlesnakes, sagebrush, and dust storms. [LAUGHTER] So I transferred to the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. And Manhattan Project had three areas—I worked for the army major who was in charge of one of the areas there. DuPont was the contractor there. And at Oak Ridge, I met Robert Olson, who was with me at DuPont. Before I met him, he worked at the University of Chicago to work on the Manhattan Project—he worked on at the University. And he transferred to Oak Ridge; I met him there. We were married there, and then we transferred to Hanford, with DuPont. We arrived here October 1st, 1944. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: What sort of work did you do at Oak Ridge? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, he and I were at DuPont getting ready to work. The work on the Manhattan Project was to develop the bomb. That was what it was for. And he worked at Oak Ridge. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Do you know what sort of—was he working in chemicals or physics? Do you know what sort of work he was doing there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: No, because it was all secret. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: I see. And did you say you were also working there as a clerk? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: I worked as a secretary for the Army Major, who was in charge of the X-10 area in Oak Ridge. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Okay. When you arrived at Hanford, what sort of work did you undertake here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Oh, I signed up to be secretary and DuPont was the contractor here for the first year or so. And they sent me out to 200 West Area to be in the stenographic pool. I was the only secretary there. There were several departments, and all the departments brought their paperwork in to me. [LAUGHTER] And I took dictation for all of them who wanted to write letters of any type. Then they sent another girl out—another secretary out, but she couldn’t take dictation. So I did all of that. There were several departments. I don’t remember the names of all the departments, but it was a major process. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Was it similar to what you were doing at Oak Ridge, or was it a new kind of work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: It was the same kind of work, secretarial work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Right. What was your impression of the Tri-Cities when you arrived? Was it like you had been warned? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: No. [LAUGHTER] We drove along the highway south of town, and Bob looked over and said, there it is. And we could see a few houses. We went to the hotel to check in at the hotel, and the hotel was called the transient quarters. [LAUGHTER] The hotel in Oak Ridge was called the guest house. We were in the hotel about three days. Then we moved into—at that time the houses were assigned to people. There were only the two of us, and so they moved us into a one-bedroom prefab on Winslow Street. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: In Richland? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Winslow Street in Richland. And there was one street behind that, and behind that street was desert, all the way out to the river. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: What were your impressions of the house? Did you like the house? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, the house was adequate. It was 600 square feet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Had a question and it went right out of my mind. [LAUGHTER] Okay. So could you tell us, what was an average day at your job? You said you took dictation, but what other kinds of work— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Typing. In 200 West Area in 1944, it was typing. Except for the people who dictated. One man came in one day and he dictated the evacuation process, which took him several hours to do it. And the evacuation process—if it had ever had to happen—the process was that it would be on buses—cattle car buses. [LAUGHTER] The seats were on the sides of the bus, vertically, not horizontally across as they are in most buses. But there was never an evacuation process. There was preparation for it, if it had happened. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Interesting. I understand the transportation to get to jobs on the Hanford site was difficult. Did you take buses? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, there were buses. There were buses, yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Was that a long commute? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Yes. I don’t remember the number of miles, but it’s a long commute from Richland into the West area. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: What was your husband working on? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: He worked on—it was a group of scientists that were—13 or 14 or 15, something like that—and they wrote the separations process. Which was part of the process. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: I guess that was probably a different part of the Hanford site from where you were working? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: No, it was in 200 West Area, too. Yes. And it was a group of scientists who had transferred from Oak Ridge along with Bob. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Right. Could you please describe Hanford as a place to work? It’s a broad question. Let’s see—what were some of the more challenging aspects of your job? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, that I typed for eight hours a day. I typed or took dictation eight hours a day. No coffee breaks, nothing like that, and everything was confidential. Nobody discussed their job with any other person. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: I would guess you would have had to have had pretty high clearance to be taking dictation on all these sensitive matters. What was that process like? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, I worked in Two West and then I transferred to B Plant, and I went to 300 Area. My next job, I worked for Wilfred Johnson when he was assistant general manager. And I worked in the 703 Building. I had Top Secret clearance there. So I had kept the filing cabinet locked. I took dictation from him. The rest of it was the type you’re making phone calls. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: When did you find out about what the goal of the Hanford site was, to make the weapons? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: When the bomb was dropped, I read it in the local paper. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: What was your reaction? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: I was happy. That the US was going to be safe. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Right. Do you—trying to think how to phrase—is that your impression of that’s when everybody around you found out as well, or was it sort of a general surprise that the— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Yes. It was a surprise to everybody, I think. That’s my opinion. Except the men like my husband who were working on it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Did you continue working at the Hanford site after the war? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Yes. I worked there for ten years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Did your work change substantially once the war was over? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, as I said, I worked as a secretary in 200 West, and then I moved to B Plant. And I worked in B Plant, and then I went to the 300 Area and was a secretary for the head of metallurgy. And then I had the job as—I was then an executive secretary for Wilfred “Bill” Johnson. And I retired after that period. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Did the workplace environment change in that time? You mentioned there were no breaks at first. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Change in what way? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: You mentioned it was very focused work during the war, no breaks, really concentrating to get the job done. Did that become more relaxed eventually, or was it still the same pace? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Not in the jobs I worked on. Everybody was there to work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: No coffee breaks, nothing like that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Interesting. How about—can you tell us something about your life outside of work during the wartime? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: We skied. Bob was from Wisconsin. He was a skier. And I grew up in Panhandle, Texas, and I did not ski. But I took lessons. And we skied on weekends. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Where would you go? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: We went to the closest one, over by—the closest one, which was south of East Richland. Tollgate. We went to Tollgate and skied there. And then we went up to the Snoqualmie Pass, and we skied there when it had only three rope tows. Before they put in any kind of lifts. It was—and I don’t remember the year for that, but—shortly after we got here, we went to Snoqualmie Pass. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Did the social environment—did life in Richland change for you outside of work once the war was over? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, there were a few more activities, because while the war was going on, there was nowhere to go. [LAUGHTER] We had a friend from Oak Ridge we played bridge with part of the time, and then we skied weekends. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Did you feel it was easy to meet new people when you moved here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Did I feel--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: I’ve heard some people say that when they first got here, they had a very easy time meeting people; I’ve heard other people say when they got here, they were so focused on the work, they didn’t get to meet as many people— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Oh, no, no, because we had friends from Oak Ridge who were transferred who were scientists. And people who were at work in that kind of work. So we visited with them, and they—we all had a little group, all the people that came from Oak Ridge. So we had several friends. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Let’s see. Could you describe any ways in which security or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, of course. [LAUGHTER] No visiting, no coffee breaks—we worked. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Did the secrecy continue outside of work? I’ve seen in some communities that people feel that they can’t talk about the work, and that sort of gets—someone last week was describing how she sort of felt she had to be on her guard about speaking about her work. She was afraid of that. Did you feel any sort of sense like that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: We didn’t discuss—we did not discuss work, because we were busy with whatever we were doing—playing bridge or dancing or skiing. So there was no reason to discuss work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Sure. When you retired from being a secretary, you mentioned you eventually got into real estate. Is that right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Was that right away, or did you have a [INAUDIBLE] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: No, it was not. My husband died in 1974, and so I was at home. I did volunteer work for 20 years. I had no plans to go back to work, but after his death, I decided to work in real estate. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Will you tell us about your volunteer work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Oh, yes, Kadlec Hospital Auxiliary, and Mid-Columbia Symphony Guild, and Girl Scouts. All types of volunteer work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Great. What kinds of things did you do at the hospital? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Volunteer work. I would go down at 7:00 in the morning, and I answered the phone in one of the departments—I think it was the children’s department, that was part of what I did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: And when you started getting into real estate, can you tell me about that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Yes, yes. I took classes at CBC. I studied hard for it, and I passed the test. I started to work for a company called—let’s see—Sherwood and Roberts. They were a company that had offices in this state and California and some other state. I worked for them four years, and then I transferred to other companies. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Did that job change over time? I know the communities started expanding during that period— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Oh, well, yes, there was more work as the company got larger. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Could you describe any ways in which you think of the Tri-Cities as changing over the first couple of decades you lived here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Well, it got larger. Larger, and they built more houses out past Winslow [LAUGHTER] Winslow Street. Well, of course it changed. There were more activities. Everybody was more—and there were people transferring in and out from large companies. There were a lot of people who came here who had worked for other companies that came here. And some had worked for General Electric or whoever the major contractor was. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Let’s see. Of course, during a lot of this era, the Cold War is going on as well. Did you feel that that was something sort of just off happening in the world, or was that something that you felt impacted your life? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: The Cold War? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Yeah, of course, there’s sort of this global conflict going on. There’s a lot of still building nuclear weapons, there’s thinking about use of nuclear weapons. Some people have described sort of a fear during that time, and other people have described they were happy—they went about their work and it didn’t bother them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: No, there was no fear to me personally. I was happy to see that the US was doing a job extremely well. I hoped it would continue to be good. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Let’s see. This is a general question. How would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the period that you lived here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: I think they should all be very proud of it, because it ended the war. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Right. Is there anything that you think children growing up today might not know about this period? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: I have no idea whether they know or not. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Sure. Is there anything you think, beyond—sorry, I have to—trying to think through, just—as people have lived here for some time start thinking back on their lives in the community, how they would like people to think about the history of the local community? I guess you’ve answered that to some degree: we should be proud about the contributions of the time. I guess what I’m trying to get at is—what was different in, say, the ‘60s or the ‘70s, in living in this era than it is today? Anything come to mind? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: I don’t think there was anything different from living in any good community or city. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: One of the local community leaders here—we understand you knew Sam Volpentest— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: --who contributed a lot to the local history. Would you describe your knowledge of his impact, what he was working on when you got to work with him? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: He was a major impact. He saved the Tri-Cities time after time after time. He made contacts in Washington, DC and he kept them. He flew back and forth frequently. Without his perseverance, the Tri-Cities would never have become as good as it had been. He kept sure that Hanford was going, which, at that time, was a main project in the Tri-Cities. And the best one producing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: I always like to ask—what have I not asked about that I should be asking about? What else should I be asking you about? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Oh, I don’t know. Nothing else. [LAUGHTER] I think you asked very well, thank you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: Well, if anything comes to mind, or anything you’d like to expand upon comes to mind, we’d of course love to hear it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: All right, thank you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: But otherwise, thanks so much for being here. It’s been very interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> Olson: Thank you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX15306174"> O’Reagan: All right. </div> Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Douglas O' Reagan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sue Olson Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:18:53 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 245 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 200 West Area B Plant 300 Area 703 Building Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1944-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1944-1964 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Olson, Robert Johnson, Bil Volpentest, Sam Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sue Olson Description An account of the resource An interview with Sue Olson conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2/5/2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-09: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. 200 West Area 300 Area 703 Building B Plant Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Volpentest, Sam, 1904-2005 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6c10e7cd5c77c67e2ed1ebcce4a63ef6.jpg 87ee9053e27e2c67bb21a94229a21fe3 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fdad70d298e5bf3f027f0463a19488be2.mp4 b415b0ea09ed2f30f8b71066b333122f Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Douglas O’Reagan: My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Everett A. Weakley on January 13th, 2016. Interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And I will be talking with Everett, or Ev—would you prefer Everett, or--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Just—yeah, Ev or Everett. Either one. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. About his experiences working on the Hanford site. Okay, well thanks for being here. So—you were just telling me while we were having some camera issues—I’d love to hear about sort of how you got involved with the Hanford site, what you were working on that brought you here, and then your sort of early years, what you were working on here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, they came up to University of Idaho and recruited people. And I was one of the ones they recruited. So I came down here, and they put me on work at the tritium program extraction process. So I was a process control engineer at that time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Do you know why they recruited you? Were you working in physics? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: They were after engineers, especially chemical engineers at that time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: I see. Did you know anything about nuclear science specifically? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, no. We didn’t know squat. [LAUGHTER] Of course. Because we were up at University of Idaho. But it was a lot better than being drafted and sent to Korea. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: How much were they able to tell you about the job before they hired you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Very little. Very little. They didn’t tell us what was going on. They came down here and they put some people—engineers in this job, some in this job. I was selected for tritium extraction. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Could you tell me about your first experiences on that job? What sort of the first month or two like? Do you remember? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, they put us on shift work. I think it was called XYZ shift. And it was only five days a week, but it was—changed. So they were going 24 hours a day, but only for five days. It was a glass line at that time. Tritium was extracted and then you had to send it—you had to pump it out through palladium windows—that’s the way they got the hydrogen out, and the tritium and the deuterium. And then we had to collect those in glass containers. It was all hooked up to the system. And then we were designing one for a metal one. So I went in on the metal designs also. And most of that work was done in the shops down in—oh, what do they call it—the old Hanford site. They had a lab—or a place down there, and they did most of the work—construction work. And then they assembled it all. It was interesting work, actually. Because they kept me out of the Korean War, also, so I was happy about that. I didn’t want to go over there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Part of what we’re trying to get an idea about is sort of—what was it like working on the Hanford site? Is there anything that sticks out to you about the way things worked? Or the structure, or anything like that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, since I was a single guy, they put us in the dorms. They ran out of dorms, so they put us—there was two dorms that were down in the women’s dorm area. So they put us in one of those dorms down there. I remember there was a—what the heck street was that? Anyway, those women’s dorms were right close there, too. And then we’d go up and eat at the Mart, which is still here, but it isn’t called the Mart now. And we’d walk through this field of—I think they were prunes or plums or something like that. And you’d go through there and you’d get attacked by the birds. [LAUGHTER] They would actually attack you during the daytime. So it was a lot of things going on. For dorm club, we’d go down to—oh, the Blue Mountains, and we’d go up to Mount Hood, and hunting and fishing was always what I did. It was a good place. Lot of people. It was interesting, because everybody was new, had come in. It was quite the exciting time to see all these people from all over the United States. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Did you live in the dormitories long? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, let’s see. I lived in there until I got married in ’53. Then we got a B house on Van Giesen Street—one end of it. And I wasn’t the oldest tenant, so I could not buy that anyway. I wouldn’t want it anyway. And then they started selling houses; I got a H house, south end of town and had to remodel that. Had to dig out the basement and all that. By that time, I had several children, so I kind of had to make room for all these kids. Took out the chimney. My wife did not like the coal-burning stove down there to heat the place. So we put in electric baseboard heat. Swamp coolers on the windows. Re-put new—took the chimney out. Had to put new roofing on. All that sort of thing. And later on, we moved to where we are on Pike Avenue now. Then we had more kids. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Keep you busy. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: That’s right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: What was life like in Richland in the ‘50s? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, it was kind of—there was always something to do. Mainly, down along the river in the park. We’d go down there for entertainment in the evenings. There’d be dances. And then I took up square dancing, my wife and I. So that was in different places, but mainly at the end, it was down in the—what do they call it, down there now? At the park. Oh, community house. It’s still going. I think this is their last year. We used to be on what’s now a hole in the ground, on the south end of that building, was where they used to have a structure. That’s where we danced, it was in that. And they had a kitchen in there; everybody’d bring food. It was a nice time. Had a lot of fun. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: So you said—do you feel it was easy to get integrated into the community, to be a part of the community at that time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: What do you mean? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Well, I’m just thinking in terms of your—you’ve been describing a very interesting social scene that people can get into. I’m just thinking, there were a lot of new people coming into town. How—you yourself, of course, experienced this—what it was like to be a new resident in Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, mainly you were in dorms. So, you were all right out of college. Here you are, a bunch of college kids, here—men, and then college women right next door to them. So there was a lot of dating going on. Then we’d go over to Pasco, to the Elks Club at that time. And on Friday nights, they always had a fish dinner. We’d go over there and dance and eat. That was a good time. That was ballroom dancing, it wasn’t square dancing. That was later. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: So returning to your work for a minute, I guess to some degree you’ve done this, but could you sort of describe a typical work day, and did that change over the long course of time that you were working there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, when I went out there, I had to work shift work. XYZ shifts. You’d work daytimes, evenings, and nighttime. I didn’t like that too well. Then when I went to 300 Area, I was all daytime, which I liked. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: How much did the work you were doing change as you got these successive promotions, as you got the new jobs? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Yeah. I mean, when you were an engineering assistant, was your—I’d assume—if only because it’s decades earlier—how different was your work than when you were principal engineer or senior principal engineer? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, the added responsibility, of course. And I spent a lot of time in the old reactor fuel and then I wrote a lot of documents on how to—the canning process. And that’s probably in here—I’m pretty sure it is. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: I noticed here, it says that you are an expert on fuel manufacturing environmental issues. I wonder what—when did that become a priority? The environmental issues, was that something that was always part of your work, or did that develop over time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Environmental issues—you worried about what was going out the stacks, especially in 313. We had slug recovery—we’d take the aluminum—the ones that were reject—and they would dissolve the aluminum cans off in caustic, and they always had this exhaust going out. If you didn’t watch it, it would suck out quite a bit of moisture with it, and that would have caustic in it. We had trouble with the women walking by—their nylon hose would disintegrate. And they didn’t like that. I don’t blame them. And you could feel it—you could feel it on your face. They had to fix that up, of course. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Were safety issues or the environment ever something you were concerned about working there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, yeah, I was always worrying about—And then at the 306 Building, making fuel elements for the N Reactor, I was involved in that—a lot of things. I had to make trips to the aluminum companies that made aluminum products for us. Bought them back east, and some of them in California. So I did a lot of traveling, going to these different places, trying to get improvements made in aluminum ore, and later on, Zircaloy-2. That was Wah Chang made that down in Oregon—made Zircaloy-2 for us. That was interesting. So you’d take a drive down there and visit their plant. And then you’d go to these other places and visit those plants. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: These were to get components for the fuel manufacturing? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: What’s that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Were these trips to get components for the fuel manufacturing? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: They were making components for— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: I see. How much—let’s go with this. Could you describe the ways in which security and/or secrecy impacted your work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, you couldn’t talk about what you were doing, and we knew that. I made a lot of trips—I went to National Lead Company in Ohio at Fernald. That’s the ones that we would get our uranium cores from, for the old reactors. Then I’d go down to Mallinckrodt in Weldon Spring, Missouri, and that’s where they started making the billets that they’d send up to—on Lake Erie. There was a place that’d take the big billets and make smaller billets for the N Reactor. So I was always traveling around. Then at the same time, I was going down to the Savannah River plant and checking on what they were doing, because they had the same people. Like me, engineers that were busy and they’d get together and compare notes, and try to get the lower prices on some things. Especially aluminum components for the old reactors. Nothing much you could do about the Zircaloy: it was pretty well fixed. The only plant I never go to was the one that made the braze rings for the N Reactor fuel. That was back in—and it had beryllium in it. And I never had gone to there. I don’t know—I just plain missed it for some reason. I don’t know why. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Was it easy to communicate with all the engineers and workers at these plants, or did the secrecy ever sort of inhibit that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, no. If you’re buying, say, Zircaloy stuff, you go right down here in Oregon and talk to them. And that’s what we did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Same way back east on the aluminum plants. Did a lot of traveling. My wife didn’t like that, I don’t think, but we had to travel a lot. And it was old airlines at that time. [INAUDIBLE] had an airline to go to Spokane. You could catch a plane from there, it takes six hours to get into—now takes just a few hours. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Was it unusual that you were traveling that much? Did other people also travel that much from the Hanford site? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, a lot of people were traveling. It’s hectic now. I won’t get on an airplane anymore, so heck with them. [LAUGHTER] I’m retired; I don’t do that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Do you feel the security or secrecy of the place changed much over the decades? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, yeah. When I started here it was really secret. They didn’t want the Russians to know anything about making tritium. But the secret got out, because somebody in Savannah River—or down at Oak Ridge probably told them. So nothing we could do about it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: But oh, yeah, they tried to keep it secret. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: What were the most challenging and/or rewarding aspects of your work at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Ooph! That’s a tough one. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: It’s a big question. Any particular times that you were working on a project that was really stumping everybody? Any real challenges there that stick out? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, there’s always challenges to make things safer and better, and don’t dump stuff out into the atmosphere, or down the drain out to the ponds. Because at that time, they ponds along the river. And it discharges—a lot of stuff went into that pond. They tried to clean that stuff up, but—oh, yeah. When you have time to go through this, you will find a lot of things in here that I worked on. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Is there anything in there that you’re particularly proud of having accomplished? Or that sticks out? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, I lasted the whole—until I got laid off. [LAUGHTER] That’s an accomplishment—I didn’t get crapped up with anything. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Did you like your job? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, yeah, I liked it. Oh, sure. It was a challenging job. I wrote a lot of manuals. That’s one of the things I did, a lot of manual writing when I was out there. There are still some of those around on the processes of lead-dip canning process, and co-extrusion process. I did a lot of writing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Have the Tri-Cities changed much in your time living here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: And how? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, yeah, since I came in ’50? Oh, yeah. There’s a lot of changes. They couldn’t even allow the blacks to live in Kennewick. They had to go over in Pasco, for instance. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: So we didn’t see too many blacks, actually. Now towards the end, they started hiring some people in that were blacks. I had no problem with them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Yeah, we’re trying to get a sense for how the community has changed over time. I know that’s a vague question. That’s certainly an interesting point about the demographics of it. Anything else about sort of the social life, the number of things going, anything else like that that sticks out to you on how the community’s changed over the decades? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, I always had been hunting and fishing. So when I came here, I took up hunting and fishing again. Some of the people that I—I belong to the Rod and Gun Club—joined that many years ago, and I still belong, even though I got rid of my guns last year. I don’t go out and dig goose pits in the middle of the winter anymore. That’s too cold. I didn’t like to eat geese, anyway. [LAUGHTER] But I had a lot of good trips hunting down the Blues and up north of Spokane, up in that area. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: One of the things—well, okay. Let me go to this one next. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and/or living in Richland during the Cold War? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Hmm. That’s an odd one. Well, for one thing, we couldn’t announce what we were doing anywhere. If you could, you made sure you didn’t. If they said, hey, you’re from Hanford. But it didn’t bother me on traveling too much. Because I’d usually go on to aluminum vendors or Zircaloy-2 vendors. Or I’d go to Savannah River plant, which has got the same restrictions as we have. And it was a free exchange then when you went there or you went to National Lead at Fernald. It was free exchange with the people there. So that was just like being at work. So I had no really problem with it. I didn’t really like traveling that much. But there was nothing I could do about it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: You were mentioning your collaboration people at Savannah River. Can you tell me more about that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: What’s that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: You were mentioning your training people at Savannah River, is that right? Or just trained people who eventually were at Savannah River? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: No, they were—I met one of them. But they sent people up in tritium extraction. Because they built that plant for tritium. The guy that was running the tritium extraction plant was one of them that I trained. And the last trip I made down there, I met him and went into the tritium extraction plant with him and talked to him. He gave me a tour of what it was like. It was a lot different than what we had out here, of course. Then they shipped their stuff again to Oak Ridge. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Okay. So, I’m also interested in how people commemorate their community, how people celebrate the history, or try to remember the history. I understand that you’ve been involved in some of the historical groups around here. Can you tell me something about that? Why you thought that was important, why you got involved with those groups? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Are you talking about the Richland Rod and Gun Club, for instance? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Well, them and also the B Reactor Museum Association and so on. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well the B Reactor Association, I was one of the earlier ones, before they got the Indians out there. It was interesting, because I was on the ground floor with them. In fact, I was in a meeting this week with them. I still belong to them. Just like the Rod and Gun Club, I still belong to them, even though I don’t—got rid of all my guns because I don’t go out and dig goose pits in the wintertime anymore. So it was interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: I always find that there’s an awful lot of things that I don’t know that I should be asking. What could you—what would seem important or interesting that you might want to talk about, or think might be worth discussing that I might have not thought to ask? Anything that comes to mind? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Hmm. Not right off the top of my head, it isn’t. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Sure, that’s fine. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Yeah. We’re just trying, as I said—we’re most interested in getting a feel for life in the Tri-Cities throughout the Cold War, up to the near present. And just how things have changed over time. What it was like to be a worker on the Hanford plants, how work on the Hanford plant changed over time, what it was like living in the community and getting to know people. So really, a broad set of things, but there’s always questions I don’t think to ask. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Okay. Well, you might have some ideas when you go through this later on. They gave me this, had my payroll number on it and all that. My service dates, 6/19/50 is when I came here. And payroll number 51500 was pretty easy to remember, thank goodness. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: As you went through this, did anything— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Huh? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: As you started reading through this again, did any memories leap to mind? Did anything about it sort of jog any fond memories or any surprises? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, we always had surprises. We never knew what was going to happen. Item—let’s see, what is that? Item four. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: I would ship pyrophoric uranium Zircaloy chips and fines back to National Lead. And we had surprises there, because they were supposed to use metal pallets. Somebody brought in wooden ones. And they put all these things that we had full of concrete and chips and fines in it, and they had to take them over across the street into a building. And when they did that, they heated it up and it broke one of the containers, and it caught fire on the shipping containers. They weren’t supposed to use shipping containers. That was a hell of a mess to clean up. Because we had a fire, had to clean all that up then. But we actually shipped the stuff back there and they recovered the uranium and reused it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Well, I think that’s the written questions I have here. There are certainly a lot more interesting stuff here. Again, if anything comes to mind you would like to speak about, we would love to hear a bit more. Also, it mentions here that your historical knowledge of site activities, particularly in 300 Area, has been extremely valuable in the preparation of the RCRA and CERCLA documents and planning. Could you tell me anything about that initiative? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Whereabouts are you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: It’s number five, sub-point A. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, okay. I did a lot of document writing and preparations of these RCRA and CERCLAs documents and planning. And I worked with—what’s her name? Michelle Gerber? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: I worked a lot of work with her, as she was a kind of historian. You’ve probably met her, of course. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: I know the name, but I haven’t actually met her, I don’t think. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: You haven’t met her? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: I don’t think so. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Amazing. I’m surprised you haven’t met her yet. Anyway. She needed a lot of work. I would find things in 300 Area when we were cleaning out for the old reactors, getting 313 cleaned out. We would find movies. I’d ship that out to her, and then she made a CD out of it, I think. It showed the canning process, which had never been done before. It was— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Do you think the history of your job is going to be well-preserved? Do you think the records are still there that can reflect on your times, your work? That is again, sort of an open-ended question here. I’m just trying to think through how people will remember this time in history, and sort of the work that you were involved in. You’re mentioning you found this film and were able to get it out there. But probably some materials didn’t make it out, for security reasons or whatever else, or just weren’t preserved. Do you feel that people have an accurate memory of the time as you look through? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, most of them, I think, do. I always rode a bicycle around, between the buildings out in 300 Area. I would collect lead parts that I’d see laying around and get rid of them—or pick up anything else. So that I would ride those into the building. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: I saw—I was out at the DoE’s artifact collection—historical artifact collection. They have some bicycles out there that I guess were what you were describing, people traveling around the site. Was that common? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: What do you mean? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: You were using bicycles to get around the site? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Well, it was in our area. Oh, I used it all the time. And it had a basket in the back wheels. I’d put something in there—I would collect lead brick or something like that, and put it where the lead’s supposed to be and kind of clean things up. Well, it was a pretty good-sized area, 300 Area, so if you had to go down to the south end for some reason, you wanted to get there and get back. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Right. Okay. So as I said, I think these are the questions that we had prepared, sort of the general ones here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: You might have some questions when you—well, you can use anything you want out of this write-up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: Yeah, I think this will be a great help. This has been very interesting from my perspective here. We certainly thank you for your time. Yeah, I think that’s at least our first set of questions. But maybe if anything occurs to us, or to you, maybe we could send follow-up questions? Would that be okay, if any questions— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, yeah, you can always get ahold of me if I’m around. I don’t go travel too far since I’m 88. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan: All right. Well, thanks very much. We appreciate your time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: Oh, she’s still back there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> O’Reagan. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX195563363"> Weakley: [LAUGHTER] </div> Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Douglas O' Reagan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Everett Weakley Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:32:21 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 240 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 300 Area N reactor 306 Building B reactor Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1950-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1950-? Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Gerber, Michelle Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Everett A Weakley Description An account of the resource An interview with Everett A Weakley conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Pasco (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Richland. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1/13/2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-08: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. 300 Area 306 Building B Reactor Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) N Reactor Pasco (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd03ed5496b28bc5658b6cedbb7811a1c.jpg cdf4ad783592d80ab92e4e8de08a9132 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd07e75b7aa3d6bdc185fd241f7c3d1c0.mp4 f04f6245b14fb6b4a256f244212221ba Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview O'Reagan, Douglas Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Walkley, Evelyn Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Douglas O’Reagan: First of all, will you please pronounce and spell your name for us? Evelyn Walkley: Evelyn Walkley. E-V-E-L-Y-N, W-A-L-K-L-E-Y. O’Reagan: All right, thank you. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview on February 18th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be speaking with Ms. Walkley about her experiences around this area—around the Hanford area and the Tri-Cities area over the 20th Century. Well, thanks for being here. I understand you moved here when you were just a little girl. Walkley: That’s correct. My family moved here in late 1943. So I was ten years old and in the fifth grade. And my father was a journeyman carpenter, so he was recruited to come out for the Hanford Project. Told not to bring his family, because there wasn’t housing. But he brought his family. O’Reagan: Do you remember anything from your life before moving here? Walkley: Yes. We came from Oklahoma and I remember being on a small farm there. The year, or a year-and-a-half before we came here, we had lived in Leadville, Colorado for a few months. Again, my father was working on some—actually, it was a training facility for the Army, I think, up in the mountains of Colorado. I remember being there, and I was in the fourth grade. Very, very crowded school, and you shared your desks and you did not throw away a piece of paper unless it had been written on margins, front side, back side, because the supplies were in short supply. O’Reagan: What were your first impressions of—was it Pasco you moved to? Walkley: Yes. I can remember us driving up—we came over the hills of Pendleton and at some point, hit the Columbia River. I can remember, as a fifth grade kid, knowing that Washington was the Evergreen State. We were getting very close to Washington and I couldn’t figure out where the trees were—how—where is this? We came in to Pasco on a very hot Sunday. We spent the day trying to find a place to live. And there wasn’t one. So that night, my parents parked by the city park in Pasco. We were pulling a trailer and somehow or other, they could raise the lid on this and my parents slept in this trailer. My brother and I slept in the car. That’s where we spent the very first night. No, I take it back: that might have been a Saturday. And then the next day, we went around looking for a place. We found out about this trailer park that is roughly in the area of 10th and Clark in Pasco. Essentially, this was an alfalfa field, and if you had a trailer you could park there. We did not have a trailer, so we pitched a tent that we had brought. The first week we lived in that tent, and there was just a ground cover. My dad started to work. At some point in the next few days, he was able to build a floor and the sides part way up this tent, and then rafters to make it so that you could stand up in it. We lived in that tent for a year. After the year, they were able to buy a little cabin on this place. Of course, none of this—we must have had electricity, but I know that we did not have running water. But at any rate, then they pulled the tent over beside this cabin, and my parents then basically—the cabin was our living room, kitchen, and my parents’ bedroom, and my brother and I slept in the tent. When we were all in the tent, my dad had built double bunkbeds. My parents slept down and my brother and slept up. Because we were all in this 14 by 14 tent. So it’s pretty cozy. O’Reagan: How did the weather treat you? I would think that would get pretty hot and cold in the seasons. Walkley: It was. It, I believe, had some sort of a cook stove. And probably that’s what my mother cooked on. I can remember pretty clearly us being newly in this tent and my parents going to get groceries. And during that time, there was wind blowing. When they came back, everything was covered with sand. I can remember my mother just setting down and crying. She hated it; she wanted to go back to God’s country. But you’d learn to live with sand. Now, it was much better once we had a floor. I can remember my mother bringing in clothes from the clothesline and that they were frozen—and it was kind of freeze-dried. But she’d bring them in, and they’d thaw, and somehow or other dried. But it was—if the wind blew, the wind blew, and the tent flapped all around. And if it was cold, it was cold in the tent. And if it was hot, it was hot in the tent. But other people in this trailer park, and other people in the whole area were in similar circumstances. We did not use our car at all while we were here, because the gas rationing points went to whoever my father carpooled with to get to Richland and Hanford. So any place we went, we walked. So you walked to the movies, standing in line. You walked to the grocery store, which, at that time, downtown Pasco was centered in 4th and Lewis, and just two or three blocks around from that. So we walked all of those places. Walked to school. I went to Longfellow School, which—I don’t know how far that was, but I’d walk on 10th Street, and they were building homes to the west side of 10th Street. When the wind would blow, that sand would come off of there, and would just beat against your legs. I can remember that being a stressful time, because there wasn’t any concern about air pollution. And I’m sure that watering trucks were not available to them, and they were building homes as fast as they could. That was because, essentially, the homes in Pasco ended about 10th Street. So it was—when I think about it now, I think it was really pretty primitive and we were sort of poor folks. But then, so was everybody else. And this was all for the war effort. It was—I think the country was 100% into the war effort. Way different than Vietnam and Korea. So we were saving aluminum foil off of pieces of gum. I’m sure we turned it in to someplace. I never knew where that aluminum went to—probably the trash. O’Reagan: What did you do for water? Walkley: Oh. We must have carried water from some central faucet. I don’t really remember the carrying the water. But I know we didn’t have any running. I think we did have an electric light. I don’t remember any other electric appliances. We may have had them. I was a ten-year-old kid. I didn’t pay attention. But I know that we did not have any indoor plumbing. There was a wash area in the facilities that we used for at least the first year. The second year, I think we maybe had a washing machine of our own. You just carried water, heated it on a stove. Hot water tanks are really nice to have in a home. And running water. O’Reagan: We haven’t spoken to very many people who lived in Pasco in this era, so this is really, really fascinating stuff. Can you tell us about any of the other people who lived near you, or any of the other children you met? Walkley: Most of the other children that I recall early on were native children. They had grown up here. I think that most of the people that I recall in the trailer park were adults. Because they probably heeded don’t bring your families. I know that my parents recruited an aunt and uncle to come up. My uncle worked out on the Hanford Project someplace; my aunt worked at what’s called Big Pasco, which is the big warehouse areas on the river in Pasco. That was all an Army supply depot. My aunt said they had everything from sewing needles to tanks that came in there and were dispersed out. My cousins were older. The place where we lived, that had essentially been an alfalfa farm. I remember my parents talking about our landlords, which were—Fosters was their name—that he had to grow alfalfa and hay to feed his horse. And he had to have the horse because he needed something to help him till the ground. So this just seemed like, stop both of those things and you’re better off! And they did, because they were renting out. I have no idea what we paid to have this tent area. The area in the trailer park—most of the trailers were homemade. There was one Spartan trailer there. I think, maybe, the CREHST Museum had a Spartan trailer. It was aluminum siding and curved front windows. It was a mansion. There was one of those. But I have no experience with the camps that were in Richland and with all of the servicemen that were in Richland. I was a kid, and we didn’t get to Richland, because we were walking. It was—like I say, my mother hated it. She couldn’t wait until the war was over and we could go back to God’s country. But she did find out in 1945, when we did go back for a year and a half that God’s country was economically depressed. So we came back here permanently then in 19—late ’46 or early 1947, and have been here ever since. But as—I believe that the windstorms were worse then, just because of the farming and the construction that was going on. I don’t know that the winds were any worse. But it was a lot dirtier then than it is now. Part of it is different farming practices, not as much construction. And then the people that—when there’s construction sites, now, they’re running water trucks back and forth. And they weren’t doing that in 1944. O’Reagan: Were you still living in that cabin when you moved back, or did you move somewhere else? Walkley: No, when we moved back, we actually moved into a basement apartment that was on 3rd Street in Pasco. I don’t remember the number, but it was north of what is now Pasco City Hall. At the time that we moved there, it was Pasco High School plus a junior high school. We were about three blocks from there, and at that point, then, I was in the seventh grade. Like I say, that was Pasco High School and Pasco Junior High School. Then at some point, my parents purchased a home that was out in the middle of nowhere, and essentially it was—there was no housing around it. This was on Brown Street in Pasco, and from Henry to Court, except for their house, there were no other houses. 5th Street to 10th Street, there wasn’t—and that house had just been—I don’t know when the house was built—pre-war, I’m sure. And it was old. They purchased that in probably 1948 or ’49. And essentially there was just a dirt road—two-lane road going to the house. And then it was kind of normal life. O’Reagan: Was your father still a carpenter throughout this time? Walkley: Yes, he was doing carpentry work until he retired in like 1968, something like that. And in the meantime, they had purchased a little farm on Road 68. It still is a little farm on Road 68. But he was watering and taking care of a few acres of concord grapes while he was also doing carpentry work. O’Reagan: Can you tell us about going to school at, you said, Pasco High? Walkley: Yes. So when we moved back, I was in the seventh grade, and went to the high school, because the junior high was there and, at that time, the north wing was just being built. So you could tell by that that Pasco was really still quite small. My husband and I were in school together, but we did not actually start dating or anything until after we were out of high school. But he actually was a native born, one of the few in the area. His mother actually was born in Walla Walla and he was actually born in Walla Walla, but they lived west of the—what was Central Pre-Mix. It’s somebody else now, but the gravel pit that’s out on West Court Street. They lived on the river where Court Street takes a right angle turn and goes away from the river. So I would say he was part of the downriver people, because their well had to have been Columbia River water. But, like I say, he was a native. His parents had a Chris Craft indoor—not indoor—inboard motorboat—I don’t think I’m using the right term. But at any rate, the government came and said, we want to use your boat. Because they were doing sounding on the Columbia River, and the boat that they had, that apparently was a five horse outboard motor, would not hold the current. So we want to requisition your boat. So apparently my husband’s dad said, well, you can have the boat, but not without me. So he went to work in his boat. And if it was good weather, they did surveying—sometimes in the river and sometimes not. I think if the weather was really bad—and I don’t know whether he went to work or not—but at any rate, at that time, there were really just two big boats on the river, his and I think Havstad’s, which—the Havstad House was what’s now called the Moore Mansion, that’s by the Blue Bridge. So he was—his—my husband’s parents, Glen and Elvira Walkley, were natives. He was PUD commissioner for years and years and active in the community. But let the government use his boat during the war time. O’Reagan: If you were describing your education, your time in high school to students today, what would be different? Trying to get an idea for what life was like. Walkley: Different—that’s the like of automobiles. There was one student that I can recall in the whole high school that would come to school in a car. My husband would also come to school in a vehicle, partly because of the distance that he lived, and he was involved with sports and so there was nothing like an activities bus. But I can remember being in the third floor of that building in the home ec room and looking down and see him coming in. And sometimes he rode in a Cushman scooter, and he’d get off and take off sheep-lined leather clothing, if it was cold. Sometimes he would come in a pickup, and sometimes he would come in a truck, because he was a farm kid. Once in a while, he would come in his folks’ Cadillac. And none of us—most of us—just didn’t know about Cadillac cars. The big fishtails on them. But otherwise, people walked to school, or the kids way out in the country rode the bus. It never—for one thing there would not have been the cars available, and you would not have been able to afford them if they had been. I think that’s probably the biggest thing. Of course, the idea of cell phones—we wouldn’t even have dreamt about that. But our communication was talking to one another. O’Reagan: I guess you still covered—you say you had home ec—I guess you covered the same classes though. Walkley: I was on a track for going to college. But I was taking—the other thing, probably is they’re doing more advanced studies than we ever did. The highest math that I ever had was solid geometry and trigonometry. We didn’t have any calculus. The other thing is the role of girls. There was one other girl in those two upper math classes; and physics class, I think there were only two girls. Now I’m sure it’s just not that way. Plus, the classes are much bigger. Now, the chemistry class—because I think a lot of people must have had to take chemistry—it was pretty well covered, but not physics. I have a story about college. I went to what was then the College of—Washington State College. I went there for two years and then got married, so went a year at Occidental in Los Angeles, and then finished up at what was then the College of Puget Sound, which is now University, like WSU is a University. My major was economics and my minor was geology. When I was at the University of Puget Sound, one of the requirements was a summer geology trip on the San Juan Islands. I was the only female in this geology class. My husband was in the Air Force. They politely told me that if I would not go on that trip, they would not require it. The reason was they had no facilities for a female on that trip. One weekend campout that we had, they wanted to know if my husband could come. Oh!—I was dumb—I said, sure. You know, is it okay if he comes? Yes, we would like him to come. So he didn’t have duty, and so he came and we slept in the back of our station wagon. And, again, I was so unaware that I didn’t realize they wanted him there as a chaperone because I was the only female in this geology class. That’s something absolutely unheard of—I mean, that sort of thing would not happen today. O’Reagan: That’s really interesting. Was it your ambition, initially, to go to college? Did your parents have thoughts about you going to college? Walkley: It was my idea to go to college. My parents, I don’t recall them ever encouraging it, or ever really discouraging it, except that I was so excited when I graduated, because one of the things was I got a $50 scholarship. Well, the economics of things was the $50 wasn’t going to let me go to college. So I did work for a year after high school, and saved money. Because the first year that I went to Pullman, I went there with just about $1,000. And that got me through that first year at college. I must have made enough money in the summer that I could go back the second year. That’s also unheard of now. I think my mother would send me $2 cash a week, so I could—I had $2 cash: I was rich. And even at college, very few students had cars. For one thing, there wasn’t parking, and for another thing, you just didn’t. A few must have, because I know I carpooled with somebody to go and come. But that was different. I happened to be at WSU when Bing Crosby’s twins were going to school there. They had a car, and they would park in front of the library building. Was some sort of a Ford convertible. And they would set there, and I’m sure they were chick magnets, because of their name. But very few students had cars. O’Reagan: So you transferred from Washington State College to Occidental, you said? Walkley: Yes. O’Reagan: Why did you transfer? Walkley: I transferred there because my husband was going to college at California Institute of Technology, Caltech, who’s part of the LIGO system. And that’s where he was going to school. So we lived in student housing on the Occidental campus, and he commuted. But he was a year ahead of me, because he didn’t have to—he didn’t stay out the year that I did. He graduated, and then he was in the Air Force ROTC after—late summer, he was called into the Air Force. We were in Ohio for a while and then he was stationed at McChord. So that’s why I finished up at the University of Puget Sound, which was, like I said a college then. O’Reagan: So was he called up for the Korean war at that point? Walkley: We were between wars at that point. My history is foggy, but it was—I wish I could remember when the Korean War was. O’Reagan: ’55, I think. Was this the ‘50s, the ‘60s? Walkley: I know that he served two years. His ROTC class was one of the last that their commitment was two years. He was an engineer. The Air Force had really wanted to try to recruit pilots, but Caltech let the Air Force know that, no, we’re producing engineers and scientists and those kind of folks. You’re better to use them in that than to train them as pilots. So he went in as an engineer and had two years, and then after that, there was no Air Force reserve here. So he would just go to Fairchild during the summer for some training. But there was a period of time that he was on a 24-hour notice that if they’d call him up, he had 24 hours to report someplace. So that might have been Korea. That would have been in the ‘60s. But I hate to kind of show my ignorance of history. O’Reagan: I’m a historian, I get dates wrong all the time. Walkley: [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: So when you were assigned to go to college, was that just to better yourself? Was it because you wanted to get a job out of it? Walkley: I don’t know that I had any lofty reasons. I think it was because I thought that this was what you should do. Neither one of my parents were college graduates. But I had seen my parents working on the farm before the war, and I guess I thought that that’s just what I needed to do to be able to support myself. Now this was before women’s liberation. It was all before that. And then ironically as it turned out, about the time that my husband was getting out of the Air Force, this opportunity to farm what had not been a historical family farm—they had purchased—and Van’s folks, he and his sisters had purchased this farm, because they had had ground at the Eltopia area, which was the Bureau of Reclamation came in because of Grand Coulee Dam, and they chose to not keep any land there. So in a tax-free exchange, they turned the money into buying the place that we farmed. Well, that opportunity to farm came up, so we did a 180-degree turn, and instead of him being an engineer and building highways, which is what he did before the Air Force, we started farming. And did that for 57 years. O’Reagan: What did you grow? Walkley: When we moved to the farm, it was all dryland. And this farm was east of Ice Harbor Dam, about five miles. It was all dryland, and so we grew dryland wheat. Because of the farm program, you couldn’t grow all wheat—so we would grow barley and/or rye. In the mid ‘60s, that part of agriculture was fairly depressed, and so my husband had the idea that we’d start watering things. So we started irrigating supplemental, just. And then over the years, we kept adding to this irrigation system. So when the farm was sold in late 2013, half of our acres were irrigated and half was still dryland. So all of that was my husband doing, but we turned a piece of land that was barely giving us a living to something that was really a pretty good diversified farm. O’Reagan: Why don’t we pull open a map here and see if we can—just get my chair forward here. See if we can get a view of where we’re talking about here. Walkley: Okay. O’Reagan: Okay. Walkley: Okay. All of this really dark area is probably the Snake River Vineyard, and we were next door to them. So Highway 124—got to get my glasses focused here. O’Reagan: Sure. Walkley: So basically, our farm was here. And then we wind around some. And then here, this section right in here was not us. Oops! That was a little too much. And so we pumped out of the river at—that’s the spot where we pumped out of the river. So basically, we’re—and this corner section. And then all of this was really hilly, sandy area. So that’s where we farmed. And the dam is here and Charbonneau Park is right in this area. O’Reagan: That’s a lot of territory. Did you have to get help in farming all that? Walkley: The first few years, when it was all dryland, we only had help during harvest time. Once in a while, we’d hire somebody just temporary, just doing tractor work. Mostly, my job was chasing parts and cooking for the harvest crew. Once in a while, I’d have to drive tractor for a couple of weeks. This was not anything I really enjoyed doing. And then also bookwork. I did the bookwork for the farm all the time, including the taxes. And I did that until—well, basically, our daughter had a major stroke in 2007, and this took a lot of time with her rehab. So some of our taxes, I had to have a CPA do during some of that time—some I still could do. So I was the bookkeeper and the cook. O’Reagan: Did other people farming around you grow the same things you did? Walkley: They did at first, but about the same time we put in irrigation, so did the neighbors. After a year or two of having potatoes, the neighbors then—I think they weren’t selling—then basically went into Snake River Vineyards and concord grapes. And then on the other side of us, it for a long time was still the same—it was either rangeland or the same sort of farming. And then Broetje Orchards went—well, Broetje Orchards and AgriNorthwest. AgriNorthwest, the area that they had out there actually started with some local farmers in Eureka, and that was called K2H. And then it was AgriNorthwest. They went into—virtually everything, then, that they farmed was irrigated. It definitely changed the landscape, changed the economics of it all. A lot of the ground that we would irrigate, we would rent out. Only when it rotated to wheat or maybe soybeans, then, if it was potatoes or a sweet corn or alfalfa hay, we rented that out and then just did the watering for it. We took care of our irrigation system, the sprinklers, and managed all the water. O’Reagan: Where did you learn to farm? Was this knowledge you had from your parents? Walkley: No. Van had—when his parents had had land in the Eltopia area, that was dryland wheat farming. So he knew about that. My experience was on a small farm in Oklahoma that was basically a subsistence farm. We had enough cows that we could sell milk to the PET milk company, and a few acres of orchard so we could sell apples. But it was 50 acres of very diversified sort of farming. So that did not give me a lot of experience with over 5,000 acres of dryland wheat farming. My husband knew how to do this, and he was very smart. So we’d go to growers’ meetings and somehow or other, we made it. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: That’s interesting. I’m interested in how people develop their farms, learn new techniques, that sort of thing. Was the Growers’ Association a big deal in the area? Walkley: Yes. We were involved with the Washington Association of Wheat Growers on a county level. And the County Extension puts on programs. We belonged to the grange. There’s educational things. Visiting with the neighbors. We had to learn how to take care of the ground, because western Walla Walla County, at least where we were, was really lots of sandy loam. Similar to some of the Horse Heavens. So you have to treat that gently, or it’s going to blow away. So we learned, we did different things. One year I can remember, my husband went to Christmas tree sales lots the day after Christmas. He loaded up a truck with Christmas trees. We put those out on sand hills to try to hold it down. We’d spread straw for years and years and years on sand hills. And in fact, when we sold the farm, that was still something that we were doing to try to hold down sand hills. We were also using straw in tracks that the sprinklers make. So you’re using straw in dryland and irrigated both. But back to the wartime, I’m just thinking about how that was. Of course there was various kinds of not just gas rationing, but shoes—I mean leather, and other things. The attitude is so different now. We were content to not be able to buy as many bananas as you wanted, because if they had bananas in, you were limited to buying six of them, for instance. We were all in the same boat. I don’t recall of there being complaints about this. I don’t know if some of those shortages—how people would react to them now, when we’re used to so much abundance. But that’s just what you did. And as for what was happening at Hanford, that was on our radar. We knew it was secret—you know, my dad was just building things. And in fact, he did a lot of building not out on the Project, but in the City of Richland. So some of the older warehouse buildings and things would have been buildings that he worked on. As a ten-year-old, this just did not faze me a lot. When we moved back, the flood of 1948 certainly affected us. My mother at that time was working in Richland, and she was able to take the train from Pasco to get to Richland. And then she stayed there for the week, and then get back again, because the highway bridge—which was the old green bridge, which is gone—that was flooded. And the road through Columbia Park that was the main road, that was flooded. So you couldn’t get there from here. I can remember it all because then I was having to take care of the little strawberry patch that we had. My father was, maybe at that point then, doing construction in Pasco. I don’t recall him having the trouble getting to work that my mother had. But much smaller population center. Schools, much smaller. It was just a very interesting time. I think you all are doing a great job with this project, because the people that really did know about Hanford and everything that was going on, you’ve got to get them interviewed before they die off. Because we’re getting to be pretty old! [LAUGHTER] To have lived through this. O’Reagan: Were you ever interested in local politics of the area at all? Walkley: Well, only to the extent that my father-in-law was an elected PUD commissioner. When we were really in the political realm, then we were living in Walla Walla County, and so divorced from the Tri-Cities politics. Of course, nobody asked me my opinion, so nobody gets the benefit of my years of wisdom. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: Were you aware of the down-winders controversies? Were they in your area? Walkley: Yes. We were well aware of those. I sometimes do wonder if—now my husband had—in 2000 was diagnosed with lymphoma. And lymphoma, they think, has multiple causes, and maybe it’s multiple triggers that have to trigger at the right time. I wonder if that had anything to do with drinking Columbia River water. I don’t know, and it isn’t anything that I would pursue. What happened with the iodine releases and the winds, I’m not part of that. I did wonder when Mount St. Helens blew, why there wasn’t a better forecast of where those clouds were going. Because I thought, Hanford area should have had a lot of information on the winds and where things go. So it was surprising that, say, Ritzville and Pullman and various places didn’t know after it blew that—okay, because of the conditions, this is what you’re going to be getting. That was a surprise to me. Way off the subject. O’Reagan: No. Did that impact your life? Walkley: It impacted it only peripherally. The clouds were certainly something that I’ve never seen that kind of a cloud before. We didn’t have a lot of ash falling on us for some reason. My daughter was home that weekend, and driving back to Pullman for her was a real experience, because the ash was bothering her visibility. As it turned out, every morning they’d get news, well, don’t go to class this day. So she didn’t need to be there for a week, but she didn’t know that at the time that she’d left home. So it affected her that way. What was usually a two-hour, two-and-a-half-hour drive took her five or more. When she did call that she was there, she really sounded like she’d been through a stressful experience. But then it’s not very often that a volcano blows its top and does its thing. O’Reagan: During all this time, in the background there’s the Cold War going on and a lot of the fear about nuclear exchanges and all this. Was that ever something that impacted your life or your family’s? Walkley: Only that if I would go to, say, a state meeting of a group that was anti-nuclear, I could indicate that no, we’re not—as the crow flies—not all that far from the Hanford Project. We’re able to grow crops and not glowing in the dark. And also say things like, when you have tanker trucks driving up and down I-5 that’s carrying liquefied natural gas—have you thought about what kind of a hazard that is? We listened to the fire department radio when the railcar blew up in the Wenatchee railyard and devastated that area. If that train had been in the tunnel, or in Seattle when that happened, the devastation would have been unbelievable. So there are just risks and hazards all over. To our knowledge, this was an area that they were mitigating the risks. I think at the very first, in 1945—I don’t even know that the scientists knew all of the risks, because they were learning, too. But as they learned of the risks, they were taking steps to modify. Probably we’re living in one of the safest areas. O’Reagan: You say you raised children here, too? Walkley: Yes. Two children, a boy and a girl, both graduates of WSU Pullman. My daughter still lives here. My son lives in Missouri. O’Reagan: Did they go to high school around here? Walkley: They went to school in Burbank. Grade school and high school. And then both went to Pullman right after high school and graduated. My son graduated in 1980, and at that—so he decided he needed to get out in the world of work and took a job with a—actually, at that time it was called Allis Chalmers, Combine Division. So he was still involved with the farm. He was in the experimental section of combines. Then met and married a Missouri girl and she had roots in Missouri, so that’s where he’s been since college. My daughter graduated in 1982, and she worked for—started out with the Farmers’ Home Administration. It’s morphed into part of the Farm Service Agency. She was making farm loans. But in 2002—she moved various places in the state, but in 2001 she managed to get back to working at the Farm Service Agency in Pasco and was helping some on the farm. Then in 2002 she, as she said, quit a good-paying job for longer hours, less wages—what’s not to love? So she was, as she said, following Dad around to learn farming. So she was our main combine driver. But we had other employees at the time, but she was the combine driver and was at the staff meeting every morning at 7:00 and was probably going to be in a position to take over the farm until she had a major stroke in 2007. And that changed those plans. O’Reagan: Okay. So we’re also interested in the agricultural history of the area and among that, you said you were near one of the vineyards of the area? Walkley: Right. The Snake River Vineyards, which is the concord grape vineyard. That’s, again, just east of Ice Harbor Dam. I understand it’s one of the largest concord grape vineyards in the world that’s under one ownership. You know, if you look on maps, the whole Columbia Basin is called the Great American Desert. But with water, this magic elixir, you can grow anything in these soils. The amount of diversified agriculture in the Columbia Basin is astounding, if you really would see what all is grown there. There’s things that I don’t even know about. Very, very minor crops that maybe are major in the world. I really think of the Columbia Basin as a breadbasket that is feeding the world, parts of it. We have a really rich agriculture base. The big driver for that change was Grand Coulee Dam, which was power for the Hanford Project, and flood control some, and irrigation. That was really—I see that as a driver a lot for the economic—what’s happened to our area, in its growth. Certainly a big driver is Hanford, but there’s also a huge driver with the agriculture. I don’t even know everything that’s grown there. But I expect that there’s a hundred different crops grown in this area, very productively. I think that our yield of potatoes per acre is better than Idaho’s. At one time there was this saying, well, a good Idaho potato’s grown in Washington. And then Idaho potato people didn’t like that. But there certainly is potatoes and sweet corn and field corn and seed corn and peas and lentils—well, lentils are more Palouse. I think we don’t, maybe, give agriculture or farmers the recognition that they have for what they’ve done for this area. O’Reagan: Did you ever—were you sort of sticking with crops you knew and had expertise in, or did you think about changing crops for ones that were more profitable at different times? Walkley: Oh. My husband was always trying different things. Sometimes we were just before our time. I know that he grew some hard white wheat one year. We had to haul it someplace special, not in the area, to market it. We experimented with various things. We grew buckwheat for a year or two. We grew soybeans. In fact, when we grew soybeans, the Farm Service Agency and the crop insurance people had to get through—well crop insurance mostly—run through some hoops, because there was no history of soybeans here. We’ve grown canola. And so my husband was always trying something new. That was just his nature. He was really the driver of what turned that farm into dryland and to diversified. Because as I said, he was very smart and he was always thinking of, how can we do things better? We had older equipment, so it was hard to put GPS on some of them, but we were able to. And we had one fella that worked for us, started working for us in 1974. When we were trying out some GPS, my daughter said, Guadalupe will just hate that. He is not going to want to do that. Guadalupe loved the GPS, because, he said, now I can watch the equipment better, and I don’t have to worry about where I’m going. So the employees embraced it, too. I’m sure that if my husband was still alive, for Christmas he would have purchased a drone. But—yeah, he was very smart. O’Reagan: Can you tell us about some of your workers? Walkley: We’ve had all sorts of workers over the years. Like I said, first it was just during harvest that we would have extra workers. Some fellas worked for us—they would come back, year after year. At one time there was three Pasco High School teachers that drove combine for us during the summer. They—every year—would come back. Part of that was because of my cooking. But they seemed to enjoy working for us. Guadalupe, as I say, started working in 1974. When I sold the farm, he was still working for us. He liked to work, and he liked to work for us. Trying to think of some specific kind of workers. Our foreman was from Texas. He was from an area in Texas where they mostly speak Spanish; so was Guadalupe. I know when our last set of employees—people that are still working there—one is from Mexico, with a green card; he’s legal. But a fair amount from Texas. And they started out as migrants, picking asparagus. Then settled down and are full-time folks in Pasco. I think you asked me something else. I’m trying to think what it was. O’Reagan: I think that was—the most recent question was just sort of about the workers. I guess we could branch out from that to—were there any sort of big changes or trends or—you were telling sort of the history of agriculture around there. Anything that comes to mind. Walkley: Well for our farm, and the biggest change that affected me was we went from three combines and three drivers and various truck drivers and me cooking for all of them to one big combine and hauling our grain out by semi. So I still did cook for the combine driver, because it was Nannette, and later my grandson. But it wasn’t the same. Early on, when we were running three combines and all of these trucks, I took a hot meal to the field at noontime. So I had figure out how to keep things hot and how to keep things cold. The combine drivers would eat while the truck drivers were greasing the machines. Then the truck drivers would eat. And if one was at the elevator, you just waited out there until they got back and ate. Wherever they were in the field, I needed to find them and I needed to be there at 12:30 to have that lunch ready for them. That all changed. Early on, the combine drivers would stay out on the farm, and I was feeding them three meals a day. Later on they didn’t do that. I will say that for truck drivers, my husband found that our very best truck drivers were females. Part of that is because they would listen; you could teach them. Because they knew they didn’t know how to drive these trucks. Now, found out that the boys—now, they didn’t know how to drive the trucks, either, but they’re not going to admit it, and they’re not going to listen. The best truck drivers, typically that we had, as a generalization, were females. They’re easier on the equipment, and they’re teachable. And some of them spoke at my husband’s memorial service. As did some of the fellow workers that we had. To me, the driving truck was the worst job on the farm, because you had to park the truck so that when the combine was emptying, chaff wasn’t blowing back on the combine. Because early on, there were no cabs on these, and no air conditioning. My husband, who was driving combines said, I’m eating that dust all the time. I am not going to eat it while I’m unloading. So the driver always had to be parked just right. The truck driver’s just always getting in trouble because they weren’t parking just right, or they were getting stuck. I’m sure that some of these poor truck drivers would just do their best, and they would be stuck, and they’d have to call the combine. There was the times that my husband could, maybe, dig a little or put a thistle underneath a tire, get in and drive that truck out after this kid had been working and working, trying—and it must have just—if it would have been me, it would have just made me gnash my teeth! But that happened more than once. One of the girls that drove truck for us, at his memorial service said, I got stuck, and she said, I didn’t want to get stuck. I knew not to do that. But I got stuck, and Mr. Walkley had to come over and help me. And he came over and I was just so worried about it, he was going to be so mad at me. He came over and he said, do you know how to not get stuck? Don’t drive. And she said, that was the end of it. And he got me unstuck, and it was all okay. [LAUGHTER] But living on a farm is just—it is also very different from someplace else. Especially when you live there, because you’re always on the farm. Something comes up in the middle of the night. You’re just there, and you handle it. Once we got irrigation, there was a lot of things. My husband would get up in the middle of the night and go out and check the sprinklers. Or he’d get up and look in the bedroom window. We had a pressure gauge, and if that pressure wasn’t what he thought it should be, go out and check the farm and see what’s going on. So it’s a 24/7, 365 job. At least it was for us, because we lived on the farm. O’Reagan: Well, there’s always a lot that I don’t know the right question to ask. Walkley: [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: What should I be asking? Walkley: Oh! I have no idea. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: We’re interested in-- Walkley: You’re supposed to be guiding me. O’Reagan: Sure. Walkley: Because we’re really digressing into farm and farming history. Which is different than the Hanford Project. And so I don’t know the right questions, either. O’Reagan: Well, so, we are interested in Hanford and the impact Hanford had on the community, but that’s not the only thing we’re interested in. We are interested in the agricultural history of the area. We’re interested in what it was like living in or around the Tri-Cities throughout this whole period. Day-to-day life, or how things have changed. Walkley: Yeah. In day-to-day life, because of the rationing, and us choosing to put our car up on blocks, we walked everyplace. We went to the movies a fair amount, which is, in a way, kind of surprising to me. But when you went to the movie, you had to stand in line. And the line could be a block or so long. But I remember standing in line, but a bus coming up with the Italian Prisoners of War that were here, that were housed in the Big Pasco area. They didn’t have to stand in line. They just went on in as a group. I could understand that, but yet—[GRUMBLES] And the entertainment was going to the movies. Now, I think for the military that was here, there was a USO building on the north side of the big park in Pasco. They would have things going on there. And I know in Richland, there was all kinds of actors, for instance, that came and entertained the troops and the folks that were working there. But that wasn’t part of our life, because we didn’t live in Richland. But I can just remember walking, doing a lot of walking everyplace. Doing without certain things—now, we never went hungry or anything like that. But there were frills you just didn’t have. Somehow or other, you entertained yourself. Partly because—I know for my dad, he probably put in long hours of working. You go home, you eat and you go to bed. The next morning, you get up and eat and go to work. But for a kid, for thinking about going to a Playground of Dreams or going here for entertainment, walking the malls for entertainment—that just wasn’t part of our life at all. I can just remember kind of playing out in the dirt. Because there weren’t a whole lot of lawns, and I know where we were living, there wasn’t. There was the remnants of the alfalfa field. Later in high school, my friend and I would—I didn’t realize it, but we were essentially babysitting her little sister. She lived in a regular house on 10th Street. At that point, we were living out in this house in the middle of nowhere, it seemed like. But to go from my place to her place, we’d have to drag her little sister’s stroller through the sand. Just that—of course, we didn’t have—there was no television. We had radios, you’d go to the movies, and that’s where you’d get a lot of the news, because they would run a newsreel first—before the main. There’d be a newsreel and there’d be a comic and maybe even a sing-along with a little bouncing ball, and you’d all sing. That is totally unheard of. Have you gone to a movie where you’ve—the whole people are singing something? O’Reagan: No. Walkley: And the words are on the screen with a little bouncing ball. But the newsreels—that’s where we got our information—video information, anyway—about the war, and what was going on. I remember listening to Edward R. Murrow and Walter Winchell, who was talking to “North and South America and all the ships at sea.” I can remember December 7, 1941, and us being glued to the radio. Probably it was a battery-operated radio. When I was a kid in Oklahoma, we did not get electricity until maybe 1939 or 1941. So we had no electricity, no running water, no indoor bathrooms. The house was eventually wired and we’d come home from school looking to see if the meter was on the meter base, which meant we had electricity. You had to pay for a minimum of kilowatts, whether you used them or not. We would watch that. And the minimum, as I recall, was 35 kilowatts. You use 35 kilowatts in half an hour now. But we had a fixture with two lightbulbs in the living room, and a matching fixture in the bedroom with one lightbulb. And this was brilliant! I mean, we could see so good! I remember those two light fixtures. I don’t remember what was in the rest of the house. Later, we had an electric-driven cream separator that was very tall. It was as big as I was. You had to crank it first to help get it started before you could switch it on to electricity. I just remember my job was cleaning the innards of this cream separator. If you’ve never done that, that is a hateful job. But something that everybody ought to have to do at some point, is clean an electric cream—now I liked putting it together. It’s very interesting, very fascinating. I liked taking it apart and putting it together. I disliked washing it. But that’s not anything you want to know. Agriculture-- O’Reagan: I also understand that unlike Richland and also in a lot of ways unlike Kennewick, Pasco had a more diverse population in a number of ways. Was that ever something you experienced? Walkley: Yes. We did. We had some Japanese families. And because, as I understood it, the line that divided whether or not the Japanese had to go to internment camps was the Columbia River. So the Japanese in Kennewick were taken to internment camps. The ones in Pasco were not. But the Japanese area in Pasco, their businesses and where most of them lived close to their business, that was off-limits to the military. The first meal that we had when we came to Pasco was at the M and M Café, which was down by the underpass in Pasco. And it was run by the Japanese. First time in my life I’d ever had oyster crackers. But that area was—and I’m not even sure if the military was here at that point—but later on, that area was off-limits to the military. Now, some of these were second generation Japanese, and they were no threat to this country. They were fine, upright people. There were a few blacks in the area, and basically they were in the east Pasco area. They were—my understanding—very discriminated against in Kennewick, but allowed to be in Pasco. We had a black student in my high school class, and he was one of the class officers. His name was Duke Washington. He was a very good football player, and in fact played football for WSU—College at that time. As I understand it, when they were going to play some team in the South, the WSU coach was told, don’t bring that boy with you. But the coach said, we’re bringing him—and they did. And he was a star football player. Now, I—again, I was young and ignorant—I think I was unaware of a lot of things—I don’t know that he was discriminated against. I expect that he was. But I don’t recall a lot of blacks being in our high school. And there should have been, for the number of black people that lived in east Pasco. So I don’t know whether they weren’t welcome in school—I’m not sure what that was really all about, because I was not aware enough of what was going on in the community to know that. That’s probably another difference between when I was a student, and students now. Because I think that students now—probably a lot of it is social media—they know what’s going on in their community. I thought I knew what was going on, but I don’t think I did. So all of this awareness of social things—I think that’s very different than it was when I was in school. And then we didn’t learn things in high school that students are learning now. Because I know I never had any calculus. O’Reagan: All right. Well, that’s all fascinating stuff. Anything else that leaps to mind before we wrap it up? Walkley: Oh, I’ll probably think of oodles of things when I go home. O’Reagan: Well, we’re certainly open to follow up discussions. That oftentimes leads to even better discussions once people have time to think about what else there is to say. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:24:53 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 249 kbps Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1943-2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Evelyn Walkley Description An account of the resource An interview with Evelyn Walkley conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-2-18 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-5: Metadata v1 created – [RG] Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Richland (Wash.)--Social conditions. Housing Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F076444117ae2c86647ee8d705fe3c145.jpg 8976c055d68251fc4d46ba983b6f47fb https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F89da53c58c34229c68c8890bd2ee16b8.mp4 f561bf21f4c6e0119896680d6c3fa4de Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview O'Reagan, Douglas Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Freshley, Max Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Douglas O’Reagan: First off, would you please say and spell your name for us? Maxwell Freshley: My legal name is Maxwell Freshley, F-R-E-S-H-L-E-Y. Not many people around here know me by that name. I go by Max. O’Reagan: Okay, thanks. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral interview history here on January 11th, 2016. This interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And I will be talking with Mr. Freshley about his experiences working at the Hanford site. To start us off, would you tell us maybe some of your life up, before you came to this area? Freshley: Well, I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. I graduated from the University of Portland in 1951 with a degree in physics. I was offered a tech grad position on the site here. At the time, it was operated by General Electric Company, and this was—I started work here in June of 1951. Okay. So I guess prior to coming here, my having been raised in Portland, and that’s where I went to school, my extended experiences were rather limited. That’s kind of what happened. So I came here in June of 1951, fresh out of school, I wasn’t married at the time. First place I lived was in the Army barracks in north Richland. I can’t tell you about how long I lived there, but while I was living in north Richland in the barracks, I did not have a car. So being kind of isolated out north was a bit of a challenge. So as soon as I could find somebody who would loan me some money, I bought a brand new Ford and that solved a lot of my problems. And then sometime during that first year, I was moved to one of the dorms in Richland. I think the dorms were located on Lee Boulevard. It was close to—I’m calling it a drugstore. But it was kind of like a Payless. I don’t think that was the right name at that time. But they had a restaurant—they served food in this drugstore. So that’s where I would eat. O’Reagan: Had you heard about Hanford before you came here? Freshley: Not really. I really hadn’t heard about it. It was all secret, you know? O’Reagan: Right. Were you aware of the sort of connection with the atomic bomb before you got here? Freshley: I’d have to say I was not. Although while I was still going to school—still in school—when was the Nagasaki ignited? O’Reagan: ’45, I believe? Freshley: ’45? O’Reagan: I think so. Freshley: That—oh, okay. O’Reagan: It was the very end of the Second World War. Freshley: Yeah. Well, I might’ve heard of that. Yeah. O’Reagan: What was your first impression of Richland and this area? Freshley: [LAUGHTER] First impression was living in the barracks out in north Richland-- [LAUGHTER] was not too great. Of course, my first impression was it was darn hot here, coming here in June. It was very warm. My future wife and her mother brought me to Richland from Portland and dropped me off. [LAUGHTER] So things kind of went from there. O’Reagan: Sure. So we were going to ask about where you were living, but we already addressed that to some degree. What was life like in the barracks? Freshley: Oh. I would say very basic. Of course, in the dorm rooms that were assigned, you always had a roommate that you lived with. So I became, of course, very familiar with my roommates. When I moved from the barracks to Richland, I had a different roommate. So I made acquaintances with two people like that. They were both scientists, so we got along really well. In fact, one of them is still living in Richland. O’Reagan: What kind of work did you do at Hanford, and where on the site did you work? Freshley: Well, first of all, I worked in 300 Area in 3706 Building. I was—they assigned me a position in the Graphite Group. We were studying graphite, the moderator in the reactors. One of the things that was going on at the time—and I can’t tell you what reactor it was—but the graphite core was swelling. It was—I don’t know if it had come in contact yet with the upper shield, but it was growing. I was assigned to two people in the Graphite Group. We went and extracted samples of graphite from the core of this reactor. The thing that they had set up to do that, of course, was already here. So we were extracting samples—core samples. What the purpose of my job was to determine the annealing temperature of the graphite, so that if they raised the temperature in the core to a point where graphite annealing started occurring, then the core would shrink back and not interfere with the top shield. So I think they were looking for somebody—[LAUGHTER] I won’t say it. But anyway, I was assigned the position or job of taking these graphite samples and investigating the annealing temperature. What we used was a Fresnel diffractometer. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that, but interference rings from this interferometer would be displayed. It was my job to count the rings. It was a very tedious job. I’m sure that these two fellas didn’t want to do that, so they found me, and I did it. These rotations were—honestly I can’t remember whether they were three months or six months, but you would rotate from one position to another. I don’t remember if you could choose your positions—your rotations—I guess it probably depended on whether or not there was something available or not to go to. So I fulfilled my position in the Graphite Group. I didn’t want to stay in the Graphite Group, so I moved on. O’Reagan: Before we move on, I have a quick question for you. This is a little bit off-script, but I have an undergraduate degree in physics. Freshley: Uh-huh. O’Reagan: I was reading a while back that when you started heating up the reactors, it caused that expansion to go back, and that sounds like what you’re describing. Freshley: Mm-hm. O’Reagan: But what is annealing? Freshley: It’s heating to a temperature where the damage caused by the neutron radiation would be annealed physically. So the core would shrink back. But you had to get it up to a certain temperature, and you didn’t want to overheat it, because if you get it too hot, then the core—the graphite would oxidize. That would not be good. But I think the cores were enclosed in an argon atmosphere, as I remember. O’Reagan: It just surprised me, of course—I expected you get something hot, it expands. But now we’re saying you get it hot and it shrinks! Freshley: Yeah, that’s right. But when you’re looking at the diffraction rings on the interferometer, you can tell by the movement of the rings when you are reaching the annealing temperature. So either they—and I can’t honestly remember the details here, whether the rings did not move as fast, or whether they might have even changed direction. O’Reagan: Interesting. Freshley: So I had an early experience with a graphite-moderated production reactor. O’Reagan: What was it—you said you moved on from graphite to something else? Freshley: Oh yeah. My second assignment was in the metallurgy laboratory in 234-5 Building. 234-5 Building now is known as—god. Hm. Plutonium—it’s the one that you read a lot-- O’Reagan: Plutonium Finishing Plant? Freshley: Pardon me? O’Reagan: Is it the plutonium finishing? Freshley: Yeah, Plutonium Finishing Plant where the plutonium buttons were received and machined to a hockey-type shape. Well, they were—actually, they were reduced to form the metal, and I was not involved in that. But I was in the Plutonium Metallurgy Lab, which was at one end of the Plutonium Finishing Plant. I don’t think there are many or any people left around who know of that. I can’t think of anybody that I worked with during that period who’s still around. But we had a Plutonium Metallurgy Lab, and my manager was a very nice fella. This, now, was in the early ‘50s. One thing that he wanted me to do—and I don’t think that what I did was original research, because I think all of the original research was probably done at Los Alamos, which was the renowned weapons facility. He wanted me to investigate the low temperature phase changes in plutonium. So what I did—and that’s important because phase changes in plutonium or any metal creates a dimensional change. And a dimensional change is not something that you want in a weapon or a bomb, because it interferes with the efficiency of the bomb. So here I was, fresh out of school and didn’t know from up. Anyway, I put together what’s called a differential thermal analysis apparatus. Are you familiar with that? O’Reagan: I know the individual terms. Freshley: Okay. [LAUGHTER] So that’s what I did. I ran low temperature phase studies on plutonium—pure plutonium to detect these low temperature phase changes, which were very—since they were low temperature, they were very difficult to pick up, because there wasn’t much energy exchange during the phase change. Then, since that was not something you would want in a weapon or a bomb, small alloy additions were added to the plutonium to stabilize the low temperature, so you didn’t have these low temperature changes. All of this at the time was quite classified, which make it extra interesting, I guess. But when I went out to 234-5 Building in the plutonium lab, we were—there were three or four of us—we were assigned a car. So we had a car that we could go back and forth in, to work. That made it pretty nice, because we didn’t have to ride the bus and all of that. Then—this is something else that I doubt very much that anyone knew about at the time. It was the fabrication of plutonium parts for artillery shells. We cast plutonium in what was known as the 231-Z Building. We didn’t do it in the 234-5 Building. 231 was just across the street. In that building, I was not involved in the casting or the machining, but the parts were machined in that building. Then they were brought over to 234-5 Building in the Plutonium Metallurgy Lab. Because plutonium would oxidize and so on—so my job was to produce pure nickel coatings. But I don’t mean coatings like were attached. We used bismuth, which has a low melting temperature and it’s stable, to machine the exact replica of the plutonium part. Then, my job was to make—with electroplated nickel onto this bismuth—and then the bismuth was melted away. My job was to enclose the plutonium parts in nickel. So I had to do that in a vacuum. At first I had to do the electroplating. Then I had to put the nickel—what—the nickel cover, if you want—on the plutonium part, under vacuum, and solder a seal around the edge to make it—so it wouldn’t contact the air. And then it wouldn’t be as—you wouldn’t have to worry so much about contamination. But it had to be done in an atmosphere where, after the nickel part was put on the plutonium part, I sealed it with the vacuum and then it was not contaminated. The interesting part about that—one of the interesting parts—is that we were doing this for the Livermore National Lab, who was also at the time at a weapons facility. There were two: Los Alamos and Livermore. We were doing this for Livermore. As soon as the parts were finished, and I finished them, there would be a representative from Livermore waiting for the part. These parts, at times, were handed off, out the back door of 234-5 Building to this individual, who then took them to town, to the airport. I presume then, they were flown to Livermore. These tests at the time were conducted in the South Pacific—Eniwetok Islands. I never knew anything about the results. [LAUGHTER] Or what happened. But I suspect that these days we have artillery shells with plutonium weapons involved. O’Reagan: When you were working on all these—all these different processes, what sort of team were you working—were you working mostly on an independent sub-project, or did you have other people you were sort of working with day-to-day? Freshley: Well, when I did the differential thermal analysis, it was me. And when I was enclosing the plutonium parts in these nickel shells, that was pretty much me. Yeah. The group was small. I would guess—let’s see, there was—oh, three, four, five—I suspect there were less than ten people in the whole group. The machinist—there were two machinists—I guess I shouldn’t say who they were, but—they did very well—one of them did very well in the Tri-Cities. He had a big vision and— O’Reagan: I ask, because some of what you’re describing sounds—at least to my sort of ignorant ears—like applied chemistry as well as applied physics. Did you have a chemistry background, or was that not really necessary for what you were working on? Freshley: I did not have a chemistry background other than what you normally get in a four-year program. I did not have a metallurgy background, either. You know? So that all took—I had to get acquainted with that aspect of the world, and I found it to be very interesting. Later on in my life, I was sorry that I probably hadn’t taken metallurgy. O’Reagan: How much were you instructed specifically what to do versus sort of innovating yourself or figuring stuff out as you go? Freshley: Well, I’m sure that my manager—he had a degree from Montana School of Mines in Metallurgy. He was a very nice person. He—I’m sure I got instruction and help from him, because I needed it. Here’s this 21-year-old kid, just out of school, doesn’t know metallurgy from up. But I guess I was successful and it worked out. O’Reagan: Okay. Let’s see. Could you describe a typical workday within those first—you worked there for a long period of time overall, is that right? How long were you working at Hanford overall? Freshley: Overall? O’Reagan: Yeah. Freshley: [LAUGHTER] I started in 1951 and I retired in 1993. Then I consulted for a period after that. So you figure out the years. The first 14 years were with GE, then Battelle came in ’65, and I transferred to Battelle. I had the choice at that point to transfer to either Battelle or Westinghouse. Westinghouse was focused on the FFTF, and the development of that reactor. But I chose Battelle. O’Reagan: Why did you choose Battelle? Freshley: I don’t know. I think they were interested in things that I found fascinating. So I switched to Battelle, and have never been sorry. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: So when you were describing—is that amount of time that you were describing up to the end of your time at GE? Or was there still more that you were working on at GE before, or subsequent to—you were describing the different plutonium products. Freshley: I haven’t gotten to the end of GE yet. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: Okay, great. I’d love to hear more. Freshley: Yeah. And then I got out—I was moved—I got into other things besides plutonium metallurgy. I might say that one of the—while I was at the plutonium lab, one of the technicians was working in a glovebox—do you know what a glovebox is?—that exploded. And it totally, totally contaminated the lab with plutonium. So we spent—the group—spent a lot of time decontaminating that room, and everything in it. We were successful enough that the walls were repainted to secure the plutonium contamination and everything. But then—I don’t know why I changed—but I stayed in 234-5 Building, and maybe—I don’t know, three, four, five years, possibly. Then I got involved in light-water reactor fuel development. That’s where I basically spent the rest of my career. In the late ‘50s, PRTR was under construction. We did—in those days, you were given—at least, in my case, you were given a lot of flexibility to do new things. That was really neat. Then—I didn’t write down the date, but in the late ‘50s, PRTR was under construction, and there was the second International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. We contributed to that publication—there were several publications. I didn’t get to go to the conference, but we contributed to that. Then I got involved in plutonium recycling in thermal reactors. I don’t know if you read this morning’s paper: there was an article there about a plutonium fuel—well, it’s called MOX—mixed oxide: plutonium oxide and uranium oxide, a mixture of fuel. This was at Savannah River, and they were building—or are supposedly building a facility for fabricating mixed oxide fuel for light-water reactors. But there have been some problems there, and it’s way behind schedule and over cost or whatever. But that doesn’t affect me. So I’m not involved in that. But anyway, I got involved in, like I say, fuel development—plutonium fuel development for light-water reactors. We had the liberty of doing a lot of different things. One of them was—oh, when we—at first, we found diluents for the plutonium. We irradiated and tested many diluents for plutonium. It had to be diluted—I mean, you can’t use pure plutonium. So I got into that, and we conducted lots and lots of testing of different diluents for plutonium in the MTR and ETR in Idaho—Materials Test Reactor and the Engineering Test Reactor in Idaho. There was a lot of that, and the post-radiation examination was done in the 324 Building, where the major contamination still exists that they have to remove. It’s in the ground, and it’s a major decon project right now with whoever the contractor is, I don’t know. Anyway, we did a lot of testing in MTR and ETR with diluents. We developed a plutonium aluminum alloy spike enrichment element for PRTR. That was one of the activities. An aluminum plutonium spike element—excuse me—is only for spike enrichment in the core. These are spaced around for different neutronic effects. And the reason—it’s a difficult concept, and I don’t know how we got started on that, exactly, because the coefficient of thermal expansion of aluminum with a little bit of plutonium in it is a lot different than the Zircaloy cladding in which it is enclosed. So there were problems with that. Then—ah, let’s see—then I got into recycling the plutonium in thermal reactors, and that was a major government initiative to dispose of plutonium that was no longer needed. So we made mixed oxide fuels of different types. One of the types that seemed attractive at the time was a vibrationally compacted mixture of plutonium and uranium. That is a difficult thing to achieve, because we had to make plutonium—mixed oxide shot, and we vibrated it into the long rods. I remember setting up a shot tower in the basement of 326 Building to make uranium shot. That didn’t work out too good. We didn’t put any plutonium in 326 Building. O’Reagan: Is this still the late ‘50s or have we gotten into the early ‘60s yet? Freshley: Well this would be the late ‘50s. Well, we’re getting into the ‘60s, though, yeah. We did irradiation tests of aluminum plutonium spike elements in PRTR. I can’t remember what the plutonium concentration was, but then we started working on VIPAC, or vibrationally compacted fuel. It seemed like it would have advantages, because you’re not working with the small centered pellets. You can just pour the fissionable material into the tubes and VIPAC—vibrationally compact—it. So that—we did a lot of work on that, on VIPAC fuel, because we thought it would have an advantage fabrication-wise. But it had disadvantages, too, of course. You couldn’t compact it to the density that you would get with the centered pellet. There was another concern about it, and that is: fuel elements and reactors, the cladding fails from time to time. Still does. I think they suspect that there is a cladding failure in the Columbia Generating Station now. We needed to look at how they would perform with a cladding rupture. So we performed a test in PRTR in what was known as the Fuel Element Rupture Test Facility, FERTF. We were brave. O’Reagan: It sounds dangerous! Freshley: We put together a test element. The elements in PRTR were 19 rod clusters—I forget how long, but quite long. So what we did--we were adventuresome—we put a mixed oxide fuel element in PRTR, but first we drilled a hole in the cladding. John Fox, who you’ve interviewed, still can’t imagine that we did something like that. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: This probably couldn’t happen today [INAUDIBLE] Freshley: Oh, no. No way. Anyway, in 1966, we had that experiment in PRTR, and everything was going pretty well until they started cycling the reactor power a little bit. Well, from then on, things went from bad to worse. The cladding failed, but I mean, other than the small hole that we had drilled in it, it ruptured for over quite a distance. When it did that, it swelled, and it came in contact with the pressure tube of the FERTF. It caused that to fail also. So this made a horrible mess in PRTR. The reactor was shut down for I don’t know how long during the cleanup and the recovery from that. I can’t remember—I have some pictures if you’re interested—whether or not we were operating with fuel melting at the time. Because we wanted to get as much heat out of the element—or out of the rods as we could. Now, uranium melts at a little over 2,800 degrees centigrade. So we did a lot of work with not only VIPAC fuel—fuel melting in VIPAC fuel, but also in pellet fuel. Of course, you don’t do that sort of thing in real life. In a commercial light-water reactor—I don’t know what the maximum operating temperatures are in the uranium pellets, but it’s a long ways from melting, I guarantee you. O’Reagan: So did you get the data that you wanted from this rupture test? Freshley: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, don’t do it. Yeah, and that was kind of actually the end of VIPAC fuel interest. It would definitely not have been commercially viable to have something like that going on in a power reactor. Of course, we learned what the rupture behavior—probably the worst case of what a ruptured VIPAC fuel might do in real life. So that was kind of the end of VIPAC fuel elements. But it was interesting! A really interesting thing to work with and try and develop. We had various—came up with various schemes for compacting UO2 and MOX with using a Dynapac machine, which is a high-energy compaction machine, to form particles. The ideal particle would have been a sphere in a varying size range, so you can maximize the density during VIPACing. But it didn’t work out. And I didn’t get fired. [LAUGHTER] But there were a lot of experiments. Also with looking at the transient behavior of VIPAC fuel, we even conducted some tests in a test reactor. You are placing pure PUO2 particles next to the cladding. Then doing a transient power test on that to see what kind of behavior you would get: how the PUO2 particle would behave. This was done in a reactor in Idaho called SPERT—I can’t tell you what the acronym stands for right now, but it was an interesting exercise. Had some—maybe the reactor was in San Jose; I’m not sure. Anyway, I had some companions who were working for GE; we worked together on that sort of thing. But then, this would have been in 1975, ’76. The light-water reactor power industry wanted to go to higher burnups. That is, leave the fuel in the reactor longer, so they would have longer times between maintenance shutdowns. At the time, the maintenance shutdowns were probably a year or less. So what happened when they went to higher temperatures and higher burnups, the fuel column in—these are ten or 12 feet long rods—would shorten. The fuel column, then, would shrink—would settle. So that caused a great deal of consternation in the light-water reactor power industry, because they had these voids, then, at the top of the fuel columns. Something we called the irradiation-induced densification occurred. So then there was a big effort, commercially, to find solutions to that, so we had—there was what was called a fuel densification program to solve this problem. The fuel industry—let’s see, how was this—they could not tolerate the core shrinking, and then that led to an understanding, or an investigation of N Reactor densification—just the neutron activity. But then they wanted to go to higher burnups. So they started leaving voids in the pellets to accommodate the fission products associated with the high burnup. That didn’t work out to well, either, because of the column shrinking. So that’s when we launched, or got into looking at the fuel densification behavior. The fuel vendors, then, came up with adding materials into the fuel—god, I can’t think of the name now—that would disappear on the high temperature centering of the pellet, leaving voids—controlled voids in the pellets. And they do that today. So the High Burnup Effect Program was a big program here at the lab for quite a long period of time. As a result of that, the fabricators reduced, by using—I can’t think of the name—reduced the density to accommodate the fission—oh, then they put in pore formers. And we, as the lab, were instrumental in coming up with suitable pore formers that would disappear upon centering, during the centering process, to leave these voids in the fuel pellets to accommodate the fission products. As a result of that, this proved to be very satisfactory. It resulted in a stable fuel column and the achievable burnups were increased significantly. You’re probably aware of the fact, now, that the Columbia—the reactor, generating—the Columbia Generating Station, now, can go on a two-year cycle. Meaning they don’t have to shut down for maintenance every year; they can go two years. So the achievement of satisfactory high burnup in reactor fuel was made. All of the other reactors, now—light-water reactors—use that technique. And in fact, as a result of that, the NRC—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—has imposed a requirement that they test the thermal stability of centered pellets by exposing them to a heat treatment so they don’t shrink any more. Or the shrinkage would be very small. So we were instrumental in coming up with this out-of-reactor thermal test to test the stability, if you will, of the pellets. O’Reagan: You mentioned working with the light-water reactor industry. Were you working with different groups outside of the Hanford Site and outside of Battelle at that point, or was it still focused within the company? Freshley: I would say that the company, Battelle, the lab, was instrumental in these investigations. EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, was a partner. In fact, they were kind of the driving force helping us put together a joint program where we had seven other contributors—financial sponsors to this program. We had meetings frequently on the progress of this effort. These seven sponsors came from all over the world: Japan, France, England—of course, the commercial operators in the United States were members. So we had this rather large, difficult to manage international program to develop these advanced fuels for high burnup. O’Reagan: So this wasn’t classified, or was it more of a sharing agreement with [INAUDIBLE] Not classified then? Freshley: No, it wasn’t classified. Well, maybe there might have been some—not security, but because the seven sponsors of this program were—they were paying money, you know? And contributing, and they wanted to protect their interests. O’Reagan: More like trade secrets, then, rather than— Freshley: Pardon? O’Reagan: So, more like trade secrets, then, rather than confidentiality. Freshley: Yeah, but I’d say, most of the—in the United States, the utilities that were operating light-water reactors contributed to this. Another contributor or sponsor was Germany. I can’t remember all of them. That made it real interesting. We had these technical reviews and meetings all over the world. So that made it kind of neat. O’Reagan: Yeah. Freshley: Yeah. But the program was very successful. I think I have some documents that describe it, if you’re interested. O’Reagan: Yeah, absolutely. Freshley: Okay. And then—I’m not covering this too well—I thought my notes would be more complete but they’re not. [LAUGHTER] Then I got into—this was late in my professional career. There was a reactor in Savannah River, and I didn’t—I can’t tell you the name of it—that produced tritium for thermonuclear weapons. It had to be shut down because of safety reasons. So I got involved in what was called tritium target development for light-water reactors. Because you need tritium for a thermonuclear device. What we did was, the way we did it, we irradiated lithium metal—I shouldn’t say irradiated; we exposed lithium metal to a neutron environment in light-water reactors. The idea being to generate tritium, the gas. Well, what happens is lithium is a metal similar, maybe—low-melting, kind of—to aluminum. It’s not compatible with many cladding or enclosure materials. So we exposed lithium to neutrons to form tritium. In doing that, you had to—because the tritium is an isotope of helium, you had to tie it up some way and contain it. You didn’t want it to get out of the cladding, because we were using zirconium cladding. And then inside of this target, we used a getter for the tritium to collect the tritium and try and keep it enclosed. In fact, I’ve learned recently that there are some commercial reactors back east that have tritium target elements in their cores now to produce tritium for thermonuclear devices. O’Reagan: I imagine that’s something the government wouldn’t want other places to be doing then. Freshley: Well, probably not, yeah. You can google tritium production and you’ll get information on the process—well, I don’t know about the detail of the process, but information on producing tritium in light-water reactors. Then as I was nearing retirement, I got out of that and was taken over by a couple other people. But it was interesting, and so that’s kind of—I enjoyed doing this sort of thing a lot. Exploring and testing and so on. O’Reagan: Was the tritium work also unclassified then, or was that back to the classified world? Freshley: I think it was in the classified world, perhaps, at the time. Although the lady who currently manages that project at the lab here gave a talk on these elements, these targets, and some of the latest things that they were doing. This was a while back, that she gave this talk. But there were parts of the talk she could not discuss. These parts that she couldn’t discuss are unknown to me and foreign to me, because a lot of that has happened since I retired. See, I retired in ’93—1993. That was—what—25, 26 years ago. O’Reagan: When you moved from GE to Battelle, did you ever notice any sorts of differences in your work experiences in sort of general terms? Freshley: No, not really. They were the same people involved, in my case. The big difference is that under DoE at the time—I think it was DoE, maybe AEC—we did not earn credits for service. So 14 years, I didn’t get any—[LAUGHTER]—credits for service which would help my pension, until Battelle came. Then that changed. I do get a GE pension still, but it’s not very much. O’Reagan: Let’s see. Are there sort of—one thing I’m interested in is how working on Hanford—people’s experiences changed over time as the decades went on, how things changed. Anything sort of leaps to your mind in those regards? Freshley: Well, one thing that comes to mind to me is things that you do if you’re in the lab and so on, are a lot more regulated now than they were back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Can you imagine opening the door and getting somebody a plutonium part that he takes off with and goes to Livermore? O’Reagan: Yeah. Freshley: You don’t do that. O’Reagan: Right. Let’s see. Freshley: So things are a lot more regulated now. And I would say a lot more sophisticated, too. I am aware of the fact that AREVA, here, the fuel fabricator, has developed since my time some very sophisticated models on fuel performance. We didn’t have models like that in those days. O’Reagan: Interesting. One of the things we’re also trying to get at, which is why a lot of this has been very useful, is what was done on the Hanford site that was sort of innovative or hadn’t been mastered elsewhere? Because you hear sort of both sides of the Hanford legacy, and a lot of these are harder to get at without having classified sources. So the unclassified versions people could tell us about are very interesting. Freshley: Well, I would say, that except for my time in the plutonium laboratory, things were pretty much unclassified. The development of these different fuels—fuel materials—and testing them and so on. I would say that was pretty much unclassified. O’Reagan: Interesting. Freshley: Now, I’m sure that AREVA here has some proprietary interests in their fuel modeling these days. But I’ve seen some of it; it’s a very sophisticated code and model. O’Reagan: What was it like living in Richland, let’s say the ‘40s and ‘50s first and ask for the later parts afterwards. Freshley: Well, I can tell you my experience. O’Reagan: Yeah. Freshley: First, as I said, I lived in the Army barracks. Then I moved to the dorms that were on Lee. This was before I was married. I was here for a year before I got married, and then when I got married, we got access to one of the Gribble apartments. I don’t know if they’re still there on Gribble Street? I think, maybe, Kadlec has taken all of that over now and destroyed all of the old buildings. But they were two-story apartments. They were really nice. Then after that, we lived in that apartment for five years, my wife tells me. And then we bought a ranch house. It wasn’t a purchase from the government; it was after the ranch houses and the other government houses were sold off by the government. This fella was in a position, a management position, in DoE—I think it might have been AEC at the time. And we bought this ranch house from him on Burch Street in Richland. We paid him $10,000 for it. And then from there—we lived there for a few years, and then we bought a house on Howell. And from Howell, we built a house in Country Ridge. That’s where we live now. We’ve lived there for 20—over 25 years. O’Reagan: Interesting. I was just thinking back on the timeline there. I know for a long time people couldn’t buy houses in Richland. So I guess you got your first place not too long after you were allowed to? Freshley: Oh, I think it was very soon. I can’t remember his name, but he was in some management position in DoE and wanted to sell his house. So we bought it from him and got the title and made some changes and so on. Yeah, it was among the first government houses that were sold privately. O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. What was life like in the community around there? Do you remember any sort of community events? Freshley: Yup. Town Theater was there. Actually showing movies, of course. Mm, I don’t know how to answer that. I would say it was pretty normal. Did a lot of outdoor activities, a lot of snow skiing at Tollgate—I don’t know if you know where Tollgate is. O’Reagan: I’m new to the area. Freshley: Oh, are you? Okay. It’s in the Blue Mountains. A lot of boating activities. We had a canoe and enjoyed that. Things like that. O’Reagan: Great. Freshley: Pretty normal, I would say. Wouldn’t you? O’Reagan: Sure. Freshley: [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: Did you ever feel like the sort of larger scale politics of the day ever impacted your life whether—Cold War security issues or changing Presidents or any of that? Freshley: I can’t relate to that. I was not politically inclined like some people you know. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: Sure. Let’s see. This is sort of a similar question, so we don’t have to go into too much detail. Any memories of the social scene, local politics, or other insights into life in the Tri-Cities over the time you lived here? Freshley: Over what time period? Oh. O’Reagan: In the time you lived here. Freshley: Well, like I said, I’m not politically oriented, so if there were these things happening, I was pretty isolated from them. O’Reagan: Okay. Could you describe any ways in which security and/or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work? Freshley: No, I really can’t, except 234-5 Building, every time you went out there, you had to have your badge and security. I think even in the Plutonium Finishing Plant, there probably—I think there were—additional security requirements. O’Reagan: What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford or living in Richland during the Cold War? Freshley: [LAUGHTER] Well, I wouldn’t know how to answer that. I would say, from my experience, it was very normal. I guess if there were security requirements and things like that, you just kind of got used to it, and you didn’t—it wasn’t something that stood out. I think that’s true. O’Reagan: Okay. So what haven’t I asked about that I should ask about? What else is there I should be asking about? Freshley: Well, how do I answer that? I don’t know. I think we’ve covered my experience pretty thoroughly. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: Well, we don’t have to dwell on it if nothing comes to mind. Freshley: No. O’Reagan: It is an open-ended question. Freshley: Well, what happened, after we bought our ranch house, the government didn’t come around and change our light bulbs anymore. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: Oh, really? Did you have to—how much of a transition was that once you sort of became a homeowner? Was it--? Freshley: Oh, it was a good transition, from my standpoint. You could do things—like we made modifications to the house. It was our house. It wasn’t controlled by the government—or owned by the government. So that made a big difference. You had a lot more freedom and so on in what you did and how you did it. O’Reagan: All right. Well, thanks so much. This is very, very interesting, very useful. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:06:12 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 248 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 300 Area 3706 Building 234-5 Building 231-Z building 324 Building N Reactor Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1951-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1951-1993 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Fox, John Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Max Freshley Description An account of the resource An interview with Max Freshley conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Subject The topic of the resource Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Hanford Nuclear Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-1-11 231-Z building 234-5 building 300 Area 324 Building 3706 Building Battelle General Electric Housing N Reactor Plutonium Finishing Plant Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor (PRTR) Richland (Wash.) Secrecy Westinghouse https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F04d6fb5586fd89129d3054b0c41df249.jpg f52f36f03b18e6ca3ad0ecc3929059b2 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F151938c82a3c7912af7b3e83b9747fbf.mp4 fc9eebb9af727b3febf2c6cc28d97d6e Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history with Jerome Martin on June 1st, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Jerome Martin about his experiences working at the Hanford site and his involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. And you—just wanted to use your legal name to start out with, but you prefer to be called Jerry, right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Jerome Martin: Yes, I do. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Jerome’s a little too formal. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Right. Just for the technical purposes. Sure. No more, we will not mention the name— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Again. [LAUGHTER] So for the record, you did an interview with the Parker Foundation sometime in 2010. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I believe it was earlier. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Or possibly earlier. And some of the Parker Foundation videos, as we know, were lost. And so this video is an attempt to recapture some of the information that would have been in that oral history, but also add some other information, and also to give you a chance to talk about your involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. So just as a introduction to whoever views this in the future. So why don’t we start in the beginning? How did you come to—you’re not from the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Not originally. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: All right. How did you come to the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, a little quick history, I got my bachelor’s degree at San Diego State College and then I was a radiation safety officer at San Diego State for about three years. Then I had an opportunity to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where, again, I was a radiation safety officer and on the faculty of the physics department. After several years there, an excellent opportunity came up for me here at Hanford with Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. So I moved here in 1976, and had a great opportunity to work with many other more senior people here at Hanford that had been here since the beginning. One of those, of course, was Herbert M. Parker. He was former director of the laboratories under General Electric, and then retired, but stayed on with Battelle as a director. I had a few opportunities to interact with him, and was quite impressed. I have heard stories about, he was a rather demanding taskmaster. And I could kind of imagining myself trying to work for him, but it would have been a challenge. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: What do you feel is important to be known about Herbert M. Parker for the historical record? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I’ve had an opportunity to review many of his publications. They were quite professional and very well researched, and in many cases the leading authority on several topics. So I was very impressed by his publications. I didn’t have a direct opportunity to work for him, so I don’t know about his management style or other things. But that was the thing that impressed me the most, was his publications. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: What topics did Dr. Parker write on—or do his research? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: His early professional career was in medical physics. He was at Swedish Hospital in Seattle for many years. Then he was called upon, as part of the Manhattan Project, to set up the safety program at Oak Ridge. He did that for about a year or so. Then he was called upon to do the same thing here at Hanford. So he came here and established the entire environmental safety and health program for Hanford. Of course he had all the right background to be able to do that, and he was able to recruit a number of really talented people to help him with that. So I think Hanford ended up with what could be known as the best environmental safety and health program, among all the early AEC and then DoE laboratories. One of the things that impressed me most by that program was the record keeping. And I had an opportunity to work on that in later years. But the way the record keeping was designed and set up and maintained was quite thorough. It was designed to be able to recreate whatever may have happened according to those records. It turned out to be very valuable in later years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Who instituted that record-keeping? Was that Parker? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I don’t recall the name of the individual that set it up, although I know Ken Hyde was involved very early on. He may have been at the very origin of it. But I’m sure Parker certainly influenced the rigor with which that program was established. In later years, John Jech was manager of the record keeping program, and then my good friend, Matt Lyon, was the manager of that. I worked with Matt, then, on American National Standard Institute’s standard for record keeping. We incorporated into that standard virtually all of the fundamentals that Parker had established initially. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: The first name was John— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: The second manager of records was John Jech. J-E-C-H. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Do you know if he’s still living? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: No, he’s not. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: And what about Lyon? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Matt Lyon passed away about ten years ago, as did Ken Hyde. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: What’s that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Ken Hyde—I think they all three passed away about ten years ago. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yeah, give or take. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: So you mentioned that the record keeping was designed to recreate an incident as it happened. Do you know of any such—or can you speak to any such times when that record keeping system was crucial into a safety issue? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: The one that comes to mind is one of the more I guess infamous incidents here at Hanford. It occurred just around the time I arrived here in 1976. It was sometimes called the McCluskey accident out at the 231-Z Building. There was an explosion in a glovebox that resulted in very significant contamination of Mr. McCluskey by americium-241. And the response to that incident, and then all the following treatment of Mr. McCluskey was very well documented. In fact, those documents then became the basis for a whole series of scientific papers that described the entire incident and all the aspects of it. So that was one major case where excellent record keeping was very valuable. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Excellent. And what—I’m just curious now—what happened to Mr. McCluskey? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: He survived for about ten years after the accident. He initially had very severe acid burns and trauma. But he was very carefully treated for that. The americium contamination that he had was gradually eliminated—not eliminated, but reduced substantially. He survived for another ten years after that incident even though he had heart trouble. I know several people that assisted in his care, and it was quite remarkable what they were able to do and what he was able to do. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. Did he ever go back to work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: No, he was 65 at the time of the accident. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: So he kind of went into medical retirement at that point. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Right. Yeah, I can imagine. So you said you came in 1976. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: And what did you—what was your first job, when you came to Battelle? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, I worked in what was called the radiation protection department, later called health physics department. My first assignment was called ALARA management. ALARA stands for maintain our radiation exposures as low as reasonably achievable. I would monitor the exposure records of Battelle workers, and watch for any that were the least bit unusually high, and then look for ways that we could reduce those exposures. And I monitored other things like average exposures and the use of dosimeters and things of that nature. The overall assignment was to generally reduce the workers’ radiation exposure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: How successful do you feel that the department was in that effort? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I think we were very successful, and it went on for many years, even after I had that assignment. I remember one time, looking at a report that DoE put out annually on radiation exposures over all the major DoE facilities. Those average exposures, highest individual exposures, and things of that nature. Battelle and Hanford had among the lowest averages of all the other DoE facilities. So, I believe it was a very effective ALARA program here at Hanford. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Do you know if that report was ever made publically available? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Oh, yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yeah, those are published every year by DoE. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, great. I’ll have to find that. Sorry, just scribbling down some notes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: At one point, Battelle had a contract with the DoE headquarters to actually do the production of that report each year. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: And I was involved in the production of it—oh, three or four years, as I recall. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay. So you mentioned that you had moved on out of that program or department, so what— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Right. Well, I started getting involved in management at kind of the bottom level. I was an associate section manager, and then I got an assignment as section manager for the radiation monitoring section. I was responsible for all the radiation monitors—or as they’re now called, radiation protection technologists—the radiation monitors for Battelle and two other of the contractors here at Hanford. It was kind of ironic that I was located in what used to be the 300 Area library, and my office was on the second floor. And my office was the former office of Herbert M. Parker, when he was director of laboratories. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: It was an honor to have that space, and recall memories of Mr. Parker. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow, that’s great. And how long did you do that for? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I did that two or three years, and then another opportunity came along in 1979—no actually, it was ’79, but I guess I’d been on that management job for about a year and a half. In September of ’79, which was about three months after the Three Mile Island accident, we had an opportunity to make a proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide support for their staff in emergency planning work. At that time, NRC was making a big push on all the power plants, all the nuclear power plants across the country to enhance their emergency planning programs. So we began about a ten-year project with NRC to supplement their staff. The NRC established the requirement for annual emergency exercises at each of the nuclear power plants, where they had to work up a scenario, and then they would activate their emergency response staff to demonstrate that they would know how to handle that accident scenario. We served as observers. We had teams of observers with the NRC staff. We did a total of 800 of those exercises over a ten-year period. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: So we had a lot of staff out there, doing a lot of travel. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Yeah. So that would have been—so you said for power, would that have been for all of the power reactors in the United States? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yes. There were 103 plants at the time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. Did you do any in foreign countries? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I didn’t personally, but we did have some staff that went to a similar kind of program with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and visited foreign nuclear power plants. Some in France, that I recall. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. So you said 103 power plants? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: In the US, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Actually, that was the number of reactors. There was a fewer number of plants, because many of them are two or more reactors at a site. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, okay so the 103 is the number of reactors? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I believe that’s correct. At that time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: How did Chernobyl affect your field and your work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: That’s an excellent question, because that was in this period. Of course, the Chernobyl accident happened in 1986, and I was working directly with NRC at that time. I was project manager on that NRC contract. When Chernobyl happened, there was an immediate reaction, and NRC had to study the Chernobyl accident as well as we could, and then determine what could be applied to US power reactors by way of improvements and emergency planning. One of my managers, Bill Bair, was part of a US delegation led by DoE and NRC to actually visit the Chernobyl area shortly after the accident, interact with the Russians, and do lessons learned that was turned into a series of DoE and NRC documents that tried to extract as much useful information as we could from Chernobyl and apply it here in the US. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Right, because if I’m not mistaken, the design of the Chernobyl reactor—there were reactors of similar design in the United States. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Not exactly. The Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel. There were a few reactors in the US that also did not have containment vessels, but they had other safeguards. The N Reactor was one of those. Unfortunately, I would call it an overreaction of the US government to a reactor with no containment. Severe restrictions were put on N Reactor, and some re-design was required that ultimately led to the end of N Reactor. It’s interesting to note that at that point in time, which was about 1986, 1987, N Reactor had generated more electricity from a nuclear reactor than any other plant in the world. So it’s unfortunate it came to an early demise. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: And—sorry, my ignorance here on the technical aspects. You said some of them don’t have a containment vessel. What does a containment vessel look like and what role does it play, and why would there would be reactors with one and without one? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, N Reactor went back to the early—the late ‘50s, I believe when it was designed. It was designed similar to the other reactors here at Hanford that were intended for production of plutonium. But N Reactor was a dual purpose, in that it also generated 800 megawatts of electricity. But it had a similar kind of design to what you see out at B Plant, for example. So it didn’t have the same kind of containment vessel that other modern pressurized water reactors or other nuclear power plants have that is designed in such a way that if there is reactor core damage, any radioactivity released can be contained and not released. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Or released in a very controlled fashion. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I see. Kind of like a clam shell that kind of covers the— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, it’s basically—yeah, in many cases a spherical kind of containment. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay. Excellent. So after—obviously the demise of N Reactor, ’86, ’87, is kind of the end of operations—or I should say of product production—product and energy production on the Hanford site. So how did your job change after that? And what did you continue to do after the shutdown? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I wasn’t directly affected by N Reactor shutting down. And the other production reactors had been shut down before that, so I wasn’t really directly involved in that. But I had yet another opportunity came up that turned out to be really a challenge for me. The Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas is the primary assembly and disassembly facility for nuclear weapons. At that time, it was managed by a company called Mason and Hanger. Mason and Hanger had that contract for many years, and DoE challenged them to rebid the contract. So Mason and Hanger reached out to Battelle for assistance in teaming on environmental health and safety. So my manager talked me into being involved, so I went down to Amarillo and visited the plant and worked with the team there on the proposal that had to be presented to DoE. And we won the contract. Of course in the fine print it said I then had to move there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Ah! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: But it turned out great. By that time, my family was pretty well grown, kids were through college. So we moved down to Amarillo, and I went to work at Pantex. We really enjoyed that. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Amarillo’s a very nice town, a lot of nice people. The work at Pantex was very challenging. I enjoyed that very much, too. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Great. So how long were you at the Pantex plant? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, I was manager of the radiation safety department down there for three years, which was my original contract obligation. During that time, we were very closely scrutinized by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, which was an organization established by Congress to be a watchdog over DoE. Their method for watching DoE was to watch the contractors very closely. So they would scrutinize everything we did, and then challenge DoE if they found something. They pushed us in a way that was good, because one of the things they promoted was professional certification. I’m a certified health physicist, certified by the American Board of Health Physics. At the time at Pantex, I was the only one we had there. But the DNFSB pushed us to add more, so I got more of my staff certified. There was a similar program for technicians called the National Registry of Radiation Protection Technologists, and at the time, we had two of my staff that were registered with NRRPT. Again, they pushed us to promote more training. By the end of that three-year period, I think we had ten of our technologists registered and certified. So we really improved the credentials of our staff. We instituted some new programs, again, related to ALARA radiation reduction. Probably the most interesting or challenging day of my life occurred down there in 1994. We were working on disassembly of the W48 program. The W48 was a tactical weapon used in—that was deployed in Europe—it was never used. But it was a very small, cylindrical nuclear weapon designed to be shot out of a 155 millimeter howitzer, which is amazing just to think about. But the plutonium pit in this device was surrounded by high explosive. It turned out to be rather difficult to disassemble this particular design of nuclear weapon. It also turned out that the plutonium pit had a relatively high dose rate, compared to others. So the workers were getting some increased exposure to their hands in the process of working on this. So we were concerned about their extremity dose. So we worked up a method for doing a classified videotape of the disassembly operation, so that we could study each step in the process to find ways to improve worker safety. Providing shielding, remote tools, things of that nature. The process on this was to take the plutonium pit and high explosives and put it in liquid nitrogen bath for a period of time. Then bring it out and put it in a little tub-like, and pour hot water on it. The HE would expand rapidly and crack off. And for the most part, it worked very well. Well, there was this one particular pit that we were working on when we were doing the videotape for this study. Apparently the HE wasn’t coming off the way it should, and so they had to repeat this process over and over. They brought it out of the liquid nitrogen, poured hot water on it, and the plutonium—the cladding, the beryllium cladding on the plutonium pit actually cracked, due to the severe temperature change. The workers who were working on this were trained very carefully that if that cladding on the pit ever cracks, get out of there fast, so you avoid a plutonium exposure. So that happened. One of the technicians heard an audible crack and saw it on the surface of that pit. And they all evacuated immediately. They got just outside the door of this special facility, and they called our radiation safety office, and fortunately my three best technicians were standing there by the phone. They said, pit had cracked. And so they got over there as fast as they possibly could. They recognized the danger of having an exposed plutonium pit, and how that can oxidize and cause severe contamination very quickly. They decided to put on respirators to protect themselves, but they didn’t bother with any of the other protective clothing because they wanted to save time. So they made an entry where the cracked pit was, still there with the water bath on it, and the video shooting this picture. They took samples right on the crack and on the water and all around it. They managed to take that plutonium pit and get it into a plastic bag and then they doubled bagged it and then they triple bagged it and sealed it up. Then they came out. Of course, the samples revealed that there was indeed plutonium contamination coming out of that crack, but they had contained it very quickly. When we made a later entry to retrieve the video tape that was still running, and we looked at the timestamp on it. From the time the crack appeared until they had it in the bag was seven minutes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: That’s about as fast as you can possibly expect a response team to come in and secure a situation like that. And so, following that, of course we had the incident debriefing, and I had to chair that. But we very carefully went through and recorded every little thing that happened from the time they were working on the disassembly to the time they exited. Got that all documented, and then the videotape of course documented all of that. The scrutiny by Department of Energy, the Amarillo office, the Albuquerque office, Headquarters, any number of others—we had a lot of attention that day. It was a long, hard day at the office, but very exciting. Following that, we had to debrief many other investigation committees and others. But we had that videotape to rely on, and that just was invaluable. That’s my—that was probably the most exciting day of my life, down there. [LAUGHTER] Got a follow-up to that. That W48 weapon was designed by Livermore. They came in at a later time and did a post-mortem on that cracked pit. And when they did, we discovered that the amount of plutonium contamination there that was available for distribution had it not been contained, would have totally just made that facility useless. I mean, extremely expensive clean-up, if it ever got done. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Not just the room, but the entire facility? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, mainly that room. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: That room. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: But it was a very big room, and a very valuable room, specially designed. But the quick response of our radiation safety technicians and getting that contained saved that room and millions of dollars in expense. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. And so this was a weapon that was the size of a howitzer shell? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: 155 millimeters. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. And what is the—I don’t know if you know this—but what’s the explosive power of that—is it—I guess it could be— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, it’s just like the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about 20-kiloton fission device. The plutonium pit is designed to implode and cause a super-critical reaction. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: But fired out of a howitzer, instead of— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Fired out of a howitzer, perhaps 20 miles or something. And then you can somehow coordinate the careful detonation of this-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: --device. It boggled my mind. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I guess that’s best that that was never ever— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: There’s quite a large number of different nuclear weapons. Many of them were tactical weapons used in Europe—or deployed in Europe during the Cold War. Many other more modern ones are part of Polaris missiles and other large bombs that can be deployed by B-52s or B-2s. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yeah. There’s quite a wide range of different models and designs. I didn’t know that at the time, but it’s fascinating. I remember one day standing in one of the disassembly rooms, and they had this nuclear weapon in a cradle standing there on the floor, and they had the top off of it. And I could just look down in the top of it. I couldn’t touch it, but I could look in there and just see the engineering in one of those things was just amazing. Just beyond belief. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I bet. I can only imagine. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yeah. But I’ve gone off on this nuclear weapons story and departed from Hanford. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: It’s okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Maybe I should come back. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I think that’s a very interesting story. I certainly—I’ve also, like I said, heard of plenty of bombs—ICBMs, missiles, but I’d never quite heard of a howitzer-type fired weapon. But also just the fact that your team and your field was able to prevent a really nasty incident is pretty amazing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: It speaks to your profession and your skill. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, like I mentioned, the professional credentials. Two of the three technicians who responded were certified by NNRPT. And they had the right kind of training, knew what to do, did it very well. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Great. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I had an opportunity a year later to nominate them for a special DoE award for unusual—not heroism, but effective response. And they won the award that year. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: That’s great. So how and when did you leave Pantex? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, the first time, was in ’96—no, I’m sorry, in ’93—and I had a special appointment back at DoE headquarters in Germantown. So I went back there for two years to work with the branch of DoE that was like an inspector general—the internal inspection branch, if you will. Very similar in scope to what the DNFSB—Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—was doing. Scrutinizing all the DoE operations at the national labs and other facilities, and trying to always make improvements. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: So I worked with the DoE headquarters staff on many different audits that we did at other DoE labs. At the time, I specialized in dosimetry, both internal and external dosimetry, and other operational health physics parts of the program. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, I had a couple other interesting assignments in there. After DoE headquarters, then I went back to Pantex for three more years. And then another opportunity came up on an old facility near Cincinnati that needed to be decommissioned—decontaminated and decommissioned. And I went to Oak Ridge first, worked with the Foster Wheeler Company on the design of what became the largest radon control building that had ever been done. I was the radiation safety officer for that project at Oak Ridge in the design effort. And then we moved to Cincinnati for a year and I worked at the Fernald facility in actually building this radon control facility. What we were trying to deal with were these large concrete silos that contained residual ore material from the Second World War. They have to go back to—when the Manhattan Project was trying to bring together the necessary uranium in addition to the plutonium that was produced here at Hanford, they were using a rich pitch blend ore that was coming from what was then called Belgian Congo in Africa. It was shipped from there up the Saint Lawrence River to a facility near Niagara Falls. And then it ended up being processed to extract as much uranium as possible. But there were these residuals. They ended up in these concrete silos near Niagara Falls, New York as well as this Fernald facility, just outside of Cincinnati. So we had three big concrete silos that—I don’t recall—they must have been 80 feet in diameter and 50 feet high. So they held a lot of uranium ore residuals. It contained a fair amount of radium, which gave off radon gas. This facility was located not too far from a residential area. So it became a greater concern for getting it cleaned up. We put together this radon control facility that had these huge charcoal beds and you could pipe—you could take the head gas off of this silo, pipe it into these charcoal beds where the radon would be absorbed, and then the clean air would circulate. So you could fairly rapidly reduce the concentration of radon inside the silo to much lower levels. In the process, the charcoal beds got loaded up by absorbing radon. There came a point where you had to heat up that charcoal to drive off the captured radon. We devised a clever scheme with four different beds where we could kind of keep one of them recirculating on all times and have the other three working. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: So you say drive off the captured radon, where would it be driven off? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Over to the next charcoal bed, which hadn’t yet been completely saturated. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh! But then eventually you still have charcoal that— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: but it decays with a 3.8 day half-life, and that was built into the plan, too. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: But if it was to escape, right, it would get people very—it would contaminate or get people sick, or--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, it was pretty carefully designed not to— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, but I’m saying that radon— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Oh, if it escaped from the silo. If there was no control of it—a certain amount of radon was escaping from the silo. For the most part, it’s a light gas, it just goes up and the wind blows it and disperses it. So it was very difficult to even measure anything offsite. But there was that concern there that we were dealing with. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: But if enough of it was released at once, then there might have been an issue? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Like if the whole roof of the silo was suddenly removed and it all came out, that could be a problem, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Interesting. I didn’t realize it had such a short half-life. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yeah. So I did that, what amounted to ten years of offsite assignments. About that time, my wife and I got tired of moving. So we came back to the Tri-Cities, and our kids are here. I came back to work at Battelle for another few years before I retired. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: When did you come back to Battelle? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I came back in 2001. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, okay. So then you worked for—it says you retired in 2006. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I retired about four years later. And the last major project I worked on was also very interesting. It was the project for customs and border protection. It was to install radiation portal monitors at seaports. This was shortly after 9/11, and there was a concern about dirty bomb material being imported by any means. We had one part of the project dealt with seaport, another part airports, and a third part postal facilities. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: So I worked on the seaports part, and I had the Port of Los Angeles was my assignment. Another one of us had Port of Long Beach, which is right next door, which are the largest seaports on the West Coast and have the largest number of shipping containers coming in. So we devised a method for monitoring those shipping containers as they were unloaded and making sure nothing was coming in that way. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Did—oh, sorry. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Very interesting project. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I don’t know if you can speak to this, but was anything caught by these monitors? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yes. But not dirty bomb material. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Turns out they were so sensitive, they would detect any kind of elevated background radioactivity. For example, kitty litter is a little bit elevated in background. Any kind of stone product, and there are various granite and other stone products imported from different places. Those had a high enough background activity that they would trigger our monitors. So we would run all these containers through a set of monitors, and any that triggered that amount would then be sent over to a secondary monitor, where they’d examine it more carefully, verify what was actually in the containers, sometimes inspect them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: So recently our project staff got a tour of some of the facilities at HAMMER. And I believe we saw one of those monitors. Would that have been the same? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Mm-hm. Big yellow columns? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Yeah, that they run it through. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yep, that was the one. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: So you helped design— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: We helped design—oh, I didn’t really get involved in design. That was done by some real smart people out here at Battelle. But I was onsite trying to get them installed. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: And tested. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. That’s really—that’s fascinating. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yeah, it was. I had a chance to do a lot of fun things when I worked at Battelle. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Yeah, it sounds like it. Sounds like maybe I need to go get a job over there. Maybe they need a traveling historian. So, where—what have you been doing since you retired? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, for about five years, I worked for Dade Moeller, which is kind of a spinoff company from Battelle. And they had a major contract with NIOSH—National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health—as part of an employee compensation program for radiation workers. Initially, the way this was set up was we got the actual radiation exposure records for former employees and examined their measured radiation exposure, and then did some other calculations that would tend to take into account anything else that they might have been exposed to but was somehow not measured on the dosimeter and many other factors to kind of add up their maximum possible radiation dose. And then that was compared—this is where it got a little complex. There are many different types of cancer that can be caused by radiation at a high enough level. Some types of cancer can be caused by a radiation level lower than some others. So it depended on what type of cancer the individual had as to which—how we measured their maximum possible radiation exposure to the likelihood that that cancer was caused by radiation. We did a careful calculation using probability and determined that if their cancer was at least 50% probable that it was caused by radiation, then they were granted an award. Well, we did that for several years in a very careful, scientific way that was well-documented. Then it became political. A lot of former workers, then, applied for another category within this overall compensation program that they called Special Exposure Cohort. Which meant that it didn’t matter how much radiation exposure they had, if they had the right type of cancer, they could get the award. And it’s kind of degenerated that way. But for many years, I think we did it right. I also had an opportunity to work on another part of that project where we did what we call the technical basis documents, where we reconstructed the history of how radiation exposure records were developed and maintained at each of these different sites. Every one varied a little bit. I did the one for the technical basis document for Pantex in Amarillo, because I was familiar with that. But I got to do several other interesting sites, one of which was Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Going there and interviewing some of these old-timers and looking at their old records, I found that there was a chemistry professor at what was then Iowa State University. He was called upon by the Manhattan Project in 1943 to help them improve their methods for extracting uranium metal. The old process that had been used by the Curies and other early scientists was really quite inefficient. But this professor developed a method used in a calcium catalyst that was very effective. He was able to purify uranium metal much quicker and in larger quantities. The story was that he would have to get on the train every Sunday afternoon and go to Chicago for the meeting with the Manhattan Project and report on the progress of his research and so on. One week after successfully isolating an ingot of uranium metal, he took it with him in his briefcase. Went into the meeting with Manhattan Project and clunked it on the desk, and passed it around. He said that this is a new method for producing substantial quantities of uranium metal. All the scientists around the table kind of poked at it and scratched it and so on and didn’t believe it was really uranium, but it was. And they finally decided that he had made a great breakthrough, so they sent him back to Iowa and said, make a lot more, fast. And he did. So he had the material they needed, then, for the Manhattan Project. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Interesting story. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. So how did you become involved with the Parker Foundation? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: About ten years ago—almost ten years ago—my friend Bill Bair and Ron Kathren and a couple others on the Parker Board invited me to participate. Matt Moeller was chairman of the board at that time—invited me to participate, and I just joined in, and found it very rewarding. I really appreciate what the Parker Board does in the memory of Herb Parker and in the sense of scholarships and other educational programs. So it’s a pleasure to contribute to that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Great, great. You moved in 1975 or ’76? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I moved here in ’76. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: ’76. And you mentioned children. Were your children born here, or did you move here with them? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: My oldest daughter was born in San Diego, and my younger daughter was born in Boulder, Colorado. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: So they were six and eight, I think, when we moved here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: What were your impressions of Richland in the mid-70s when you moved? Did you live in Richland or did you--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: We did. Yeah, we lived just a few blocks from WSU here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: In North Richland. It was a very different community, but one that I came to know and respect. Because at that time, education was really paramount in the minds of parents and the school system. And my wife was a teacher. So we really took an interest in that. My kids got a really good education here in Richland. Went to Hanford High, and then did well in college. One of the main features of Richland at that time, I think, was a superior education program. Some of the other history of Richland with old government housing, and then we got a new house, and things like that are entirely different, but also very interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: And is that what you kind of are meaning when you say it was a different community? I guess I’d like to unpack that a little bit more. How—in what ways was it different? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, a large part of Richland was originally government housing, and you only had to drive through town, you could see all the evidence of that. And then on the north side of Richland, they had opened up—beginning in 1965, I believe—development of newer private housing. We got here just in time to get in on a new house, and worked out fine for us. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Great. Was there—being next to a site that was primarily involved in product production, plutonium production—was there a different feeling about the Cold War in Richland per se than anywhere else you had lived in the United States at that time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: There definitely was different feelings about the Cold War and living anywhere near a nuclear power plant. I remember when we were working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at many different reactor sites around the country. In many cases we would have public meetings to introduce the local folks to what we were trying to do to improve the emergency planning. There was a lot of concern about living anywhere near a nuclear power plant just a few years after TMI. I tried to explain to people how I live within 30 miles of nine nuclear power plants. But I understood radiation. I understood the risk, and I understood what could go wrong or how to deal with it. And it didn’t concern—didn’t bother me that much to live here. I found that to be generally true of a lot of people in Richland that were part—working at Hanford and were well-educated. They understood the risk and they could deal with it. Whereas many other people were just afraid. And I attribute that to what I call now about a 71-year deliberate misinformation program on the part of mass media to scare people about radiation. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I like that. I’m writing it down. How do you feel that the—do you feel that the ending of the Cold War changed your work at all? I guess the reason why I ask— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: It did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: --these questions about the Cold War is because it was the impetus for much of the continued production of the material. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yeah. I was in Germany in 1988, just before the Berlin Wall came down. I was also there in Berlin in 1984, and we actually crossed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin on a special tour. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: It was quite amazing. I was in Berlin for a meeting of the International Radiation Protection Association. I took my whole family; it was a tremendous adventure for them. But we were able to be part of a special US Army tour that went through Checkpoint Charlie. I think they did this once a week. And we had a little tour of East Berlin while it was still under the control of the USSR. We visited their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they had a little ceremonial changing the guard there. And we visited the square in Berlin where Hitler had burned the books that one night in 1939. And then we visited a huge Russian war memorial, and there was a building there where the Germans had surrendered in 1945. There was quite a story about that. But I was really impressed with this huge Russian war memorial. There were five mass graves that each held 100,000 soldiers. It was done in kind of the Russian style, with statues and other honorary symbols to clearly show their respect for the lives of all those soldiers. But that was an impressive sight. But I was there again in 1988 just before the Berlin Wall came down, and you could kind of see the end of the Cold War coming. So it was a great opportunity that I had, working for Battelle, being able to travel like that, and do many exciting things. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Did you get to ever talk or meet with any of your counterparts on the Russian side? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: After the Cold War ended. And what was that like, to finally work with what had been considered the enemy? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: It was quite unusual. I was scheduled to go to Russia a week after 9/11. It almost got canceled, but I managed to go. I was giving—they were having a conference for young scientists and trying to introduce them to international concepts of radiation safety. So I gave my paper and four others that we did to that group. It was located at what was the Russian equivalent of Los Alamos, their design facility. There weren’t very many Americans had been in there up to that point. So I was watched very closely. [LAUGHTER] And not allowed to see much, actually. But it was a very interesting exchange. The papers I was presenting were prepared in both English and Russian. And then we also did what they called a poster presentation, where we had a big poster with diagrams and everything—again translated to Russian. So we were able to put these up at this conference for these young scientists. They, I think, got a lot out of it because it was in their language so it was easy for them to understand. Working with an interpreter was a new experience for me. I would give this oral presentation, so I’d say one sentence and the pause. The interpreter would repeat that. I’d say the next sentence, and—kind of an awkward way to do an oral presentation. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I can imagine. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: But their hospitality was very good. This was in 2001. So the Cold War had been over for quite a few years. But we were trying to establish better relations. I think it was quite effective in doing that. I had another opportunity to work with Russian scientists on an NRC program, again where NRC was trying to provide training to their equivalent Russian inspectors for nuclear power plants and explain to them some of the ways that they did inspections, things they looked for, how they documented findings and things like that. We had four Russian inspectors and their interpreter come over from Moscow. I was their host in Washington, DC, and we worked with them there with the NRC headquarters for a week, providing training. And then we brought them out to Idaho to the Idaho National Lab, north of Idaho Falls, and went to a large hot cell facility at Idaho. A hot cell is where they have a heavily shielded enclosure with mechanical arms that do things on the inside. It was quite a sophisticated facility and somewhat unlike what the Russian counterparts were used to. But it was a good learning exercise for them. We kind of went through a demonstration of how we would do an inspection—a safety inspection. So, I had those kind of opportunities to interact with Russian scientists and found that very exciting. Very interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Did you find that there was anything that you had learned from them at all? Or do you feel that the US was much more advanced in radiation protection and health physics? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, I kept my ears open when I was talking to them, but they didn’t reveal much. [LAUGHTER] So, we didn’t pick up much that way. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: We were trying to help them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Right. Were you at Hanford during the Russian visit to Hanford when they toured the Plutonium Finishing Plant? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: No. That was after I retired, I think. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay, just curious. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I heard about it of course. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I’m sure. That must have been a pretty big deal from the standpoint of both countries. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to talk about? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I think there’s one thing I remember from when I did this interview the first time that I wanted to mention. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I’ve been talking about all the varied experiences I had, and excellent opportunities over the years. But I think one of the perhaps most impressive things that I was able to do was to be able to hire several good people into my organization. I won’t mention names, but there were several that I call superstars that are now leaders in the field. I was able to bring them in right out of college or from another job, and hire several really good people that certainly enhanced our program, and then gave them great opportunities to grow and expand. Like I say, they’re now leaders in the field. That was one of the most rewarding parts of my job. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: That’s great. Maybe you can give me their names off camera and we could contact them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I think they’re already on your list. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Oh, okay, good. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: But I’ll do that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Well, good. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: We’ll do that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: They should be. Tom, did you— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Tom Hungate: No, I’m fine. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Emma, did you have anything? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Emma Rice: No, I’m fine. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Jerry, thank you so much. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, that was fun. Did we stay on target? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I believe we did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I wandered a little. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: That’s okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: There’s some stories there that might be interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: I think the stories help keep the oral histories—they have a human-centered focus and they’re interesting for people to watch. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I hope so. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: And I think there might be a couple things that merit some more research in there that personally, for me, I’d like to find out some more about. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Especially the howitzer thing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Hungate: One thing I’d just like to ask— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Hungate: You’ve been involved in a lot of things over a broad range of time and experiences and I just kind of wonder what you would feel is the one—maybe the item or two that you’ve worked on that will leave the most lasting impact? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: The most lasting impact. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Hungate: Or that you wished had been developed more that didn’t quite complete, you’d like to see more work done on it, it was either defunded or it was— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Well, I’m thinking of several different things now. I’ll just have to think it through. The work we did with NRC to improve emergency planning on nuclear power plants I think was very effective. And that’s still being maintained today. Work we did with DoE at Pantex on nuclear weapons. You mentioned the end of the Cold War, that’s when many of these tactical nuclear weapons in Europe were brought back and declared obsolete, and so we were doing a massive disassembly operation on those. I learned a lot about nuclear weapons and found it fascinating. We implemented some methods at Pantex that I think are still in use in the maintenance programs that they do now. But we were able to, I think, substantially improve on radiation safety at Pantex. Certainly to the point where we were finally blessed by DNFSB and DoE. I think the quality of that program has been maintained. There’s several other projects that I’ve worked on over the years, but I guess there’s no one thing that stands out that I would be concerned about that it was defunded or ended or somehow went downhill. I’m sure that’s happened, but I haven’t kept track of everything. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Being as nuclear power and nuclear weapons have different objectives, and you mentioned this retirement of a lot of nuclear weapons, do you feel that nuclear weapons still have a role to play in security— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: I do. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: You do? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Martin: Yes. Because the Russians still have a lot of them, China has some, the French and English have a few. It’s what I call the mutual deterrent, which is a term that’s been used. It just means that we don’t ever want to use one again, but if any one of those countries had some kind of an unbalanced advantage, it could be used. So if we have this mutual assured deterrence, it keeps that in balance. So it’s important to maintain that stockpile. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Interesting. Thank you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Hungate: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX244066500"> Franklin: Great. </div> Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Franklin Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jerome Martin Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:02;33 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 248 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview N reactor 300 Area B Plant Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1976-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1976-2006 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Kathren, Ron Bair, Bill M. Parker, Herbert Hyde, Ken Lyon, Matt Jech, John Moeller, Matt Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Jerome Martin Description An account of the resource An interview with Jerome Martin conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-07-29:Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 6/1/2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Waste disposal--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site. Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region 300 Area B Plant Battelle (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) N Reactor Parker, Herb 1910-1984 Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F9b9a473b596f5a77ab1eca9de21bcbc7.jpg a47fef2418adfc10000ab94ad0f2ef61 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1c8d5add285c766719f8e3d9016ca78c.mp4 de64b4641f2df7bcd6977637f9220e2f Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Douglas O' Reagan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stanley Goldsmith Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Douglas O’Reagan: First of all, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Stanley Goldsmith: Stanley Goldsmith. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Okay, thank you. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Mr. Goldsmith here on March 21st, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be talking with Mr. Goldsmith about his experiences working at Hanford. Okay. Could you tell us about your childhood up through—just briefly tell us about your life up through college and entering the Manhattan Project. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: At Hanford here, or at Los Alamos? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Before that. Your life before the Manhattan Project. Where were you born? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Virginia. Norfolk, Virginia. In 19—March 25th, 1924. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Can you tell us about your life before the Manhattan Project? Up through college? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well I— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Why don’t I move closer, that might— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: I was raised in Norfolk and went to Virginia Tech to take—to get a chemical engineering degree. I entered Virginia Tech in 1941, and I graduated in 1945. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: And then you entered the Army, is that right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: After graduation, I was drafted into the Army, and assigned to the Manhattan District of Engineers. Eventually, after waiting in several different places for my clearance, I wound up at Los Alamos, where I worked from 1945 to ’47—1947. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Did you just find out about what the goal was once you arrived? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Yes. After I got to Los Alamos, we were told what the objective was, and all about the problems. This was different than the other nuclear sites were. This mission was kept secret. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: What element of the project did you work on at Los Alamos? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: At Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: At Los Alamos. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: At Los—I worked on processing the uranium-235 for the first atomic bomb. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: What did that involve? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: That involved converting uranium oxide that had been enriched with 235. That involved processing it from an oxide to a fluoride so it could be reduced to a metal. And then machined into the shapes they needed for the bombs. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Were you figuring out your process as you went? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: No. The process had been pretty well established. This was more like just individual laboratories processing individual amounts of u-235 to get it to the point where it could be reduced to metal. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Who did you work with? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: What? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Did you work with anybody? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Who else was in your lab? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: That was a long time ago. Let’s see. There was Al Drumrose and a Purcell—I don’t remember his first name. There were two other—well, maybe a few other more people. But I guess I just don’t recall the names. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: So what brought you to Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: What got me to Hanford? I left Los Alamos to get a graduate degree in chemical engineering. When I graduated, I got a job here at Hanford as a nuclear—as a reactor engineer. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: How did you hear about the job? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, I knew about Hanford, and I sent out letters of inquiry about positions that may be open here and at other sites. And I got the position here in 1950. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: So you wanted specifically to work at Hanford or other sites—what was—did you have specific goals of what you wanted to do? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, I liked what Hanford had to offer. So there was no question about that. They satisfied what I was looking for. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: What were your first impressions of the area? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, it was shocking to say the least. It was like out in the wilderness. And when I arrived in 1950, General Electric operated the whole site, including the housing and all of the utilities and so forth. They assigned me a house that—I don’t remember what the rent was, but it was very inexpensive. And then in 1960—let’s see, it was about 1960—between ’61 and ’65—they divided the work at Hanford among several—among four or five contractors. One of them operated the laboratory, one of them operated the nuclear reactor, and one the separations plant. I stayed with the laboratory. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Could you walk us through an average day when you first—say in 1950 or ’52—what sort of work were you doing? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: What sort of work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: The average day—you want me to start back there?—is that my worksite was located about 20 miles from Richland. You could take a bus operated by the plant, or you could drive. But you had to go through an entrance gate—entrance—not a gate, but a station. And then we had to show our passes—badges. Then we went out to the site where we were working. In this case, at that time, I was working at F Reactor. As a reactor engineer, I rotated positions at the different reactors. So the work was—you asked me about the work—the work was, I thought, extremely interesting. And I felt very fortunate in that I felt like I was on the forefront of a new technology. By the time I got up here, there was a lot of emphasis on the peaceful use of nuclear power. I got involved in work for improving the nuclear fuels that was currently being used. This was because I was with Battelle then, and Battelle had a joint contract with the DoE where they could use part of their facilities—well, the major part of the facilities were for DoE work. But they also had a contract which they called 1831, and that was for doing private work for industrial corporations involved in nuclear work. I spent a lot of time on that, trying to—my group was trying to improve the performance of the fuel. Wanted to get higher powers. So that the fuel—we could produce fuel at a faster rate—I’m sorry, produce plutonium at a faster rate by increasing the power of the reactors. I worked as a reactor engineer for about four years. Then I took the position of manager of nuclear fuels research and development. We worked on developing or designing nuclear fuels, analyzing the fuels that had been used in the reactors to see what improvements could be made. Let’s see. We had a lot of interactions with the commercial fuel designers. As I mentioned, there were two contract billers. And this was done on the 1831, which allowed Battelle to use some facilities that were DoE’s—some facilities on the plant in their private work. So I’m trying to think about the timing, now. The main—after working on DoE projects for about five years, I worked on a private project that was sponsored—that was funded by Exxon—they’re now called Exxon Nuclear. They were interested in getting into the nuclear business, because they had a lot of claims on land that have uranium. They wanted—they decided to utilize those claims. Get the uranium, then processing it for use as nuclear fuels. So at that time, I think there was only one Exxon employee involved in this. They took over part—a major part of that, as Exxon Nuclear—took over a major part of Battelle. We were moved out of the buildings that DoE built, and we were located in Uptown in Richland in the industrial—just completely isolated from the other nuclear work that was going on. We designed a nuclear fuel for Exxon Nuclear which evolved into their first commercial fuels. During that time, Exxon Nuclear began to have their own staff. But we stayed with them until about 19—early 1970s, we worked with them. And then their own employees could take over from then. After that, I worked on fuel cycles. On seeing if we could design different types of fuels with different types of materials, like thorium, on the fuel cycles. And we—let’s see. This was work for DoE. And we continued that work—my group continued working for DoE. They were working on the nuclear reactor regulation, on NRC. We had projects with NRC. Our main project was DoE. And here again, I was telling you--[COUGH] Excuse me. I was still involved in nuclear fuel development. We did a lot of work for NRC and also for DoE. This was on helping them understand and approve their review of new nuclear fuels in reactors—nuclear fuel design. So we were working on both sides of the street: with the regulatory side, and the DoE development side. And then in 1980—excuse me just one minute—I should have jotted these dates down. In late 1980s, I worked on a DoE program on nuclear fuels—on nuclear fuel cycles, where we were looking at different way of utilizing the nuclear fuels so that they would last longer and that they would be safer. Then after that, I was assigned to Battelle Columbus, because I had worked through this project. It turned out quite successful. And Battelle Columbus had a contract with DoE to perform research on finding a nuclear repository—nuclear burial site. I was the Battelle manager of that program for about four years. We looked at the—examined the potential nuclear sites in New Mexico, Louisiana, Georgia, and here at Hanford. This program went on for about four or five years, and then DoE selected the Nevada site at Los Alamos—not Los Alamos—at Las Vegas for the site to bury the spent nuclear fuels. That program lasted for quite a while, but I left it in 19—after four years, because I didn’t want to move down to Texas, which was one of the sites that was being considered. So I moved back here to the Hanford. I worked on miscellaneous programs after I came back to Hanford. A lot of them had to do with the nuclear fuel cycle and the nuclear waste disposal—nuclear waste treatment and disposal. And I did that type of work for about four years, and then I retired in 1987? 19—yes, in 1987. And I left Battelle, and went to work for an environmental engineering company in Washington, DC, who was working on the same sort of thing. They were technical support contracted to DoE headquarters. So I was there until—let’s see. I was there until about 1994. And then I had to just—I still continued to work even though I was retired from Battelle. I had actually moved back to Battelle and was hired by Battelle as a consultant so that I could retain my pension and the salary for the job. That went on until about 1992. And finally, I retired for good. [LAUGHTER] So, that’s a very brief and sketchy description of what I did here at Hanford. One thing that—a little sideline you might be interested in. You asked about what Hanford was like. When I first came to work here, there were very few facilities that could be used at Hanford. I was not—I didn’t need anything special to do my work; I didn’t need a specially designed building structure. But I did do work on design and that work was done—the group was assigned to the Hanford High School. [LAUGHTER] Let’s see, where else? As I said, I had worked at most of the reactors that were operating at that time. Oh, there’s one thing that—I want to back up a little bit until about 1975. I got in—my group got involved in plutonium recycle. This was a program that DoE sponsored, a fairly large program, in which we were trying to recycle the plutonium that was not being used in bombs. Plutonium—to show that it could be used in nuclear power reactors. And we actually had a plutonium recycle test reactor built here onsite to test the fuels, the mixed oxide. We called it mixed oxide fuel because it’s plutonium and uranium oxide. And the reactor, which was the PRTR, Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor, was designed specifically to try to test, get information on mixed oxide fuels. Let’s see. I moved around a lot. After about five years on that program, I moved on, I think, to working for Exxon Nuclear, to assist them in their program. Now, Exxon Nuclear was so sensitive about their work being exposed by DoE that they moved many of the facilities that they used at Battelle, they moved them to different sections. We had offices at the old—what was it—the woman who had all of this fabric stuff? It was in Richland, it’s right in downtown Richland. And we took the top floor of one of the buildings that had already been built. And of course, there, we only did calculations because they had no facilities for taking care of irradiated material. That was an interesting time, too, when we were off on our own, so to speak. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: They did that because they were afraid of the Department of Energy taking their knowledge? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, they were concerned there would be some link—crossover—inadvertently, perhaps. The DoE could claim that some of the work done by Exxon Nuclear was done by DoE. And they didn’t want that to happen, so they completely isolated themselves. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Did that hurt your work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Did that work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Did it impact your work, being isolated like that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: I’m sorry? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Being isolated, did that impact your work? Did it slow your work, or did it cause any problems? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: No, it didn’t cause any problems. We were able to move our whole group out into the new facility in downtown Richland. So were other groups—nuclear physics group, and the other groups that went into the fuel cycle. But that was an interesting time, because we were really developing commercial nuclear fuels. The design that we had come up with was the first nuclear fuels that Exxon Nuclear had marketed. They marketed to—I’ll think of that in a minute. But anyway, we got involved in—since I mentioned earlier that there were very few Exxon Nuclear employees involved in this program—that we actually got involved with the Exxon Nuclear people who went out to market their product. That was at the time when we ran into some very interesting commercial situations. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: What makes one nuclear fuel better than another nuclear fuel? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, they were made primarily from uranium, and they were oxides. They were made into compressed pellets. Now, some of these were different—some of these were specifically made for boiling-water reactors, and others were for pressurized-water reactors. There was a design difference in the two reactors. One of them—the power level was about the same, but the design of the fuel and the way it was structured was different. That made a difference in the fuel for the two types of reactors. After we got involved in working for Exxon Nuclear, when our contract with them expired, we became very much involved in working only for DoE and NRC. I think I mentioned that to you. We—oh, we had contracts—my group had contacts with practically all the commercial nuclear fuel design people, and we provided them design support, and we did testing for them. So we were pretty much involved in the nuclear industry by then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: How secretive or how classified was your work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: After—when I moved to Hanford, the classification was almost—was very slim. It was very lax, because with the dropping of the atom bombs, then all of that came out, what the bomb was made of, and some ideas what the design of the bomb was. So by that time, it had pretty well leaked out, the security was relaxed on that, also. So that wasn’t—that was no longer a big problem. There were still some residual problem in security. In fact, the Russians, of course, wanted to get into the nuclear industry business. They wanted to know—well, this backed up into the weapons program—Cold War program. They wanted to know what powers we read our plants at—how many megawatts. And they actually took measurements of the Columbia River and calculated from that what powers we were obtaining. So that was when the Cold War was going on. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: How did you hear about that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Hear about what? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: The Russians testing the waters. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Oh. I think we had—our security people kept an eye on what was going on with the Russians. And this is one of the things they found out. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Let’s see. What was life in the Tri-Cities like back in the 1950s and ‘60s outside of work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, it was pretty plain in a way—several. Because there weren’t many things to do. There was only one theater, and there may have been one or two grocery stores, and I think there was one real estate agent. That was the case with most of the various businesses. There was maybe one, or two at the most. There was not much in the way of entertainment. I mentioned that we had one theater. People—the workers at the plant—developed their own entertainment—sources of entertainment. They formed all kinds of different clubs. One of the most popular club was the bridge club—competitive bridge. We played that in one of the commercial buildings that had an open space that we could use. Another was the Richland Little Theater. And then there was a Richland opera—Light Opera, also. And there were—of course, golf was a big activity, because there were already several different golf courses. So that was taking off. There were other activities like that where you had to build them yourself. You may have gotten a little support from DoE, but you couldn’t depend on it. So we had to make our own source of entertainment and relaxation. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Did you play bridge? What was your entertainment? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Yeah, I got involved in playing bridge. This was duplicate bridge. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but that’s a form of bridge that is competitive. It’s still—it’s played in such a way that everybody—each couple gets to play against another couple, and they rotate during the evening, so that other couples play the same cards. The competitive part comes in as to who comes up with the best score at the end of the evening. [LAUGHTER] And that was quite controversial. Particularly when a man and woman were partners—they would—they had no shame, or no hesitant to getting into arguments at the bridge table. So that was a big deal. Even now there’s a lot of bridge clubs that are playing here—duplicate bridge is what it’s called. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Where did you live throughout your time at Hanford, or in this area? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: What’s that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Where did you live? Did you move houses? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Yes—well, yeah. At that time, they were building houses like mad. I lived in one of the government houses in Richland—old Richland. Then I moved into what they called a ranch house. Those were a government house that was one story, and it had three bedrooms. There was some furnishing that came with these houses. The rental on it was very nominal. And as I recall, we were provided—many of these houses, or most of them were heated by coal. DoE actually—at that time, it was actually GE who ran the town—provided free coal. They would come around periodically and dump a load of coal for you to use in your houses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Sounds dirty! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Huh? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Sounds dirty! Seems like it would get you messy. All the—dumping the coal, is there a coal dust that would come up? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: What’s that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: When you burned the coal, would it be dirty? Would it make a lot of smoke, I guess? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Not too bad. They must have used a hard coal that gave out less smoke. I don’t know that—it wasn’t like an industrial company where they had large facilities that generated a lot of steam, a lot of smoke. This was kind of dispersed. So we didn’t have an air problem at that time. We had—now the other thing that they did to make life easier—we had our own transportation—public transportation system. You could ride on the buses that they had for free. So that was to make life easier for the employees. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Must have been a lot of buses? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: What? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Must have been a whole lot of buses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, most of the buses were actually used to go out to the Area—to take the workers out to the Area, because there’s where you had a lot of people to be transported. The civilians, or the private people, had—many of them had their own cars. So didn’t use the bus. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Was it different when you were working on commercial energy compared to when you were working for the Department of Energy? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Yes, there were quite a lot of differences. We were able to produce fuel designs and produce developmental fuels in a much shorter time than DoE, because there was a lot of paperwork involved in going through the DoE process. In fact, one of the DoE people at headquarters who was in charge of reactor development said he was very upset because he couldn’t—he was in charge of the fast reactor, the FFTF. And they were struggling to try to get the thing going. He was very upset because he couldn’t understand how we were able to get fuel for Exxon Nuclear, and they were still struggling. They’d been struggling for a long time. [LAUGHTER] So he wanted to know what we were doing. Well, what it was, we didn’t have to jump through all the loops that you did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Was it finding the uranium, the procurement that was the problem? Or just write paperwork? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: No, the problem that DoE had was that they had a bureaucracy that kind of controlled things. And that always slows things down. It took them about twice as long to develop the fuel for the Fast Flux Reactor than it did us for the commercial reactors. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Hmm. Let’s see. Have the Tri-Cities changed much in the time you’ve been living here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Oh, yeah. It’s been amazing how it’s grown. The Tri-Cities now is like a normal city. The nuclear influence is much less, because we have so many other businesses now involved for our economic base. As I had mentioned earlier, there were usually one kind or maybe two types of business or entertainment or something like that. When the commercial people came in, they opened as many stores as they wanted, or that were needed. So that was one big thing. Another big thing was the housing development, the real estate. I remember up until 19—let’s see, about 1965, GE was in charge of everything, including building houses. [COUGH] Excuse me, I’ve got a cold. When they opened up the lands, part of the land, surrounding territory was owned by the Department of the Interior—it was government owned. And then they made those available to the public for building houses and other types of structures. The demand for these things was great enough, so the building was really at a peak. Now, even now, you take a look at the housing—the amount of housing that’s going on, and take a look at the commercial businesses, like drive down George Washington Way, you see all these new businesses or restaurants or that sort of thing. So it’s really changed. Richland was all on this side of the Columbia River. That was one of the boundaries for Richland. But then the Columbia River curved around, and there were—on the other side of the river, there was nothing but sagebrush. But some entrepreneurs had bought land there, and then when they started to build, they had lots of land to build on. That was no problem. There’s a whole new part of Richland that’s on the other side of the river that wasn’t there until probably about 1965 or so. That’s when it started. So there’s been a growth of industry. The highways have been developed. There’s new industry that’s come in. So we’ve developed quite a good industrial base now, and it’s still growing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Are there any—to ask an open-ended question, are there any moments or stories that come to mind that you think are worth telling about your time working at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, I told you about how we had, early on, we had offices at the Hanford High School. That was—we made a lot of fun of that, when anyone called you at the high school, we said this is the Goldsmith class of ’41-’42. There was a lot of—amazing amount of work that was done on animals to use those as some of the basic studies for the effect of radiation on animals. Now we don’t have any of those studies going on. But let’s see. I’m trying to think of something that is unusual. A lot of it was—practically all of it was unusual. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: How about something mundane, but it’s still kind of unusual? Or maybe a day in the life later on in your work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, I mentioned the general public had to develop their own recreational activities. We have—I don’t know—we have a lot of parks and fields. Like some of those baseball parks are very good. I didn’t appreciate how good they were until—I have some relatives who live in Maryland, and we visited them, and we went to see their children’s baseball game. But they had just an open field, nothing like we have. So that’s been—the recreational things have improved quite a bit. Of course the boating is still a big deal. I really—as I said, there was so much growth going on that it’s hard to pick out any one area. Excuse me. The recreational areas have increased. You know, we’ve grown more; we’ve built at least two new golf courses, and these were very good golf courses. Then the other thing is some of the building of private homes around the golf courses. That has been—we live in a community there that probably has—what would you say, Joyce, about 800 people? Something of that sort. And it’s very nice. There’s two such communities. One of them is called Canyon Lakes, where we live, and the other is called Meadow Springs. That’s been developed—highly developed. We both have very nice golf courses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Joyce: After you retired, didn’t you work with the people from Israel, the First Defenders? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Oh, yeah, that was an interesting little program. That was after I retired, and I was re-hired. Battelle got a program from the State Department to help—to develop ways for the First Defenders on a terrorist site could make a better determination of what happened. And they did this on a worldwide basis. Mainly, underdeveloped countries, but one country that they had and they were anxious to get involved because they had firsthand information—they were anxious to get Israelis involved. Because they had a lot of first defenders. The program consisted of sending a team of people over to Israel and tell them what the program was about. And then Israel was to send about 20 people over here for a month. And then we were using the training—the HAMMER facility to do the training. I got involved because when the Israelis came over, they asked me, since I’m Jewish, they asked me if I would help trying to make them feel comfortable and so forth, take care of their dietary laws. And again, they were very pleased. And it was fun, it was interesting to see how they had become sensitized to terrorism. For instance, they stayed at one of the hotels out there. It’s right outside of Columbia Center Mall. And early morning, a bus would pick them up and take them out to the HAMMER site. After about two or three days, the bus driver said—no, someone said are we going to take any different routes? And the bus driver thought they meant for sightseeing. But they didn’t want to establish a pattern for terrorists to see what their schedule was. So they finally got him to change the route out to Hanford itself. But that was interesting, because the view of the Israelis who had been submitted to so much terrorism and the view of the other countries that we trained but who had not been submitted were completely different. Like night and day. So that was interesting experience. They show you the difference between our view of being careful about terrorism. As I said, these people were housed—excuse me. These people were housed in one of the hotels close to the Columbia Center—close to the Columbia Center Mall. They would go into the mall, and they were appalled to see that people were allowed to go in and out of the mall carrying all kinds of backpacks and all kinds of packages where it’s not being inspected. Because in Israel, they inspected anyone who was carrying a package of any sort. And they would be examined. So that was an interesting insight on how the different countries treat terrorism. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: And the training was about how to respond to a nuclear accident, or a crisis? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Well, this program was called the First Defenders. And these people were doctors, they were scientists, they were firemen and so first. They were a mixture of who would come to the site where an attack had been made. That’s why they called them the First Defenders. They—let’s see, what was I going to say? They were very—the ones that were really involved in anti-terrorism were very conscientious and good about it. We had some interesting things that arose as part of this program. As I said, there were nations from all over the world that were involved to a certain extent. And we had the Indians, from India, coming over, spending a month. They were put up in the Hanford House—Red Lion Hanford House. They got a call one day from someone at the Hanford House wanting to know if we could talk to these people about how to keep the shower curtains inside of the showers, because they would keep them out and they would flood the whole area. So there were strange incidences like that. I’m sorry, Joyce? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Joyce: About when Bill Wiley was here and you worked at Hanford Battelle in Quality Assurance. Did you share any of that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: The quality--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Joyce: Uh-huh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: Bill Wiley was a very—I think he was very influential and left his mark on the site, because he wanted to develop this environmental molecular laboratory, the rows of buildings out there, the new rows. And that opened up a whole new set of doors for Battelle to grow. They went into more basic stuff. Up to that time, we mainly focused on working on problems with nuclear reactors and nuclear fuels. But this was completely different from that. This was basic science that these laboratories allowed us to get involved in. And it’s opened up a whole new area. I think Battelle, and Hanford in general, has benefited from it, because they get a lot of extra programs that they wouldn’t have before. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Were you involved with these basic science programs? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: No, I started in nuclear fuels and nuclear reactors most of the time I was here. But I didn’t get into any of the basic science programs. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Did you want to say anything about this Oppenheimer letter, maybe introduce it for us? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: He was a very nice guy, and he was very considerate, and everybody liked him. He was very friendly—friendly in a reserved way. He didn’t go around smacking people on the back, but you knew he was warm and he remembered names. After the peace was declared, I think it was that later date in 1945? No, not 1945. At any rate, after the war was over, and things settled down, he sent out a letter to some of the people who worked on it that thanked them for their effort. And he sent me one of those letters. And I’m very impressed with it, because he knew what I was doing. Because he could mention that in his letter. I’ve been very proud of that letter. That’s what that is all about. It may not be much to many people, but to people who have been involved in the nuclear industry, I think it has some impact. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Did you ever meet any other Los Alamos or other Manhattan Project veterans who weren’t from the Hanford site when you worked at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: When I went to Hanford did I ever--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: Meet any other people who had been at Los Alamos? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: No, there are not too many people here, just a few people here. I’m hoping—I’d like to know—I wanted to put something on Facebook about seeing how many people from Los Alamos who actually worked on the bomb still are around. Because I don’t think there are too many. I was—I got my degree when I was 21, so—and then I immediately went to work and have done that since then. But I’ve lost track of most of the people. I think they’re probably dead by now. [LAUGHTER] But if there’s something that comes up from that, I’d like to see. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> O’Reagan: All right, well thank you so much. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Joyce: Thank you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX228872584"> Goldsmith: You’re welcome. Thank you. </div> Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:08:27 Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview F Reactor Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor (PRTR) Boiling Water Reacto Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1950-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1950-1987 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Wiley, Bill Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 247 kbps Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Stanley Goldsmith Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Richland. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/21/2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-07-28: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Battelle (Wash.) Boiling Water Reactor F Reactor Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) General Electric HAMMER Site Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor (PRTR) Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ffc26abfcad1867ffbfbc9943486fecef.jpg 50e3b275424ab6190bdb6c842abe8137 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6e943532e002ba8d078e11a4e7f75958.mp4 ec42f85d52e2ce276b6305ce36a4e155 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview O' Reagan, Douglas Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Carson, David Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. To start us off, will you please pronounce and spell your name for us? David Carson: Hi. My name is David Carson, D-A-V-I-D, C-A-R-S-O-N. O’Reagan: Okay, thank you. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview here on April 29th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus on Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Mr. Carson about his experiences working on the Hanford Site and living in the Tri-Cities community. Well, thanks for being here. Could you tell us first just a little bit about your life leading up to either moving into the Tri-Cities or starting working at Hanford? Carson: I was born here in Richland at Kadlec in May of 1958. Grew up here, went through all the Richland schools—Spalding and Carmichael, and—I can still call it Col High because I went there then. Went off to college, met my wife. We were biology majors, and about the time that we graduated and were looking for jobs, Battelle, who at the time had a huge biology program, they lost most all their contracts. So that just evaporated. My wife managed to get on with Battelle a couple months after we were married. But it took me over six months before I finally got a break and got hired on at N Reactor as an operator. My-- O’Reagan: And that would have been ’81? Carson: That was in March of 1981. My parents had moved here in the spring of 1951 with my brother and sister. I was a 16-year mistake, so they’re a lot older. But they moved here in ’51. They lived in the trailer camp up north. My brother and sister went to Ball Elementary, for example. In ’53 they were able to buy a ranch house on Cedar Street, and that’s where I grew up. My dad was a fireman. Eventually became a lieutenant and then a captain. My mom was a secretary and then executive secretary. She was one of the very first certified professional secretaries onsite, and did a great deal to spread that program and bring skills and professionalism throughout all of her parts of the work. For years, she worked here—for over 35 years, a couple years longer than my dad, actually. So I’m about as Richland-born-and-bred and Hanford-centered as you could hope to ask for. When I got hired on at N Reactor, I started—as so many people in operations did—back in the fuels department. We called it back, because it was in the back part of the building. It was both the front and the back of the process. So back there, we made up the charges of reactor fuel for charging into the reactor. After that went in, the old fuel was discharged. We also took care of that out in the storage basin. So that was—I started in late March ’81, I was in fuels for six months. I always knew that I wanted to move up into the control room. So after six months, in September of ’81, I moved up front to reactor operations, not fuels operations. Started out as—everyone was referred to sort of shorthand as paygrade. A plain reactor operator was a Grade 18. So I was a Grade 18. That’s where you begin learning the basics of the job. You learn how to take building patrol and what all the readings mean and how to take them correctly. Because you have to go around the whole building twice a shift and check on running equipment, take readings, make sure things aren’t breaking or whatever. Then you start learning more of the jobs, from housekeeping—there were some specialized parts of that. Doing laundry—there was specialized parts to that, because it was—you were dealing with radioactive clothing, so contamination control, you learn that a lot. All the different functions during charge/discharge. This was the time, in the early part of the Reagan Administration when they changed over to once again producing weapons-grade plutonium. It was called the 6% program. Weapons-grade plutonium is judged on how much plutonium-240 has grown into it. If you have more than 6%--PU-240 is a big neutron absorber, so it does not create a nuclear explosive as well. It poisons reactions. So the less of that you have, the less you have to work to separate it out and get just the PU-239 that you want. So changing to the 6% program meant that they were doing charge/discharges a little more than twice as often. Plus, a lot of the maintenance had been let go. For many years they’d been in power only, since the end of the Nixon Administration. And that was something of a coup, to let in startup just to produce electricity through the Hanford Generating Project number 1 that was run by Washington Public Power Supply System. We sent our steam to them over across the fence. We didn’t have anything to do with that, except send steam, get back water. So there was a lot of upgrades going on throughout the whole reactor plant. The reactor plant—we called it the power side, where the steam that we made as we cooled off the primary loop was used to drive turbines that drove the primary pumps that circulated the water. A lot of that equipment was also repaired, upgraded. It took a while to really get up on plane and start operating smoothly again. A lot of operators came in right around within a year or so of the time I did, and four or five reactor-operator certification classes’ worth. They would take about 15 people at a time, and you would run through about a year-long program to learn everything from fundamentals, which was basic math, basic chemistry, basic nuclear science, up through the specifics of the systems in the reactor and how they interacted, how you operated them safely, what you didn’t want to do, what you did do, the reasons behind all that. It got pretty complex. You had to take three tests to become certified. First, after the first couple sessions of classroom training, they would pull us off our shifts. We worked a four-shift rotating shift at the time. Pulled us off our shifts, put us on day shift in the classroom for chunks of time. We’d go back when there were outages, because they needed bodies. When you finished your first couple of sessions of classroom training, there was the written exam, which is called the eight-hour. And it really is. It was almost 50 pages. I finished it in about six-and-a-half hours. I used up an entire pen. Just as I was finishing writing the essay on the last page, the pen died. And I looked at it—it was clear, and there was no ink left. So after you passed your eight-hour, you got a bump. You were then called a Grade 21, and a lot more of your training was real-time in the control room. You would sit on consoles with the other operators, and they would help guide you. You’d get some hands-on time. You’d learn more about that part of the job. After several months, and some more classroom training, you had an examination called the demo, where one of the instructors would come over and they would walk you around the control room and just start asking questions. Your job was to answer the questions, point at stuff, look things up in books—prove that you knew where it all was, what it all meant, what it all did. When you passed your demo, then you went into the final, more intensive part of classroom training to get ready for your oral board. Pass the eight-hour, pass the demo, train some more, then you sat an oral board, in which there were people from operations, engineering, nuclear safety, training, and sometimes somebody else would sit in. I don’t know why, but they did. So once you passed your oral board, you were considered certified—a Grade 23. But you still didn’t get turned loose yet. You still had to have guided time in the control room. You had to do a certain number of evolutions. You had to do so many startups, so many shutdowns, be in on so many scrams, do a little of this and a little of that, until your shift manager, after watching you and talking to the other operators, figured you were ready. So then, one day they say, okay, you’re free and clear. And your certificate went up on the wall with your name on it saying that you were a certified reactor operator, and you got thrown in. And then you really started to learn the job. Because all this stuff was suddenly no longer even partially theory. It was all real. O’Reagan: How many reactor operators were there at a time, roughly, who were licensed? Carson: It went up and down. Each shift was required to have at least four in the control room when you were operating. Typically, during this time in the ‘80s, every shift had seven or eight certified operators, and as many as a dozen Grade 18s—the ones who didn’t want to get into the certification program, who did other stuff around the plant. Because there was always stuff to do, if nothing else—housekeeping, stocking the laundry, and sweeping the floors. We had a schedule that came up every month and you rotated through different jobs in the control room. At the N control room, there was three major parts. There was a nuclear console, where you actually ran the reactor itself. We manually controlled the rod positions and manually monitored the power level and the flux where the neutron cloud was going up or down in the reactor. You wanted to keep that still and stable. You didn’t want it to cycle, because that can get—create stresses, if one part of the reactor’s really hot while this one back here is cold, it stresses—increases the fatigue and the chances for the failure of something. So you wanted to keep it nice and steady. We had instrumentation. We had—the only computer display we had was of temperatures. That was probably the main one, and the charts that showed how the neutron flux was changing. You wanted to keep all the lines straight. There was two of you, and you rotated on the nuke console every two hours—two hours on, two hours off. You’d get breaks and stuff while you were off. The double-A console controlled all of the primary loop and its interface with the secondary loop. That’s where you controlled the drive turbine speeds that drove the primary pumps to circulate the coolant. That’s where you controlled the primary loop pressure, the level of it, the emergency backup stuff—you were responsible for that. So you had this whole corner of the control room and panels that were your responsibility. The third part controlled the secondary loop—that’s the side—the primary loop went into the tubes of heat exchangers and it boiled the water on the shell of the heat exchanger—the steam generators. So that steam went up into the steam header. A lot of it went over to WPPSS. Some of it went down to drive our turbines. We also had a turbine generator of our own in the boiler building that was our onsite power source. You took care of the secondary loop there—its level, its pressure, the way it was. There was also a lot of other things that that operator did—rupture monitoring was at that panel, because N Reactor did not have a containment; it had a confinement. It was designed in 1958, went critical in ’63. They didn’t build—I guess they couldn’t at the time yet—build a full containment to keep everything in. It was designed that if there was a tube rupture and you had a big burst of superheated steam, that would vent. So we had to keep our primary loop really, really clean. And that’s what the rupture monitor was. If you saw signs that the fuel element in one of the 1,003 process tubes was beginning to release uranium into the water, you’d shut down and push that tube right away. There was also a system specifically for cooling the graphite. N Reactor, like the other old Hanford reactors, was called graphite-moderated. It used very pure graphite in a big block with complex passages through it. The neutrons, when they would leave the fissioned uranium atom, would go out and bounce around in that graphite before they found their way back into fuel, slowed way down, so that they could cause another fission. Modern power reactors use the water, the coolant, as a moderator. We used the solid graphite. We had a system to cool that specifically. So that operator took care of that. Also, the gas system, we circulated helium through the core when we’re operating, because at full power, 4,000 megawatts thermal, the temperature in the center of the core was 600, 700, 800 degrees in places, Fahrenheit. Pure graphite—you don’t want any air or water, anything that’s going to react with it at those temperatures. So we used the helium—you had to control that, too. And there’s other miscellaneous stuff, but you had to learn all of this, and you learned all of the classroom stuff, but just like anything, you really learned by doing, where it becomes second nature. The wonderful part about working it in was my shift—I was a little unusual in that I was assigned to one shift at the beginning, C shift, and I stayed on that shift my whole nine years there. Other people would move around, sometimes involuntarily. But I managed to stay on C shift all the time. It’s such a wonder and a joy when you can become that tight of a team to where you knew exactly how any individual’s going to react in a given situation. You don’t even need full words to communicate. We would have entire conversations in acronyms and shorthand. And we—stuff happened and we would ride it out and just—scary as heck, but—when it was over, you knew that the team had just really done its work like it’s supposed to. So that was always—that was a good feeling. O’Reagan: Could you give us an example of one of these acronym exchanges? Carson: Oh. Oh, it’s— What’s the HPIP delta P? 18. Okay, we need that up to 50. So—I’ve lost a lot of that. O’Reagan: Sure. Carson: But as in any installation, every piece has a name. It has typically an official name that meets a standard of naming from an engineering organization, it has the name that it’s normally referred to as, and it has an acronym. Sometimes it might have an even shorter shorthand name that your crew comes up with that you all know what it is, but you also know all the others as well. In a situation where something has begun to get out of line, out of normal--it’s not a crisis, but it’s something that you have to pay attention to and deal with right away—you need to transfer information as quickly and as clearly as possible. And that was how that was done, with shorthand acronyms that everyone knew exactly what you were saying; they could anticipate what you were about to say. So you could get other people to take particular actions absolutely as quickly as possible, and they could get you, by what they said back, to do your actions properly. O’Reagan: Could you walk us through a one specific scram or other sort of stressful event? Carson: I was there in the control room one night when—I believe it was thunderstorms hit a main distribution power line—a 230-kilovolt lines coming from the dams—that happened to be online as our offsite power. Lightning hit one of those transmission lines and caused a power surge that tripped open the breakers at the substation. Offsite power was called A bus. Onsite power was B bus. You needed them active and separated up from 13.8-kilovolt where it came into the reactor, all the way down to 12-volt DC instrument power. You couldn’t have any connection between those two, because that could conceivably cause a fault that would stop the reactor from scramming if it needed to. So they powered everything, but some things were powered more by one bus or one by another. This is one of the main things that we trained for, was a power loss. Of course, if you lose one of your electrical buses, that’s one of the automatic reactor scram trips—there was 23 of them. So the reactor scrammed, and everything’s going along about like you’d expect for a power loss from one bus. Everything’s already prepared and set up to take the proper actions automatically, so you have to monitor those and adjust as necessary. Then all of a sudden, there was some kind of electrical fault in our B bus, our onsite power, which was still online. It tripped off. It was B bus—I believe I’m saying this right—B bus powered the lights in the control room. So you knew if those lights went on, you’d lost B bus as well. Now, if you lost both buses at the same time, that was an automatic trip onto emergency cooling, which for N Reactor was very large, high-pressured diesel pumps would pump water. Valves would open at the inlet and outlet of the reactor and it would change to a once-through. We had a series of water tanks with demin[eralized] water, filtered water and sanitary water. And then through some mechanisms, it would trip all the way to river water. If it was known that if you ever tripped over onto emergency cooling, the thermal shock—because the water was kept hot, but it wasn’t as hot as the reactor—the thermal shock could basically destroy the reactor. And that would be over. Nothing you could do at that point as far as keeping the reactor as an operating reactor in the future. So luckily, A bus had actually come back online just seconds before B bus went off. Then B bus came back, so the lights came back on, and then we lost A bus again. Because the whole BPA network was still having ripples and things. And then it came back up and then we lost B bus again. So when each of these things is happening, there’s stuff you have to do, depending on what it was. We’re running back and forth, trying to do that, and it got really tense. But all that training, you stopped really thinking—just all the training in your brainstem took over and you started doing what you needed to do and communicating in just those short, almost little digital blips of information so that everyone knew what you were doing, and you knew what they were doing and you knew what everybody had to do and that they were doing it. So things got pretty terse in the control room right there. As the buses kept coming up and down, it would reset off hundreds of enunciators and we didn’t have time to try and figure out what the overall cause was; we were just still fighting to keep the reactor from tripping on to emergency cooling. So eventually, we got both buses back and stable and we could continue with our—then it became just a regular post-scram shutdown. The cool-down of the reactor, changing things to work slightly different ways here and there throughout the plant. Then you sit back and giggle and get the shakes a little bit. Everybody talked real loud and real fast for a while, you know? [LAUGHTER] So—just some stressful things like that. Any unexpected scram made you a little tense, a little puckery. Because you didn’t know what happened. We had big CRT monitors mounted up by the nuclear and the double-A console that were tied into an electronic alarm system that they would record all of the enunciators. There were—I think I heard the number once—it was 1,400 different enunciators in the control room. When one of those went off, it sent a signal to this alarm system that put the ID of them in a buffer memory. They would display up in the CRTs. Well, when you scram, you got 400 enunciators within two or three seconds. So all you could see on the screen was the first eight or so. So you didn’t know what was going on. You just had to deal with what you were supposed to do and trust that no further catastrophe was going to happen, and just be ready for it if it did. When the reactor was running smoothly, we called it at equilibrium, when we had not changed power by more than 5% in 72 hours. That was sometimes hard to keep your focus, because all the lines are running straight on the charts, and it’s graveyard, nobody wants to talk, and you’ve all told all your stories a dozen times, and nothing much to say. So you’re sitting, waiting, watching. So like the quote about war, hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Not as terror-filled as they might be, because we were trained and experienced in most stuff. Sometimes—there was always the possibility that sometimes something could happen that was really untoward, really out of the way, that could be really dangerous, really a disaster. O’Reagan: How much of working in the control room was sort of judgment or sort of work of art as opposed to a sort of objective do-the-next-thing? Carson: Actually quite a bit of it. One of the things that you developed as you gained experience as an operator—we called it getting stick time. When you started getting enough hours on a console and really starting to figure out how everything actually did work, you developed a feel, just from watching how all the different parts of the console you were on interacted. You got a feel if something was maybe not right, if something started looking a little jittery or a little bit out of its normal range that you wanted. Then you’d have to figure out, what little tweak can I make? Because everything was running in automatic, but you could always make small corrections. What little tweak could I make, given what I know about that that’s going on, that would make it better? And you developed what I always called a touch. Because you didn’t just go up and start twisting stuff. You really—with some instruments, some controllers—some control loops more than others—you didn’t want to put any very large change into it at all, because it was so sensitive. In the action that that controller would take, the input back to, say, the primary loop from changing the speed of one of the makeup injection pumps could just suddenly—if you did too much by accident, you could scram the reactor. Or you could cause it to lose pressure, which would scram the reactor another way. So getting to really develop that unconscious feel, similar to the way that when you’re driving and you pull into a parking lot or a real narrow street, you can actually feel with your body where the corners of your fenders are. It’s developing that kind of feel for a huge complex machine that was really what brought you into being a really good, competent operator. Some folks had it on some systems more than others. The older operators who’d been at it forever, it was just completely unconscious with them. That was just the way they did things was smooth and easy, and you don’t just jump in and start fiddling with stuff. You always think it through before you touch anything. And then when you touch it, you touch it very gently and make the changes as slow and small as you can to get the result that you want. O’Reagan: So you worked there through the closing of N Reactor, is that right? Carson: Yes. O’Reagan: How much did that change over the course, before you got to the closing? Was it—job change a lot over that time? Carson: While we were still operating—regular operation—it didn’t change that much. Some new things were put in, but overall they didn’t really affect us much. You had to deal with failures. For example, when the reactor was operating, the water circulated through five steam generator cells. We had six, so one was always out of service for maintenance or repairs or whatever, and you operated with five. Well, one of the cells was undergoing a total refit—a total reconditioning. And then another one of the cells, the primary pump developed some problems that were going to require a rebuild. So the decision was made to go ahead and operate at a reduced power level with only four cells online. That took a lot of adjustments. They had to come up with temporary limits that we had to learn and follow. Some of the procedures changed slightly for that temporary period to take into account the fact that you had a lower capacity and a lower rate of heat removal. So just dealing with a change like that, and then that begins to feel normal. And then they bring another cell back online. So you’re back to the way it was that used to be normal, but you have to kind of reset yourself to working that way. Limits were really the main thing we paid attention to as we were operating. All of the nuclear industry—and N Reactor, certainly, they really drilled this into us—it operates in defense of depth. You don’t ever have just a single barrier to something causing an accident. I called it a box-in-a-box-in-a-box-in-a-box-in-a-box. There’s the actual strength of the machine, at what pressures or temperatures will it break because the materials just physically can’t take it. So that’s your outermost limit that you never, ever, ever got close to. Inside of that was your technical specifications that protected this outer box. Inside the technical specifications were the process standards that protected the technical specification limits. Inside the process standards were your operating limits that protect—you never wanted to break a process standard, because you’d have to have an investigation and figure out why that happened and everything. And sometimes there were even special limits inside the operating limits that were even more restrictive. So those limits changed over time, but that was just part of the job. You had to get used to the new ways things were, and just live with it, because that’s the way it was. They taught us why the change was made, and what it meant, and that this was the new limits here and here and here. That’s the kind of stuff we went through during our continuous training. After you’re certified, the training cycle had all the operators, shift by shift, when they would roll around on dayshift, you would have training days. And every two years, you went through the entire certification curriculum again, from fundamentals through reactor operations, through system interactions—all of it, every two years. We had to take a recertification exam every quarter. So every three months you had a job jeopardy examination to keep on top of stuff. So that’s how all that was communicated to us and incorporated into the way we worked and the way things were operated and handled. As we got past the Chernobyl accident, some people knew right away, that was the death knell for N. A lot of us were still optimistic that the differences were so clear and plain and could be explained, and we could continue. They had plans for upgrading some of our equipment to allow the reactor to run for another 20 years, they said. [SIGH] Didn’t turn out that way. So much political fire came down on all of the DoE complex, but Hanford especially. I don’t know if you remember, at the time, we had a senator who was 100% anti-Hanford. I spoke at the time when South Carolina had three senators and we had one. Because he worked as hard as he could to send all the work, all the waste, all the everything to Savannah River, so that it wouldn’t be at Hanford. I’m just griping now, but—it ended up, it was January 7th, 1997 at 07:31 that the reactor was shut down for the last time. It was going to be for an upgrade. They were going to put in a control room habitability system that did actually get put in, and it worked. It was for a time if there was ever a large release from the reactor, we could have sealed up the control room and lived on recirculated air and supplies for up to two weeks. They put that in. There was another big upgrade. Because of the hydrogen bubble that developed inside the reactor at Three Mile Island from water being split by high temperatures and the presence of metal into hydrogen and oxygen. And the hydrogen formed a big bubble that could have—in very, very small circumstances—could have ignited or exploded. They were worried about hydrogen inside the reactor and power buildings at N. So they were putting in a hydrogen mitigation system that would have been able to take all of the hydrogen evolved from the entire quantity of water in the primary loop. If it all split and turned into hydrogen and oxygen, this system could have recombined the hydrogen and taken away the explosive potential. So we all hoped that, yeah, we were going to get these upgrades and we’d be able to start up again and keep going for a while longer. But we never did. So the people who could leave right away did. But the end of ’97, we’d lost a lot of the real sharp engineers and some of the top people in operations. And then as the years went on, and became more and more clear that there was no future for the reactor, more and more people drifted away. I eventually, in late ’89, I took a temporary upgrade to write layup procedures for the reactor. At the time, they were going to keep it in—well, it went through a whole series. It was going to be on cold standby, where the fuel would still be in the reactor; we would still recirculate the loop, but we wouldn’t operate. We would just maintain it ready to operate if we needed it. Then it was going to turn to dry standby, where the reactor would be defueled and we would circulate dry pure air through all of the piping throughout the plant to keep the corrosion away so that if we needed to restart, we could refuel and restart. So that was one of the big procedures that I took the upgrade to write, was the whole valve lineup to establish that flow path from the 24-inch primary and secondary loop main valves, all the way down to the ¼ inch instrument root valves. I had to find every single one and lay out how they were going to be opened, in what sequence. I also wrote a bunch of other procedures. That’s where I first started learning how to write procedures. But at the end of the six months, they did not want to keep me on there permanent, doing that. And I sure didn’t want to go back to operations, which was by that time two years after the reactor had been shut down, almost three. I could just feel the IQ dribble out my ears, because you can only sweep the same floor so many times. Once the reactor was defueled, there wasn’t a whole lot of anything to do. O’Reagan: How many people were still on doing that kind of work? Carson: Probably about half the number that we’d had at the peak days. Because you didn’t need as many operators to do what we were doing. So people were going to various places. A lot of people went from there over to the K Basins, to deal with the stored fuel. Some of them are still there, dealing, now, just with the sludge. It just—there was no sense in trying to stay there where I was comfortable. So that’s when I got a job with Tank Farms, writing procedures. So I did that for four years. O’Reagan: Was that something that you actively thought—you enjoyed the procedure writing, or was that just another--? Carson: Actually, yes. I’ve always loved writing. For a long time, I desperately wanted to be a writer, a fiction writer or a science writer. And I just never was able to do it. I got a small number of rejection letters from various magazines. Once I started writing for a living, doing procedures, it just knocked all hope of ever writing fiction right out of me. But I enjoyed the process; I’ve always enjoyed figuring stuff out. When I came to Tank Farms, the procedures were horrible. There are standards and—even at that time, it was just coming out of DoE order on how the qualities of procedure has to have—the requirements that it has to meet, in terms of how it’s written, how the data is presented, how things are phrased. So when I came into Tank Farm Procedures, once I got my feet on the ground, I kind of pushed, and we did a complete overhaul of the entire Tank Farms Procedures system. Getting all of the several hundred—I think 740 procedures—getting them all rewritten to current standards. I developed, for the first time at Tank Farms, a standard compliant alarm response procedure. There’s procedures for everything, including when—I talked about all the enunciators in the control room. We had big, thick books of enunciator response guides that told you what tripped it, when it would reset, what it meant, and what you had to do. When 500 go off at once, you’re just doing your trained-in post-scram actions that you know what to do. You don’t look at each individual one. At Tank Farms, they had alarm response procedures, but for a whole facility, the book might be this thick, because anything that happened, the only response was notify management. It was quite a culture shock to go down to Tank Farms, because at N, you needed a college degree of some kind just to get in the door. It was a really fast crowd. Really smart. Even the guys that stayed back in fuels, most of them were really sharp. So we operated at a really high level, had a really high level of in-depth training. Tank Farms, not so much. So I had to get over that culture shock, and then begin to teach the folks that I was writing these procedures for why they’re changing, and what it meant for them, and why it was better to do it this way. So eventually, we did. We were the first group to use electronic photography in procedures. We were the first group to have all of our procedures computerized. And we worked hard and it came out really well. I learned that I really enjoy that process of figuring things out and then of using my writing skills to convey that in the best way possible. I really enjoyed that. After four years at Tank Farms Procedures, a new facility was being built, the 200 Area Effluent Treatment Facility. So I transferred from Tank Farms to the ETF. In part, because they had stuck in a manager that no one got along with. The man was not very—ahem—socially apt. We’ll just leave it at that. I went over to ETF and started developing their procedures as the facility was still being built. That’s where I got laid off. 1995, there was a big layoff by Westinghouse. I got the boot there. So for the next two years—it took me six months to get any kind of job again. And then I was—Fluor Hanford had come in—Fluor Daniels. They had their own built-in temporary company to supply temporary work. So I bounced in and out with that temporary company several times on the canister storage building, a little bit at Tank Farms. And then finally the head of Fluor Northwest just said, we’re done with all these temporary people, because it’s too hard to deal with the temporary company. Just hire them all in. So ’97, I got hired in. And then I got made over into a nuclear safety hazard analyst. That has been my main bread and butter. Hazard analysis, which is a very specific discipline in the nuclear industry, working on safety basis documents, which is the—safety basis defines what you can do and how you can do it, and what you can and can’t do. So the nuclear safety people developed that, the customer—DoE RL—approves it, and that’s what you live by. So we—first we draw the coloring book, then we make sure that everyone colors inside the lines. That’s nuclear safety’s job. Hazard analysis is a part of that, because before you do anything new, or if you’re going to change anything that you’re doing that’s approved now, you have to have a very deliberate process of analyzing all the hazards, figuring out how bad the hazard is, what it could cause, how bad that effect could be—if it’s a real accident or if it’s a no, never mind, that’s already covered by other controls, do the new analysis you need to do, create new controls for it, and get those instituted so that everything is still inside the box. O’Reagan: When you were working on the Tank Farms, do you think those procedures were just left over from a time when people just didn’t care as much about— Carson: Yes. Very much so. I guess I skipped ahead. I talked about the culture shock moving to Tank Farms. At N, we had great training, we had really good procedures that were very well thought out and well developed and well proved. We had a deep understanding of all of our limits, why they were there, what it meant if you violated one in a certain way. All that was just ingrained to us. So you did things by the procedure, you lived inside the limits, you knew why, you knew how. There was no problem. Everybody just worked that way. Tank Farms had for years been kind of a dumping ground of the people who couldn’t make it elsewhere. The only lower step was the laundry. And I worked a little bit with some tank farm operators that, shortly after I got there, got transferred to the laundry because they couldn’t make it at Tank Farms. The whole organizational philosophy was the smart guys know what they’re doing, just shut up and do what they tell you, even if it isn’t written down. Don’t worry about that, that’s just for show. Their procedures were—in one case, it was a page-long paragraph that was one sentence. I don’t think it even had a verb. It was like telling a story, and didn’t have any specifics. Nobody understood them. They all hated them, because they were all like that. We changed that; we made it better. The culture shock was coming from a place like N, where, like I said, we were a fast crowd, we were really dialed in, we really knew what was what, to Tank Farms, where there were still people working there—great operators, they really knew their job, they knew what to do—but they couldn’t read. They had a special dispensation to have their requal exams every year orally. Because they couldn’t read. They couldn’t read valve tags. So people would go out with them and tell them what was what. They knew exactly what to do; they were good operators. But that kind of difference in level really caught me short for a while. It took me a while to change my mind to realize that—okay, they want to do a good job, too, no matter how cranky they seem. So don’t look down on them, don’t ride a high horse. Just—they’re people like you, let them to do the job. And it worked out, it did. I made some friends there and we did some good stuff. I helped a lot of them out where I could, explaining things. I think I’ve forgotten what the question was. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: I was just sort of exploring this different or maybe changing priorities about the environment or waste control over time and over different parts of Hanford. It seems like they’re— Carson: Oh, yeah, okay. O’Reagan: We’re really interested in safety and such at N Reactor and having these great procedures, but maybe the less sexy parts of it were not as fully developed yet. Carson: Yeah. This is an example I think that illustrates that. We were among the first to really start taking control of our low-level waste. Every place you come out of a zone, there’s what’s called a step-off pad, where you undress in sequence. You take the outermost stuff off, and you step on one pad, then you take the inner stuff off and step on the next one, so that you’re leaving all of the contamination behind. There were rad boxes sitting there, and so for things like your tape and your surgeon’s gloves, would all get thrown in the rad box. That’s what most of our low-level waste was. That kind of stuff. Nobody used to pay much attention to it; it was just something that you toted down to this room, and then you threw it on a truck and somebody took it somewhere and threw it away. They really started working at following the latest directions for how to properly deal with and account for all of the waste: low-level, higher level waste—anything. Getting the accountability, getting the proper labeling, understanding the proper limits for what could be certain types of waste. We really had that ground into us. And we really griped about it, because we were filling out data sheets and filling out labels and other labels and other labels and double and triple wrapping the boxes and labeling the wrappings as we put them on, and doing all this stuff. The one time I ever had to go down to the burial ground—it’s funny, some jobs some people would catch all the time. You might be there for years and there was things you never got to do because you were never assigned to do them. One of those was taking our low-level waste boxes to the burial ground and throwing them out of the truck into the trench. So we had spent all this time doing all this accounting, doing all this labeling, making sure the packaging was all okay and everything was very carefully set up and everything. And we get to the disposal trench in 200 West Area. So we’re carefully—you’re not supposed to damage the box—it’s a cardboard box inside of a couple plastic bags. You’re not supposed to damage it. We’re just taking them and dropping them over the side out of the back of a truck. And here comes a truck from somewhere in West Area, one of the construction things going on or something. A dump truck with wood and broken plaster and glass and a few rad boxes and stuff. They just wave him up there, and the dump truck backs up and just—pbbt—dumps, and drives away. No paperwork, no nothing. I don’t know what was behind it; maybe there were reasons it was like that. But that was just a contrast that really griped me. But they did a good job at N of explaining why the way we were doing things had to change. Why the new way was actually better, what it meant for stopping releases to the environment, reducing them. Things you should do to lower your impact, lower the amount of waste. That’s where I first really started getting it, and it slowly moved into other places so that things were much more accounted for and controlled. These days, it’s very controlled, it’s very different. It’s much more secure. Nobody uses those rad boxes anymore. The only place I ever see them is in rad update training every year. Everything’s in certified drums. It’s treated certain ways. It’s all measured and accounted for, and inspected before it goes to its final burial to make sure that there is nothing in there that isn’t supposed to be. There’s a whole entire facility in West Area that’s devoted to doing that. Waste Receipt And Processing, WRAP. They get in drums of waste from all over the site, and they do NDA on them to find out how radioactive they are and what kind of radioactive stuff is in them. They X-ray them. If necessary, they will open them up, take everything out, sort it out, so that the stuff that isn’t supposed to be there is out, and then repackage them properly. So everything is very concentrated on making sure that any waste products, whether radioactive or chemical or even domestic waste, is handled and treated properly. And that has really exhibited a standard growth curve. Because when I first started in the ‘80s, there was a lot of resistance, both kind of social and institutional, and among the groups. But the people who understood it just kept pushing, kept pushing, kept getting the message out. Gradually, you saw the same kind of acceptance go up like that, like a normal growth curve. That’s just the way things are done now. So that part’s a lot better. I never really experienced any untoward activities. We were never told to go dump stuff in a hidden place. We were never told to dispose of something in an unapproved way. But a lot of the stuff that we were around wasn’t as controlled or properly packaged or set up as it would be today. That’s all to the good. You used to be able to go just about everywhere and there would be contaminated patches. A lot of those have been cleaned up. People no longer are allowed to just stick something out here and just put a rope around it and call it an accumulation area. There’s very high degree of control and accountability. The job I’m in now with Central Plateau Surveillance and Maintenance, they have a responsibility for all the old retired facilities, the old canyon buildings. And there’s a lot of auxiliary buildings around those and a lot of waste sites and old cribs and trenches. Most of what they do is repeatedly inspecting all that stuff, making sure that anything that’s present is properly in place, that it’s allowed to be there, that they know what it is, that nothing’s going wrong. So that’s all really a lot better. In all of society and all of industry, things are much safer now. People understand chemical hazards especially. We used to be able to go get stuff out of the tool crib that isn’t even allowed to be sold anymore, because it’s carcinogenic. But there, it was an electric cleaner called Swish that was mostly carbon tetrachloride. And you could just get a spray can of it and go and clean things off with it, or kill spiders. [LAUGHTER] O’Reagan: So I’d love to come back to this, but just to make sure we get to it before we run too long on time, could we step back to your childhood in Richland-- Carson: Sure. O’Reagan: --and what it was like growing up in Richland? Could you tell us a bit about that? Carson: Well. Virtually everyone I know, their folks worked in the Area. They never talked about what went on what there or what they did. My dad talked about some fire department stuff sometimes. O’Reagan: Was that the fire department on the site or just— Carson: The Hanford Fire Department, yeah. Nobody ever really knew what was going on out there. The closed-mouth, closed-city—you know. I always thought it was amazing. Very early in the morning, my mom would drive me to a baby-sitter down in south Richland. And I always thought it was amazing, she could look out to the northwest and she would tell me which plant was running. I didn’t know they were reactors; I didn’t know what it meant. But she could look at the steam plumes, because even though they weren’t modern reactors with cooling towers, they still had retention ponds before the water went back in the river, and those would steam. She could just look at tell me which plant was running. And I always thought that was amazing. We had a fairly—at least in my experience anyway, as a middle class, my folks were both working, lived in a nice neighborhood up near Spalding School. We had a very safe, nice environment to grow up in, a good childhood. Just a lot of playing in the street, going over and playing in the playgrounds. You go to school, you have all your friends there, and you go do stuff. Not a lot different than most places, but—I loved then, and I still do, and unless you grow up in a place like here, you don’t get the chance to just walk in the desert, way away from anything where it’s really quiet, and you got all the sagebrush that just smells so good. And you just walk way out there somewhere, and no trees around, and just sky and desert and total silence. That’s something you really only get growing up here and somewhere very like this. Everybody knew about the Area, but never talked about it. I do remember, I was in first grade, I believe, when the Mobile Whole Body Counter came to Spalding. They gave us some tours of it, and they said that some people were going to get to go through it after school. Well, I thought it would be really neat. I think what they were probably doing was running some of the teachers through it, just as environmental sampling, really. This was in—this would have been ’64, around there. About ten years after the Green Run, when there weren’t huge releases like that, but there were still some releases going on, a lot of monitoring. I waited around after school for an hour, hoping to get to run through this. They would bring people in and 20 minutes later they’d come out. I got in trouble because I was so late walking back to my babysitter’s after school because of that. But where else is something like that going to happen? The Hanford Science Center was a pretty special place. To us, it was like just an everyday thing—doesn’t everyone have a neat science museum like this? But, no, they don’t. It was no longer—I was born in 1958. So the city was no longer run by GE. But there were still people—and they were still indulged by the city government—who, if a light bulb went out, they would call up the way that they used to call GE up to come and change it. For a while, that still kind of went on, somehow. I remember the air raid siren tests. On the last—in the last week of the month, I don’t remember what day it always was. But I always remember getting kind of scared about that. There’s nothing like that sound of—Richland had three, then two, then one—of air raid sirens going off. And at that age—eight, nine—I was starting to realize what that meant. That if that ever went off for real, it was all over. It was a big deal, a really big deal, to have to go to Kennewick or Pasco, because there was only the Blue Bridge, which wasn’t the Blue Bridge then. It was green and it was called the New Bridge. And then there was that horrible frightening old green bridge that was taken out. So if you had to go to Pasco, you had to go to and through Kennewick, and then go over one of those bridges. The highway between Richland and Kennewick was—I can still remember when it was just one lane each way. There was actually a stop light at George Washington Way, because the highway came in and curved and there was a stop light at G Way before it went up to the bypass part. Right there at that intersection is where the Rose Bowl was. Everybody knew the Rose Bowl, the sewage treatment plant. Great way to be introduced to a town when you’re first coming into it. As far as I know, it was a fairly normal childhood. My friends and I, we did all the normal things. When the hydroplane races started, there was a couple weeks in the summer where all anybody wanted to do was play hydroplanes. So everybody would have their own little scraps of wood they made into a hydroplane, and you’d drag it behind your bike in the street. Or turn on a hose and set it in the gutter and go make a dam to make a big puddle you could run it through like a boat. Day sleeper signs. Everybody—almost everybody worked a rotating shift—ABCD, where you rotate, at the time, from swing shift to days to graveyard<a>[EM1]</a> . My dad worked a rotating shift for 17 years. Once I started it, I understood how bad it had been for him when I was young, when I was little. But you’d walk around, and in the windows, in houses, “day sleeper.” You just understood that probably most of your friends were going to live in a house just like yours if you lived in one of the Alphabet House districts. A lot of my friends had the same or very slightly different models of ranch house all up in that area. So you knew exactly where the bathroom was, you knew where the kitchen was, you knew where the light switches were, because they were all the same. That’s probably somewhat different. There were virtually no African Americans in Richland. In elementary school, I think there was two—there was a boy my age, and his sister who was a little younger. Caused me some problems, because he slapped me around one day after school, and that affected my attitude for a long time. But because there were almost no black people in Richland, I had no idea what they were like or anything. My parents, a lot of their friends were conventionally racist at the time—it would be very racist now. But at the time it was just conventional. And because there were so few of them, they all knew each other because they had their own community that they would get together. I just thought that it was natural that every black person in the world knew every other one. Because they would always say, hi, how are you, and talk to each other like they knew each other. I thought that was normal. So I don’t know how common that is across all of the US, but it was certainly true here. Because Kennewick was a restricted city, Richland was mostly a city for somewhat upper level workers at Hanford, Pasco—East Pasco was where most of the African American people and the Hispanic immigrants went. It was always used as a term of horror—oh my god, we have to go by East Pasco. I’ve been there, now. It’s people with houses and neighborhoods and kids and dogs. At the time, it was just hell to be—this horrible thing. So I just—I grew up with that. Everybody knew the same things about everything, and believed the same way. That was really about it. O’Reagan: Was going to college when you first sort of left this bubble, if you will? Carson: Yeah. I went to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, which—I grew up in the Lutheran Church. Really white. Going to PLU wasn’t really all that far outside the bubble. There was a little bit, because there was a very large contingent of Taiwanese kids going to school there. I tried to be all friendly and stuff—it was my first experience with the fact that other people can dislike you, too. So that was a problem. But that was—it was a good experience. It was being away from here, seeing some different things, the way different people lived. Met my wife. So that was a really good thing. But at the time, even though growing up here, I still didn’t really know a lot about Hanford or the nuclear industry, I knew a little more than when I was a kid—but not really that much. So I had no real good arguments or rebuttals for the people who—there in the mid ‘70s were already rabidly, no nukes, no nukes. Get rid of Hanford. Clean it up and throw it away. So that was kind of frustrating. There was one thing I was glad when I got hired on out here, I finally had a chance to learn all this stuff. Other stuff growing up here really is just things based on being here in this area. The place to go if you were going to go ride motorcycles or shoot your bow and arrow or pellet guns or whatever, you went down behind the cemetery along the Yakima River in Richland. O’Reagan: Oh yeah. Carson: Later on that became a place to go when people would go have keggers or wanted to go smoke or make out or whatever, that was a popular place. I never got invited to do any of those things, so I was only ever down there with my motorcycle. I do remember, as I moved into high school, I started to understand the feeling of isolation that Richland had. Because we had been not really a closed, secret city like a lot of the ones in the Soviet Union were, but just like a cloak of invisibility over all we did here. Nobody ever really knew much about us. I was there when Richard Nixon flew in to authorize Fast Flux Test Facility. He had flown into Walla Walla on Air Force One, because at the time to the Pasco airport couldn’t service a plane that large. And then took the Air Force One helicopter and they landed in front of the PNL sandcastle and chopped down a couple trees. I’ll always remember that, because it came down and just—limbs were flying all over the place. He stood—something you wouldn’t see anymore. He was all by himself. He didn’t have a retinue behind him, around him. The Secret Service was sort of out there, but they weren’t really a visible presence. He just went and stood on the steps and addressed people and talked about stuff and announced FFTF and what was going to go on and everything. That night on the CBS News, Walter Cronkite talked about how Richard Nixon made a stop in Walla Walla and then flew to Alaska to meet with the Japanese emperor. It was his first trip to the United States since World War II. Mentioned nothing at all about what happened here, which was really far more important than a very minor diplomatic meeting that lasted two hours or something. I then did start thinking about, and I noticed a lot of that isolation. People around here just got used to never being paid attention to, to never having anyone know where they were or what went on here. So a lot of worlds kind of shrunk down to just here. You just—your church, your softball league, your friends, the hydroplane races, and that was the extent of life. So I am glad that things have really expanded out and the diversification that first started being talked about in the ‘70s has really taken hold, and so much more is done here now than just relying, almost 100%, on money from Hanford. I think if there was another bust—another one of the endless boom and bust cycles that Hanford has had over the years—if there was another big bust at Hanford, I think the Tri-Cities could probably pull through it—Tri-Cities and surrounding areas—could pull through it really very well. O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Carson: So that’s a big difference from growing up here, is the fact that now we’re somebody. We’re a known quantity, we’re actually a desired destination for many different reasons. We’re known for many different things. Not just, oh, all that secret stuff that nobody knows about. O’Reagan: I understand you volunteered at the CREHST Museum for a while. What was important to you about the history of the area that got you to do that? Carson: The fact that I was—that was in the six months that I was first laid off. I was trying to get contract writer work. That necessitated my becoming a business and getting a business license. So I ended up starting my own little computer consulting business. Because I did that, I heard from a friend of a friend who worked at CREHST that they were having computer problems. So I went down and I volunteered. I said, hey, I’ll be glad to come through and try and clean stuff and help you. And then in talking with the director, Gwen Leth—she started asking questions and found out all the other stuff I could do. So she really wanted me, and so I started working there at CREHST. They were fairly newly open, and I rewrote some of the displays, because they were not well-written. They had errors and they weren’t interesting. So I did that. I wrote an article for a magazine about CREHST—by request—that never got published. I helped with the computers, helped with some of their equipment. I just did stuff for Gwen. I was the publisher of their paper newsletter for several years. They would send me this stuff to do, and I’d put it all together into desktop publishing and did that. So that was fun, they were great people. I learned a lot about community education and what it meant and what it could be. I got to see all the neat behind-the-scenes stuff that is always the coolest thing about anything. The people there were just so wonderful that when I went back to work, I still kept in touch doing things like the newsletter, and then when I got laid off again, I would just go down and start back down there. Volunteer sometimes 40 hours a week, sometimes just a couple days. Whatever was happening that I could do, depending on what was going on with my daughter and stuff like that. So I had desperately missed the Hanford Science Center. I talked about that earlier, that it was such a great place to go, especially as I learned more and then could see more of what was actually being told me at the science center. But then when it closed down, I desperately missed having that there. Because I wanted to take my daughter to it, I wanted to keep doing it. I had volunteered to do some stuff at the science center, just before it closed when it was still in the Federal Building. So being able to help resurrect a lot of that, keep it going there at CREHST, and even provide input on what they were going to show next and things. And seeing how all of that was coming together and the efforts that they made to really reach out to the community and continue the education and the keeping the history. And keeping the artifacts alive and just being able to go in there and wander through anytime I wanted was just really great. And the REACH center is a fabulous, wonderful place. But at the time I was working at CREHST, CREHST was still going to be the lead, and they had plans for a facility about the same size down on Columbia Point that the REACH part of it was going to be a small part of the CREHST Museum. Turned out the other way. But CREHST—even just the efforts that people made to make it come about, the people that got together behind the scenes and worked with DoE, worked with the community to get funding, worked just to make things happen like moving the building of the FFTF Visitors Center from out there down to where it is now. That’s what that building is. The below-stairs part was new, but the superstructure is the old FF Visitors Center. So getting that to happen was not simple, was not easy, wasn’t cheap. But they kept at it and they did it. So that kind of dedication inspired me to do more along that line, like this. O’Reagan: Okay. Well there are always questions I don’t know to ask. Interesting incidents, or themes you wanted to talk about or anything like that that comes to mind that you thought might be worth mentioning. Carson: In terms of work, or in terms of growing up here, or just anything? O’Reagan: Either or both. Carson: One of the things I did at N Reactor was I became one of the designated evacuation bus drivers. At the time, because facilities were manned around the clock, and it was 43-and-a-half miles from my driveway to the N Reactor parking lot—a long ways out there—you had to have some way to evacuate everyone that was there, in case there was an actual big accident. On regular dayshift, all of the buses that brought everybody from town were all there. But there were, parked off on the side, a couple of the old, old buses that were there strictly to be evacuation buses. They didn’t have enough drivers to have one on every shift to make sure that was covered, so they just enlisted operators. We got special training in how to drive the old buses and stuff. So on weekend dayshifts or sometimes on swing shift, and even on graveyard a few times, if everything, all the work was caught up, there was nothing going on, we would go out and practice driving. Just drive around all over. So I got to see a lot of the Area that’s really not terrifically accessible now. Because, man, those buses will go a lot of places. They love a gravel road. Drove all over, saw the Hanford Bank. Drove down, found the big boat ramp between F Area and H Area where the Hanford patrol would put their tactical boat in and out, and also where a lot of bald eagles like to hang out in the winter. Drove out to—way out by Vernita Bridge to the old warehouse, the stone warehouse that’s out there—drove out there, and drove around that. Got out and looked at it. At the time, they still had part of the old highway, the old two-road highway that led down the valley and over to Hanford and White Bluffs and serviced all the farms and everything around there. We drove on this dirt road around B Area, and then all of the sudden, here’s a beautiful paved road where the lines are bright and clear and the pavement is not cracked. So we just kept on driving. That was an exciting find. O’Reagan: Were these evacuation plans pretty well founded already when you got there? Carson: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you had—in case of an emergency, you had an assignment to come and grab an emergency response card. There were holders of these in the control room. Everybody was supposed to go run in there and grab one and do what it said. Just one thing, whether it was shutting down some equipment, or going and closing something up, or something. You go and do that job, come back, if you’re done then you go and get on the evacuation bus and it will leave when everybody’s accounted for. So the whole evacuation thing had been practiced and set in place for years and years. Luckily we never had to do it, except in a drill. Oh. One of the funny things—one of the first times, it was just us three or four operators going out for a practice drive without the instructor or anything. It was a really hot summer’s day on the weekend. Those buses didn’t have air conditioning. [LAUGHTER] They did have eyebrow vents—one above the driver and one above the door. And we’re driving along and all the windows are open and it’s just too hot. So one of the other guys on my shift, operator, he gets up and he says, I’m going to open these vents. And he reaches up—I was driving—and he reached up above me and opened that one. Air started coming in. And all of the sudden—he opens this one—and there was a big bird’s nest inside that vent. And the way he was, he pulled it and it went right in his face. [LAUGHTER] There was just this explosion of straw and feathers and dried bird poop and stuff. We all tried really hard not to laugh at him, but—[LAUGHTER] he even laughed at himself, so. That was another thing. I remember when Uptown sat kind of alone. There wasn’t really anything built up around it yet. The big Mormon church had been built across the street, but there was nothing else out around it. And over now where that Exxon station and the Fire & Water store and the restaurant and where Hastings is, none of that was there. There was a couple of old wooden shacks. No idea what they were. But one night, it was a fall night, and we went because my dad was there as part of the fire department. There was some kind of—I don’t know—maybe a fire prevention week celebration or something. They were going to burn the shacks down to show what it looks like when the fire department puts out a fire. So my dad was part of that. And there were hundreds and hundreds of people standing in the Uptown parking lot, watching as they set these two shacks on fire. They let them burn for quite a long time, then they came out and put them out, and there was a lot of ooh, ahh. That’s a fairly early thing. One thing that happened through the ‘60s that I took for granted and then didn’t realize when it stopped until several years later—there were all kinds of traveling exhibitions that did come through here from NASA or the Army or the Navy or the Air Force. They would come and bring an exhibit and set up like in the Uptown parking lot or somewhere. They would be there for a day or two and give their spiel and you could go into their trailers and see what they had. Then they would pack up and move on to somewhere else. There were a lot of those. One that I wish I would have done, but at the time I didn’t think it was important—the X-37 Dyna-Soar—it was a first lifting body design for a recovery vehicle, or an early design for a space shuttle in the ‘60s—to go right around the Gemini program. It was eventually going to become a part of the Army’s or Air Force’s manned space laboratory program that never got off the ground. And they brought the vehicle around on a big trailer with a little trailer museum to talk about it and stuff, and I wish I would have gone to see that. But I was too busy doing something else that I thought was more important. So all kinds of stuff like that would come through. There was always—Griggs brought in a lot of these little, cheap tawdry little traveling exhibits and things. Bonnie and Clyde’s death car showed up there on a trailer when I was a kid. Right after the movie had come out and I was just really fascinated by the whole gangster thing. So of course I made my mom and dad go all the way over to Pasco to Griggs to see that. One I felt bad about then and I still feel bad—they had a dolphin that was in like a ten-foot above ground swimming pool, just barely moving. You paid $0.50 to see that, and I just felt bad. And just the kind of stuff that doesn’t really happen anymore. There was a lot of that still. Because the Tri-Cities, I think, moved into the ‘60s a little more slowly than other places. O’Reagan: Well, this has all been fascinating. I know our battery starts running out around this point. Carson: Okay. O’Reagan: So I guess we’ll have to wrap up now. But it really has been great. Carson: Great. O’Reagan: So thanks a lot. Carson: You’re very, very welcome, and I would be happy to come back and talk more about other things. Anything you’d like to ask questions about. O’Reagan: Fantastic, thanks a lot. Carson: Great. Thank you. <div> <div> <div> <a>[EM1]</a> </div> </div> </div> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:35:12 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 248 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview N Reactor 200 Area 200 West Area F Area H Area B Area Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1958-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1981-1997 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Carson Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Hanford Reach (Wash.) Hanford Nuclear Site (Wash.) Nuclear waste disposal Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-4-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-07-29: Metadata v1 created – [RG] Description An account of the resource An interview with David Carson conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. 200 Area 200 West Area B Area Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Effluent Treatment Facility F Area H Area K-Basins N Reactor Richland (Wash.) Secrecy Washington Public Power Supply System (WOOPS) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fecc318de874e02165a0adba276148544.jpg 1a405e5eb93d81a0c044840814841635 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F3bab96a36faefb5efcaa973b0a007927.mp4 9752103e397f6c9c4671a80e6c1c1324 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Robert Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin, and I am conducting an interview with Linda Davis on May 26th 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I will be talking to Linda Davis about her experiences growing up in Richland, and her father’s experiences coming to work on the Hanford site. So, Linda, let’s start at the beginning. Why don’t you—you were mentioning earlier, with some of those items you brought which we’ll view later—you were showing us pictures of growing up and your father’s photo when he came here. So I guess why don’t we start with your father coming here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Linda Davis: My dad had been working in Kansas on I think it was a CCC project. And it came to an end. And they were told very little. Go to Washington. They’re like, right. [LAUGHTER] But my parents had always wanted to get the heck out of Kansas, so they found that this was their escape. And it was during the Depression, so jobs were tough. My dad came out. He was supposed to be coming out with a bunch of friends, and my brother got sick, so he ended up coming out later. He had to—he hopped box cars to get here! [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: He rode the rails and hitchhiked. And he got here a few weeks after his friends—a couple weeks after his friends did. They all got the management positions, and he got to be Joe Blow. [LAUGHTER] But he came out in February, March of ’43. He had been working cement. They sent him out with some other guys. They drove all over the whole reservation looking for the right rocks and gravel and sand to make the cement to start pouring B Reactor footings. After he did that, he was there when they poured the footings and that was always one of his—he was always very proud that he was there when they did the footings. Briefly, he was sent over to the extrusion and he was one of the first ones to actually run the machine to extrude the plutonium. Then after a short term there, he went back to B Reactor and became a nuclear operator until he retired. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And he was first here in a tent. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: They supplied these big tents with a stove in the corner. And he says those really weren’t that bad. Then they, quote, moved him to barracks. And he says, those were the pits. They had gaps in the wood. There was just one layer of wood and gaps. So you learned really early on—you woke up in the morning, you shook your head, you wiped your eyes off, because you’re either removing snow or sand. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And he says when he got here off the train, he says, there was as many people getting on the train to leave. And he says, the sands would come in and people were missing their families, and they were leaving in droves. My mom and the kids did not come until fall of ’43. There was no housing at that point in time. They went and lived in Yakima and my mom got a job and dad would commute on his long changes to Yakima to go visit the family. The rest of the time, he’d go stay in the barracks. And when he first got here with some of his friends, they had long lines for the showers. They were like, oh, we don’t want to wait in these stupid shower lines, we’re in a hurry. So him and his friends went—they’re from Kansas, streams there are shallow and warm. They went, there’s this great big river, so they ran down and jumped in the river. And jumped right back out! [LAUGHTER] He said it was so cold! They went and stood in line after that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: That’s a great story. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And my dad played poker and he was well known for his poker playing here. We thought he used to—was just bragging, until when he died and people were coming in and they were going, wow, was he one wicked poker player. They used to be able to play poker on the buses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, you know, an hour ride, they had these little tables they’d set up towards the back and they played poker. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: He could earn almost as much money playing poker as he could working. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow, that’s great. So how long was it before your mother and—so you weren’t born yet at the time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: No! [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So how long was it before your mother and the rest of your family were able to move to the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: They stayed in Yakima for about a year and a half. And then they moved—their first house was a A house on MacPherson, which was just finished and they ended up having to go to a hotel the first night, because it was freshly painted, and it made them all sick because it was still wet. [LAUGHTER] They were kind of unusual because they had their own furniture that they had brought from Kansas. Most people came and they had—everybody had the same bed, dresser, everything was supplied. But they had a lot of their own furniture that they brought from Kansas. So they would have been here—let’s see, he came out in ’43, ’44—early ’45 is when they got their first house-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: --in the Tri-Cities. During that time, Dad had commuted back and forth. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. And you said that your mom was working in Yakima. What kind of work was she doing? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: She was a receptionist in a doctor’s office. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: She was telling me—oh, just a few years ago, she was telling me that she was working, and people had been displaced and all the, quote, riffraff was coming in, and people looked really down on the people like them who were coming in. She was working in a doctor’s office, so nobody really thought about it, so they were a lot of times just talking, and some ladies got real snippy about, well, you got all this riffraff coming in and these lowlifes and stuff. And she just looked up and said, oh, well I’m one of those. [LAUGHTER] But they were really looked down on, because people didn’t know why they had been displaced. And they didn’t know why all these people were coming from all over the country. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, because they hadn’t— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Nobody was allowed to know anything. So there was a lot of anger, and a lot of looking down their noses at people that had come into the Hanford Project. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Do you think maybe some class conflict? Or maybe people they had perceived as Dust Bowl type people--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Dust Bowl type people, because a lot of them came—Kansas, Oklahoma supplied a lot of the workers out here, because the word had gotten around, go to Washington, go to Washington. They didn’t know why, just go to Washington, you’ll find a job. You’ve got crummy farming, a lot of them just packed up and left. And they showed up. Then the, quote, natives of the area who had felt that they had been here for a significant amount of time really did look down on all these strangers coming in. It was—they would look like refugees to them. Because a lot of them came with homemade trailers and, literally their own tents if they couldn’t find a place to live. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And they hopped boxcars. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And they hopped boxcars to get here! [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting. So, earlier you mentioned that your family had lived in a lot of different houses early on or kind of gone all over. So can you talk about that? Those early years of being in Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: You were assigned houses by what kind of job you had and how many children you had. You could apply to get a different house. And for all sorts of different reasons—my mother liked to move, I think, because a lot of it—she always liked to move. And Dad went along with it. They lived in ranch houses, F houses, A houses—they sneakily got into an H house, which they didn’t qualify for. You couldn’t—weren’t supposed to get into any housing unless it’s written out by the government that you could. They traded with somebody who wanted something—they wanted like the A house. They were in an H house and Mom and Dad said, oh, we’d like the H. So they traded without telling the government. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Ooh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: That lasted six months. [LAUGHTER] Then they had to move again. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So the H houses were bigger then? I’m not quite up on all of the— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: They have a basement; they have one floor. They were probably better made. They were nicer houses than like the A. But the one people were having more kids or something. I can’t remember why they wanted to change. But Mom and Dad sneakily did it, then they sneakily had to slink out [LAUGHTER] when they were told they had to leave. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. Yeah, one thing I’ve heard around here is that basements in those early years were pretty rare. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: What basements you had, like in the A houses, B houses, F houses, they were dirt. I’ve been in them when they hadn’t been changed yet. It’s basically a dirt floor, you walk down the stairs and then you’re there. Then there’s like this raised cement block area. Well, that’s where they’d dump the coal into. They would come with these trucks and dump the coal in. You just had enough room to go down there and shovel coal. They were pretty gross. [LAUGHTER] But I remember Mom and Dad, though, said everything was supplied. You had no utilities, they brought your coal—you had to call and ask for a lightbulb to be changed. You were not allowed to do it yourself. [LAUGHTER] Totally government. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, that’s a lot like here. You have to put in a facilities request to do that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, well, they had to—she goes, a lightbulb? Like, we can’t change your own? Oh, no. But she says they were really Johnny-on-the-spot. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah. They’d call and say, you know, lightbulb in the bathroom burned out. Oh! We’ll be right there! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow, so it would have been a whole department of people. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: There was a whole department of people who were doing that. If you were not working at Hanford or what they called support, like supplying the oil and changing the lightbulbs, a grocery store, pharmacist or something, you were not allowed to live here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And if you were, like, married and your husband—one of their friends that happened—dropped dead of a heart attack, she was given 48 hours to leave with her kids. They were kind of severe at times. But it was super safe. Kids could run and play. If your kid got in trouble, you could lose your job. That was—I remember my dad always holding that over my brothers. [LAUGHTER] If you get in trouble, I can lose my job and we’ll have to leave. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So kids were good; they didn’t have a choice. If you had a kid who became a juvenile delinquent, then you could lose your job and given 24 hours to leave town. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Did you know of any incidences of that happening? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: My parents talked about it, but I didn’t have names or—you know. Just somebody that they knew, their kids had been a real pain—and he ended up I think keeping his job, but he had to move to Kennewick. He couldn’t stay in government. He managed to beg and plead and keep his job, but he had to leave town. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So they were not only kind of controlled the work site, but they also really controlled the fabric of the community as well. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: To the point where they had—after leaving Richland, and living elsewhere and now in Kennewick, you realize the layers are like military layers. And it’s taken a long time for that to kind of break down. You had your echelons, just like in the military. They even went so far as to tell people, you are in this job and you’re in this job, and you’re not supposed to communicate. They may have grown up together in some Podunk place in the Midwest, known each other since childhood, but, all of the sudden, oh, you’re not supposed to talk to each other? [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, so kind of like that difference between commissioned officers— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And a non-com. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Non-com. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah. Oh, you’re more of a commissioned, you’re too high up and you can’t talk to the lower echelon. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, scientists don’t talk to janitors and so forth. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: That’s really interesting. Did your mom work after— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yes, she worked at Dr. Ellner’s office, urologist here in town. She worked there for—I don’t know—from the time I was about nine, eight—I guess I was about eight when she started working there. So that would have been ’62. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. And so then you would be born in ’54. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: ’54. Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Part of that big baby boom. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah. And how many siblings do you have? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Three. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. And were any of them—did any of them move to Richland from—so your parents came, your father came out in ’43, and then your family came out in the fall. When were your siblings born? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: They were born all in Kansas. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And so they were born in ’37, ’40, and ’41. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So you’re the real baby of the bunch. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Oh, yeah. I was the surprise. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Ah. I think we all are in some way. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Oh, I was—my mom was 41, so yeah, I was a shock. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow, yeah, that is quite a surprise. So tell me—then you would have been born then when Richland was still a government town. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So tell me about growing up, like maybe from your earliest memories on. What was it like to—do you have any early memories of before—while Richland was still a government town? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, I have a lot of memories from really early. My brother and I seem to both have the brains from early, early. The other two go, I don’t remember anything then. [LAUGHTER] They don’t really remember anything until after they’re five! One of the things that always struck me was, as a kid, driving through town and they had that asbestos siding that you had a green house or this dark reddish house. They all kind of looked the same. I know my sister one time accidentally ended up in the wrong house after school. And one of Mom’s best friends came in and found some guy sleeping in her bed. He was on leave from the Army and he had gotten in the wrong house. But they all looked the same. And people had the same furniture. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So my sister went in and says, like, the living room furniture, I think, was all the same. And she says, she came home, put her papers down and then went out and played. Then came back later and went, Mom keeps moving the furniture! [LAUGHTER] She says she has no idea which house she went into. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, they had basically—I remember the green and the red. There might have been—and then there was some blue. And then they had like a cream color with them. So like the A houses would have been light colored on the top and then the red on the bottom. Or cream and—there was like three choices. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. It’s like the Model T. You can get it in black or black. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Right. Yeah, this was—and you didn’t have a choice what color it was. And I guess when they first moved in, besides the paint being wet, they literally handed them a ten-pound bag of grass seed and said, plant your yard! Have fun! [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. That’s great. So, how about any memories that stand out from your early childhood or early life in Richland? I remember, earlier you mentioned that before we started taping, that your family had bought one of the first commercially available houses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Spec home. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Spec home. What year was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: 1960. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay, so you would have been about six years old then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Right. That was just before I was six, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And what was that like, to be in one of these? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: You— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: New, new, new homes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Because of the class thing going on, I was not considered—and then shortly after they started building this North Richland area—I always felt like I didn’t fit in. I didn’t fit in with the kids in the, quote, government houses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: My house was basically a ranch house. We had hardwood floors instead of tiles. And we had a one-car garage, ooh, ahh. [LAUGHTER] But it really wasn’t—it was just a three-bedroom ranch. One bathroom and a one-car garage. And then all the scientists and the people making more money and the doctors started building into North Richland. And I didn’t fit in with them, either, because they went, oh, you’re in that little house. It was kind of like feeling like you didn’t fit in anywhere. Because I wasn’t in a government house, and a lot of the government houses were way bigger than the house we were in. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Huh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But I remember saying—one of the first memories in that house was—they’d moved us in—oh, they’d never allow it nowadays. Moved us in, we had no water. So the firemen came and hooked up to a fire hydrant about a block and a half away. [LAUGHTER] And then it ran into a garden hose, and it was February, and like below zero. So you always had to have water running in the bathtub to keep the little garden house. And if froze up, all the neighbors would come out and jump up and down on it, breaking the ice up. But nowadays you wouldn’t be able to move into a house without full running water. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, right. Wow. That’s fabulous. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And then when we were first there—we were the very first ones sold. The others were having open houses. And we’d be sitting there having like a family get-together, and people start walking in our house. Oh, this one’s not open! No. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And then that of course touched off a boom, though, right, in house construction in Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Right. North Richland, I remember we used to sit at our kitchen table and look out and watch all the houses going up, and here are all the—for years, you could see new houses and hear hammering every morning. North Richland just really took off because everybody started building their own. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: A lot of people went ahead and bought their original house from the government, but my parents—I don’t know, they fell—my dad fell in love with this house. My mother hated it. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: How long did they live at that house? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: We lived there 13 years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. So they really do like to move around a lot. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: That’s like mom’s record, yeah. Her last move was with us and she had to live with us ten years without moving before she died. [LAUGHTER] But generally, about—when my siblings were growing up, they got used to moving every six months to a year and a half. And they went to every single school in Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. Well, I guess they know a pretty big cross-section of the community, then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: They were always—when you talk to different people, they’re like, oh yeah, so-and-so, and I go, oh yeah, my parents were their neighbors. And somebody else would say, oh yeah, they were their neighbors, too. Like Garmo who owned one of the grocery stores. All these different people, they were their neighbors at some point in time. Probably Johnson, who was the photographer for the area. He was a good friend and I’m still in recent contact with his daughter. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But pretty much, if you lived in Richland for any length of time, my parents were your neighbor at some point. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: That’s great. So when did your father retire from Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: I was married, so—when did he retire? I got married in ’74, so I’m trying to remember exactly. ’75 or ’76, something like that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, wow, so he was on—did he have any gaps in employment, or did he work onsite since 1943? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: He worked onsite that whole time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow, and so what did— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Except for the six-week strike they had. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, well tell me about that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: I don’t even remember what it was about. I was in junior high. They had a strike which my dad was not in favor of, but he wouldn’t break union line. So he was on strike. During that time, he says, oh well, I’ll make the best of it, so he built a family room onto our house. [LAUGHTER] And got hooked on soap operas. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: He used to make fun of Mom wanting to watch her soap opera, and then when he went back to work, he’d come home from work and go, what happened with—[LAUGHTER] But they were only on strike for like six weeks. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And do you remember what the strike was about at all? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: I don’t remember what it was about. Like I say, it was in junior high. It was— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Do you think you can give me kind of a date range so we could try to find something about that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: That would have been in the late ‘60s? Somewhere in—yeah. It wasn’t a very long strike, but it was the first one that I know of that they had. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Was that site wide, do you remember? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, it was site wide. I wish I remembered what it was, but in junior high you don’t pay attention to stuff like that. Yeah, Dad’s on strike, well, so is everybody else’s dad, so— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: All you know is that he’s camped out on the couch watching soap operas. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: No, he was busy building the family room. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: He literally put a whole addition on the back of the house. So that’s what he was doing during his six weeks. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Still worked. So you mentioned that he had been kind of a construction guy and then had worked at the separation plant, right, and then worked in the B Reactor. So what other jobs did he have? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: He went from B Reactor, when they closed it down, then he went to K. And then he kept saying, oh, I sure hope they don’t ever send me to N. That’s where he ended up. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: He was always—he liked his B Reactor. Just the way the others were set up and they were different, he liked his B Reactor. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: He got comfortable— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But he ended up at N Reactor anyway. That’s where he retired from. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, wow. And what did he do at— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: He was a reactor operator. He was—yeah, from after construction, he was a reactor operator. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So it seems like a really big career jump, from construction to— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, but they didn’t—nobody knew what they were doing exactly. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So it’s learn-as-you-go. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, I bet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: My dad—I remember him—it was really neat to go on the B Reactor tour, because it was probably the 70s before he ever even talked about what it looked like or anything. I never knew what it looked like. But he started—in the 70s was able to start feeling comfortable—I mean, it wasn’t classified or anything then. But the guys had just been used to not talking about it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Well, yeah, I mean secrecy. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But he started describing the panels and stuff. And there was this office behind him, and he says—during World War II—he says, the crazy Italian in the silk suits sat back there. And then he’d go get crapped up, is when they’d get contaminated and they’d have to take his silk suits away and burn them. I didn’t realize it until after Dad was gone, when he was talking about the crazy Italian in the silk suits, that was Fermi. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Sitting behind my dad! [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow, that’s amazing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But he never said his name. He never said his name. Just the crazy Italian in the silk suits. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: But, of course he probably would have known his name. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Oh, during World War II, they didn’t. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So that’s how—I think they just referred to him as the crazy Italians with the silk suits. Because they literally did not know their names. He was the guy who sat back there, and he’d go into places they weren’t allowed to go to. And he wasn’t really supposed to, but he’d go in and tinker. Then they’d check him for radiation and go, eh, those clothes—I remember, one of my early memories is being in grade school and my dad getting off the bus, because everybody rode the buses to work. They were just like clockwork and super on—I mean super on time. And I remember coming out of the house, and my dad’s getting off the bus in the afternoon and—I guess I was heading to school. He’s coming down—my dad was only five-foot-six. And he’s got a pair of pants that he’s holding up around his armpits, and a shirt that’s probably was past his knees rolled up to his—and clomping along in these shoes that don’t fit. He had gotten crapped up at work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And he ended up—one of his friends who was like six-foot-six had some extra clothes. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, he’s like, you know, when you get your clothes crapped up, you lose your clothes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Even your underwear. [LAUGHTER] So he’s coming home with—[LAUGHTER] I still remember—luckily we only lived like a half block from where the bus dropped him off. But I thought, that had to be a little uncomfortable at work, walking around like that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, no kidding. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Trying to hold these. Yeah, Trawler, he was six-five, six-six. He was a tall guy, skinny. But Dad was only five-foot-six. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow, that’s a great story. So there’s some—a couple of the big events that we always ask people about and one of them is Kennedy’s visit to the N Reactor in 1963. Did you—were you— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Both my parents were working. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: They were both working, so— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: [LAUGHTER] I didn’t have any way to get there. I wanted to go, but my parents, oh, it’s going to be a big crowd. They didn’t like crowds. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So, yeah, I didn’t get to go. They were both working. So I heard about it from my friends. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Your friends who went? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, I had friends who went. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Awesome. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And they still remember it, and I’m going, oh, I didn’t get to go. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Ah, you were busy. So any other major—any other big events that kind of stick out at you in Richland, growing up in Richland or maybe even a little later? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Ah, let’s see, what were the events? They always had their fire parade, their fire prevention parades. That was when you were a kid and you got to decorate your bike and ride down the road. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: G Way, and they had—when I was really little, there was like Frontier Days or some other parade that we had. And then one of the big thrills was in the spring, they would bring in, quote, well, we’d call them travel trailers now, but they were the early mobile homes that were like eight-foot-wide and 12 feet long. And they’d set them up in the Uptown Richland parking lot. You’d go look through them and go, oh, aren’t these cool. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: They brought them up for sale? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, you know how they do car shows now in parking lots? Well, they’d bring these little mobile—[LAUGHTER] little dinky mobile homes. Which nowadays, I says, my fifth wheel’s bigger [LAUGHTER] than these, quote, homes that you’re supposed to live in. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: I could imagine for some of the people who had been here in the early days that those might have given them some flashbacks to the trailer camps or— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, my parents didn’t live in the trailer camps, but they had a lot of friends who did. And one of my best friends, her parents had built—they had no place to live, so they built their own trailer and lived down at the Y. It was a homemade, and it was really little with three kids. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. That’s amazing. So did you end up staying in Richland, then—did you ever move out of the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: We went to the Chicago area, and we were gone—I didn’t leave until I got married. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: My husband went to Pullman for a year and then we went to Chicago. We were gone about nine years and then came back and raised our kids here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, okay. And so what brought you back to the— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Family. My parents were here, my dad’s health was failing, and I had just lost my father-in-law. So we kind of wanted the kids to get the chance to know their grandparents, because my husband’s parents were both gone. So, family. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And good memories of being growing up here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Sure, sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Versus Chicago. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So, what would you—is there anything you would like future generations to know about growing up—like kind of the experience growing up in Richland, or what it would have been like to be so close to Hanford? To help them understand what that would be like. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Growing up with my dad, the guys and women who worked out there, they were proud of what they did. Yes, bombs, they all agreed, the bomb is nasty. But in the long run it probably saved millions of lives on both sides. Because Japan was willing to fight ‘til the last man, which would have been millions of more lives lost. And if they would have gotten the bomb first, we’d be speaking Japanese. [LAUGHTER] I think there’s an overall pride—and my husband and I were just talking about this last year, that what was accomplished at Hanford would never be able to be done today. Back then, the old—they had all the signs, loose lips sink ships. My husband says, well, it’d been sunk long—they couldn’t have even gotten the first thing done before it would have been out in the open. Nowadays I don’t think they could pull it off. And people knew they weren’t supposed to talk about it. My dad—my mom said when they were living in Yakima, my dad, he had read about the reactor—splitting the atom in the Collier’s magazine before the war. They were going to go get the magazine and look it up. They never got around to it. Found out if you asked about that magazine, you were fired. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So they learned not to say anything. They handed some uranium around and my dad by the weight, he said, it wasn’t very big but he knew by the weight what it was. And he started to say something, and his boss says, don’t. And later he says if you would’ve said it, I would’ve had to have fired you on the spot. I mean, you just knew that if you said anything—so he whispered it to my mom one night, under—they were sure that there were microphones everywhere. So even though they were living in Yakima, he would put a pillow over them. And he says, I think we’re making the bomb. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And my mom kind of went, pfft. Sure you are. [LAUGHTER] And then my mom didn’t know—said they didn’t really know what it was until my brother came home from school and all the kids and everybody was going, we dropped the bomb, we dropped the bomb. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But I think there’s a pride in what they did. It was very secretive and when you realize that everybody was doing their little part, and they didn’t know what the other parts were. I mean, it’d be like trying to tell somebody to put a car together. Here, you have this screw, put it somewhere—and only that one. And you don’t really know what’s going on. It was really amazing what they pulled off. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And I think they—all the men and women who worked out there were really proud of what they did. And I think it went on to their families to feel proud of what they did. Yeah, the bomb’s not a nice thing, but where we would have been without it? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. What about later in the Cold War, after, and all the other things that were produced—all the other bombs that were produced? Do you think that added or ever shifted and change, or—especially in the late 60s with the protests? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, in the ‘60s, my dad used to get to work with Dixy Lee Ray periodically and they’d sit and talk. And he always kept saying, you know, we’ve kept it so quiet and we keep it so hush-hush. He says, we’re past that point now, we need to educate people on nuclear power and get away from the—people, and I still talk to people, especially not from around here, when you’re in other states, they cannot separate power from bomb. To them, it’s all one thing. There is no power, it’s just a bomb. And it’s like, no, you can have nuclear power and not have a bomb. And he kept saying, we need to educate—and I remember learning stuff about it in school here. Cousins and stuff back east, they never learned anything about it. They knew nothing about nuclear power, nuclear fission—nothing. [LAUGHTER] I think the sad part is that they didn’t do more educating, they just—they lived too long in that shroud of secrecy, and didn’t spread the knowledge. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. So you think, maybe it was—even though everybody knew after ’45 what was—and that they were continuing to produced, there was maybe a missed opportunity there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And throughout the ‘50s it was still—you didn’t talk about it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, the fear, the specter of international communism. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Right, even though war was over with the bombs, everybody knows about it, it still was a hush-hush. Yeah, I think they missed an opportunity on education. And people just grew up fearing it and not understanding anything about—hey, this could be a decent power source. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Taking Chernobyl out as a factor. [LAGUHTER] That was a poorly designed— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: There’s also Three Mile and other—certainly when a lot of people on the East Coast found about nuclear power first— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, they learned about it when it wasn’t—sometimes it was a poor design to start with. Well, when we lived in Chicago, there’s the Indiana Dunes. They were trying to build one on the Dunes. They didn’t even have any bedrock to sink it into. And we’re going, you know, they’re dunes? They kind of like, don’t stay put? [LAUGHTER] When we left there, they were still trying to do it. And we’re like, that doesn’t even make sense. So then there was a lot of stupid mistakes, too, that—yeah, you got to think about all the safety part. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. But it seems kind of hard sometimes to separate the secrecy even from the—there’s so much [INAUDIBLE]. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Do you know, through even the mid ‘60s there was still tremendous secrecy. Mid and late ‘60s. You still, living here, felt like, you know, it was hush-hush. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: But I imagine with the government owning the town until the late ‘50s that certainly you would keep that element of—that kind of vibe alive. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, and pretty much the same people who were here when the government released the town—when I graduated from high school, what, were there 9,000 people in Richland? That was in ’72. So a good chunk of those people were ones who were still here from World War II. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, and you lived in Richland the whole time, from when you were growing up, when you were born. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Mm-hm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So did you ever go to the other two cities much? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Oh, yeah! Downtown Pasco was one of the best places to shop! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Oh, it had the classy stores! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Oh, yeah. It was a major trek, but you’d go to downtown Pasco to go shopping. Well, that was a big day shopping, because they had the fancier ladies’ stores, they had shoe stores, they had the pet shop! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And they had a big drug store, and furniture stores and you could spend a whole day in, quote, Downtown Pasco! [LAUGHTER] That was a classy place to go. And then the old downtown Kennewick was—that was more functional. It had Penney’s and Sears and stuff, you know. Not Sears—what was it? I can’t remember the name of the store. But when you needed fireplace stuff or a stove or something. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So like a Woolworth’s or something like that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, but there were several stores. And there was the hardware store that’s still there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, the— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Kennewick Hardware is still there. It was there when I was little. I think one of the big things you remember is like going there in three feet of snow because our stove had caught fire. We had to buy a new stove. Back then you could leave your kid in the car, and I was tired of going in and out of stores, and sitting there in the car. I was probably about four. Mom was just inside, you know, ordering a stove and we got a chinook. Within like the time that they took them to order their stove and come out, I watched the snow leave. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Totally fascinating. It was gurgling and stuff, but wow. That’s one thing about this area, you get chinooks. When you talk about it in Chicago, they go, huh? [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah. Wow, that’s really interesting. Did you have any friends from the other cities, or did you mostly— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: My parents’ best friends moved to Kennewick, which was my sister’s best friend—it started out with my sister’s best friend who they lived kitty-corner from us when I was born, and then our parents met and became best friends, and then her younger sister and I are best friends, and we’re each other’s kids’ godparents. But they—when I was about three or four, they moved to Kennewick to a new house. [LAUGHTER] And then he commuted. He had to drive out to work because he couldn’t—the buses didn’t go to Kennewick; they were only in Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So there was still a lot of inducement, then, to stay in Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, you didn’t have to get that second car, because you’d just walk—most of the guys didn’t walk more than a block or two to get to the bus. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: I mean, these buses were everywhere. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, at the project offices, we have a map—I think it’s from the very early ‘80s but even then they were still running buses, and yeah, they’d go all— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: They go everywhere and nobody walked more than two blocks from their house to a bus. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: That’s [INAUDIBLE]. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So you only had to have one car. Even when my mom was working, she got the car to go to work and Dad rode the bus. Wasn’t any problem. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. I bet that would help instill a certain sense of camaraderie, because you’d ride the bus with these guys, and it’s not like today when you get in a car and you’re kind of in this bubble—you have a radio, but you’re kind of in a bubble. Whereas in a bus, everyday, you-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Well, we lived there, where—the change between the government town and the newer part of town. So you had people like Dad—you’ve got nuclear operators, you had janitors and you had the scientists, all on the same bus. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: I mean, everybody rode the bus. When the bus would come, there’d always be five or six guys standing out down there. And a bunch would get off and a bunch would get on. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: So after the changeover, it was still the site that operated all the buses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Mm-hm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Did they have to pay for that, or was that just a perk? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: That was just—yeah, they just paid for it. I mean, the government paid for it—nobody else could ride the buses, only the workers and they only went to and from work. They weren’t for like the families to go shopping or anything. It was just for the workers. And, yeah, they just got on the buses and they knew they were going to be there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: When did bus service start in the area for other people living in Richland? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: It had to have been after—as soon as they started building houses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Because these guys had to get to work— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. Oh, no, sorry— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And most people back then, you had tire vouchers and stuff—you couldn’t like get tires overnight. You couldn’t even get bananas without a doctor’s prescription. [LAUGHTER] My siblings were skinny, so Mom always ended up with a prescription for bananas. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, they had to write doctor’s prescriptions. So getting a second car wasn’t even really an option. So they started the bus service really early, just getting these guys out to work as they started building the home. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. So you brought in some documents and things. Would you like to— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Where’d we put them? [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: I think it’d be really interesting to get those on video and to have you talk about some of those. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: All right. They’re not super exciting. This is my dad’s birth certificate. The City of Miller which never was officially a city, in Lyon, Kansas. My father’s records were in the courthouse along with three generations of family records, and it burned down when he was about seven. So he had no birth certificate. And not too long after he started working here, they asked for his birth certificate—that he needed to get it. And he says, I don’t have one. So this is his newer birth certificate that they issued in May of ’42. He came in February so to May he had to get it. They sent an FBI agent out who interviewed his father, his uncle who raised him—his mother died when he was born so his uncle raised him—and his aunt. And they also used an insurance policy that was issued when he was 20 to verify that he was him. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So not everybody has all these affidavits and stuff at the bottom of their birth certificate, but this was from the FBI being able to verify. My great aunt was like, that was the weirdest thing. [LAUGHTER] Because back there, you just don’t have government people. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. So they would have been out to the small town in Kansas, then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Out in the middle of nowhere. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: To ask questions about her nephew. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: That was one thing growing up in Richland. You were so used to the FBI coming to your door at least once a month, because everybody had different cycles for their clearances. They would always come to your door and ask, are they part of your—do they drink, do they do that? We talked to them all the time. It was never any big deal, because always somebody in your neighborhood was renewing their certification—their clearance. When I lived in Chicago, they came about somebody who was going to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority. It was my neighbor. My neighbors all slammed the door in their face. I talked to the guy, I opened the door, and I go, oh, yeah! It was security clearance. He goes, you’re the first one who’d talk to me. [LAUGHTER] I says, did it all the time when I was growing up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But it scares a lot of people. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But I think they thought it was a little—because the war’s going on, they don’t know what’s going on and here’s these FBI people wanting to know about my dad. I think they’re going, what’s he doing? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, is he a spy? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, did he get in trouble? And they’re not allowed to tell them anything. So they thought it was very, very strange when these suited men showed up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: That’s great, that’s a great story. And it’s great to have the documentation here to— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: You’ve already seen a million flood pictures. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Well, that’s still a pretty—very scarring event for a lot of people, I bet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, this was the flood of ’48. It came within a few blocks of where my parents were living at the time. Don’t ask which street that was back then, because they moved so much. But this was just a family picture of the Flood of ’48 that was so devastating. And then they put the dyke in. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Here is—well, this one’s tiny. This is just a picture of any summer day in Richland. Everybody had kids. Most the families were young, so there was lots of kids. It was just—even when I was growing up was the same way in the ‘60s. There was kids everywhere. Riding bikes and running between houses, and you came in when the street lights came on. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And I imagine not a lot of elderly people in Richland, right? And so that must have—because you would have had grandparents, but they would have been far away, or they wouldn’t be living in town. Whereas in Kennewick and Pasco people might have more extended families living near them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Right. My grandmother came here to live with Mom and Dad not too long before she died. But, yeah, grandparents—if you were retired you couldn’t live in Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: If you were not working for Hanford, you didn’t live there. So, yeah, there weren’t old people and most of the construction workers who came were young and all had young families. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So there were kids pouring out of every house. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So this is—how many kids are in just—this is Mom and Dad’s front yard. And the kids played ball together, they ran and played tag. There were no fences, so all the backs of the yards were like one big yard. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. And probably still not a lot of trees at that time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Not really. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And when—can we look at this photo on the back? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: This was 1948. So that’s only three years after the war. So, yeah, the trees are still—if you look around, you don’t see any trees. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And here’s another one. This one would be—let’s see. This’d be ’46. No trees. There’s a bush. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And this is one of your sisters? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: This is my sister. Yeah. First day of kindergarten. But what I brought it for was the A house. See, they had the dark color on top—this one, I’m guessing, is probably the red one. And then the cream. They were all like that, they were all bicolored. We had cream and then one of the other three choices. You had green, red, and blue. That was it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: The government supplied the paint. This is the house that I grew up in on Newcomer. It was the first spec house sold. We’re still getting our water lines. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And my dog, Tippy. This isn’t the garage anymore; somebody’s changed it out. But we had—it was really fresh and new. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And this was 1960? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: ’60. Yeah, February of ’60 is when we moved in. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Mom says January of ‘60. I always think it was February but oh well. Halfway through kindergarten, I had to change schools. My siblings went, so? Because they had to change schools all the time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, not a lot of sympathy for you, I bet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And this is my dad getting an award for what they called the Christmas Tree, which was the front of the reactor that had lights—indicator lights on it. I don’t know if it says exactly what he—just came up, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: He’s D. D. Smith? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Most people called him D. D. or Smitty. His named was Derald. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Derald. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Derald. Like Gerald but with a D. Let’s see. Yeah, he was considered a pile operator. $185 was his award, which—like I said, that was a lot of money. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: A couple weeks’ wages, probably. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: At least two or three weeks’ worth of wages. So that was a really big thing. Yeah, something about modifying the lights or something so they were easier to read. Apparently they thought it was a good idea. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. Do you know when that was? Was that during the war? Was this— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Since my dad never looked any different over a 40- or 50-year period, I’m not sure what date is on this. What was funny is on the back, I found my friend’s dad’s name on it. [LAUGHTER] And I went, oh! I’m kind of guessing this might be the ‘50s? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Early ‘60s? I’m looking at the ties. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: No, that’s good. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: They had a paper that came out of the Areas. That was in that paper—the Area paper was a little fold-up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, we have a bound collection of a lot of the Hanford GE News and a lot of that. Let’s see this here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: 1944. This is my dad’s card for the International Union of Operating Engineers. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And that was December of ’44. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So this is still during the war. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And this is the other part of the same thing, the International Union of Operating Engineers. Came out of Spokane. Got stamped; I guess for going to meetings. No, his dues, his dues and going to meetings. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Makes sense. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Whoops. This isn’t for my dad; this is for my grandmother. I need to go show Kadlec this. [LAUGHTER] My grandmother got cancer and was in Kadlec Hospital for six weeks before she died. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Here’s the total of her bill. $386.15. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: The operating room cost $8. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Anesthesia was $10. It cost more. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Lab, dressings—yeah, and she was there for six weeks before she died. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Six weeks. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And that’s her bill. This bill was—yeah, written on the day she died. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. And what date was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: 1946. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Oh, okay. So she moved in, then, pretty soon after the war ended? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, and she moved to— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Hungate: And it’s billed through DuPont. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yup. Oh, even I—I didn’t even notice that. DuPont. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: DuPont. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: I don’t know of many people still have a bill from 1946. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: No. That’s a very interesting bill, though. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: What is this one? Oh, this is just really bad pictures that they took—every year they had to have their pictures renewed. [LAUGHTER] That was—that had to have been a windy day, because his hair’s sticking up all over. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, well, like you said earlier, they had thousands upon thousands of men to process. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, it’s like while you’re at work, and it’s just like get your picture taken, click, and you’re done. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And this, on the front it says GE so— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, that would have been from after GE took over. I’d say from that picture from the ‘60s. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: What’s this one? Just a few little odd things I found in Mom’s—oh, just—from February of 1942, The University of Kansas School of Engineering and Architecture, Engineering Defense Training Program from—his certificate. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, this is—I’m not sure exactly what they taught him, or—he never talked about this. I knew nothing about this until I found this just this last week. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow, interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So I have no story to go with this, other than the date and it’s my dad. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. So then he would have came out here very shortly after getting this, right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Mm-hm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Like I say, when they told him to come out, they didn’t tell him why or anything. Just go to this place in Washington that you’ve never heard of. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, we have a job for you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And you’re going to have trouble finding it on a map, even. [LAUGHTER] This is just a—it’s got—it says N Reactor Plant Dates—Data. Just about—I think it was a reference for them when they were working. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: It’s pocket size. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So I think it was just a—yeah, decontaminating, water treatment—I think it was just a little reference thing that they kept in their—on their person. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And then my dad was trying to get my uncle to move out here from Kansas. [LAUGHTER] And he wrote a letter describing wages, jobs. So, trying to get down to there. Let’s see. “They want patrolmen pretty badly. The pay isn’t as much as I make by about $18 a week.” But my uncle was single, never married, so it probably wasn’t any problem to him. And he says, “However it isn’t bad. You start at $58 a week.” [LAUGHTER] It says, a week. And after 30 days, after you’ve passed that, you move up to $60 a week. And then after six months you get $62.50 a week. Yeah, they were looking for patrolmen and firemen and a lot of the other stuff. And he asked—my uncle was in World War Two, and he asked if he had any training in anything specific that might be used out here. But my uncle stayed back in Kansas and eventually became a—because of being ex-military, he became a postman. Not a postman, a postmaster. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: A postmaster in a little town. But he never did come out. I just thought the pricing—just thought it was interesting, because 58 bucks a week. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: That would have been—that’s a good chunk of money back then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: For my uncle, for what he was making in Kansas it would have been a whole lot of money. [INAUDIBLE] Oh, meals at the cafeteria average $0.75. It’s just littered with little stuff like that. He was trying to convince my uncle to move back out here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: What’s this? Oh. This was in a Kansas City Times in 1947. “Growing Town of Atom Plant Workers Is a Distinctive Sort of Community.” </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Mm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: So, that was kind of—you know. This is what, when people released—after the war’s over, people are starting to hear, now, what the heck was—[LAUGHTER] going on, and how different our towns were from towns that had been around for 100 years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. And that it’s completely government controlled and— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, and plants were far from town. You know, Dad would usually spend an hour on the bus going out to work, and we were in North Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yeah, but I think this is what my uncle had cut out and sent to him. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Cool. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: From Kansas. And the highest birthrates in the nation. [LAUGHTER] Because everybody was young. I was part of that major boom. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah. Wow, that’s neat. That’s neat that he saved that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And my sister says—we were talking and she said, yeah, when you went to school, you stood up on the first day of school and said where you were from. Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas. When I went to school, we had all been born here. There weren’t any outsiders, I guess, because we were all born here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: But during the war, everybody stood up and said where they were from. Because everybody was from somewhere. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: She says, there was a few—once in a while you’d run into somebody who says, oh, I was born here. And they’re like, oh. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Yeah, oh, you’re an original! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Oh, you’re really strange! You didn’t come from the Midwest? Because that seems to be the biggest proportion came from the Midwest. Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: And Texas, too, there was a huge—but that’s definitely where they were pulling lots of people from. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: And it was mostly by word of mouth as their job tended to—go to Washington. What are we going to do? Can’t tell you. Because I don’t know. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: Take this train to a place you’ve never heard of. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Yup. Any other questions? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Franklin: No, I think that was great. Thank you so much for sharing. I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know about, growing up here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX253515545"> Davis: Oh, I probably—going to think of a million things driving home, I’m sure. Oh, I should have said—[LAUGHTER] </div> Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Franklin Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Linda Davis Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:59:18 Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview B Reactor N Reactor Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Lee Ray, Dixe Smith, Derald Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 232 kbps Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Linda Davis Description An account of the resource An interview with Linda Davis conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource hose interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Pasco (Wash.) Kennewick (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 5/26/2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-07-26: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. B Reactor Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Kennewick (Wash.) N Reactor Pasco (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F93ee156bf46d941b4d9b5e5aba9f1639.jpg c9e9467a12728ad2773706a589bd69cb https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F51d399f9b332ecd3ff88a077a2397164.mp4 b36dcb106c274666d29d9290ef95c177 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Douglas O' Reagan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed William Cliff Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. To start off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> William Cliff: Yes. I’m Dr. William C. Cliff. W-I-L-L-I-A-M, C is the middle initial, and Cliff, C-L-I-F-F— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: All right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: --like a mountain cliff. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Thank you. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Dr. Cliff on May 5th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University’s Tri-Cities. We’ll be speaking with Dr. Cliff about his experiences working around the Tri-Cities community over the 20th Century. To start us off, could you tell us a little bit about your life growing up before you came to this part of the world. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Yeah. I was actually born in Idaho, and then we moved around to Oregon and then to Utah. And then got married in 1969 in Colorado. Took a job with NASA in Huntsville, Alabama, and that’s where we moved to and we lived there for about six or seven years. There were about seven of us that were from around the United States that were hired to work on a special project at NASA. That gave us quite a bit of fun. It was electro-optic systems and we worked on those. And of course we worked into other things while we were there at NASA as well. Huntsville—if you were raised in the West, Huntsville’s a little bit different. For the first years I was there, I never had an American boss. All my bosses were the old Peenemünde group. The Germans--Von Braun, Stuhlinger, Geissler, Horne, Dahm, Krause, and so on. Very nice people, very knowledgeable people. We went down and I got to work on a lot of electro-optics—laser systems for probing the atmosphere and for looking at fluid flow. After which, I got—was over our physics and chemistry experiments in space and was in charge of the first commercial product in space, which was monodispersed latex spheres. So got involved in an awfully lot of things, and finally got involved in the shuttle. Worked on the heat transfer for the solid rocket boosters and the external tank. So my working time seems like it almost started there just about the time of the shuttle and then sort of ended just about the time the shuttle ended. So I guess it was fate. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: What time frame was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Well, about 1970—well, the shuttle started taking design back in ’69, ’70, ’71. That’s when I was running the code for—of course, we were doing a lot of other things, too. Like I say, seven of us were hired to work on a special electro-optics project for measuring the wind fields near the launch vehicles. Because the last decision made before launch is, do I have an atmospheric window? So that was sort of important, too. As a young scientist—engineer space scientist, you had all the toys you’d ever want. Because by this time, NASA had become very popular to the American people. And in 1969, with the Apollo-11 launch liftoff and landing on the moon and returning, NASA could do no wrong. As with many times in history, there’s a gloried agency within the United States. At that time, of course, NASA took over. Von Braun, the head of it, could do no wrong. So as a young scientist, I had every conceivable toy you could imagine: laser Doppler systems, probability density analyzers, I had a Mach-3 wind tunnel that I could use at my discretion. We really had a lot of fun for a young engineer. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: So what brought you to the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Well, the Tri-Cities was very interesting. We had a child, Christina, in Huntsville, Alabama. And before she got school aged, we wanted to come back to the West. Both my wife and I were from the West. It’s just like salmon returning. You want to come back, same place. So we looked around, and I happened to call out here. It looked like I was first going to go to Boulder, Colorado and do some work for NOAA. But I called a friend out here at the Hanford site, and he knew that I did a lot of wind characteristics for NASA. And he said, what would you think about moving out here? I said, well, that sounded like it might be kind of good. So they flew me out, I gave a presentation on laser Doppler velocimetry, which we really were the heads of in the world at that time, at NASA. They had some very, very good people. So I gave a talk on that out here. Chuck Elderkin said, when can you be here, in two weeks? I said, no, no, I’ve got some payloads I have to still get ready for. So signed up to come up here and work for Chuck Elderkin and Chuck Simpson and Bill Sandusky and a lot of these really interesting people in the atmospheric world. And as I mentioned, I think this was the largest atmospheric complex in the United States, because you had to worry about a release going downwind. So you had a huge amount of sensors in this area. And in fact, in my work, in dealing with some of the correlation work that we did, we had seen the work that had been done out here as well. So I was very interested in this area and interested in the people that were in this area that had done so much scientific work. So anyway, we were hired to come, and my first job was actually representing Battelle at--I think it was called ERDA at that time—in Washington, DC. So my first six months on the job, roughly, were actually in DC. We moved all of our equipment and cars and stuff out here, and then went to Washington, DC to live for—actually it turned out to be—shoot. I want to say—many months, and then came out here to take the actual job out here. I told my wife, I said, now, I’m not sure what you’re going to think about it. Said, you’re not going to see many trees. And she got out here and she says, I never want to leave. So, one of those people that this was her ideal site. Been very happy ever since then, and she sort of built up—every time I’d go on a trip, she’d buy another horse. So ended up building a little house with a barn and horses, and each—I remember one in particular that was kind of interesting. I got on a plane—I did quite a bit of overseas work. Got on the plane and they gave me an envelope. And it says, To Daddy. I thought, it’s going to open up and it’s going to say, please come home, Daddy. Well, I open it up and it says, here’s the horse you’re going to see at the barn when you come back. So anyway that was the life of the person traveling. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Where did you buy this—where were you living? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Well we were living in a place called Hills West at the time when we came in. This area’s really interesting because it has ups and downs in prices of houses. So we found that it was easier to build than to buy at that particular time. So we built a house in Hills West. Then we were living there, and I was doing quite a bit of overseas work. When we were here, we also then were trained by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for reactor operator licensing exams. In fact, the Unit Two out here—I was the lead examiner for the first group of people that ran the Unit Two reactor here at Hanford. So that was kind of fun, too. So for a few years, I spent about half my time going around to different BWRs around the—boiling water reactors—around the country. But I still think my favorite one is the one that’s right here. Got to do a lot of different projects over time. The Canadian government wanted us to blow up some pipelines near Calgary to see if they were accidentally or purposely ruptured where the flow would go. So we went up, and my job was to measure the fluid velocity coming out of these ruptured pipes, which were probably three or four feet down, and they’d rupture and it’d just come up out of the ground. So that was kind of an interesting one. We had one where a fellow named Jim Grier who—great manager—did one with Shell Oil Company to look at taking the mud—the drilling mud from the seas and then putting it back down on the bed. So when you’re drilling for oil you get all these muds and things, and now you got to get rid of them. So we had a big project here to look at how you made them into briquettes and then put them back on the seafloor. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: This was all working for Battelle? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Yeah, yeah. You had the opportunity to do a lot of different kind of unusual things. And one I mentioned that we started to look into was one of the commercial companies wanted to know how you could take strawberries and make them stand up so you could cut the tops off. So we did a little short project on looking at how you’d use the calyx as a drag device. The calyx, you know, the leafy part which is good for Scrabble. To look and see how you could control the position of the strawberry using a converging fluid system. Anyway, that was kind of interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Do you remember what year you came to the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: 1976, I believe. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Great. And you mentioned a couple of names—Chuck Eldritch, something, something like that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Elderkin. Chuck Elderkin. Chuck was really the person that hired me. I came out and interviewed with Chuck. He was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. In fact, I thought this is really strange. The people at Tri-Cities are very, very nice. But coming in and interviewing for a job, I didn’t expect this guy to take his family and me out for ice cream at night. So he was such a nice man. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: But he was a well-known climatologist? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Yeah, yeah. Him and Chuck Simpson and there’s Bill Sandusky. I think Bill Sandusky just retired from the Atmospheric Sciences Department. And they ran the Atmospheric Science Department. There’s another fellow named Ron Drake that was there as well. But it was very prestigious organization there at Battelle. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: One of the things we’re interested in finding out is what was created, what was invented, what was discovered out there on the site? It sounds like climatology was cutting edge out there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Oh, I think so. I mean, you really had to have your game plan in place, in case something happened. We’ve all heard of cases where the down-winders were saying something happened and we were affected. So you’ve always had a very good Atmospheric Sciences Department out there. I was trying to think of some of the other names that were extremely interesting to me. Coming out of NASA, I had heard of this group and these people, so I was very excited about coming. And then, like I say, we went to Washington, DC and we had one child and two golden retrievers, and to live in DC for a little while. And if you ever have a thought it was tough to find a place with a child, think about two golden retrievers and who wants to let you stay in an apartment with two golden retrievers and a child. Anyway, we had quite a bit of fun. And then we had to drive all the way across the United States. My wife would fly between stops, and I would pull our boat and the dogs and catch up with my wife, Nell, and Christina our daughter, as we came across. So it was kind of an exciting time for us. I don’t think I’d have the energy to do it again. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: You said your wife really liked it when she got here. What was your first impression? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Well, I was born in Idaho and lived in Utah, so this was very familiar kind of territory to me, and I loved it. In fact, one of the first things I did was get in my car, and I just drove out through the Area and up through by Othello and up by all those little lakes and the backwater, look for fishing areas, and go down and talk to the fishermen and stuff. So for me, this was an ideal location. And it turned out for my wife it was an ideal location. She could do all the things that she wanted to do with the animals. And I could do everything I wanted to do with the fish—and the steelhead and the salmon. Loved fly fishing for the steelhead up here. Probably one of the most significant events in that was that my father was out fishing—he loved to fly fish, too. And I told him, as you go down this river, I said, look over your shoulder, split those two big rocks right there, and when you do you’ll have a steelhead on. And he goes down there, and bang, this huge steelhead comes on. Just—he said he never had a fish fight like that in his life. He said, but one thing, Bill, I had to take him the extra step. So anyway, it’s been a wonderful area for us, and like I say, we’ve had a lot of people over. The work really became significant for us in 1989. US Customs Intelligence Service, Eleanor Lusher called Ed Fay at the Department of Energy and asked if someone would write a couple of articles, one on hafnium and one on zirconium. Ed asked if I would do it. So I wrote these two training bits for Customs, sent it to them. Next thing I know, I got a big beautiful plaque from the Customs Intelligence Unit head at New York. And then Bill Wiley liked that so well, he gave me one, too. So that got us sort of started. And then in ’94, US Customs and I began training. Congress approved a budget to do Weapons of Mass Destruction training for the non-weapon states of the former Soviet Union: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. So that sort of started us off. And the first thing we did, we did border assessments to find out what they could do at a border and what they couldn’t do. And we found one location that if they had—if the smuggler went across the border down a ways, they couldn’t chase him because they had no gas. So some of the places were pretty rough. But then we went back in the countries and we did the training based upon our assessment at the borders. Then things just sort of took off from there. We began training more and more and more countries, going overseas. One of the problems that we had was when we went overseas—I actually carried a suitcase that was filled with strategic metals, if you will, to show and do training on. But it was very, very heavy. And we couldn’t carry any radioactive material with us at all. And we couldn’t—they didn’t have any trucks or things to pull something through, and there were very few radiation detectors. So we decided that we had to find a place where we could have trucks, cars, set up exercises just like you would have at a real field position, and be able to use real radioactive material, and specifically weapons-grade uranium and weapons-grade plutonium. Because these are two items that, without them, you don’t build a nuclear weapon. At the same time, back then, most smugglers and customs officers around the world were afraid of them, thinking that they’re highly radioactive. When in fact, through your training you find out that the weapons-grade materials are the least radioactive materials that you’re going to be working around for most of the time. The industrial isotopes are the rough ones, so to speak. So we got the Pentagon, Harlan Strauss, we got the Department of Energy, of course, with us. We got the State Department, Pat O’Brien, Non-Proliferation Disarmament Fund. We selected the HAMMER site as the site where we could do all of these things. So there were actually four groups of people putting out customs—trying to think. Customs—there were actually a couple different people that we worked with. But we put these four agencies together, combined them together, and came out and set up the training. We looked around, where could we do the training? Well, it just turns out that the HAMMER site was just being developed, and it was the ideal place. We drove through the HAMMER site, Customs, State and the Pentagon and I, and we saw a little building out there that is actually a rest stop. But it looks exactly like a border crossing in a third world country. We said, this is it. This is the place we got to do. So we then teamed up with HAMMER, and from that time forward it was all a wonderful partnership. In fact, people coming in could not tell the difference between if you were a PNL person or a HAMMER person. I remember one time, Nikolai Kurchenko, a Russian, the head of the Russian delegation came in and he had this beautiful Russian hat. And I thought, oh boy, oh oy, I wonder if he’s going to give it to me. Well he didn’t. He gave it to HAMMER. And I thought, oh man. But anyway, that’s been a wonderful relationship to where PNL and HAMMER worked together and you wouldn’t—couldn’t tell one from another. So that—in September of 1997, HAMMER did the dedication of the HAMMER site. At that dedication, we had Hungarians and Slovak Customs all in full uniform, for the dedication. That was the first class we had. And the classes have sort of continued ever since. So it was sort of a remarkable marriage, I would say, of the two groups. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: What does HAMMER stand for? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Hazardous Material Management and Emergency Response Training Center. It’s actually the Volpentest HAMMER Federal Training Center. That’s the nice thing about HAMMER, is you can do things there that you really can’t do anywhere else in the world. And that is, we’re able to bring out the weapons-grade plutonium from PNNL, weapons-grade uranium, put it in trucks and cars and pass the through the portable monitors and have the people respond, pull them into what we call secondary and do the searches. But it’s with the real thing. And like I said, the first few years, some of the people were very much afraid of going up against those materials, thinking that they’re highly radioactive when in fact they’re not. But even the Russians—the [INAUDIBLE] wouldn’t let the Russians use their materials to train on. So we had—I think the Russians were here four times for the actual training at HAMMER. And then we actually ran a rail test, where we had a railroad train go by the 300 Area here. It carried the special nuclear materials. And when I say special nuclear materials, I mean the weapons-grade plutonium and uranium-enriched and the isotope 235, and uranium-233. So those things that are fissionable that you can make the weapon out of. Anyway, it was kind of interesting because the train test, the Russians wanted us to evaluate one of their portal monitors. These are large monitors for looking for radioactive material. I think it’s the only time that test has ever been run. In the end, we’ve had over 60 countries out there, at HAMMER. As you know, we took a little tour the other day and saw all the different facilities that have been built, and the State Department has built three really nice facilities for the training. The very first training that we did at HAMMER, we actually had phone lines to each participant coming out of the ceiling. Of course, now, in the new buildings and stuff, you got good simultaneous interpretation, the headgear, and you can do it in the field as well if you want to. Normally, in the field we do consecutive translation. But it’s a wonderful facility. As we’ve gone around the world, we’ve seen how people smuggle things and we’ve built traps that look like how the smuggler does it and then we train the people on how to find it. Kind of exciting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: What had been your jobs, your involvement in each stage of this? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: My involvement? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Was I was the manager of the program. We called it Interdict RADACAD. Interdict for the interdiction of materials, commodities and components associated with the development or deployment of a Weapon of Mass Destruction. And then RADACAD for Radiation Academy. Well, you can imagine what happened on that—people immediately picked up RADACAD and that’s what it became known as. And one I forgot to mention, Terry Conway was the main customs officer we dealt with. He came out, and he was the one that thought up the term RADACAD. So that term actually belongs to him. But I’ve gotten calls from people in Washington National Security Council and people say, what does this RADACAD mean? What does it stand for? So we made it to very high parts of government and actually got to be a line item there for training. Andrew Church at State Department in the—I want to say in the training area there—Andrew’s specific area—he’s the one that actually sent most of the countries, or a lot of the countries to us. Department of Energy has sent a lot of countries to us. The Pentagon, with Harlan, sent quite a few to us. But they always came in as a joint effort, if you will. Andrew Church, Export Control Cooperation, ECC, and the State Department, is probably the first group that actually provided funding out and spread it—it would go through Customs to go to us. And he’s—Andrew’s still there. He’s still a good sponsor, living sponsor, if you will. Oh! Now that we’re talking about it, can I bring this out? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Yeah, please. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: This is kind of a cute little storyboard. Of course, you probably can’t see too much of it. But this actually shows one of the classes from Azerbaijan that came to visit us. My wife probably has had 40 separate nations at her home where she would spend three days preparing food so they have a banquet at the house. Some of the nations have been there to the house more than once. So this is the Azeris here giving my wife a souvenir. She got so many souvenirs that she had to build a case there at the house to put all the various souvenirs in. Ali here was a boxer for the Azeri Olympic team. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: And then he went into radiation safety? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Customs, yeah. [LAUGHTER] Went into customs. Yeah, it’s interesting, the people that come and take the training, when they go back home, and then we go back and visit them in maybe six months or so, they will have moved up in the organization. Getting a certificate from RADACAD was a very, very big thing for most of these countries. It actually meant almost an instant advancement. This is when the missile came in that you saw the other day, the SCUD missile which is on loan to us from the State Department. Some of the exercises that they’re doing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Could you tell us a bit more about the SCUD missiles for the cameras? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Got a call one day from a friend there at the Non-proliferation Disarmament Fund, said, Bill, do you want to have a missile out there to look at? And I said, sure! And then all of the sudden, one day it shows up out there, and the driver said it was the strangest thing he’d ever picked up. He said he went over to—I guess by the State Department where they had it, and he said I wonder who’s going to be driving that. So he drove it out here and brought it out to HAMMER for training. And—oh shoot, one of the pictures I think I brought with me—I know I’ve got it over there some place—is Bill Gates. Bill Gates came through and toured the Hanford site, and the last stop was there with the missile. So I’ve got a picture there with Bill Gates and I, looking over that missile. Kind of a fun toy. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Do you know how the State Department got the missile? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: It was provided by the Soviet Union. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: And the fear was that that would be—somebody would try to drive that out of the Soviet Union? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Oh, now that one is one that’s been cut up, as you could tell. It’s been set up as a demilitarized system, so it cannot ever be used. In the United States, however, there was one that did come into the United States legally, supposedly, and demilitarized. And my understanding was that another one came in that Customs took and they had the paperwork from the first one and it was drivable and everything else. So you’d think how could something like that every go through a country? But they can. So I’m not sure where that missile is right now, but Customs took it over and if they did all the paperwork right and demilitarized it, the person probably got it back. Let’s see. I thought maybe one of these we were holding—oh. Harlan Strauss. Oh, missile components. Anyway, this is sort of a fun one. And then Customs gave us this plaque here from the Northwest Laboratory for the Interdict Training Program, 2004. Now the nice thing about this is we continuously got letters from customs officers saying it’s the best training they’d ever had in their career. So when people walked out of the training, they actually felt comfortable. And you’d always ask them, well, what’s going to happen if someone comes across and your radiation alarm says you’ve got plutonium. They say, I’m going to stick right there and handle it. Years ago, they’d say, I’m going to take off running as fast as I can. So just that little bit of knowledge is very helpful. We have had people, of course, that just don’t like any radiation. Some people contend that a little bit of radiation has made the human species actually better, if you will. And that if you have a small amount of background radiation, it’s more healthy for you than none. It’s called hormesis, so it actually—your body upregulates itself to take care of itself a little bit better. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: How is HAMMER run? What is sort of the organizational structure of it? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Well, HAMMER actually is a training facility that’s headed by Karen McGinnis, who does a wonderful job of making sure that the site needs are met. It’s actually set up for the Hanford cleanup to give all the specialized trainings so that the person in the field is safe. That’s pretty much it. It has, I think, about 50,000 man days of training a year. Every person on the Hanford site there that deals with radioactive materials is actually trained right there on the HAMMER site in the radiation building, the one that we took a tour of the other day. Volpentest certainly was a forward-thinker, in knowing that you needed to have something like this for the Hanford site, and knowing that it’s going to be a major cleanup facility. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Do you know much about Volpentest’s role in getting all of this organized? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Volpentest was the key person with the willpower and the tenacity to—my understanding is that he thought the project up, he fought in Washington, and he fought in Washington, and he fought in Washington. And I wish I could remember his words one time when—at HAMMER—not a dedication, but like ten-year anniversary. He said something about, they said what was so hard? He said, just again, and again, and again, you just had to be persistent to do it. And then finally, he got it and it’s, like I say, it’s the best training center in the world. You can do things out there at HAMMER that you can do nowhere else. We have brought in containers, we have fiber optic scopes to look behind walls, you can bring the special nuclear materials out there, and you can drive through the scenarios. And we mock-up. We mock-up our international seizures. In fact, one that we were accredited with in May of ’99 was a Bulgarian seizure where a fellow had gone out of Romania and up into Turkey and was coming back through Bulgaria, Josef Hanifi. He got to the border there and the Bulgarians had just been out training at RADACAD. They noticed that he seemed a little bit nervous. So they questioned a little bit and finally they sent him over to secondary. So they moved him to secondary. The car was perfectly clean. Nobody should be driving that car; it was way too clean. They found—a screwdriver was the only piece of equipment in the entire car. They were about ready to let him go, and apparently then he offered them a bribe. They said, no, no, we got to find it. So they started looking and they found a little piece of paper with a star on it, which was a Kurdish separatist group. So they said, okay, now we’re going to look a bit more. And the next thing they found then was what we call a passport. This is a piece of paper that gives the isotopic items that are in an element. It always goes with the material. When you get something that’s very sensitive, whether it’s radioactive or not, you’re going to have this spike assay, or what we call a passport, with it. And if you find it, the other stuff is there. So here it was and it said uranium-235, and said 99.99% uranium-235—which we train everybody, if you see that, you know that’s at least a partial. You do not enrich uranium to that amount. But now they knew what they were looking for. All their sensors—none of their sensors would work. I mean, the handheld radiation devices weren’t going off. Then finally the guy remembered the screwdriver, and he picked up a tire pump. The tire pump was like one he had but it was heavier. So he looked at matched them up and pulled it apart. And sure enough the compression cylinder inside the pump had been pulled apart and a lead pig—when I say lead pig—a lead isotope holder—radiation holder—they pulled it out and it had uranium-235 in it when they pulled it apart. It’s a great example to show that uranium-235 is easily concealed. Because you put it in there. One of the pagers that I brought with me that are used all around the world for detecting radiation was laid actually up against it and it still showed zero. Trying to reach around, see if I can open this up. This is the one we saw the other day. This particular one is my favorite. We’ve distributed thousands around the world. There’s actually several makers of these. This particular one is Sensor Technology. But you just turn it on, and then you wear it. As soon as it turns green it’s ready to pick up any radiation you’ve got. Very, very sensitive, and yet—this water bottle is just about the size—about like that was the lead pig that was in the container. So put it on the outside and if you press the button there—[DEVICE BEEPING] Reads zero. You’ve always got a little bit of gamma background radiation, but it read zero. And then of course as you pulled it open, pulled the top off and expose the little amount of radiation, then the thing goes wild. So that was one of the seizures that we were accredited with. And in fact, the customs officers that made that seizure were brought to the United States and brought out to HAMMER again to give a little talk to everybody on how they did it. So it was kind of interesting. We had a couple of other seizures, too, that were quite interesting. The Bulgarians, when they first were over here the first time they actually made another seizure. So they were extremely dedicated. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Had there been any particular—I don’t know—international politics or sort of big events that have shaped what people are looking for at HAMMER, or HAMMER’s mission? I’m thinking like—as the world’s sort of security concerns change, has that changed what HAMMER is looking for? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Well, HAMMER, of course was really set up to handle the cleanup of the Hanford site. But the society area, if you will, has been a blessing for the world of bringing people in for training. Just going back in history, in December 14th, 1994, Josef Wagner, who is well up into the nuclear world in the Czech Republic, was actually caught by a man named Kamil Klozerski, the second command of the criminal police in the Czech Republic. And he was carrying with him 2.72 kilograms of 87.7% enriched uranium, which is almost weapons grade. That sort of set the tone for the world, I think. Because that had been brought down from Moscow by train, by car, and gone through a lot of different country border crossings, and it sort of showed the world that there really wasn’t any way of catching or stopping it at that time. So after that, you began seeing the portable monitors, began seeing the radiation detectors and things of that nature start cropping up. In my mind, there was sort of a changing segue way, I guess, for the world. Now the United States, I guess, lacked behind a lot of the other countries in putting up portal monitors and stuff because we sort of consider ourselves isolated. But as recent events have shown us, of course, we’re not. So the United States then took up and protected all of its borders with these large portal monitors. And if you walk off on the plane and you look very carefully, your customs officers will be carrying something like this. Normally, it’s just called a personal radiation detector. This particular model is called a pager from Sensor Technology. So the United States is doing a real good job with its people and getting its people trained for detecting radioactive materials. There’s been several seizures around the world. I guess maybe I’ll leave it at that. There’s been less than what we call a significant quantity, bag quite a bit that has actually been seized. We know that a lot of nations and a lot of groups who’d like to have the material. So as we talked about the other day, if the IAEA says that if a country has eight kilograms of plutonium, you could not discard the fact that they may have a full-up weapon, or 25 kilograms of uranium-235, or eight kilograms of uranium-233. So that’s sort of the baseline, so for nuclear smuggling, we always compare that. There’s been 18 seizures since 1992 of weapons-usable material. And when we say weapons-usable, we mean greater than 20% enriched uranium-235 or plutonium. So there’s not been a lot. And there’s a lot of equipment out there to try to stop it. But as we saw with the Bulgarian seizure, certain things can be fairly well-masked. A lot of times, people will ask, well, hey, a small number of grams you found, like in the Bulgarian seizure, you’re not going to make a bomb out of that. And the answer is yeah, that’s correct. Normally what happens on a smuggling operation, they’ll give you a very small amount of material, and if it’s good material, they’ll give it to you to take and analyze. And then they’ll say, we’ve got three more kilograms or five more kilograms back there. So when you see the small ones, they become very important, because that’s what people are trying to push and say, this is a sample. We had a case out here where zirconium—which is non-radioactive, but is used in reactor systems—smuggler sent us a small piece that we analyzed, and it was really, really nice zirconium. A customs officer was embedded with him and he was saying he was from Iraq and he wanted to buy it for Iraq. So it went on, and they’d give us another piece, and it wasn’t quite as good, but it was still good nuclear-grade zirconium. So eventually, customs arrested him, and he had five tons of zirconium there waiting to go to Iraq. It was stored in the World Trade Centers. I went back and looked at it. It was kind of interesting. Oh, I had one other—I got another picture over there some place where I showed two—that Eleanor Lush, who we talked about that actually the program started with, her and another person using a piece of our equipment to look at roofing tar from Venezuela. It was suspected that something was hidden in the roofing tar. Why are you buying roofing tar from Venezuela, which probably the cost of shipping it is as much as the material’s worth? So here at PNNL, Dick Papas and Jim Skorpik had built some equipment—some acoustic equipment—to look and find chemicals that—actually it was originally developed for looking at chemical weapons. And in this particular case, it was for looking through this tar keg to see if somebody had accidentally hidden a rubber ball in the middle or something. But anyway, we worked on several cases. [DEVICE BEEPING] With customs. And it was always kind of fun. I was called in on one case where I was able to go and testify, was the first to testify for the US government against some smugglers. So it was kind of interesting, back in Brooklyn. Anyway we had sort of a fun life. The HAMMER site, like I say, sort of came as a godsend for doing this. They were built up to handle and move materials around in a method—and they’re on the Hanford site, so you can actually use the radioactive materials. And of course we used not only the weapons-grade which we talked about several times, but we also used the commercial items, because those are ones you’re going to find most often. That is the cesiums, cobalts, things of that nature. We have those in the training as well, and the people have to identify what they are. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: You mentioned testifying—was that because--just as an expert witness? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Or were you actually involved in--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: No, no, just as an expert witness. Yeah, no, no just as an expert witness on what we had analyzed. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: How has your sort of day-to-day work changed over the time that you’ve been working at HAMMER? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Oh, not—I’m just pretty much retired and I get to do the fun things I want to do, and I get to do kind of an outreach and talk to the people that we’ve with over the years, the various agencies: the State Department, the Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of the Defense and Homeland Security. I really don’t do much anymore. If a class comes in, I’ll maybe give a talk on nuclear smuggling and maybe a couple of other little talks. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: When did you retire, or start to retire? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Pardon? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: When did you start to retire? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: 2011. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Okay. What was your sort of day-to-day before that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Well, when we had the classes, of course it was—phew—early morning to late afternoon, but it was a labor of love, setting them up and getting all the people. When the training went on, I one time, somebody asked, well how many experts do you use? And I counted up, I think on one class, 27 that you would run into. 27 different experts you’d run into in that class. We had people from Oak Ridge, for instance, Steve Baker would come down and that’s where the uranium enrichment was, and so he would talk about uranium enrichment. We had the MSIC people come in—Missile Space Intelligence Command—come in and they’d talk about some of the missile systems that we had. So I guess I really wouldn’t call it work; it was kind of fun. And then HAMMER is even more fun. I go out there and it’s sort of like a large family that you blend into. My wife keeps saying now, when are you going to really retire? I think that day is coming pretty soon. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: You mentioned going around looking for fishing spots when you first got here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Yes! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Is that a big hobby of yours? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Yes, I love to fish. To me, this was a very interesting and exciting area because I went up there in the desert area where these—all of the sudden, there’s water and there’s fish in these lakes. I watched the people catch them and how they did it. I’d go down and talk to them. So then we’d begin doing that, and got with friends, and we’d walk into a little lake called Virgin Lake, which is about a mile walk-in, so there’s not a lot of people. Haven’t been there lately, though. But, yeah, I love fishing, and my dad took my brother and I out. I think—I think he said we were either three or four when we first started going out and going fishing. I remember him buying these old bamboo fly rods, which would be very expensive now. And I remember walking and holding the tip down, snapping the tip off on the ground. My dad said, no, no, Bill, you have to hold it up. So that was in Idaho, when we lived in Idaho. I guess I’ve been sort of lucky: I’ve always found something that was fun to do. Even when I went down to NASA, I remember they came out looking, like I say, for seven of us from around the United States to work on a particular project. It was kind of a thrill to be able to go down and sort of play and have all the toys you ever wanted as a young engineer. It just seemed like my life said, well, here’s the next thing, here’s the next thing. So I guess the next thing probably is we’ll maybe settle down even more. Maybe one day do a full retirement. Although I still like talking about nuclear smuggling and talking with the people. When I was in the Czech Republic, and actually it was December of ’95, and we were talking with the criminal police there. So I spewed out all we’d heard, about Josef Wagner and any co-conspirators and stuff. And they said, oh, well, we thought we were going to tell you about that. No. But it was interesting because they were really into it. And when the breakup of the Soviet Union occurred, I said, what have you noticed? He said, well, people think they’re free. But he says, people think they’re free to do whatever they want, so we’ve seen an increase in murders and really hard crime. Which I never thought about, because under the dominant rule, nobody dared do anything. Then after they broke up and were free, they could do all these different things. So the criminal police actually had their hands more full, I guess. The Josef Wagner case was just a very special case. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: How have the Tri-Cities changed in the time you’ve lived here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Oh! More people in my fishing spots! Yeah, the Tri-Cities have gotten many more people. In fact, we live up on Keene Road, which is part of Richland, going toward Yakima there. The traffic has gotten almost unbearable at rush hour. I mean, it really is amazing. When we built our house, 1990, Keene Road was a little two-lane road that did this. As you drove along the road, and if you come up over this rise, you’d see our house. But the house would look like it was a stick figure, just looked like—because you would look through one octagonal window, straight through to another octagonal window. So it looked like there was no depth to the house. It was a very strange feeling. And then the next thing you know—whoom—then they came and bladed out the road, made it a four-laner, and the first thing happened was they cut it a little too steep at the end of our driveway, so our driveway went like that. And I had to call them up because it snowed and I said, I just slid into the road. So they came back and fixed it. City of Richland has been very good. But we’ve certainly enjoyed it, like I say, we’ve had a pretty good life here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Have you followed local politics at all? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: A little bit, but not too much. I mean, the national politics have been something interesting to watch, kind of fun to watch. I always watch the news and hear the people say—it’s a very fun thing to be watching and going over. Anyway, I don’t get involved in politics very much. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Okay. Let’s see. I guess that’s most of our sort of preset questions here. Anything else that comes to mind that I haven’t thought to ask? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Hmm. I’m just trying to think of some of the fun little projects that we’ve done in the past and the people who we’ve worked with. Seems like we’ve always had some—well, it was kind of interesting, because I used to do quite a bit of research. When I was at NASA, we built these large laser systems for what they call a coaxial laser system—for actually looking at wind for probably 20 kilometers out or so. Very, very accurate. And when I came here, one of the first things I did was I went back and I got with our old NASA people and set up a program to scan San Gorgonio Pass with an airplane flying over and taking the wind velocity measurements, so you could see. And now there’s large wind turbines down there—wind turbine farm and stuff. And that’s what we wanted to assess, was how deep did that maritime layer go as it came down from the coast. So that was sort of fun, as it led to the stuff we did at NASA with the laser Doppler systems. But we did it out here at PNNL. And then I got to work with a fellow named Jim Davidson. He was over our national security back then, and probably one of my very favorite bosses, if you will. So with him, I got to be—my training—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission training—and with Jim, I actually became one of the US advisors for the International Atomic Energy List, which is now the Nuclear Suppliers Group. So all those things you wanted to keep away from Russia and China, there was a thing called CoCom, which was NATO plus Japan, minus Iceland. And we’d meet in a secret place in France and in England and go over all these lists. So one of the jobs that I had with Jim was to work on that International Atomic Energy List, to be sure that we’d try to keep special things away from Russia, so that they couldn’t reprocess materials, or they couldn’t do this, or they didn’t have that, per se. So that was actually kind of fun. And I think that I probably enjoyed Jim as much as anybody that I’ve ever done—he’s retired now. I think I mentioned, he’d be an interesting one to talk to because he gave perhaps the best tour I’ve ever had of going out through the Area and dealing with the old reactors. Anyway, he got us involved in a lot of very interesting, interesting things. Oh, one—do we have time to bring over a picture? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Yeah, sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Maybe we can take it. This is just a short picture of some of the things that go on at the HAMMER site in training. These are many of the people who are involved in the training. This particular picture, I think was interesting because we’re holding an eight-kilogram ball of Tungsten, which has the same density as plutonium. As a result, you can see how small that is. So if you’re smuggling, if I’m smuggling drugs, I’m going to have a large area. But for smuggling nuclear materials—the special nuclear materials, you don’t need a lot of space. Where with drugs, you’re going to smuggle it and you’re going to have it where you’re going to have take it open, put it back in, take it open, put it back in. With weapons of mass destruction, you may only make one carry. So it may be completely sealed up. Maybe welded. But the size of the materials that you’re going to be dealing with don’t have to be a lot. Not going too much detail, this is over in Holland, when we were in Holland. You see the big Dutch shoe, there. I don’t know if you can see that or not. Oh, this is nice. This is where we—one of the buildings that was turned over to HAMMER from the State Department. Karen Nicola. Oh, shoot. Jim Spracklen. Jim Spracklen was at DoE for a long time and he really was a blessing for HAMMER. He just has been so supportive of everything at HAMMER. Of course there’s the missile again. Paul Van Son was the State Department person. I believe that this one was where they handed over the State Department building that we took a tour in the other day. So, yeah, at the signing of the turnover here, this is Karen McGinnis, who’s the head of HAMMER, the director of HAMMER, who’s very, very supportive of all these activities. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Do you know how she became director of HAMMER? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: No, I don’t. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: We’ll have to see if we can get her in and ask her. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Yeah. I’m not sure if I want to show that one too much. This is a picture down in Mexico where we’re putting on a little bit of training for the Mexican National Police. They loaned me their gun. So I look like I know what I’m doing. Anyway, that was some Weapons of Mass Destruction training that we did. This is the interesting picture, to me. This is Eleanor Lusher. This is the lady at Customs Intel in New York that actually started us getting involved in the training aspects of it. And that’s the roofing tar from Venezuela that we went up to inspect. This is an ultrasound system that was put together by Dick Papas and Jim Skorpik at PNNL to evaluate if there was things that were accidentally being left inside of the roofing tar. Roofing tar is an ideal thing, because you can’t go through with an x-ray or anything. So if there’s something inside of it, you can hide it very well and it can get through. Except if you’re using an ultrasound system. Ultrasound goes right on through it. So it’s really kind of interesting. But anyway that’s one of the few pictures we have of Eleanor. And Eleanor, I believe, retired this year—in fact, at the first of the year. But she was central in bringing us a lot of cases. Remember the case we talked about in New York and stuff? That’s where we got it from. Now, I should point out—that’s one of the interesting things that we’ve done over the years. We’ve worked for a lot of different sponsors. We began working with Eleanor here at Customs back then. Of the thousands of customs people that we’ve dealt with, they’ve all been the nicest people you could ever imagine. So, one after the other after the other, very, very nice people to work with. So I guess I take my hat off to Customs and training their people to deal with people on an everyday basis. This is a picture by the missile that’s out there. That’s Bill Gates. He came in. He’s actually kind of excited about seeing the missile. He was actually excited about old Von Braun stories that I told. Anyway, kind of cute. Did you get that picture? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Camera woman: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Good. During the training, we use a lot of different types of material—training material. This particular one here is actually put out by the Department of Energy, Dr. Noel Medding. If you want to know everything about radiation in a single sheet while you’re eating, this was an ideal training aide. We always tell people at your Thanksgiving you can put this down in front of you and say, well, when Aunt Martha takes her mammogram, she’s going to be receiving so much radiation. And if the conversation dies down, you’ve got something to talk from. This particular one is a radiation playing deck. We always say it’s a field training manual for radiation. It has four chapters, thirteen pages in each chapter, for a total of 52. So each one of them actually gives you a different item on radiation. You didn’t get one the other day. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Camera woman: What’s that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: That’s for you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Camera woman: Oh. Thank you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: We also built some other cards which don’t have very many left on, but rather than having hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades as your suits, you had missile, chemical, biological and nuclear. So you had your four Weapons of Mass Destruction as your primary suits. In fact—see if I can open this one up. So each one of these, you’ll deal with the different technologies associated with them: missiles, or chemicals or biologicals. Like this one here says Nuclear Terrorism. If terrorists have it, they will use it. Oops. Well. One of the things we do train on—this is going to be hard to see—the Man Portable Air Defense Systems. Man PADs. We heard about those an awful lot. Two things when we say weapons of mass destruction, we also normally cover Man PADs and we cover radiological dispersal devices—in other words, just casting radioactive material around. Can cause quite a bit of economic damage. Well, maybe I left it in the bag. Oh, for crying out loud. I could have searched that all day long. Okay, here you go. Here’s my two favorite cards. Of course, we have the card with the picture of the SCUD missile coming in. And then we have a card—this is Pat O’Brien, State Department, the one that’s helped with all the buildings. And he and I are over there in Poland, and this is one of the SCUD missile engines that they left in Poland. Most of the SCUDs were destroyed in these countries. State Department let them keep a couple of engines and a couple of missiles, you know, for the museums. That’s kind of embarrassing, huh? This one—special nuclear material signatures. It says gamma and neutron—tells you what plutonium has, and what uranium has. Plutonium has gamma and neutron you’re going to detect, and uranium is going to have the gamma you’re going to detect. But if you play it left-handed, like a left-hand person would, then what you’re going to see is going to be the little nuclear weapon. If you play it like a right-hand person would be, you’d see spades. Okay, these are very special, so be sure and don’t lose them. The cards turned out to be probably one of the best training aids that we had. Because people—you give them this big book, or you give them this disc, people end up not looking at them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Then the Field Exercise building, which you were in the other day. This actually came as kind of a surprise to me. We’d worked on getting the State Department to support that for a long time. And the State Department always wanted to support it—the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Fund. But we finally got them to build the building. Then they were going to dedicate the building, and they said Bill, you got to come, you got to come, Bill. And the reason they wanted me to come was because they put my name in there saying—dedicating the building to me. So now I have to make a big deal out of it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: That’s great. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Anyway. You get it all? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Camera Woman: Yup, got it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: This is a nice one, because here’s Sam Volpentest. Sam, who as we mentioned, was the thinker behind the HAMMER site. And so there he is, and there I am, showing some of the different sensing units that we have. Remember we talked about the Bulgarian seizure and the people that made that seizure noted around the world? Anyway, there they are. There’s two of the three guys. The other guy had retired. But they came out and gave us a talk. Here’s Jim Spracklen and I. Like I say, Jim is one of them that’s been behind this program forever and now runs the RADACAD program. Really, really a good guy. This is the Dutch. This is Pat O’Brien, and he’s the one that built the Port of Entry Building that we saw the other day, NDF. And he’s the one that sent—oh, just say he’s one that’s provided a lot of the support tools. If we look at it, Customs provided people for training. The Pentagon provided some funding and selected the nations. The State Department provided all kinds of training materials, so all of those—most of those Conex boxes, the big Conex boxes you saw out there, and a lot of the equipment out there were originally purchased by the State Department for our group program. Then this one here is just one of the storyboards. Let’s see what else we got here. Paul Van Son. Of course the famous picture of the missile coming in. The missile was kind of a cute story. I came in, and somewhere or other the local news found out about it. So they had the missile and we were trying to put it into a little building out there. I never even thought about this, but—it was Tri-City Herald, and they had the people there. Next thing I know is they’re cornering me and turning me around to talk to me. Next thing I knew, I turned around and one of the ladies jumped up on the missile and was riding the missile. So it was kind of cute. But they didn’t know if they would be let to do that or not. So this is kind of nice, because you’ve got a nice picture of Sam Volpentest in there. Earlier, we had one of Karen McGinnis, the director of HAMMER. Patty Murray. The HAMMER site’s had all the political people out there, it seems like, for a long time. They stop in. Very supportive. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Well we can hopefully maybe get a scan of these at some point. If you could maybe bring back in another time, we could get our intern team to scan copies of these. Then we could have a version of them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Yes. You certainly can. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Great. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Well, let me just say, this is one of my favorite ones. This is an Army program for the 120 millimeter Abrams M1 Tank Cannon. And this was a special—very special projectile that we built at PNNL and fired, actually, down at Socorro, New Mexico. But this is what we call a streak camera picture. Normally, when you take a picture you open the shutter and you open it and you get a shot. In this particular case, you got a shutter that’s open and you strip the film across. So depending on how fast you strip the film across, you get a different picture coming out. But the projectile there is going at like a mile a second. So you got to do something pretty fast. So anyway that’s one of my favorite pictures. And this is the only time that this—you can sort of see that the projectile is still exhausting out of here, sort of like a rocket exhaust. And this is the first time that this had ever been accomplished. In 1989. So VAGAS stood for Very high burn rate per pellet And Gas Assisted System. So it was sort of an acronym. You can tell it’s not spelled like the normal Vegas. But I love this picture and in fact I had to run around looking—I had to take this out of my house to bring it in. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: Great. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: I told my wife, she said it was okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> O’Reagan: All right, well, thanks so much for being here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX118553515"> Cliff: Hey, thanks for inviting me. You guys didn’t think you’d get bored to death like this, probably. </div> Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:10:41 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 248 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 300 Area Boiling Water Reactor Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1976-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1976-2011 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Elderkin, Chuck Simpson, Chuck Sandusky, Bill Grier, Jim Drake, Ron Lusher, Eleanor Fay, Ed Wiley, Bill Strauss, Harlan Brien, Pat O' Conway, Terry Church, Andrew Gates, Bill McGinnis, Karen Volpentest, Sam Papas, Dick Skorpik, Jim Baker, Steve Nicola, Karen Spracklen, Jim Van Son, Pau Medding, Noel O’Brien, Pat Murray, Patty Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with William Cliff Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-07-25: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Richland. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 5/5/2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. 300 Area Boiling Water Reactor Department of Energy Fishing HAMMER Site Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) NASA Nuclear Regulatory Commission Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Richland (Wash.) Volpentest, Sam, 1904-2005 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F28a2a31d0a10e6436fafce8d65fec651.jpg b9619b036e3525d491cc95915e251e35 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb699b96eac222f7a141bc116875ae9d2.mp4 2afe44cc1de41ef0a133dfaf1f298ffc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Douglas O' Reagan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Maynard Plahuta Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Maynard Plahuta on Thursday, I guess it’s—sorry, what is the date today? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: 28th. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Is it the 28th? Okay. April 28th, 2016. This interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Mr. Plahuta about his experiences working on the Hanford site and living in the Tri-Cities. To start us off, could you please pronounce and spell your name for us? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yes. It’s Maynard Plahuta. Maynard is M-A-Y-N-A-R-D, and Plahuta is P-L-A-H-U-T-A. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Thank you. Just to start off, could you tell us a little bit about your life before you came to the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Okay. Well, I was born in a little old farming community in Wisconsin—a little dairy farming community. Big population of 200 people. Then I grew up there on the farm most of the time and went on to college. Went to the University of Wisconsin, first got my undergrad work, and then later I went back and got my master’s in business administration. In between those two times, I worked for General Motors, the AC spark plug plant in Oak Ridge—not Oak Ridge, I’m sorry—Oak Park, Wisconsin, which was the Titan missile program for the Air Force, the guidance system—the gyro system. So then I went back to grad school and then joined up with the Atomic Energy Commission and was assigned out here at Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What attracted you to the AEC? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, I think part of it was the interest in kind of science and industry and all of that sort of thing. The people from Argonne Lab at the Chicago Operations office came to interview at the campus there. I and another fellow were invited to then go back to Argonne for a further interview, and I was one of the two that was selected to join. At the time, I didn’t know where I would be located. They asked, well, if you had a preference. We aren’t going to pick particular places, but if you had a preference, list the three sites that the Atomic Energy Commission was at that I would enjoy. So I said, well, of course, the first one was at the Argonne Lab, close by home there. And I don’t remember which I put second or third, but it was either Richland, Washington or Schenectady, New York. I ended up being in Schenectady for a while basically. But I was assigned out here at Richland, and it was interesting because he says, well, you know, this is not the western—this isn’t the Evergreen State. And I said, well, I learned that by looking up a little more information on Hanford out in the desert. So I came out here with the idea that probably these assignments would be for one year. Because we were on what they called the technical and administrative intern program. So, I was selected on that intern program, and said probably be there a year, and probably no longer, because we’ll probably assign you somewhere else. Well, I came, and I was here until ’71 and then I went back to Schenectady for four years, and came back and was here ever since. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What sort of jobs were you working on then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, initially—my graduate work was in labor relations and in personnel management and that sort of thing. At that time, they didn’t call it human resources, they called it personnel management. So I was, first year out here, probably in the personnel department for about a year. And then that’s when the whole diversification program started here in 1963 or ’64. And I was assigned to look at the unique use permit and work for a fellow by the name of Paul Holstead who had the responsibility for all the lab operations as far as the Atomic Energy Commission was concerned. That was very interesting. So that was all start of this whole arrangement with Battelle being selected to operate the Pacific Northwest Lab. Now, at that time it wasn’t called a national lab yet; it was just Pacific Northwest Lab. And they had that particular use permit, which is no longer in existence, but it was a real ideal situation. And then that led into what they called the Consolidated Lab where they could do private work as well as the government work and all of that. So I administered that contract, then, for a few years, or until I went back to Schenectady. Then I was back in personnel management in Schenectady, though—labor relations area, under Rickover’s program, and that was very interesting. Then I came back here again in ’65 and was in personnel for a while but then back at the laboratory for a while. And I worked on that for—oh, gosh, quite a few years, because I had a total of 35 years in. But most of the time was with the laboratory, but then later on, I was asked to take over the responsibilities for the DOE—at that time was already DOE—and the site infrastructure. You know, the roads, the utilities, the sewer plants, the warehouse buildings, the railroads, the—all the utilities, just like running a whole city. It was not the operations of those infrastructure; it was more the capital improvements and the projects that needed to be done. Either new roads or new utilities or whatever it might be. That was for—I don’t know—four, five, six years. That also included some of the relationship with the tribes in the cultural resource programs and that sort of activity. But then the other manager asked us, jeepers, you know, I would really like to set up something we never had here at Richland before. That was sort of a governmental relations program. So he asked if I would be willing to do that. So the last—oh, probably about the last six years of my career, I was in what they call governmental-congressional relations, dealing—almost daily basis with congressional staff. Primarily congressional staff, some within the state government as well, and the local government, particularly in those sorts of things. So I retired doing that job in ’98. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Great. Let’s back up. Could you tell us about this diversification program? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, yeah. That was really interesting, because what the idea was—that is when General Electric decided not to continue with their contract. Up until that time, General Electric had one contract for whole site operations. So the idea was two-fold. GE was not particularly interested in continuing doing that particular work, and the community was going through—yes, they still are—the diversification and further economic development for the community. So, there was a big effort there to break up the whole big contract into—I think it was five or six different segments. It was all up for bid, and various people were bidding for it. The laboratory, though, was separated as one of those segments. That was the first one to be authorized, and Battelle came in then operations in July of ’65. But up until—during that whole year, I was kind of working on part of the bid package going out and working on that. But not extensively. But then after the bid was accepted from Battelle, and they put an operation in, it got into this matter of doing this. The diversification program itself was dependent much on what these bidders would propose to supplement the economy here in the Tri-Cities. In fact, that’s how this WSU campus—you may be aware—was part of one of the contractors’ business, that they’d build this facility. Up until that time, GE had a little building down where the bank is—the National Bank down there by the Federal Building—and that wasn’t built either yet—to service the program that they established, their educational program, which is very unique because there wasn’t really any nuclear engineering classes in universities—or very few. So they really brought tech people in and really gave them a good background and education in nuclear operations and so on. Now, I said the Federal Building wasn’t built then. It was built then. It was in the process of being built when I came out here in ’63. So that diversification was the spinoff of a lot of new types of business here in the Tri-Cities. I mean, Exxon Nuclear, which now later is now part of AREVA out here at the site, the fuel fabrication. That started out a spinoff from some of the activity there. There was just a great amount of enthusiasm at that time, because, I think, there was worries that the government will fold up and the city will kind of dry up and blow away so to speak. So that was a very interesting period. There was some very interesting discussions, very interesting foresights of what might happen. A number of those didn’t survive. There were some things—isotope development was one at that time that was a little bit ahead of its time, I think. But there was—the airport was improved by that. What’s now the Red Lion in town, but the Hanford House, it was called then, I think it was—no, Desert Inn. The Desert Inn at that time was a brand new building they put up at that time. So it was a different time, and rather unique type of activity that was going on in this community at that time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Were these discussions going on in the newspapers, or just sort of hand-shake meetings? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, they were pretty well open discussions about what they wanted. And there was quite a bit of publicity about the fact of what some of these contractors—potential contractors were offering. That was exciting for the people, because some of these were new developments. Like the whole campus here, an original building that was part of one of the contractors’ bids. And the hotels and the stockyards over in Wallula over there, that was another one. And, gee, I can’t remember all of them, but there were a number. I know the isotope development thing—the isotope separations, I could really say, was one that didn’t quite make it. But anyway, it was a period of time when people were looking forward into the future and what might come, and looking at different types of work, and not so dependent just on the government here. Now, of course, we’re still quite dependent on the government here, and that’s been—what, 30 years—oh, more than that. That was 1965, so that’s been a long, long time ago. But a lot has progressed, obviously, from that time. I remember coming here—I wasn’t married at the time. I met my wife here. But, gee, if people wanted to go shopping, they’d either go to Walla Walla or Yakima or something. You know, there was nothing here. The mall out there wasn’t developed. It was—very little here to—and about the restaurants, you’d go over to Prosser to the Red Barn or something if you wanted a good meal. You could always find a hamburger shop here or something like that, but it was quite different then. Of course, my wife grew up here. She was only five years old when her parents came from Schenectady, New York with GE. She can remember—gosh, when hardly anything was going on, and families would just get together because they were from—god, all over the country. So many of them didn’t have any family here, so they created their own families, so to speak. But, yeah, that diversification effort was a great effort. There was much success, much success. I think a lot of what was learned there has been helpful and useful for the community. And I do have to give a credit, though, to Battelle and some of the forward-thinking that they did on what their operations were, very successful. And this Consolidated Lab which most people even in this community don’t understand or recognize, but it was very unique. There was a fellow that was with GE, went over with Battelle, of course, when they took over, by the name of Wally Sale. He was their finance director. Tremendous guy. He and Sam Tomlinson and the DOE—or AEC—I call it DOE, but it was the AEC then—were both very, very instrumental in getting this unique idea established and working there, where it was a fair amount of discipline and very good audit-type processing and very excellent means of determining that everything was legitimate, so to speak. That the accounting was very precise. It was a unique situation. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: So you were still working with the AEC while you were working on that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Okay. So they were—even though they weren’t sort of a bidder, or in direct— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: No, no. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: They were still involved— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, they were the organization or the entity that was accepting these bids and proposals going out and diversify the area. That was—I should also mention, that was a lot to do with some of the local community leaders here, though, too, was pushing this idea with the government that, no, we got to depend on more than just the US government to keep this economy going. So there were guys like Sam Volpentest and others—Bob Philips and other people—who were working closely with our two senators. They were actively involved. Magnusson and Jackson—Scoop Jackson and Maggie. Very, very obvious. And they both held very high level positions in the government at that time. I mean, they were—there was some thought for a while about Scoop Jackson even running for President. So they both were elevated in the structure of the politicians in the DC area. So, there was a great support there from our local state senators, particularly. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Right. So, while we’re still in this early period—you said you’d done some research before you got here. Did it match your expectations? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, yeah. I didn’t really have a whole lot of expectations, really. I mean, I knew that eastern Washington was quite dry, but I didn’t know quite a lot about it. I can remember, I was interested in geography when I was in elementary school, even, and knowing the Plains and the desert area, generally, and the wheat-growing area here, and that sort. But not too much—very extensive. Yeah, I think I surprised the AEC people out of Argonne when I says, well, yeah, I realized it was dry and a desert. They said, well, jeepers, most people think of Washington as just being green, you know, the Evergreen State, and don’t even think about it possibly being a desert out there. And when I would talk to some of my friends back in Wisconsin as I was going out, the common words were, oh, you’re gonna be out there in the mountains and you’re gonna be out there in the greenery and all the evergreens. I say, no, no, I’m gonna be out there where the wheat grows in eastern Washington. Really? So I think that’s a misconception a lot of people in the eastern US have of Washington—eastern Washington, you know. They’re correct on the western side, but not on the eastern side. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What sort of housing did you live in when you got here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, I roomed with a fellow by the name of Holland St. John. He was a teacher at Chief Joe Junior High here, and the tennis coach there. So I did that until I met my wife and got married, and we then lived in a B house—you know, the government B house, the famous [UNKNOWN], with the landlord on the other side—very friendly people, people originally from Tennessee, I believe they were. Just great, great folks to be with. We rented that until—because we got married in ’67—until I went back to Schenectady. And then when we came back, I bought a home here in North Richland. Now, currently live in a house that my wife basically grew up with. It was an H house. We remodeled the whole thing so it doesn’t look anything—all that was remained the same was the four outside walls and one wall inside. And we added on. Anyway, it was one of the government homes that I was originally renting an H house with this roommate. And then when we got married, I rented a B house. And the original H house was—Holland St. John was one of the fellows, and the other guy was Sherman. We had the three of us, three single guys who were using that part where they—again, the landlord was on the other side. Wonderful people. That was kind of unique, because when I first came and went looking, I thought, this A house, B house, that are for rent. I was like, oh, what’s an A, B or an H house, C house? But it didn’t take long to figure out, okay, that’s just the nomenclature that was being used for these various types of homes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Right. How did you meet your wife? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: It was actually through church. There was group in our church—it was the Christ the King Catholic church, and it was a singles group. That’s how I met her. So we got married and we’ve had four children. They’re all grown adults now, of course. And we have seven grandkids. Six of them are girls, and finally the one that came along is a boy—the last one. But my two daughters—two of my daughters live here in town with their family. And I got a son in Seattle and another one just south of Portland in Tualatin—suburb of Portland. They all—I’m very proud of—they all went on through college. One has got a PhD, the other two of them got a master’s degree. One—and probably the one that’s doing the best, financially, has got just a master’s degree. But the three girls and a boy, and my son has got his master’s out of Purdue in engineering. My one daughter, the youngest one, has got her degree out of Gonzaga in engineering. The other one’s got her PhD in gerontology and the other’s got her master’s in early childhood development. So they’re all doing well. So I’m quite proud of them—of course, as most parents are. You know how they are, parents. They always think their kids are the greatest in the world. So anyway, that’s kind of where I came from—Wisconsin, and all the way out to the west coast and had not been really in the northwest prior to coming out here. I had been in California and some of those areas, but not in the northwest. You know, it’s an enjoyable place to live. But as a lot of people, as you know, here, some of them came for just a short time and they remain here forever. I married here. So that’s probably the same for me. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Part of what we’re trying to document is sort of the social life around the area, too. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Oh, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Were church activities sort of a large part of your social life at that point? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, quite a bit. And I was also involved, though—that was before I even met my wife, Yvonne. The little town I grew up in was quite a little interesting town as far as baseball. The area back there in these little towns would have their teams, and they’d play each other. So I was most familiar with baseball, and I had played baseball as a kid. So I helped one of the fellows who, just by coincidence, was also from Wisconsin, from the Milwaukie area. And he was coaching his kids in Little League baseball. So I helped out on that. Then later on, when my kids got going in the youth soccer program and that was when youth soccer first started, I was quite active in getting it into the high schools and so on, because that was not very popular, not really—like the case of much soccer in the area. So I’m on the Hanford High School support team—what do you call it? The—hmm, I can’t think of the title now. But anyway the supporters have their support efforts to keep them going. So the social life was pretty much tied in with the church, but not exclusively. Then we—there’d be these events we’d have. We’d go over to the coast or do things together, as a group—hiking. Not as much hiking, probably, as visiting various locations and sightseeing and that sort of thing. So that was kind of pretty much—but the housing was interesting, too, because you hear these stories of people going, and when they get home from work, the earlier days, before my time, going into the wrong house because they got the wrong place. But I can understand that. I mean, it was quite unique. My wife has some interesting stories about how she grew up and talking about what was family life. Their family was way back in New York. They went back once when she was about five or—no, I think seven, she said. And she had, at that time, four sisters—I mean four siblings, and another one with her mother on the way in her pregnancy. And took all the—tied into the car and drove all the way back. Spent more time going and coming than they did back there. But it was a case where she—in the case that they got to know your neighbors well, it was friendly, it was safe, everybody—kids all played out. Where we’re living now, we’ve got just that little funny park in front of our place over by the river there. Her father was an accomplished skater, so he decided when he had an opportunity to get the house along the river here, that’s the one he wanted to take it. Not realizing that not too many winters where there’s ice on the snow. But he was the state champion in New York City on ice racing. So he’s got quite a bit of medals and stuff. So she talks about the farm—I mean, the families that would get together on holidays and whatever. It was just a different type of lifestyle. I didn’t experience that myself, but it’s interesting just hearing her talk about those things. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Yeah, we’ll have to bring her in at some point. We’re trying to get as many people who sort of grew up here for that as well. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, she was only five years old and she came in ’47. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Okay. Yeah, we’d definitely like to interview her at some point. Okay, so let’s see. You were working on the diversification stuff and then you went back to Schenectackey—Ss- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Schenectady. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Schenectady, yes. And then you came back in—I have it written down here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: ’71. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: ’75. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: ’75, I mean. I left in ’71. April of ’71, back in ’75. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: And at that point you were working on the—let’s see here—the DOE site infrastructure stuff, or was that later? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, that was much later. I was on the laboratory stuff. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: It was shortly after. About the first year or so was more in the personnel and that area. But then when this whole diversification effort came forward. I think my master’s degree in business and all this kind of led into—and I did have quite a bit of educational experience in contract management and contract administration, too. I have that—I don’t know if that played a role or not, but it helped me, I know, in terms of—and it was a whole new type of contract relationship that this Consolidated Lab and the use permit and all that had. So it was unique and interesting just from that standpoint alone. So yeah, at that time up until ’71, it was there, and then came back, worked in the personnel area, in the Rickover program. That’s an interesting story, too, because Rickover was a unique individual, very unique. But his staff was made up of military men, contractor people, and DOE or AEC at that time. And there was no distinction. I mean, you would have a contractor person right along with you and so on. He considered it all just one. It was very unique, in terms of the contractor and working relationships. But yet, what was so familiar—you could have these working—I shouldn’t say one by one, it would be even offices or something. But yet, he was very instrumental in saying, I don’t want any social activities between you. So as much as going to the cafeteria at noon, there was a section where the AEC people sat, and another whole section where the contractor people sat. And the military guys could be with either one, but they would—the military people were associated with AEC office—the civilian people. So in that office, there was no distinction whether you were military or a civilian. But in the contactor side, of course they were all civilians. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Is that an anti-corruption effort, or--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, yeah, and I guess avoiding any kind of potential conflict of interest and friendships, so that you got pretty soon with somebody, well, I’ll do you a favor, and vice versa. Very, very, very strong on that sort of thing. But yet, he himself seemed just one team. It was just like a football team—you’re the receiver and you’re the lineman. You’ve got different jobs. It was unique, and there’s some interesting stories about Rickover, too, but I won’t get into those. But those are very interesting times. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Did you ever get to know any of the contractor people? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Oh, yeah. You would know them on the business side. Definitely. Oh, yeah. You’d work with them every day. Some more, because if it was in your area of responsibility, certainly, you’d be working with them. But, boy, not socially. There was no—I mean, that was a voodoo if you had any social-type activities with the contractors. That was not to his liking. That makes sense, I mean, it would just avoid any possible conflict of interest and that sort of thing. It was an interesting time. But it’s kind of like a lot of people say. I went into military, I’m glad, but I’m glad I’m out. It’s kind of that sort of same analogy. But it was a great experience. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What was Rickover’s title? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Rickover? Admiral. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Admiral, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Admiral Rickover, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: So what was his exact sort of authority within the— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: He headed up the whole nuclear navy. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Oh, I see. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: He was really up there. And in fact, when—I think—which President was it? Maybe it was Kennedy—no, it wasn’t Kennedy, it was after. Anyway, when he was giving some kind of address somewhere, he recognized—I know, I’m Rickover’s boss, but really we’re all—Rickover’s my boss. And that happened with Schlesinger, too, when he was appointed the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, when he was there. He says, oh, yeah. And he made the same kind of remark. I don’t know if it was those exact words. But Rickover was a very powerful individual in terms of his authority. He was kind of all by himself, because, again, the nuclear navy was unique, and so he was a brilliant man. There was no question about it. He would pick just the top-notch-quality technical people that he could to run his program. The safety was so important to him. The wellbeing of all the military people, and the people who were in the submarines and that sort of thing. So he was really great. But he had a unique way of operations, there was no question about that. He was a strong, strong individual. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: So this period you were working in personnel is also, I understand, the period where you started having more women and minorities being hired on at the Hanford area. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: That is true. There was a big emphasis—the period—and following my part of the end there, but in that timeframe of particularly on the college campuses and recruiting minorities and women, which is good. But there was extreme interest in finding qualified minorities and women. There was certainly emphasized that it was—and that’s great. I mean, I go back and think in my thesis for my master’s degree in business administration, and I made some statement then, makes me sound almost like an anti-feminist now. But I was saying we really got to get more women into the technical side, but I wasn’t thinking far enough. We really think a lot—we don’t have many women technicians and stuff. So I was—at that time—thinking, oh, gosh, that they could be technicians. And not even thinking about being engineers, you know, getting their PhD in engineering. But at least, let’s—so I started out just—it wasn’t a matter of discrimination, where I said they should be technicians, because there were no—but I said, jeepers, let’s work on that. I had much of my emphasis—because my emphasis in my PhD was the shortage of technical people in the country. That was after Sputniks and some of those things going. We really needed development, work hard and see what we can do to get the people interested in getting into the math and sciences and that area. Some people kind of looked at me, you want women to be technicians or something? Yeah, but—you know. Now, I think, boy, I’d be discriminated—I mean, not discriminated, but considered, yeah, you’re very limited in your scope. You should be much broader than that. Yeah, that was a time when the Sputniks went off and these others, and we were quite behind and Kennedy wanted to get to the moon. And that, though, when I was in, was quite a bit later than that. Not quite a bit, but somewhat later, and the emphasis on trying to get minorities and women as much as we possibly could. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. So it didn’t—how—did it shape your work on personnel at that point, I guess--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, I don’t know if it shaped it so much, but back to my word of emphasis, to see if we really seek out qualified people. And not that they needed, necessarily, to have had extensive training, but look at their overall education experience and how well they were doing in school. In other words, that they were capable of picking up some of the technical. And whether they had that already knowledge was not quite as important as looking at what’s their basic—I don’t know, I guess I could say basic intellect—but their ability to really take on some of these things. It was not hard to find that. I mean, that doesn’t—I don’t want to imply that the women or minorities didn’t have that. They certainly did. But I think a lot of them, maybe themselves, didn’t realize that they really could do that, that there was no reason why they couldn’t. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: I was speaking with a reactor operator in a previous interview who had a degree, I think, in forestry or something non-sort-of-nuclear, but was still able to become a reactor operator. Was that sort of common that you saw, too, people moving into new fields to get on the Hanford site? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: That was not unusual, no. And that was particularly true—and I noticed you talk I was being on—with Rickover’s submarine program—we would hire then people who—and that happened out here awful lot—who had gone through the nuclear navy and were nuclear operators. We had a number of those people that didn’t want to stay in the Navy, but we hired on his staff—on Rickover’s staff—in our local office there at Schenectady. Now, that was a small office. The office was not very big. It was relatively small. But we hired a number of those people, and they were good, because they—and many of them had not gone to college yet. They got out of the Navy, they went to college, and then came back. I mean, I remember recruiting two or three or four of those types. And we recruited basically around northeast area, because we were in Schenectady, in some of the schools around there. Plattsburg, up in northern—which is a civil engineering school up in norther New York, and a number of areas there where we would find students who—not a lot of them, but who had gone back after they got out of service and didn’t want to make it a career, and got their degrees. Some would be in the technical fields; some would not be, necessarily. But most that we hired had degrees in some form of engineering or science or whatever. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Okay. So you were working with the nuclear navy program after you got back from Schenectady—pronouncing it again. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: No, it was at Schenectady I did the nuclear program. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Oh, I see, I see. Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: It’s at Schenectady. So I was here, then went to Schenectady for four years—not quite four years—three-and-three-quarters. And then back here again. And that’s when the diversification effort came about, when I came—no, no, no, I’ll take that back. That was back when I got back into some of the other Battelle work again, after I came back. The diversification was prior to going to Schenectady. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Okay. So then were you working for Battelle or were you still working for AEC? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: No, I always worked for the government, always. It was AEC, and then a short period of time, it was—what did we call it, even? There was a two-year period between AEC and Department of Energy. Research and Development Administration, I think. Yeah, that was what it was called—Research and Development Administration. And then it became—Congress passed it and developed the Department of Energy. And when they developed the Department of Energy, it expanded a little bit and took in, like Bonneville Power out here was part of that, and a number of activities like that. More than just atomic energy, and that’s when it got a little more involved in the laboratories and other forms of—quite a bit. Whether it be climate—today it’s climate change, or climate sciences, as it’s called, and other types of activity. More than just the nuclear itself. But there’s a misconception, when I say nuclear itself, this, as you’ve probably learned and know, that there’s all kinds of work that dealt with biology and the uptake of radioisotopes and all of that sort of thing. And we had the animal farm out here with the smoking dogs and the miniature pigs—miniature swine, and all of that activity. And then when I was administering the Battelle program and the Pacific Lab, I was also involved in a lot of interagency work. So I was—in fact, one of my responsibilities there was working with all the other agencies in the interagency agreements. And that meant that works like NASA and National Science—although they didn’t have a lot—the NRC, and EPA and others would have work done at the lab. And that would be not DOE work or AEC work, but it was their particular responsibility. But they had the capability and knowledge out here to do that. So there was a lot of that. In fact, I was involved in the whole setup of the LIGO facility out here, working with the National Science Foundation. And they had no knowledge of this—had to kind of guide them by hand as to what kind of arrangements they would have between the two agencies for them to use the Department of Energy land out here and their facility and all of that sort of thing. So from very early on, I spent somewhat—a fair amount of my time working with the National Science Foundation to getting the establishment of the LIGO facility out here. That was rather a long interesting experience, too, and all the unique things that went on doing that. So I just have this—even though I’m not a scientist or engineer by training, I have this kind of innate interest in science and engineering. That was what was so exciting about administering the lab contract, to see the whole variety of activity that goes on out there at the lab. And even, I think, the majority of the citizens of Richland and Tri-Cities do not understand, fully, the broad spectrum of knowledge and exposure to all elements of the nature of science and technology that’s available out here to the lab, and what all these experts they have in those all wide spectrum of activity. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: In your experience, how kid of secretive was any of this work? Was it all kind of out there? Was it kind of compartmentalized? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, there was a lot of secret-type stuff, but there wasn’t as much of that, I don’t think—now, I didn’t get involved too much in the production—in the plutonium production. Because the laboratory wasn’t so directly involved in that. That was the big load from the local office, was producing the plutonium, getting that back, and doing all of that sort of thing. The lab was supporting that, and doing that in the nuclear aspects of nuclear science, but there was a lot—an awful lot of work that was not secret. Now, they also were, though, heavily involved in many of the secret-type stuff. That relates primarily to their strong capability in detection—detecting things. I mean, you’re probably aware that the first moon rocks that came from the moon were here at the site, at the lab, to analyze those, to look at them, what was all made up of? The very first, first exposure to the moon rocks was right down here that Federal Building, anywhere in the United States that they were shown. That was quite a deal, too. So they have this tremendous capability. The labs were one of the first—this lab—the first to detect that Saddam Hussein had used chemical warfare for the Kurds back there, and that was way back time. Tremendous, and some interesting stories of how they collected some of this stuff and how they got these samples. I don’t know if we want to get into it. It was really, really interesting activities in that sort of stuff. Some of the things—it’s not classified anymore, but the people out at the lab or some of these guys would go over to Hong Kong, and they’d just brush against somebody to get a hair off of somebody that [UNKNOWN] just get a sample. Or a little dust and dirt came off their shoe, they might pick it up or something. Just the most minute quantities of things, and being able to analyze and determine. This laboratory out here was the first to decide how big the bombs are that China was dropping, to get the size of those through the air samples and all of that. There’s just this broad knowledge, or capability, I should say, in detection activities out here. It’s just amazing. And they’ve kept that up in the same way with their radioisotope program—the medical isotopes program. So much of that that many people don’t realize of all the spinoffs and benefits that have come from the knowledge that they gained. The first CD was developed out here at the lab. Much of that. I’m really interested in reading, now, Steve Ashby’s reports bimonthly in the Tri-City Herald about some of the activities going on at the lab. And I miss that. I used to get real knowledge about what they’re working on. Of course, it’s been 18 or 20 years since I’ve done that, but that was always fascinating, some of this advanced science and some of this stuff that was really—and a lot of it was development and a lot of it wasn’t. But they’d run into some dead-ends. They’d later on pick it up again, somebody would discover something else, and they’d finally go forth with it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: When did it become a national lab? Do you remember? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: God, I don’t remember the year that was. God, I should know that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: I’m sure we can look it up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, we can look it up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Was that while you were working? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Oh, yeah, yeah. It was—god, why should—because that was a big event. And we were pushing quite well at the time to try to get that done. Yeah. Golly, that just escapes me. I’ve got to—now that you mention it, I’ve got to go back and check that out and see when it was. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What was involved in that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, it was basically—I don’t want to call it a political decision, but it was basically, I think, recognizing the scope of activity that the labs were involved with. There wasn’t a great urge by the Washington, DC people or any to readily accept that title. I mean, it means a lot. So it was really a lot of background in what their involvement, and what type of work were they involved with, and what depth were they involved with and what types—and really focusing a lot on the basic science and that sort. And that’s where I think this lab was a little later than others, because this lab, up until the later times, was more of a support lab on production activities and not quite so much in basic. Now there was some basic on the real basic physics and something to deal with reactor operations. But they evolved and grew into this more basic science in a broad spectrum. I think that was one of the criteria. Now, I wasn’t involved in that decision at all. But my understanding is one of the criteria of establishing is that they got a well-established basic science capability. It’s not just specialized in one area or something. That’s where I think this lab was one of the later ones to be recognized as a national lab, because they built that up. And one of the things, too, that there wasn’t much knowledge of, because the production was such a secret thing, that that didn’t get much publicity or get papers written about it, and so on. So unfortunately the people that were working on that didn’t get the opportunity to have their findings and whatever presented to the whole world at national conferences and things like that. And that was also true, by the way, in Rickover’s program. Rickover was very cognizant—he was so afraid that the communists had this and that. So that was one of the real issue—there was basically almost the technical people at the capital laboratory, the Knolls Atomic Power Lab in Schenectady, almost unionized because they really felt that they were being shortchanged. They couldn’t give papers at technical conferences and stuff because Rickover was always afraid that you might reveal something that was highly secret about how to run a reactor and all that kind of stuff. So I think some of that same sort of information or background was kind of holding this lab back, because they just didn’t get the publicity in the scientific world, that their discoveries and their knowledge and their experiments and so on were well-known. And I think that helped, because the people in DC who were more knowledgeable of that found that to be a quality that was great for being recognized as a national lab. But a national lab, again, was the idea with broad spectrum of research. So that’s my take of it. You may talk to somebody else and they probably have a whole different presentation in terms of why or how and what was all involved. But just being on sort of the sidelines when that happened, that seemed to me to be what was the key point in helping determine. But there was some political push, no question. I mean, Maggie again, and Scoop—I think that was when they were on, and some of those. Why are you shortchanging us out there in the northwest? And we don’t have—that was the other thing, there was no national lab in the northwest. There was Livermore down in California, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Brookhaven. But why are you guys leaving us out in the north? And that was more form—not the science or technology, but, well, don’t treat us as second class citizens. Our lab up there is as good as yours. So there was some of that out there, too. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Did it impact your work, when it changed? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: No, I don’t think so. Well, I shouldn’t say that. One of the things that did happen in that regard—and I mentioned earlier about these interagency agreements and the capabilities of the lab—that stimulated more of that. Because I think being—once you’re recognized as a national lab, it just goes along with the credibility that might be associated with the work they’re doing. So I think that resulted in more of this interagency work with the various other government agencies. What it also did—and that was probably the most key element—is bringing in the tie with universities and so on. That was really—and locally, here, that was one of the interests of the people with the lab. They would really have liked to get more—and by the fact being recognized national lab, allowed the universities, and particularly some of the ones heavily involved in the science and engineering, would tend to favor going to a national laboratory. And the research that they were doing in cooperation with the lab itself was more significant, more meaningful to them. So I think that was probably one of the biggest benefits of becoming a national lab. Yet Battelle as an organization back in Columbus and others, they had a good reputation already of working closely with universities and so on. I mean, they were a research organization. And I think that also helped, too, because Battelle was operating this, and so the people who made these decisions realized that you have a topnotch research company—foundation there, that that’s their whole world. So I think that also helped in getting it. And certainly the lab pushed for that. There was no question about it. They wanted to be recognized as a national lab. So there was a combination of these things, I think they all kind of helped and worked together and made it happen. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: So when was it that your work with PNNL shifted over to the next role? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Oh, yeah. Well, let’s see. That was probably in more the early ‘90s. Where—yeah—because—yeah—early ‘90s is when I start going in there. So most of my career was with PNL and some of the labor relations. But early ‘90s, when I got into the infrastructure deal and doing all of that, and then later the last five years in the congressional and governmental relations activity, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Could you tell us about the infrastructure work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, that was quite interesting. That was frustrating. And by frustrating I mean, there was always—well, let’s not fix it until it’s broke. Oh, gosh, we used to have some—because it was still working. And particularly that was more emphasis as the role of the site here of not producing plutonium anymore—well, then do we need to keep it? Let’s see if it can limp along. Well, what it ended up, in my opinion, a lot of times, we paid a lot more by trying to fix things afterward. We didn’t really have a good preventative maintenance program. Finally got sort of a preventative maintenance, but—it was tough. Because there was always this thing—there was always a great need of doing this thing, and jeepers, we can’t use the dollars there; it’ll still work for a while. I didn’t have the responsibility for the day-to-day operations of it. That wasn’t mine. Mine was the upgrades and the capital equipment and all that. Whether we need a new fire station or whatever it may be. And jeepers, the thing was just limping along on a thread, and something would break. But then we ended up spending a whole lot more. That was somewhat frustrating. And the guys that I worked with on the contractor side had the same experience. But some managers were a little more cognizant of the need to do that than others. And safety—the way we could get things done—[PHONE CHIMES]—was safety more. Because if we could show that there was safety-related issues that went along with it, it was easier to get it appropriated or funded, rather than say, well, it’ll still go along. And that’s the way we often would get something funded, was, could show that we really don’t want to jeopardize the safety of the employees or the workers and that sort of thing. But it was not simple. It was pretty difficult. It was always kind of bucking the tide for funding. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Right. That reminds me—so, you were still working at PNNL when the— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, I wasn’t at PNNL; it was DOE. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Right, yeah, okay. But back during the time when sort of the reactors were shutting down and the transition to sort of amelioration and cleanup got started. Is that correct? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, but that most of the time was with PNNL, still. But it was in ’89, is when the real decision was made. So it was shortly after that that I got into the infrastructure and that’s where it became hard then. Because we weren’t operating with the mission anymore. Yet you knew darn well that cleanup is going to be here for a long, long time, and why not get these things going so you don’t spend twice as much starting all over new, with something when you could just really do some work at that time to keep this thing alive? This thing, being—whether it be a sewer plant or whether it be a steam plant or fire station or electro distribution system or a railroad or whatever it might be. Because, at least I could see, it was cheaper because cleanup’s gonna last for a while and you need this infrastructure whether your mission is producing the plutonium or whether it’s cleanup. Soon we got some of the people saying, yeah, you’re right. But the guys who were doing the cleanup then, too, saying, oh, god, we’ve got so much work to do, we can’t afford to do this. It’ll last another year or two. Let’s fix it next year or upgrade it next year. The evaporator out there is a good example. They finally did it. But there was things earlier they probably could have done to increase its capability and do a better job. And finally they say, yeah, I guess that’s right, we should do it now because we’ll need that thing for god knows how long yet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What was it like living in this area around ’89 when the shift happened? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, it was a surprise, I think, to a lot of people. Kind of like, oh, gosh, here we go again. That’s when this whole activity—and I wasn’t involved in, but with the B Reactor Museum Association really got its birth when they were saying, we’re shutting down the reactors and going there. But the attitude was, or the feelings was that, jeepers, it was just doomsday basically. And not fully understanding the scope of work that needed to be done in the cleanup area. It was very little attention being paid to the depth of that need at the time. I don’t think there was much knowledge—excuse me—or basically understanding of how important and significant that’s going to be. So it was a change in times, it certainly was. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Do you think a lot of—or were people sort of in your area worried about their jobs? Or was that, you felt, sort of separate from the plutonium production? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, I–yeah, I wasn’t too involved in that sort of aspect. But, yes, the community had a concern. And that kind of coincides with the big problem out there that’s now Energy Northwest, but the shutdown of those new power reactors. So that kind of came together at the same time, and that was really a shock for the community. It was—you know, a lot of people would leave and say, jeepers, I got to go find something else before I don’t have a job at all. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Right. So in the last couple of years before retirement, you were working on the congressional relations? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, yeah, about five years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Can you tell us about that work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, about five years prior to retirement. Five, six—something like that. I don’t remember exactly when. That was very interesting, too, and you got another scope of how things got done. I got to a point where I was having daily discussions with particularly Patty Murray’s staff and prior to that, Doc Hasting’s staff—staff members. Not that much with the senators or the congressmen themselves, but primarily their staff, and working with them. And somewhat with the state offices, but not extensively. And then more with the local communities—the mayors—the Hanford communities group there. That was quite regularly—and the emphasis that we placed then, I’m not sure still exists, but really wanted to tie in closely to having the local government—the mayors and commissioners and so on—knowledgeable of what’s going on out here at the site. So there wouldn’t be these sudden surprises. That was the role that John Wagner at the time was interested in, and that’s when he asked me if I would be willing to—it was a new position he was establishing. He just wanted to maintain a close relationship with what’s going on at the site, and I don’t know if that’s—I shouldn’t say—I don’t know if it’s the case now, but I don’t think it’s quite the same as what John had in mind and what I did for those five, six years. So when I left, then, they kind of—when I retired, it kind of was sitting in just ebbs there—ups and downs—and it’s probably back more to that way. I really don’t know. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: But shortly after that, too, then, I got on the Hanford Advisory Board. So I had kind of a knowledge about what was going on at the site. So I was very active in the Hanford Advisory Board for quite a few years—for like 15 years or so. But I got so much involved in the B Reactor thing that I said, gee—I didn’t feel like to just go to the meetings and not really contribute a whole lot. So I thought I’d just give up and retire at that point in time, and I found someone who I know real well who’s capable to take my place. I was representing the county most of the time—sort of an alternate representative for the City of Richland first, but then later for the county most all the time. I wanted to be sure that—and I did find someone who was very, very, well-involved and informative to take my spot there for the county commission now. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: So Okay. So before we move on, can you tell me—what was the Hanford Advisory Board? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Oh, that was established—gosh, I can’t remember exactly when, but it’s made up of about 30 different entities—representatives of those entities. It’s statewide and it includes some of the Oregon people, the tribes are on it, most of the government—city governments and county governments are represented. There’s total—like I say, about 31. They’re a formal advisory group to the Atomic Energy—Atomic Energy? I’m really going back now—to the DOE to uncover and discuss various elements of ongoing work. And you probably see quite a bit in the paper that the Hanford Advisory Board meets on a monthly basis—no, I shouldn’t say that—about every other month. But then they’ve got committees underneath of it like the Tanks Waste Committee and the River Plateau Committee—there’s five different committees. I chaired a couple of those committees a couple times, and vice chair and so on. And they provide some advice—written advice to the—and it’s—oh, I shouldn’t say it’s just DOE. There’s three parties to this. It’s the State Ecology Department, the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, and DOE. So the three agencies are involved in this. They provide—can be anything regarding to the Vit Plant out here now, the tank vapor things—so many different activities. They write formal advice and discussion. It represents all sides, basically. Those that are pro/con, what are the proper words, or whatever you want to say. But it’s a wide representation of the general—not local community necessarily, but the state concerns. And there’s people from Seattle on that, from down in Salem, Oregon, and around the area. That’s been in existence—gosh, I don’t remember when—it was probably around ’90 or something like that, ’91. It’s been—maybe not that long—but it’s been quite active for quite some time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: That reminds me—I meant to ask, when you were working on the site infrastructure, you mentioned some work with the tribes and cultural resources. Can you tell us about that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah. I personally didn’t get too directly involved. I had a person working for me by the name of Charles Pasternak—he has since died. He was very, very knowledgeable. He was an archaeology-type thing, too, but he was a forensic expert-type thing, and was very, very closely working with the tribes. Well-respected by the tribes. He was invited into some of those longhouse ceremonies and that sort of thing. So he worked on that. He was the one that was the primary person for me. I got into a lot of the discussions and so on, but for the day-to-day activities, he was really tops. And would work with the SHPO office—the State Historical office in Olympia on stuff—on these writings and stuff. So it was interesting. But I didn’t get daily involvement there. I had enough in my other hands to take care of. But he was just ace number one on doing that. So I got familiar with the process and the operations and what the issues were and that sort of thing. But that was informative for me. He was sort of a mentor to me, to be honest, though, in that respect. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Do you know sort of how—one of the things I’m also curious about is the development of cultural resources and local efforts to preserve culture, preserve memory. On the DOE side, I know, today that’s done through a contract with the Mission Support Alliance. Do you happen to know when that sort of contracting began, or was DOE sort of also contracting while also working on it? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: No, DOE was working primarily at the laboratory out here at Battelle. That’s where—and that’s partly how I got into it, I think, although I wasn’t administering to Battelle Lab at that time. But that all function was under the laboratory. It was after I left that Mission Support Alliance came into existence here. And then they took over a lot of that support type activity. But, no, the laboratory, and Jim Shatters was involved, Mona Wright was involved out there for the lab. Paul Harvey was—not Paul Harvey—Dave Harvey was involved in some of that out there, along with the history. And Michele Gerber on the historic—the Hanford history type stuff. So that was all with Battelle. And then that moved it, I think, when Mission Support Alliance—and that was after, basically, after I left. So that was there. But, no, there was quite an interest—not as much as there is today—again, that’s a fault, I can say, of us who were in the department at that time. We really weren’t on board extensively on the history protection stuff. Although the contractor, Battelle out there, and others were doing that. But I don’t think DOE was following. And then that’s when I discovered that, gosh, we really have a responsibility here. And that’s when I hired this Charles Pasternak who came over from GSA and had been doing that sort of thing down in Phoenix, Arizona. So I said, we really need—so I hired him. And as I say, he was—that was his livelihood so to speak. And that’s when I think we began then to pick up on that sort of thing. I had an extreme interest in doing it and I got to know Mona Wright real well at Battelle. Tom Marceau was involved in that out there. And Tom can give you the whole history there with the laboratory at that time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What sort of day-to-day work—was it Charles Pasternak? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Pasternak, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What sort of work was he doing? Do you know? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, it was this whole cultural resources area. He was, as I say, an archaeology type and that was his training. So he did all of the work a lot with SHPO up there when we got into some of these areas where they needed—we needed to know the 106 process, and all of that sort of thing. So Charles was our main person to follow that. But I had the interest, also, of John Wagner, the manager, even though I wasn’t playing that congressional role at that time. Because he, too, I think, recognized that we needed to do a little bit more there. And in fact—I don’t know if you’re familiar—but he’s one of Cindy Kelly, who’s with the Atomic Heritage Foundation---he’s one of the board members there. He had really an extreme interest in preserving the history. As much as he tried, he couldn’t get headquarters people—they always told him, John, you go back and tell them we’re not in the museum business. And that’s what the people here would be hearing all the time. But John himself was really interested in doing all that. I sat in meetings with him at headquarters where he’d really push hard. And they’d push back, that’s not our—it was their responsibility, but they’d just, yeah, okay, but we don’t want to spend a lot of time on that. So that was—but locally, I think we did well. I think we did very well at pushing that along and I got to give contract—credit to people like Tom and Mona and others out here on the contractor site who even pushed us a little bit sometimes. Which was good. That’s necessary. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Could you sort of sketch out for us your idea of sort of the history of efforts to commemorate the site or the work that was done on Hanford? In terms of, up through the B Reactor Museum Association--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah. Well, my interest was, again, as I learned more about it, was let’s preserve this history of this site, because it’s very unique. It’s really unique. And I had to avoid sort of a conflict of interest of joining BRMA while I was an employee of the department. So I was interested, though, in knowing what they were doing and I was in agreement with them and was very supportive when I could be in some of their activities. But shortly after I retired, then—not immediately, but not too long after, I did join as a member of the B Reactor Museum. That was in—well, quite a while later, because it in 2005, so it was quite a while later that I actually joined them. That was—the more I learned and found out about the uniqueness of the B Reactor and its history and its knowledge and its importance, I really, really got heavily involved. And that’s eventually, here, like a year and a half ago—I finally got off the Hanford Advisory Board because I was spending so much time—more time on that—and not feeling I was really contributing a whole lot. I mean, I’d make my comments and so on at the general meetings, but with regard to drafting formal advice and all that, which I was quite active in earlier, then jeepers, get somebody else who has the time and so on, and I’d devote more time to the B Reactor Museum Association. But, again, I’m, as well as my interest in science and technology, although not being trained in that area, I’m sort of a history buff. As a kid on, I could list the order of the Presidents of the United States, I remember. Zing, zing, zing. I can’t do it any longer. I’d have to stop and think about it, get it mixed up a little bit. But history was another area that I was kind of interested in. I like to read a lot of history books and that sort of thing. I think that was stimulated by my second year in college in a class I took from a history professor who was just interesting. And what I found so interesting about him is he said you can read the book, but let me give you some stuff, some of the trivia-type stuff that he knew about some of the personalities and some of the things that he had learned through his research and understanding about the true natures of some of these people and what unique features or attributes they had. That, I think, stimulated my interests even more. But it was in existence prior to that as well, but it just enhanced it a bit. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What sort of stuff has BRMA worked on in the time you’ve been with them? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Oh, gosh. We have done extensive amount of work on some of the modeling to bring up some of the models that we have out there that can describe and portray better the actual activities in the instruments and the equipment in the area there itself. We did that. And of course our big effort was to make it a national park. That’s where most of our time, and that’s where I really got involved with and again working with the other two sites, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos with Cindy Kelly back in American—I mean the Atomic Heritage Foundation. We’d have monthly phone calls on proposing various kind of language that we’d like to see in the act and working with the Congress. My experience working with congressional staffers helped a little bit there, I think, but so did Cindy, who—and I first knew Cindy, basically when she was in DOE—worked for DOE in the headquarters in the cultural resource area and all of that area. So that’s how I got to know Cindy. And then later on, we kind of met again, then, when we were working on the B Reactor. So the biggest contribution, I think, was the effort from the very beginning. B Reactor was—not B Reactor, but the BRMA association—B Reactor Museum Association—was established formally in ’91, but was actually in ’90 or so when it began to formally—and how that all happened was that there was in existence here at the time—we called it the Tri-Cities or maybe they were Richland—I don’t know—Technical Society. And that was made up of all the various tech—whether it be electrical engineers, or civil engineers, the chemical engineers, nuclear engineers, the health physicists and so on. They had this net group where there was things in common and commonality. When the announcement was made that they were going to get out of the production business and was going to start cocooning the reactors, the guy says, god, we got to preserve B. The history that goes with it. And I wasn’t part of that, then. But they organized a committee then to discuss further. And that’s when they decided to establish this organization, the B Reactor Museum Association, with the sole purpose to preserve for future generations the history and preserve the facility itself for public access and—for preservation and public access. Well, our mission is basically accomplished by getting it into the National Park. That was really keen. And we still have interests; we want to go along and develop the park and do all of those additional types of things and perhaps even taking on efforts to preserve a bit of the history of T Plant as well. Because that is identified in the park, and of course the pre-Manhattan Project history there with the farms and that sort of thing. But that’s been the key emphasis all along, was to preserve and make it public access to B Reactor. So there was a lot of work and working with the Department of Energy and others to clean it up and get it in shape where you could have these tours. I think it was 2009 or something when they started the tours—the more public tours. But I was involved earlier in that. There was still tours, but the tours were maybe for special groups or activities or maybe a college chemistry class or physics class or something would be coming to see it. Or some of the elected officials or could be any special tours, I think. And then it got gradually working into recognizing that there would be—in fact, when I left in ’98, there was just a memorandum of agreement type between the BRMA organization and Westinghouse the contractor and DOE, what the roles and responsibilities would be. At that time, BRMA would be willing to provide docents—volunteer docents at the time, and do that sort of thing for these various tours. So I was sort of a tour coordinator then, to find out what audiences—there would be a difference between someone who was real knowledgeable about the reactor, and others who knew nothing about it—want to know what the audience would be so we’d pick the right type of tour guide and a person who was more familiar with it, who were comfortable with those kind of tours. So there got to be a fair number of those. But then it formally established, then, when the DOE started saying we will offer these public tours. In 2009 is when it really blossomed into much more greater things, when they announced the public tours and so on. These others were more tours where people would request and ask for them, we’d try to fit them in. And there were fair number—it got to be a fair number of those, and I think that’s what convinced DOE that we need to do something, maybe more publicly. And more recognition of its responsibility in Historic Preservation Act—you know, the Department’s responsibility there. So that’s what we did. But our efforts were then to, as I say, get the thing cleaned up, get it presented well, and have some of these displays and some of the models and someone that works close with Cindy Kelly at the Atomic Heritage Foundation who had this interest and this whole establishment she has, that foundation to preserve many of the history aspects of the Atomic Energy Commission and Department of Energy and its role in the Manhattan Project. So that was kind of where our focus was, was the preservation and public access and the models that help educate. And also, and we’re pushing more on that now, is educating students and so on. And we’re holding more and more tours for students, all the way down to the fourth grade, but particularly interested in high school and college students that want to learn more about that. That’s where we’re focusing more now, on interpretation and education and emphasis more on the T Plant. BRMA does the B Reactor Museum, doesn’t necessarily relate to the T Plant, but still, that all was part of the Manhattan Project. So our focus is more on the Manhattan Project itself and all of its elements. Which, T Plant is included—the first separations plant. Again, amazing plant and amazing work that’s been done there to get it initiated and started and working properly right off the bat, working. So that’s kind of the background there on my involvement. It’s been—the last three, four, five years has been heavily involved in primarily the effort on the Manhattan historic—the Manhattan Project Historical Park, to get it established, along with the other two sites. Some of the others in DOE, as well, the Dayton Project had decided not to really join pushing on that, but they—and we had meetings yesterday again with some of the Parks people to have things—a commonality—basic common understanding of the whole project and kind of presented the same way at all three sites. But then each site taking on its own specific role, ours being the specific—the development of the plutonium and B Reactor. Los Alamos, more like the weapons development and that sort of thing. Oak Ridge is supplying the enriched uranium and those aspects. They all have a more defined role in the broader picture of the Manhattan Project. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Right. Did you ever get any sort of security—when you were making these models, I know there was a lot of sensitivity about export control and classification and all that, especially with models. Did you ever get any sort of push back on that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Not on the models. But what we did do, and that was a surprise, even to the local DOE, I guess they knew about it, but they should have—the reactor graphite that was left over, we claimed that. And thanks for thinking of Gene Woodruff, one of our members who’s a graphite expert, and I mean Gene can go and say, oh, that was made at Union Carbide. Scratch this one—that was made somewhere else. That guy. And I remember working with DOE in the laboratory—Gene was one of the top experts in the world. Again, we’ve got experts here—people don’t recognize—of the world. When there would be these international meetings or [UNKNOWN] Gene Woodruff was a guy to go all over the world talking about the qualities and the purities of graphite and how it’s made and all of that sort of stuff. He’s just top-notch. So anyway, Gene and a guy out at the lab—gosh, I forget his name right now, right off the bat—worked with our people in DOE headquarters’ national security to get us the—or to give us the excess graphite was there with the restrictions that it should be used for souvenirs and that we’re not to resell it. Of course, now there’s not quite the problem, but we didn’t want the Iranians or others to see how this graphite was made and all the purity and all that kind of stuff. Although I don’t understand, because you could still probably decide that if you had a souvenir made out of a piece of that graphite, anyway. But anyway that was—they just didn’t want a big block of this stuff given—sold or anything to someone. So we said, ah, well, we won’t—chop it up or use it in pieces or whatever. So we made that graphite model and that was done going through the whole national security system that said it was okay for us to have that, rather than dump it out here at ERDF—out in the disposal facility. So we got all of the remaining what we call old reactor—that’s the B, D and F—that’s the same type of graphite that was in those original three reactors. We got that as well as some processing tubes and we’re in the process of determining how we make souvenirs for the tours that come through in the park. And reminder, we already have what we call—we have these boron balls, too, that are used in the process to help scram a reactor if you need to. We’ve got those, and we’ve got the process tubes. So we also sell a little vial of these boron balls, and we collected the dust that we did when we made our graphite model and putting that into little vials. So it’s rather unique to this site. We’re looking at other ways to use some of these and what kind of doodads or gadgets can we make for souvenirs. Because we find that working with the Parks people is—oh, yeah, people, there’s something unique about the site, they’d like to take a souvenir back. So that may be some of our support, maybe, to keep continuing and give us our source of income there that—we’re not a great achiever of gathering a whole lot of money, but it does—and we work more on these models and stuff, working with Cindy Kelly and others on grants and that sort of thing to get our money to build these—make these various videos that we’ve made and these vignettes that goes along with when you’re visiting out there and that sort of thing. So that’s gonna be kind of emphasizing with the Parks people how we can best do this and how we can get that accomplished. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Can you tell me about coordinating with the other sites? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah. That’s—we’ve had several meetings with the other sites. There’s, again, another entity. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the ECA, the Energy Communities Alliance? That was established by the former city manager here, Joe King, who established that. And that—I’ll just talk a minute what that is. That’s made up of the sites where DOE has locations: Savannah River, Oak Ridge, Brookhaven—you know, all nine sites or so, that would go forth in more of a lobbying effort to DOE headquarters on funding and what the needs and the issues and problems are there, as far as the local communities. And many of these were in common. I mean, there were particular areas might be unique to one site or the other, but the others would all support that. But then also there’s things in common that they really wanted to get DOE to recognize that they got to pay attention to. So that was established quite some time ago. The other communities, then, kind of had a basis on which to start on this national park. And particularly Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. So we would get—the three of us would often have—and Cindy Kelly with Atomic Heritage Foundation would kind of coordinate these—it was almost on a monthly basis—telephone conferences. We’d be talking where we are and how we’re going and what we need to do. And so that was very helpful and it was a cooperative effort. It wasn’t a, well, we want that and you can’t have that. It was a system that we all want to work together. And we met last July again down in Los Alamos for a meeting on those three sites plus one or two of the other Energy Community Alliance sat in on some of that. We’re meeting again in August in Denver. This time at Denver because that’s kind of a convenient among the three sites, and it’s also where the interim superintendent of the National Park’s located, so that she can be here. That’s Tracey Adkins and she was here in fact yesterday. One of our local what we call our parks committee that’s not—made up basically the elected officials of the community here, the four mayors, the county commissioners of Benton, Grant and Franklin County, and then there’s, besides elected officials, there’s the Visit Tri-Cities, TRIDEC and BRMA is on that. We’re more of an advisory group than we are to the mayors. But the committee is an administrative committee and that’s where I and John Fox and BRMA and Visit Tri-Cities and others sit on for short-term. I guess I call that the working group who gets the work done and so on. And then we get with the mayors and so on. It’s kind of either up or down, you know, that sort of thing. But anyway, the working with the other communities has been a very cooperative effort, and we meet now on phone calls once in a while—not quite so frequently, though, not once the legislation has passed. But we meet like once a year or so, just—and now with the Parks, too. It was formerly just with DOE, but with the Parks people actually present and with the interim superintendent of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. So it’s a good relationship and I think it helps in the overall park and the Parks people are interested in working with the communities, too. They’re very—I find working with the Parks service very, very interesting and informative and they’re people who are very willing to listen and learn and likewise we try to exchange information and we learn what they’re process is and I think it’s been a very, very good relationship. And I want to give credit to Colleen French here at the local office has been extremely supportive of BRMA and all of the activities and go out of her way to have—like when we had the November 12th event out here raising the National Parks flag at the site and working with them. She’s been just tremendously helpful in getting that accomplished. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: What’s my question here? Could you give me an idea, if you know, of the sort of size of BRMA over time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: It’s small. That’s our real problem. It’s like most organizations, I find, you don’t find a lot of younger people joining. And that’s a—I think that’s kind of typical of our whole society now. Today, most of the mothers and fathers are both working, they’ve got the kids in school, they’re in soccer, they’re in baseball, they’re in football. Their time is very limited. And I find that in a number of organizations I’m in. So our group is very small. It’s—we only have about a total of about 70-some members. But our active members are probably 20 or something like that. And we have a fair number of people who are not in this community. They’re people who lived here or worked here before. One of the assistant general managers for DOE is still a member, living down the—not Los Alamos—but Los Alamos area and also a couple of them down in the WIPP site down in New Mexico. We find ourselves, I think—and we’re looking right now—what should the mission of BRMA be? And we’ve kind of—a couple of us got together the other day on—had a bottle of beer and sat in Hank Kosmata’s backyard on his patio and just kind of brainstormed a bit. I think we’ll say, for the next three, four, five years, however long, until the park is fully established, we’ll be working extensively with them on assisting in the interpretation activities. We want to emphasize more the education and working with particularly the high school, college kids but also the younger ages. We want to do more emphasis on the T Plant, which is a very key element in this whole process of plutonium and getting the plutonium that was needed for the weapons program. So those—kind of those three are the main activities we want to focus in and decide whether we morph into some other organization. Because the Parks are really interested in developing at each of these sites what they call Friends of the Park, and that’s a common thing among all national parks. It’s sort of a group that supports that local park and assists the Parks Department. And the Parks Department is not a wealthy department. They are very limited funding to all parks. They’ve got extreme backlog on the maintenance of all their activities. So they rely heavily on volunteer work, they rely heavily on these funding process of Friends of the Park, and they have a formal structure in developing it and authorizing and so on, because they, again, want to be sure that there’s precise accountability and all of that sort of thing on that if they’re gonna be associated with them. So we’re working this local community on this parks committee and so on of hoping we can establish that soon. Now, there’s a lot of competition so to speak there, because we’ve got a lot of other things in the community we really want to support. We want to support the REACH organization—they’re looking for funding. We’ve got the aquatic center, you’ve got the performing arts center, you’ve got all of these things. But nevertheless, there’s some people that don’t have to be members of this community that are interested in the Project history of the Manhattan Project and all of that, that you can get various grants and forms and that sort of thing from others. That’s something that we will probably eventually just go out of existence, because we don’t have a lot—I mean, I’m kind of the young kid on the block, actually in our organization, and I’m nearly 78 years old. We got a guy that’s the youngest kid—he’s 65! We call him the little kid brother. We’re losing people. The last two years, we’ve lost the remaining people who were there at startup of the reactor. So the history is kind of disappearing with them in some respects. That’s why I was interested, particularly these interviews that you’re doing here with some of these old-timers and some of the guys that were here, so we get that recorded, and we know what’s there and it’s so important. Of course, as you know, working with you on some of our early recordings that we had with some of our original people that are very, very informative and useful in terms of researchers or anybody that wants to use that information. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: So there’s also ways been a lot of interest among the public in the sort of more negative side of Hanford’s history. Has the down-winders and those sorts of groups influenced the telling of the history in your opinion? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Well, you know, we want to be accurate with our history. And we want to tell all sides of the history. That’s been sometimes a little bit of a problem internally, because, well, gosh, those guys, they just dump. But I say, that’s history. We’ve got to learn what the issues were and what the problems were. And the same—we get some people when the Parks people decided to have a few of the Japanese people sit in on the scholars’ group. I’m not at all opposed to that. I think we got to tell history. History’s got to be told accurately. And it’s important—we may not agree with some of that stuff, and we may not agree with their opinions or thoughts, but it’s only precisely true that we need to reflect what that history and what those events were. So I personally am not opposed. But there’s the real strong advocates in nuclear and there’s the anti-nuclear. We’ve got to show that as existing. We’ve got to recognize that. But I don’t think it’s given us any problem—the answer to your question—I don’t think it’s been an issue that creates difficulties or that we found is interfering with whatever we want to do. We’ve got to recognize it, we address it, and we think we try to address it in a very educational basis, in a very precise basis, and not in an argumentative or conscientious-objector-type—well, that’s not the right word either. But we just don’t want to be contrary to them necessarily. Just understanding that they’ve got a different point of view. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Have you sort of followed that controversy in your time living in the Tri-Cities? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, to some extent. I can see both sides. I think we need—particularly, I can see the need to reflect on what effect it had upon the Japanese. I really think that’s essential. Some of our people don’t agree with me. They say, well—they’ll say, yeah, that’s true, but, boy, if we hadn’t done what we needed to do maybe a lot more would be dead. That’s true, too, there probably would have. We’ll never know for certain, but—we hear of people and know of people that had probably saved their lives by the fact that they didn’t have to go and invade Japan. We’ve got some of our own members who kind of fit in that category. But I’ll never forget Terry Andre tells the story when she was at the CREHST museum when it still existed and an elderly Japanese person came in one day and asked her: Are you an American? She said, yes, I’m an American. Oh, thank goodness. He put a big hug around her. She kind of says, well, what’s that? She says, I would not be alive today if you had invaded Japan, he said. Because I was trained in our—I think it was equivalent to the boy scouts—which we were to be suicide-type defenders. And we were supposed to be carrying these bombs, burying us in the sand, along when the Japanese invaded, and blow ourselves up and try to get as many American soldiers as we could—or Allied soldiers as we could. So that’s one side of the story. The others you hear, but people have really suffered when they dropped the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So those stories need to be told, and that understanding has to be there so that there’s the pros and cons. And another interesting thing is, when we had the docent training by the Parks people, they were saying, try to not reflect your own opinions. Give them the facts—that yes. And they did some role playing talk about when someone says, well, should we have dropped the bomb? And they were playing with all the different ways you might address that particular question. And try to say, if they took one position kind of say, well, that’s true, but did you think about this or something. Let them decide themselves, but bring it more forth. And I thought that was excellent type comments that the Parks’ interpretation people and their docents, particularly did the training, bring forth those sorts of thoughts. I’m in agreement with that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: You mentioned this sort of pro- and anti-nuclear folks. Has that sort of politics gotten involved in the interpretation of Hanford’s history, do you think? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: I don’t think it’s got involved in the interpretation. Now, there’s people who will be critical of the fact that either one side or the other hasn’t been displayed enough. And that’s an emphasis that I really respect the Parks to—I think they mentioned, they got issues in the North and South War—the Civil War. The things down in Andersonville, Gettysburg—these—and the Arizona, and they really understand how best to portray that. They’re the nation’s storytellers, and they really want to hone in on the fact that we aren’t going to try to change anybody’s mind; we don’t want to argue with them; we just want to presents the fact more and let them decide. But maybe if they’ve got one position, just kind of let them know what some of the other people are thinking, too, and vice versa. So I don’t really see it as an issue or a problem. It’s something we’ve got to address and it’s something that got to be recognized, but we’ve got to do it thoughtfully and doing it with some knowledge of where we’re coming from and how we present that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. And you said that’s equally true for sort of the local health impact as well as the Nagasaki and Hiroshima? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: I think so. But again, that’s my opinion. I think there’s a lot of advantages and there’s a lot of disadvantages. I mean, I keep coming back to some counterpoints and that is the whole medical isotopes, and the medical radiation program and so on. I mean, there’s over 20 million radioactive diagnostic procedures in the United States every year. And there’s a likewise amount throughout the rest of the world. There’s not as many therapeutic, but almost. That’s the positive side. Now, there’s the negative side—that, gee, if you get exposed to it, that’s not good either. So, like most issues, nothing is clearly right or wrong. There’s pros and cons and I think we got to stop and think about those, and each person make up their own mind to where they may fit in that spectrum. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: How have the Tri-Cities changed in your time living here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: [LAUGHTER] It’s been significant. I see the major growth in housing. Gosh, when I came here south of the Yakima River, there was nothing—none of that whole area. West Richland was small and didn’t go out. The shopping, as I said earlier—there was hardly anything here to do in that sense. The amenities of living in the community, the education of WSU here and various arts performing type groups—just—it’s almost like day and night in that sense. I just—just amazing me, and I’ve been here a little over 50 years. It was kind of like a sleepy town almost when you first come—when I first came, I should say. Pasco was the biggest, I think, town at that time. Of course, it’s got its history with the railroad and all of that sort of thing. The growth of the housing and you wonder, how could more people keep coming in? Where are they coming from, and where’s all this activity—what’s this base? It’s amazing. But I think the biggest thing I noticed is the shopping and the industry broadened quite a bit. I think most people don’t realize how many small businesses we really have in this community—various outgrowths, spinoffs of some of the lab work and some of the other activities. I think we had one golf course here at the time when I came over in Pasco. We’ve got a lot of that. The water sports. I mean, it’s—and the surrounding areas, the wineries and all the vineyards. Yet the one other thing I remember when I first came and we first married, we used to go out and pick cherries or whatever where all houses are now. We still go out to some of the places to pick some peaches and stuff, but a lot of that stuff—and pears—you hardly see around. I can think back in those early days that we did all that. We go now in French’s out there where they have you-pick for peaches I think is one of the most popular places in town in the summertime when it’s peach time that they’re just so busy out there. But it’s changed. It’s just—but you know, a lot of the cities and so on—we’re getting people moving from the rural areas into more the urban areas, and we’re no different, I think, than some of the other major cities much bigger than we. But we’re staying—following kind of that same pattern. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Okay. So as we sort of wrap up here, there are probably—I don’t know—particular stories that leap to your mind from your time working at Hanford or living in the area, or any other sort of stuff I haven’t asked about that’s worth sharing? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, I don’t know. I think one of the things that comes to mind is my involvement early with the kids in the community in the sports area and then of course, when my own son got into some of that with working with them. The other thing that kind of comes to mind, I said, I remember Christ the King Church, but like everything a growing—I’m involved in the building committee and making that church bigger, tearing down the old government-built building, all on volunteer-type work tearing down, basically. And things of that that you tend to think of not necessarily unique to me, but for a lot of the members of this community, where you saw so much volunteer-type effort, community effort, where family didn’t have their own personal family right nearby. And I saw that. My wife can speak a lot more to that, but I saw that early in ’63 still existed, where you saw this sort of social-type gathering of—and I don’t think we see that quite the same anymore here in this community. If it is, it’s more like kind of an organized structure, or organized stuff. It’s not just like somebody drops by or you get a bunch of families together and oh, let’s have a Christmas party, or let’s have this, that or the other thing. That’s kind of what I witnessed early, and not to the extent—as I say again—as my wife did in her family. But I saw that, and I see that kind of disappearing here. Some of the interesting things at work is like—I mentioned briefly earlier about the moonrocks coming back, the smoking swine—I was heavily involved in when they decided not to have the—I should say the smoking beagles and the swine. The swine is one of the closest animals that’s similar to a human. Their skin and all that. So there’s so much testing on radiation effects. A lot of these swine that was just evolutionary and helped the whole medical field. Well, we excessed those, I remember, in the process of excessing, where should we give it to? And it ended up—I was quite heavily involved in that—we gave it to the University of Minnesota, because they had quite an extensive program on heart development and heart surgery and stuff like that. They could utilize these swine and they had made a good proposal how they would care for them and continue in breeding them. Leo Bustad was the guy that developed those, like a full-grown was 150 pounds, was close to a human being, and all those sorts of things. And I think back about those sorts of things, about uniqueness, again, of science, of technology, developing these animals so that they—and there, again, you’ve got the other side of those people that are—oh, gosh, you shouldn’t be sacrificing animals. There’s validity to that. And then you look on the other hand—but look at all the benefits you get on that, and you can do it in a humane way, and all of that. So those things. Some of the stuff, I can’t describe now. I was not heavily involved in classified stuff, but there was some of the work out at Battelle that once it’s unclassified, it’s just unbelievable some of this stuff that you learn through that sort of thing. Those things often come to my mind, but I still—taken the oath that I’ll keep those to myself. That’s about all I can say about—but I wasn’t heavily involved in that. I didn’t have a super—I had a Q clearance. That’s another interesting story. When I was hired by DOE, they said, well—at that time you had to have a Q clearance before you could ever come on work and it took about three months to get this Q clearance processed. So I was home back in Wisconsin for about a month, just waiting for the clearance, because I wasn’t going to drive all the way out here and for some reason to find out that, well, we can’t take you. I mean, I had no reason to believe that, but I just had to wait out the process. So that was, again—and that was difficult in hiring early on when we were recruiting college kids and stuff. That was when we still needed that—that everybody needed—well, not everybody, but 95% probably of the DOE and AEC—it was AEC then. People needed a Q clearance before they could get on board. Well, people are anxious, they don’t want to wait around three months. They’re looking for a job. So that was one of the difficulties that comes to mind when I talk about out those sorts of things. But there’s a lot of fond memories and associations with people that you’ll always have. And some unique activities that occurred. And, again, I keep thinking about working with Wally Sale at the Consolidated Laboratory and how unique and different that was and how innovative his approach—and he’s the one that really is the creator of that concept. So anyway, it’s been—it was an enjoyable career. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> O’Reagan: All right, well thanks so much for being here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824"> Plahuta: Yeah, you bet. Thank you. And I appreciate-- </div> Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:41:53 Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview B Reactor Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1982-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1982-? Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Hastings, Doc Wagner, John Holstead, Paul Tomlinson, Sam Sale, Wally Volpentest, Sam Philips, Bob Jackson, Scoop St. John, Holland Ashby, Steve Murray, Patty Pasternak, Charles Wright, Mona Harvey, Dave Gerber, Michelle Marceau, Tom Kelly, Cindy Woodruff, Gene Adkins, Tracey Fox, John Kosmata, Hank Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Maynard Plahuta Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Pasco (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 4/28/2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-16: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Atomic Energy Commission Atomic Heritage Foundation B Reactor B Reactor Museum Association (BRMA) Battelle (Wash.) Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) General Electric Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Mission Support Alliance Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Pasco (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Volpentest, Sam, 1904-2005 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6d06e719ac9b9555c4f738a405f3502e.jpg a2598d933b17d283d40105588e7d7ddf https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F66d4925a2f29afc5b4b3d23f95a80a5d.mp4 5b50c149f78db5cd96a35569232c6bb8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Laura Arata Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Vanis Daniels Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Laura Arata: That’s the more comforting way to look at it. [LAUGHTER] Oh, are we ready? Man One: Yup. Arata: Oh, okay, so we're ready to get started. If we could just start by having you say your name and then spell it for us. Vanis Daniels: Vanis Daniels, V-A-N-I-S, D-A-N-I-E-L-S. And that’s the second. Arata: Thank you. My name's Laura Arata. It's November 14, 2013 and we are conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So I wonder if we could just start by having you tell us a little bit about when you first arrived at Hanford, who you came with, where you came from, that initial experience. Daniels: Oh, boy. I arrived, well, let's say I arrived in the Tri-Cities. My dad came here in '43 and worked here off and on until '51 when he moved the family here. Now, between the time he first came here in '43, he, my uncle, and cousin of ours helped pour the first mud that was poured to start the B Reactor. And then, after that, he worked here off and on until '51, when he brought the family out. And I was just a little—barely a teenager when I came here in '51. I was a sophomore in high school. I was supposed to graduate in 1954. At that time, you had to be 17-and-a-half years old in order to graduate from high school. Well, see, I was just turning 16. So then when I got ready to graduate, the vice principal came to me and he says, you can't graduate. I said, why can't I graduate? He says, you're not old enough. I said, oh? What's that got to do would graduation? He say, you're only 16. You have to be 17-and-a-half years old to graduate from high school. Well, it didn't make any sense to me, you know, if I got the grade point and all that and able to graduate. And he say, well, let me ask you a question. And I said, yes? He says, if you graduate, what are you going to do for the next year and a half? I said, I don't know. He say, you're not old enough to get a job. Nobody's going to hire you. He say, so you're just going to be whiling away your time. I said, well, I guess. He says, I'll tell you what, I'll make a deal with you. He say, you come back to school next year. He say, because you're not going to be doing anything. He say, you can come as many hours as you want to. If you can find you a little part time job or something like that, you're free to leave to go and work. And you don't have any restrictions on you, you know, as far as having to be there every day. I told him, okay. So that's what I did. But that's when I really started appreciating school. Because up until that point, I had been an A student, but where I came from--I came from Texas, by the way. I was born in a place called Terrell, Texas, but that's all I know about it. We moved to East Texas, which is a little place called Kildare, which is right out of Texarkana. I personally lived in Oklahoma during those eight or ten years that I was there, and then back to Texas and then to the Tri-Cities here. But being from the south, I went to an all-black school, segregated. And I didn't know anything about interacting with other races. And when I came here, nobody gave you a—I wouldn't call it a crash course, but I'd say interaction—it has a name for it—But anyway, they just threw you into the school with everyone else. And you had to learn to adjust. Well, that can be kind of hard. And it can also be kind of devastating. So my grade point dropped, but not to the point where I didn't graduate. And I see some kids right now that I went to school with that--I see them every once in a while--and if they hadn't been there to sort of support me, hold me up, I might would have fallen all the way through the crack. I might would have dropped out of school altogether. But they were—let's see, one retired from Franklin County. I don't know what the other three girls did as far as work go. But for some reason, they sort of took me under their wing, and I guess boost my morale or whatever you want to call it. And I was able to transition in and go on and finish school. After I finished school, I tried for ten years, 12 years really, to get a job at Hanford. And for some reason, they didn't want to hire me. I went to Seattle, tried to get a job at Boeing. They didn't want to hire me. I have, later in life since I retired, I learned why I didn't get a job at Hanford or Boeing, as far as that go. The people that I thought would be my biggest asset became my biggest enemy as far as getting a job. Because when you're asked for references and you put people down, I asked them if I could put them down, I let them know that I was putting them down for references and all this stuff. But the things that they put down there hindered me from getting a job rather than helping me get a job. And I learned this since I retired. But needless to say, I worked construction. I finally got a job--an interview--for Battelle. Meissinger was his name that interviewed me. And I must've gone out there for an interview the better part of a dozen times. And every time I'd go, he'd tell me, well, we don't have anything right now. In June of '66, he called me for an interview and I went out. And I'm working every day, working construction, when you leave work on construction, that's when your pay stop. I had a wife and a kid by then. And I went out one evening because he told me, he said, I'll stay here until 7 o'clock. You get of work, you come out. I told him, okay. So I got off, went home, took a shower, when out, talked with him. And I think he was about to tell me that he didn't have a position, ‘til I told him, I said, let me tell you something. I said, now, if you're not going to hire me, tell me now because I can't keep making arrangements, taking off work and all that stuff, coming out here just to sit and talk with you. I need a job. He says, just a minute. I don't know who--he left the room. He went and talked with someone. When he came back, he say, when can you come to work? I don't know. Whenever you want me to. He said, can you come Thursday? I told him yes. So I went out on Thursday. They interviewed me, gave me a permit, which was a red badge at the time, to go to work. I started as a janitor in the 3706 and 3707 building in the 300 Area. They transferred me from there to Two East and Two West. From Two East and Two West, they gave me a job in what was called Decon at the time. We did all of the glassware, all of the pigs--which is not a literal pig. It's a iron cast. You know, you can get the gallon, half gallon, or quarts. And it contains radioactive waste on the inside. The pig is just to shield the radiation. And we handled all of the hot water from the 300 Area. So I worked in there for two and a half years or so. And we took care of all the waste, did all the filter changing and everything in 300 Area. From there, I went to 100-F, to inhalation toxicology. And inhalation toxicology is just a matter of inhaling and exhaling is what it is. But I worked with the dogs, which at the time, Battelle was doing an experiment on the effect that cigarette smoke had on the human body. We worked with beagle dogs because at that time, they said that the closest thing to a human’s physique was the beagle. A grownup beagle weighs anywhere from 15 pounds to I think the heaviest one we had was probably 47 pounds--which is a wide range for a dog, but the human anatomy is also a wide range. 15-pound dog would be equivalent to 130-pound man. A 47-pound dog would be equivalent to 350-pound man. And every three months, we sacrificed a dog. And we did everything from blood, urine, feces, muscles, tissue, everything. We learned everything we could about cigarette smoke on what effect it would have on the dogs. The dogs smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Now, we had dogs that got addicted to cigarettes. And they were just like humans, chain smoke if you allowed them to. Then you had dogs that could not stand smoke, period, and they would fight it all the way through. But you had to give them the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes a day. Okay, we had hamsters that we shammed with cigarette smoke. We also did plutonium on them to see what effect it would have on the organs, on the inside of the body. And I worked in there until I got kind of fed up with supervision at the time because we weren't getting the raises that we should as far as finances go. And when you got a family you got to take care of, $2 just don't get it. So meanwhile, I talked with supervision and they say they didn't have money for raises. But yet and still, they're turning back money every year to DOE, which was set aside for raises. They just weren't giving it out. Well, at that time, they had what they call merit raises. And I worked second shift. I very seldom saw my supervisor. And so I asked him, I say, if I very seldom see you, I must be doing a good job. Because otherwise, you should be here checking on me to see what I'm doing. I later learned that one of the guys that worked in my department had told him that he had to recheck all of my work every morning when he came in, to make sure that I was doing it right. Well, see, that wasn't his position. He's an employee like I am. The other thing is that if the supervisor had just used a little bit of common sense, he would have known the man was lying. Because when you pull samples, the minute you pull the sample, it starts to decay. Now you would have had some variation in my results and his results if he's going to run my sample the next morning to tell me that I'm not doing it right. And he's getting the same results I'm getting. Something's wrong with this picture. Well, anyway, as it turned out, I told him I couldn't work for them if that's the way there were going to do things. So I quit. The day I left from out there, I went home and I was sitting at home. And thinking, boy, I just quit my job. I got to get me a job. I went up to my sister's house and my brother-in-law was home. And I said, what are you doing home? He say, today is Veteran's Day. And also, it used to be Election Day, the 11th of November. And he say, I'm off. And so we sat round and talked for a few minutes. He say, would you be interested in leaving Hanford and going to work someplace else? He didn't know I'd quit. [LAUGHTER] I say, why, sure. He say, I got a guy you need to go and see. He told me where it was and everything. And the next day, I went looking for it. I drove right by the office and didn't find it. I went back and when he came in from work, I said, I--he say, you passed right by it. He says, it's a little building. I says, okay. The next day I went, the guy that became my supervisor wasn't in. But the secretary knew who I was when I got there. So I didn't get to see him that day. But the next day, they told me what time to come back. I went back, I walked in the door. He say, so you're looking for a job. I say, yes, I am. He says, come on back here in my office. So we went back to his office and, meanwhile, he's talking and asking me some questions. He's saying, I know your brother-in-law real well. He say you’re a heck of a nice guy. I say, he did? You say, yeah. When we get in the door and he closed the door, he say, you got the job if you want it. But I got to go through the motion of interviewing you. I says, okay. So I worked there at the Tank Farm in Pasco, which we distributed petroleum products, fertilizers, and fire retardant for forest fires. And I worked there just two or three months shy of 16 years. I went back to Hanford after that and went to work for Westinghouse. From there, Bechtel took over. I became supervisor. I worked in every area out there, decommissioning all of the buildings, the outer buildings, the 105s, tore down the 103s, basins. You name it, we did it. Took care of all the asbestos, worked in the asbestos department of the Tank Farm. They're talking about, now, where the tanks are leaking and all that stuff. We took care of all the above ground asbestos and stuff there for them. And I worked there until I retired in '97. Arata: What year was this that you quit your job, your first job with Battelle? Daniels: In '71. Arata: And so then, what year was it that you went back to work at Hanford for Westinghouse? Daniels: '89. Arata: Okay. Well, it sounds like you had quite an array of jobs between all those sites. Daniels: I've done some more besides that. [LAUGHTER] I owned my own restaurant for a little while in Spokane out at Airway Heights. I went in the service. I was at my basic training in Fort Ord, California. When I finished my advanced basic, I had run into a captain. I didn't know him, but I knew his family from Pasco. And I was talking to him and I had been home on leave and I had seen his mother. And I was telling him that she was doing fine, I'd just seen her and all that stuff. And when I finished my advanced basic, he was there and he ask me, he says, I got several places you can go if you want to, he said. Which ones do you want? I could've gone to a special forces in Chicago. I didn't think I wanted to go there. It get too cold there for me. [LAUGHTER] I could've gone to Presidio in San Francisco. I don't like San Francisco. I could've gone to Germany. I didn't want to go at that time. I could've gone to Fort Lawton, or I could've gone to Fort Lewis. I chose Fort Lewis. So I went there. And I liked Fort Lewis for some reason, although we were in the field most of the time. But I'm an outdoor person anyway. We got transferred from Fort Lewis to Germany. At the same time, the Vietnam War was breaking out. They took all of our officers and sent them to Vietnam. They took all of the personnel that had six months or less left to do, they extended them a year and sent them to Vietnam. All of them that had a year or better to do went to Vietnam. I had eight months left to do, so I didn't have to go. But they sent me from Germany back to Fort Lewis. And I trained the Milwaukee National Guard because they had activated them to take the 4th Division's place when they sent them to Vietnam. And I was sent back to Fort Lewis to train the Milwaukee National Guard. Once I got them trained, I got discharged. Three weeks after I got discharged, I got drafted again. [LAUGHTER] But I didn't have to go. I didn't have to go. For some reason, they decided they didn't want me. And those were some of the jobs I've had and some of the things I've done. Arata: Wow, there's about a million things I want to ask you about but we have to start somewhere. Daniels: Well-- Arata: I wonder if we can talk a little bit about kind of some of your early memories when you first arrived in the Tri-Cities area. And particularly, I'm interested in what your housing situation was like that and where you lived and what the community was like at that time. Daniels: Okay. When we first arrived in the Tri-Cities--coming from east Texas, where you got greenery all around you, you know, it's like the west side of the state of Washington--and coming here to the desert, you just sort of get a sickening feeling. [LAUGHTER] To tell you the truth. But if you were black, you lived on the east side in Pasco, where I still--well, I live northeast Pasco, now, but that's by choice. Anything west of Second and Lewis in Pasco, well, it wasn't off limits—it was off limits as far as houses go. The banks or anything would not loan blacks money to buy homes. The finance company—which, at the time, Fidelity Savings and Loans was the biggest one in the Tri-Cities--would loan you money to buy an old, raggedy car with interest rates so high. But that's beside the point. When we came, my dad tried to borrow money to buy a house. He couldn't get any. He found a house and the lady that owned the house sold it to him on a contract. And she let the bank, BV, whatever you call them, hmph. Anyway, he paid his payments to the bank. So, therefore, I guess they would be the proprietor or whatever you call them. And in the agreement was that if he was three days late with the payment, they could foreclose on it and take the house. And the house was less than $10,000 at the time. They never took it, of course. But then he would always make sure that it was paid on the date that it was supposed to, if he had to haul me out of school long enough for the bank to open to go pay it and then go on to school. But other than that, kids are kids. And kids aren't prejudiced. We all played together. We had baseball, we did Basketball, we had BB gun wars, which I don't know why some of us didn't get our eyes shot out. But we didn't. [LAUGHTER] And, let's see, you couldn't live in Kennewick if you were black. You didn't live in Richland because that was government and you had to work for the government in order to live out there. Well, up until probably '49, I think Mr. Newborn went to work out there in '49, which was the first black as far as know that ever worked in processing at Hanford. They only thing, blacks could work construction out there and help build it, but they couldn't help operate it, which—it still baffles me to this day, but that's just the way it was. Signs of the times, I guess you would call it and ignorance on a lot of people's part, as far as that go. Arata: So you graduated from high school, then, in Pasco. Daniels: Mm-hmm. Arata: Do you remember about how many students were in your high school and approximately how many of you were black versus the white students? Daniels: Okay. There were—let’s see—three? The high school was built for 600 kids, I think, 500 or 600 kids. And the day that they opened the doors, it was already overcrowded as far as that go. And that's the Pasco High School they got there now. I was the first graduating class out of that school. There were 107 or 108 of us in the graduating class. And I think there's probably 25 or 30 of us that I know of. In fact, I just saw seven or eight of them a couple of weeks ago. One of our classmates passed away. Arata: Do you recall any specific incidents, anything that stands out to you about your time. I'm curious, particularly about high school, because you've told us all these great stories about it--where race was an issue at Pasco High School when you were attending there. Daniels: Yes. There were maybe, at the most, 13 black kids when I went to high school. Most of them were underclassmen. There was a couple or three upperclassmen. We had football players, basketball players and stuff like that that were starters, what you might want to say were the star of the team. When they would have homecoming, the football players got to escort the queen and her court and all that stuff. Black kids couldn't do it. They wouldn't allow it. Some of the kids have since told me and another friend of mine that passed away that whenever one of them--because I was small, so I didn't play basketball or football--but anyway, if one of them turned out for football, they tried to do everything they could to hurt them. They didn't want them on the field with them. They didn't want to play with them. If any of the black kids got any type of award or anything, it was never given to them during assemblies or anything like that. If it was white kids, they made a big to-do of it and he got it on stage, came up before the whole school and got it. Black kids, they gave it to him as he was leaving school one evening or something like that. But this is faculty doing this. This is not the kids doing stuff like this. My vice principal and my shop teacher I ran into one day, oh, years after I graduated from school. They were hunting agates. And I stopped and was talking to them. And they actually apologized to me for some of the things that went on. The vice principal told me, he says, I am so sorry. He said, there are things that went on that I dare not tell or divulge--two reasons. First of all, I had a wife and kids that I had to support. And if I told them anything that was going to advance you, then I'd be looking for a job. He say, and I am sorry, but the community as a whole, well, it's like the council now, you know. They tell you what to do and you more or less jump and do it. Or like the government, which I think we all ought to vote everybody up there out, but that's beside the point. [LAUGHTER] It's just the way it was. And then I could understand their positions, because if you've got a wife and kids that you've got to support, you got to look out for them and you in the process of whatever you're trying to do. Now there's another way that it could have been done. But at the same time, they probably did what they knew to do. And that's one thing I never fault anyone for. If you don't know how to do something or to do something, then I don't fault you for not doing it. Now my brother, which you will interview next week, is probably the first black to have a job in a department store in the Tri-Cities, or at least in Pasco, I know. Well, he'll tell you about it. I won’t try to tell you about him. [LAUGHTER] But those are some of the things that we encountered. We walked every day from the east side of Pasco to Memorial Park, which was the only swimming pool in town within the last year. And at that time, there was probably 5,000 to 7,000 people in the whole of Pasco. They had one swimming pool. You got 80,000 to 100,000 people in Pasco now. You got one swimming pool. [LAUGHTER] Doesn't make any sense at all. But we walked over there every day to play baseball and go swimming if we wanted to go swimming. There weren't any park other than Sylvester Park and Memorial Park was the only two parks in town at the time. Later, they put the Boat Basin in down there at Pasco. But when we didn't have any place to play, other than going over there, then we started making our own baseball diamonds in vacant lots and things. And as the lots would be developed, they would—well, naturally, they'd run us out because there wasn't enough room for us to play. So one evening, we didn't have any place to play baseball and we wanted to play baseball. Two blocks from my house, where I grew up at was Kurtzman Park. Well, actually, it's a block and a half. But it was just a vacant field. And we took shovels, a bunch of my friends and me, and we went out there and we cleared all the tumbleweeds out, took the shovels and kind of levelled it off, and started playing baseball. A lady named Rebecca Heidelbar happened to come by there and see us. I don't know exactly what period of time, how long we'd been playing there. And she stopped and asked us if we had a park that we could play in. We told her no. We told her the only park was Memorial Park. She says, mm-hmm. And she talked to us for a minute. She left. Well, we later learned that she was an attorney, her husband was an attorney, her mom was an attorney, and her dad was an attorney. And that was Judge Horrigan and his wife, and then their daughter Rebecca. And then she had married an attorney. So she came back and asked us to get as many kids together as we could and she would meet with us. And she did. And she went to the courthouse, found out who the land belonged to where we were playing. She helped us to draft a letter to Mr. Kurtzman, which she found out lived in Seattle and ask him to donate enough land for us to have a baseball diamond. Well, it took him the better part of six months to answer us, but he get back to us because I suppose he had to look into the legal aspect of it. He got back to us and told us that he could not give any land to a special interest group or persons. He would donate six acres of land to the city if they named the park after him. That's how Kurtzman Park came into an existence. And there's a letter someplace that we wrote him with my name right on the top of it. But in the process of this, we got the land donated to us, the city of Pasco, as far as the city go. The only thing they did to get that park in there was they gave some used pipe that they had laying around out there at what we call the Navy Base, which is out by the airport. And the black parents went out there and broke all this pipe apart and everything, took it down to the park, actually took shovels--we took shovels--dug the trenches for the water system down there, put the pipe back together, put the water system in. The city did seed it. They did plant the trees. And they keep it up. But the Kurtzman building has a park right in the front of it that myself, my cousin, Mr. Louzel Johnson put up, free of charge, right where U-Haul is on Fourth Street and Pasco now, used to be a brick place where they made brick blocks, your cinder blocks. And they donated the blocks. We did the labor and put it up. At first, they named the park Candy Cane Park. And then we had to let them know that you can't do that. That park got to be named Kurtzman or else we don't have a place to play because that's the only way he would donate it, so that's the way we got that. Where Virgie Robinson's Elementary School is now, on Wehe and Lewis Street, used to be what we call the lizard hole because you get off and then had toad, frogs, and all that stuff down in there. And we'd we go down in there and get those frogs and stuff out of there and bust them because that's what we did. [LAUGHTER] Arata: Just to clarify this, I just have this great mental image in my head of this group of kids running around playing baseball. Was that integrated at all? Were most of you African Americans? A little better sense of-- Daniels: Well, what we did was, like I say, we lived on what we called the East side. There was a bunch of white kids that lived over there. Right on the north side of Lewis Street was enough white kids that they had two baseball teams. We lived on the south side of Lewis Street. We had one baseball team. And we played each other every day. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. We had a lot of fun. We played each other every day. In fact, one of the kids--I haven't seen him in years--but I was catching. And he threw a ball. He threw that ball so hard it--because I was using a board for the plate--and it hit that board and hit me right there. And I later had to have a hernia operation. [LAUGHTER] Arata: The scars of childhood. Daniels: Oh, yeah. We had a lot of fun. We played, like I say, we did BB wars and all that stuff again. I don't know why we don't have eyes out or something, but none of us ever did. Used to dig holes, tunnels. And I know you've probably read here in later years here, where kids are digging tunnels on the beach and all that stuff and then they collapse on them and they suffocate and stuff. I don't know why that didn't happen to us either because we'd dig as far as we could underground. [LAUGHTER] Arata: Wow, there's so many things I want to ask you about. If we could go back to your time at Hanford just a little bit. So you did have a bunch of different jobs over the broad course of time. Could you talk a little bit about sort of security, or secrecy, or safety, things like that? Did any of those things have a major impact? Daniels: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Now security was at a point where that certain buildings, certain areas, you couldn't go in if you didn't have the clearance to go in them. One of the things that they especially emphasized was paperwork—security or classified documents and things. And documents was classified, like secret, top secret, and they had another one. But anyway, the way you knew which one was which was the border that was around it. Like, I think secret had a blue border. Top secret had a red border around it. Now, if you went in any building, and you saw that document laying anywhere unattended, you were to report it, stay right with that document until somebody of authority came and picked that document up. It wasn't supposed to be laying around any place. Again, if you didn't have the clearance, you weren't allowed in the buildings. They didn't allow you, even if you had the clearance, unless you had business in the building, then you wasn't supposed to go and fraternize and all that stuff, like, well, like first instance, my brother. The only time I went to see him or he came to see me was if there was an emergency at home and he got the message, he came and told me or vice versa. See, you just weren't allowed to do it. You were allowed in your work area to do your work and that's it. I worked all over. So I had a Q clearance. And I had a clearance for everything but the arms room. Now in the arms room, you needed a Q, but you also needed a chip. I didn't have the chip. I worked in the arms room, but I had to be escorted to the building. And then once I got to the building, I could go all around in the building, but I couldn't come out until my escort came and got me to bring me back out of the building. So there were security, and I can remember, for instance, where that DOE--which is what we call them now--actually right where Jackson's is now, down here on George Washington Way, it was a tavern. And DOE actually put people in there to watch and talk with people that worked at Hanford, got off work, stopped in to have a beer and stuff like that, just to see if they would divulge anything that was going on out there. So it was pretty hush-hush. You couldn't go past the wire barricade unless you had business out there. Again, like I say, there's not an area or a building I don't think I haven't been in. But that was because I worked all over the place. ‘Til this day, there are still areas out there that still classified. You know, they're declassifying it and cleaning it up. And I don't know how many acres they got now, but—no, I'll take that back. The only place I never did go was up on top of Rattlesnake. And I didn't want to go up there, because I'm afraid of snakes. And my brother-in-law helped put the telescope up there. And he say when they were digging and getting ready and there was plenty rattlesnakes. I said, I'm not going up there. And so I never went. [LAUGHTER] But any area out there that you can name, if you didn't have any business in there, then it wasn't a good idea to go. I can remember working, and you would look up--and they had environmentalists--and you'd look up and you'd see one way out across the desert someplace. And what in the world are they doing? Who are they? You had to go and get your supervisor or someone, or if you was in a vehicle, you went and you challenged that person. If they didn't have a badge, then they had to go with you. You held them some kind of way until they was identified, in some way or form. You just didn't walk around out there. When the Army was out there, they would do drills and stuff. And they would come in and several times—they finally had to kind of curtail that because we had guards out there that carried weapons. And some of them almost got shot, scaling over walls and going over fences and things like this. It was an exercise, but you going the wrong direction and in the wrong place without proper identification, so they had to sort of curtail that because you don't want anybody to get hurt. Arata: Right. I wonder, I know it's a little bit before your time working at Hanford, but JFK visited in 1963. Daniels: Well, that was before I started out there. I helped put the railroad spur in that he was supposed to come in on because he was supposed to come in by train. We finished the spur the day before he dedicated the steam plant the next day. It was so hot until I decided I wasn't going. So I didn't go. My brother took my mom and dad out to the dedication. Arata: Did you ever wish maybe you had gone, braved the heat? Daniels: Yeah, now I do. But back then, I didn't. I was sick of the heat. Arata: Sure. I guess when you think about overall and through all your different jobs, maybe you could talk a little bit about how Hanford was as a place to work overall and if there were sort of any aspects of your jobs that were more challenging or more rewarding than others? Anything that stands out? Daniels: Probably the worst part of working out at Hanford was the fact that when you worked inside the buildings, they had what we called recirculated air. You didn't get any fresh air. So it was always just sort of ho hum. You know, I always felt kind of drowsy all the time when I worked inside. Other than that, I think everything I did out there I really enjoyed. And I enjoyed being a supervisor. Although, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have the job. But I had everything. All of the crafts worked for me. And that's electricians, crane operators, rigors, laborers, RCTs, the whole ball of wax. I was in charge of taking down all of the holding tanks, which, if you watch TV and you see this deal on there. This guy says he worked at Hanford for 21 years and now he's under this health care and they come out and visit him. If you watch it, you'll see three great big tanks in the back while that is on. In every area out there, they had those tanks. I took down all of those tanks in all of the areas out there and cleaned them enough that all of the metal was shipped to Japan. And that's the first time any metal, that I know of, was shipped of off the Hanford site to go anyplace except for the burial ground. But in the process of doing that, we started out doing it the way they that our RCT and everything said that we were supposed to do it. We cleared I don't know how many pounds and shipped them down here to Pasco. From Pasco, they went to Seattle and was put aboard ship. Well, before they left the Hanford area, they were surveyed to be cleaned. We shipped them down to the 1100 Area. When they left the 1100 Area, they were surveyed again. They shipped them down to Pasco. When they left Pasco to go to Seattle, they were surveyed again. When they got to Seattle, before they put them aboard ship, they were surveyed again. Got to Seattle, getting ready to put them on board ship, and they found I don't know, I'll say ten milligrams on one corner of one piece of metal. They stopped it right there. Everything that they hadn't loaded aboard ship they sent back to Kennewick. All of it. I was on my way home when it was on a Friday evening. And how they knew where I was, I have no idea, but they found me. I was in the Towne Crier down here in Richland. Guy came in. He say, I've been looking for you. I said, what do you want with me? He say, you got to go to work in the morning. I say, no, I don't. He say, yes, you do. He say, I got to have RCTs. You need to go and get ahold of Ray Jennings and get some riggers and O’Reilly, get some riggers, and crane operators, and all that stuff and we got to be out there are 8 o'clock in the morning. Says, oh. So anyway, we got it all done. I drove up out there probably at 7, 7:30 or so. We all gathered around and everything. Pretty soon, here come a guy that I've never seen before. He came in. He got out of the car, he came over, he spoke to everyone. He say, who's in charge of this project? I said, well, I guess I am. He said, well, I don't need you to guess. He say, either you or your aren't. I said, well, I'm in charge of this project. He said, come over here. He says, you haven't done anything wrong according to the RWP. He say, but we found some contamination and we can't have that. He say, so today, you are going to go step-by-step through everything that you did in order to release this metal. I told him, okay. So I call my RCTs, I get my riggers and everything. We get a panel out. And we lay it out for him. And you got to lay it out in feet, every square foot, you know, is a square. And then there's a certain amount of time that you should take to go over that square foot. And he watched us. He says, you're doing everything right if that's the way you did. I say, that's the way we did it. Well, I got the RCT head supervisor there. I got the rigger supervisor and everybody saying, well, this is the way we do it. He says, okay. He says, but how do I know—and I'll give you a for instance on what I'm talking about here—when you cut a piece of metal with a torch, you get something like the rim of this glass, where the metal actually rolls as it melts. He say, how do I know it's not contaminated underneath there? I say, well, I guess I really don't, except the instruments that we use is supposed to detect anything a quarter of an inch deep. He say, that's not good enough. He say, because some of that slag is better than a quarter of an inch. He said, have you ever heard of a Ludlum? Well, now, there's none of us out there that ever heard of a Ludlum, which is a radiation detector machine. We'd never heard of it. He says, well, that's what I want you to use. He was from Washington, DC, the Pentagon. [LAUGHTER] I said, uh-oh. But anyway, he says, I'm going back this afternoon. You will not survey or ship anymore metal off of here until I am satisfied that it's clean. I told him, okay. He went back to Washington, DC. This was like on a Wednesday. On a Monday morning, I had eight Ludlums. I'd never seen the things before. So I give them to my RCTs. And they had instruction with them. And the two kids live in Kennewick now, they read the instructions and everything, tried them out and everything. And then they became the instructors to teach other people how to use the Ludlum. Battelle has a program where that they have to certify all of the machines that are used on the Hanford site. Well, they didn't get their hands on these. So I'm working. I get a call from Battelle. And they tell me, say, Vanis, I understand you've got some machines out there that didn't come through us. I said, I don't know who they came through. But I said, they sent them to me. I said, so I got them. And I'm using them. You can't use them because they're not certified. I say, that's not what I was told. So I tell them exactly what I was told, who told me, where I got them from and everything. You got to bring them in here. I said, nope. I'm not bringing them in there. I say, I was told by the head from Washington, DC what to do. And that's what I'm going to do. Anyway, I had to go down and sit on their lap and talk with them, get them to understand that, hey, you can buck whoever you want to up there. I'm not going to do it. Well, anyway, they finally got it all squared away that they weren't going to get these machines and that I was going to use them because they had been overridden by Washington, DC. So then I got to get all that metal and everything cleared and it went to Japan. And one of things I can remember he told me before he left that evening, he say, you're doing a good job. But the thing I don't want is for one of my grandkids to get contaminated sitting up working on a computer where you have sent some contaminated metal and they made computers out of and sent it back over here. That was an interesting one. [LAUGHTER] Arata: I can imagine. And what year would that have been? Daniels: That would've been in '95 or '96. Arata: Okay. Well, I wonder if we could just wrap up. Obviously, the Cold War in this time period, kind of a very conflicted legacy. Most of my students were not alive during that time. So they have sort of a limited window into it. So I wonder of you could just tell us a little bit about, in your experience, living through and working at Hanford during much of this time period of the Cold War, just maybe what changed over the course of time, if anything in terms of—like I know the NAACP eventually came to Hanford at did some good work later on. Sort of what that experience was of living through that change. Daniels: Okay, one of the things that happened was in '68, I believe it was, about that time anyway, I was working in the 325 Building and Decon at the time. And I saw this gentleman, oh, for the better part of a week walking around. In the building, he'd always nod his head, you know, speak. I'd speak, go on about my work. Whatever he was doing, he'd go on about it too. My supervisor, one morning, told me, he stays, I need you to stay here, answer the phone. He say, take any work orders that come in. He say, and if you need to go and estimate a job, you know how to do it, go do it. I got to go to a meeting. I'll be back. I says, okay. So he went on to the meeting. And when he came back, he says, I told you something was going to happen. He say, heads are going to roll around here. I said, what are you talking about? He says, remember, they got all these blacks out here. I say, yeah. He say, 90% of them are janitors. I say, yes. He say, that guy that's been walking around in this building? I say, yes? He say, he's head of DoE. He's from Washington. And he's been observing all of the jobs, the people that are doing the jobs, the people that are in the jobs, the education that the people have, and the whole ball of wax. And he just told us that we got three weeks to start transferring some of these people into some of these jobs. He say, because you can't tell me you got that many black people out here and don't none of them have enough sense to do anything but janitorial work. He say, I know better. [LAUGHTER] So that's when they started diversifying and sending people to all different jobs and all that stuff. Because before then, most of them were janitors, I think. I got a cousin that worked in a lab, one supervisor, one operator—that was about it. Everybody else mostly were janitors. But, again, see, you're looking at an area when they start hiring blacks out there. Most of them had been here since the early '40s. They had worked construction out there and all that stuff. But none of them had ever been able to get a job in what I call production. They hired them all. They hired them as janitors. They were already elderly people. And when I say elderly, some of them may have been as young as in their 40s. But most of them only worked ten, 12 years, and they retired. They were that old. Some of them didn't want to do anything else except janitorial work. A whole bunch of the younger people actually went on and became Teamsters and electricians and pipefitters and all that stuff. But that was the first time that a lot of the blacks had ever had a steady job in their life. And they, in the run of a year, they probably made is much or more money than they ever made in their life because they had a steady job. You got a paycheck 52 weeks to the year, with a vacation, which they had never had before. So they didn't want to branch out per se, a lot of them didn't, because I know some of the people that I worked with, many have gotten in 12 years out there and they retired. They just weren't interested in killing the world at their age. They just weren't interested in it. We first went to hot standby they call it. In other words, hot standby is when you redo everything, you rebuild everything. You get it ready to go if you need to go back into production. Then they go from what they call hot standby they downgraded it to just cold standby. When they did that, then after about six months we went in, we start draining everything. This is all the oils, all the antifreeze if you had antifreeze, whatever you had that was liquid, we start draining all this stuff out of all the equipment and everything. You started taking out all the electrical stuff. And they had spent millions and millions and millions of dollars upgrading all this stuff. You've got engines, diesel engines just in case you had a nuclear attack or something to that effect that once the electricity went off, the engines kicked off and kept the reactors running. One of those engines is longer than this building is this way, and they rebuilt them all. And the only time they started, they just started them up enough to make sure that they were working and they shut them off. We drained everything out of all those engines, and then they took them out, and when I left they were still in the buildings. I think they've since sold them to someone, but that means that you can't start it back up. If you want to, you've got to put all new stuff in. Well, in 1943, when they built the B Reactor, when they started it, 13 months it was online. Try to build a reactor today. 40 years from now it won't be online. Because the government took and they put all of these entities into place. And it's a safety precaution as far as that go. But see they didn't put any restrictions on these people. And that's just the ecology, ERDA, all those people, they don't have any restrictions on them. And you get all of these in--if I hit you on the toe, don't holler ouch too hard--but young people are the worst in the bunch because the only thing they know is what they read in a book. And the book is just a guideline for you to use this up here, because there's no two things out there that's ever going to be the same. And DoE put young people in positions out here to tell people that have been working and doing this job for 30 and 40 years and they tell them what to do instead of coming out there asking some questions and trying to learn? Because the book don't tell you nothing. Do you cook? Arata: I do. Daniels: Okay. You go get a recipe, you fix the food exactly like the recipe says. It's not always good to you. But now if you are allowed to put your flair into it, then it's good, right? That's the same thing with a life. That's just the way life is. You've got to learn, and you do it by trial and error. And they don't have any business out there. I had a guy, 27 years old or roughly there, shut one of my jobs down. He did not ask the questions that he should ask. He just saw it and shut it down. You're not going to do this and you're not going to do that. Well, when you're talking to a rigger that's been rigging for 40 years, he know when he's in danger and when he's not. He didn't live that long by being stupid. Well anyway, it all comes down to not putting a barrier around where he was working. Well, he's got to be able to see the rigger down here, up here, and then he signals the crane operator. Well, if you can't see the rigger down in that hole, you can't signal the crane operator. And he shut my job down because this guy didn't have a barrier between him and the hole where he could look down in there and see the rigger. They shut it down. I had to go to a critique. And we talked about it and the rigger told him, he says, you don't have a clue what you're talking about. He said, you just shut a job down, he say, and you've got all these suits sitting up in here and making all this money and the job's still not done. But those are the things you have put up with, too. Arata: Absolutely. Well, sir, is there anything else that I haven't asked you about, any final stories you'd like to share? Daniels: I don't know. Maybe he got something he want to ask me. You got anything you want to ask me? I am just here. Just ask me whatever you want to ask me, and if I know, I'll tell you. If I don't, I'll say I don't know. Arata: I guess my one sort of follow-up question, we've heard from a couple other interviewees about having some definite run-ins with the KKK. Did you ever have any experience with the KKK in the area? Daniels: No, I never did. Now I do have a friend in Kennewick that tells me that they used to have meetings right up here on Jump-Off Joe. But no, I never ran into any. If I did, I didn't know who they were. Never had that experience, because we still might be fighting if I had. [LAUGHTER] Arata: I think that covers all my questions. I want to thank you so much for coming and sharing your stories and experiences with us. I really appreciate it. Daniels: My brother, he's got probably--let's see, I worked out there about 15 years all total and I think he's got 36 or 37 or 38, so he can probably tell you a lot more than me. Arata: We'll get him next week. We're looking forward to it. Well, thank you so much, Vanis. Daniels: Okay. You're welcome. Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:20:42 Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 300 Area 100-F 3706 Building 3707 Building 200 East 200 West B Reactor 1100 Area 325 Building Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1951- Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1966-1971 1989-1997 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Heidlebar, Rebecca Johnson, Louzel Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 230 kbps Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Vanis Daniels Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) Pasco (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Kennewick (Wash.) Segregation Nuclear reactors Radioactive decontamination Nuclear facilities Baseball Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11/14/2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-04: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Description An account of the resource Vanis Daniels moved to Pasco, Washington in 1951 as a teenager and began working on the Hanford Site in 1966. An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by Mission Support Alliance on behalf of the United States Department of Energy. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities 1100 Area 300 Area 3706 Building 3707 Building B Reactor BU reactor Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Kennewick (Wash.) Pasco (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F866f4dc1ee97127bc030dbc0e1cda11c.jpg 369953453c2a6c4d1d213754904a555b https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1fa70e25a8e3aeba0cc6e6bcb13dfa80.mp4 3dbf13537584bbe0cb93002f5c3ea15d Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Franklin Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Daniel Barnett Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:09:21 Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 225 B Encapsulation Building B Plant Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1944-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1965-1995 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin and I’m conducting an oral history interview with Daniel Barnett on July 13th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Daniel Barnett about his experiences growing up in Richland and working at the Hanford site. So the best place to start, I think, is the beginning. So why don’t you tell me where you were born and what year. Daniel Barnett: I was born in Aberdeen, Washington in 1938—August 13th. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: And when the war started, my dad was working for the Harbor Patrol in Seattle as a patrolman. He heard that they were hiring over here, so he came over here and they hired him almost instantly because he already had the security clearance and everything. Franklin: Ah. Barnett: So he called my mom and told her that he had a job over here and to get herself packed, because he was gonna get her. But when she moved here, she couldn’t move to Richland. It wasn’t even on the map at that time. They took it off the map and everything. She had to move to Prosser. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: And later on when they finally got a prefab built, we moved into a prefab at 1011 Sanford. Franklin: Where was your father from? Was he from Washington? Barnett: He was from Oregon. All my family is from Oregon except for me. My dad said he couldn’t get across the border fast enough. Franklin: So being from—what drew him to Hanford? Was it the pay? Barnett: I think so. Well, he was originally—he worked at a plywood plant, then he went to work for Harbor Patrol. He had asthma, which the wet climate apparently irritated. So he had a chance to get over here, so he moved over here. Franklin: Okay. So the climate played a— Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: --big factor and wanted the dry and the sunshine. Barnett: Well, probably the pay, too, because the pay was good for those times. Franklin: Right. And how long did your family live in Prosser before you moved? Barnett: We were there about a year, I think. I don’t remember truthfully—I was only about five when we moved there. And I was there probably about a year. I just vaguely remember moving to Prosser. Franklin: Right. Okay. And you moved—so you came over in 1944— Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: --right? And so you would have moved to Richland in 1944? About there? Barnett: Oh—I think we actually—Dad came over, I think in ’43. A year later, in ’44 we moved over. Franklin: Oh, okay. Barnett: Because I remember ’45 when they announced the war—dropping the bomb on Japan, and Mom told Dad when he come home, I know what you’ve been guarding! [LAUGHTER] Because he didn’t even know what he was guarding at the time. Franklin: Right. Wow. Did your dad talk about his work much? Or maybe [INAUDIBLE] Barnett: He worked as a patrolman until they sold the town and then he became a painter. Franklin: A painter? Barnett: Yeah, he was an artist so then he became a painter and painted the houses and the buildings in Richland. Because when the government owned Richland, if you had a paint job needed done on the house, you called them and they come in and painted it. You didn’t hire somebody from a company to paint it. The government did it. Franklin: And was he a patrolman onsite the entire time until they sold the town? Barnett: Yeah, yeah. Franklin: Okay. Was he assigned to a specific area, or--? Barnett: No, just general patrol. He talked about patrolling the fences, taking their Jeeps and going down the length of the fences and checking them out, and all that sort of stuff. But just a general patrolman, not any special area. Franklin: Okay. And you said that your—what did your mother do when she first got here? Barnett: Oh, she was just a housewife. She eventually went to work as a waitress. And then finally she got on to work at Hanford. She worked with Battelle for about 29 years as a lab tech. Franklin: Oh, wow. Do you know which lab she worked in? Barnett: Well, she did—where they did testing on the animals. Though at that time they were testing marijuana on chimpanzees and different types of animals. She did the test work on the meat from the animals. Franklin: Oh, wow. Barnett: So I don’t know exactly—it was—again, probably wasn’t supposed to be told, so she didn’t say much about it. Franklin: Did she have any schooling beyond— Barnett: Just high school. Franklin: Just high school. And what about your father, did he--? Barnett: He was just high school. Franklin: Just high school as well. Where did your mother waitress at? Barnett: Well, the first place she had was O’Malley’s Drug Store which now is a—what do you call it? A Tojo Gym? Where they teach different martial arts? Franklin: Oh, okay. Barnett: It’s down on Williams, right off of Williams. That’s what it is now. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: O’Malley’s Drug Store eventually closed, moved up to Kadlec. And a lady bought it from him, and now she’s down there on George Washington Way. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: And right by O’Malley’s Drug Store used to be a Mayfair market. So I sold newspapers out at the lunch halls at Hanford. Sold—well, I don’t remember—but I think it was the Columbia Basin News to start out, because that was the first newspaper of the Tri-Cities, was the Columbia Basin News. Then they bought them out and became the Tri-City Herald. But I remember selling—give you an idea, you can figure out how much time, because I remember one of the headlines was—one of the union leaders had been arrested by the government. And I don’t even remember who it was, it’s been so long ago. But I remember that was one of the headlines of one of the newspapers. Franklin: What about—do you remember the Richland Villager at all? That was a local paper. Barnett: Yeah, but it wasn’t very much. It was very small. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: I delivered the Seattle P-I. Franklin: Seattle P-I? Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: Okay. And you said your mother started waitressing at Malley? At O’Malley’s or Malley’s? Barnett: At O’Malley’s. Franklin: O’Malley’s. And then did she waitress anywhere else in Richland? Barnett: Not that I know of. From there she went out to Hanford. Franklin: And that was when pharmacies or drug stores as we know them now, they used to have lunch counters. Barnett: Yeah, yeah. Franklin: Right. And so they would go there and they were more of like a café-slash-pharmacy. Barnett: Yeah. The one up on Thayer, I think it was Densow’s at that time. That had a heyday lunch counter in it, coffee shop. It closed up and now I think it’s just pharmacy. Franklin: Mm-hmm. Barnett: But where the south end—what do you call it? You know when you get down here, you sit and try to remember things and you get kind of jumbled up—Salvation Army building is now on Thayer was originally the Mayfair Market. Franklin: Okay. And what did they sell there? Barnett: Well, that was the grocery store. Franklin: Grocery store, okay. Do you remember—so you said you moved into—what was the address on Sanford? Barnett: 1011 Sanford. Franklin: And do you remember what kind of prefabricated house it was? Barnett: It was three-bedroom. Franklin: Three-bedroom prefab, okay. Barnett: No, I think it was two-bedroom, because my sister was just a little baby then. Franklin: Okay. And did you share a room with your sister? Barnett: Probably with my brother. Franklin: Oh, so how many siblings— Barnett: Had three kids. I had an older brother. We were about five years apart. Franklin: Oh, okay. So an older brother, you, and then a younger sister. Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: And then how long did you live at 1011 Sanford? Barnett: I don’t really remember, but it must have been three or four years, because as soon as they got the A houses built, we had a chance to move into one. And we moved immediately to one. Because we had three kids, and a prefab’s kind of tight for three kids. Franklin: Yeah, yeah. I live in a two-bedroom prefab. And it’s—with just my wife, and it’s pretty— Barnett: Well you know why they’re called prefabs. Franklin: Tell me. Barnett: They were built by a company, brought in in two sections and then put together. They were prefabricated. Franklin: Yeah, the prefabricated engineering company out of Portland. Barnett: And nobody could figure out why they put that little square door in the back other than to throw the garbage out it. I don’t know—have you ever heard of Dupus Boomer? Franklin: Yes. Barnett: He made some cartoons about that backdoor. Franklin: Right, and that the rooves had a tendency to fly away. Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: And they had to put— Barnett: Well, in 1955, they did. They had two of them blow off. Franklin: Yeah, those are great cartoons. Barnett: Like “Pa wants a bathtub.” [LAUGHTER] Franklin: So tell me a little more about growing up in Richland. Which schools did you go to? Barnett: Well, the first school I went was Carmichael. And that was probably a mile-and-a-half away. We walked to school. Nobody thought anything about it. There wasn’t any buses. There was a bus system in Richland, but it was run by the government. It was a little old bus that you could pick up in two places in Richland to go downtown and go to a movie and come back. But no buses hauled you to school. There was high school buses that hauled people. They picked them up in the Horse Heaven Hills on farms and brought them to Hanford—I mean to Col High—it’s Hanford now. But, no, I walked to school real regular, didn’t think about it, nobody had any panic about walking to school. Everybody did it because it’s normal. Franklin: And do you remember—so you would have been going to—was it Carmichael—growing up right in the early Cold War. What do you remember about civil defense? Duck-and-cover, air raids. Barnett: I don’t remember doing that. Franklin: Really? Barnett: I don’t know whether we did or not, but I don’t remember doing that. Franklin: Do you remember knowing what was being made at Hanford? Did you ever have any fear—how real did the Cold War seem to you? Barnett: Well, the Cold War affected me quite a bit because I was in eight years during the Cold War—in the Air Force. Franklin: Right. Barnett: The security was a lot tighter. I mean, there was—you couldn’t go out to Hanford without having your security badge checked. Now you can drive clear to the Area and before you go in the Area have your badge checked. Franklin: Right. Barnett: But then, there was a badge check when you got on the buses, the badge check, when you got out to your area, and then again they checked your badges when you left the area. Franklin: Right. Barnett: So it was—the security was real tight. Franklin: Mm-hmm. But what about when you were growing up, when you were a kid in school? Did you ever have any special fear or pride in what was being made at Hanford? Barnett: Nope. It was—like I said, nobody knew what they were doing out there until they dropped the bomb. Then they found out they’d been protecting part of the atomic bomb. Franklin: Right. Barnett: But I had no fears about it. I went down the irrigation ditch—there used to be an irrigation ditch that ran through town that started—it had two, three ponds on Wellsian Way that were the settling ponds for Richland’s water system. And we used to go there and swim in them. One of the ponds they eventually made a juvenile fishing pond. And the irrigation ditch runs from there, clear down to where the hospital is, down in front of the hospital, several ponds down through the hospital and then under—well, through the Uptown district, one of them went through the Uptown district, and one went to the Columbia River. And wasn’t until ’48 that they finally put a pump in there, because in ’48 when they built the dam—they built the dike, rather—the irrigation ditches plugged up. So they had to put up a pump station in so they could pump the water irrigation ditch up into the river. We used to fish in that. We used to go down there and slide down—slide over where the pump was, because it was all slick and slimy. We’d put on an old pair of jeans and go down there and slide into the water. I mean, that’s things kids then. Nowadays they wouldn’t even think about it. My mother told me when I could swim 25 feet, I could go in the river by myself. Mainly because you didn’t go to the river too often in the winter; you went in the summer. And there’s not a place in the Yakima, if you can swim 25 feet, you can’t get back to the shore. So I spent all my—most weekends and spare time at the Yakima River playing around. Franklin: Wow. What about—maybe you could talk a little bit about the growth of Richland and kind of the building of some of the major hallmarks, like the Uptown and the— Barnett: Well, the Uptown was built—the rest of it closed up, but originally the Uptown—as you come into Uptown off to the left—that was a big theater. And we used to have a big matinee. The Spudnut’s shop has always been there. I can remember going to the movie on a Saturday and the lineup for the movie—I think it was 20 cents for a movie then. But it was clear past the Spudnut shop. We used to watch the owner there making the Spudnuts while we were waiting to get into the movies. Franklin: Has that been in its same location-- Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: --in the mall? Barnett: Spudnut’s has been there ever since it started. They originally were out there in Kennewick. If you go in there and pick up their menu, they have a little story about where they started. They started out there in the Wye. Franklin: That’s great. And what else about it? Because Richland kind of developed out towards-- Barnett: Well, Newberry’s was on the other end of the Uptown district. That was kind of a department store type. I think the only one I saw was about 15 years ago, and that was in the Dalles, Oregon. I don’t even know if they exist anymore. The downtown district, every year we had different contests for the kids. They had marble shooting contests and bubblegum blowing contests—all kind of contests to keep the kids’ interest. Franklin: Right. Barnett: At that time, the—what is it? The Allied Arts, or was that in the Atomic Frontier Days? Franklin: Can you talk maybe a little bit about the Atomic Frontier—do you remember going to the parades? Barnett: Yeah. They had a lot of the old western movie stars come to the Atomic Frontier Days. Franklin: Like—do you remember any names in particular? Barnett: No, I don’t. Like I say, a kid doesn’t retain names like that. He hears them and doesn’t retain them. But my dad, apparently, knew a couple of them, so he visited with them. It started out as just a celebration of Hanford and stuff. And then it worked into the Allied Arts show. Franklin: Okay. And do you remember any particulars of those celebrations, like the parade—the floats, or— Barnett: Well, there wasn’t any parade. There wasn’t any parade, and where Howard Amon Park is, there used to be a swimming pool. You know where it makes a turnaround? Well, there off to the right there used to be a swimming pool. And right now, they still got the old children’s swimming pool there, but then there was a regular swimming pool in the water. And in 1948 when the big flood came, it filled up full of water and they ended up breaking it up and burying it and building the Howard Prout pool. But we used to go down there and swim just about every day. And we’d go to the other end of the park and pick peaches, because it used to be a peach orchard. Because there were orchards all over town. Where Jason Lee was—the old Jason Lee—that was a cherry orchard. Where Densow is, that was a cherry orchard. Carmichael had an orchard. There was orchards all over town. Because this was an agriculture district at the time the government bought it and moved in. Franklin: Were you in any clubs or— Barnett: I was a boy scouts. Franklin: --organizations? Boy Scouts? Barnett: Yeah. We had—one that sticks in my mind the most was we had one of our young scouts drowned at the Uptown. That’s the one I mentioned. He went on an inner tube, fell in the water and drowned. That was in ’48. And actually, the water where the hospital was, the irrigation ditch you got there, that was 15-foot deep at that time. Franklin: Wow. Barnett: That backed up so much, they—that’s when they built what they called the America Mile, the dike. They called all the earthmovers from Hanford out to Richland to build that dike. Because when they started, the water was lapping over the edge to go into the houses. And they poured that thing in about 24 hours. Franklin: Wow, that’s amazing. Barnett: Now, the George Washington Way was closed to all civilian traffic, and these great big earthmovers were just going down the road, 30, 40 miles an hour. Franklin: Wow. What other kinds of activities did you do in Boy Scouts? Barnett: Oh, built models. Car models. You whittle them out, put the wheels on them, all that, have races with them. Went on trips. Just normal Boy Scout stuff. Got a little more sophisticated, but just the normal Boy Scout stuff then. Franklin: Right. And so after you went to Carmichael, did you then go to Richland High? Barnett: Col High. Franklin: Col High? Barnett: [LAUGHTER] It was Col High then. Franklin: Oh. Barnett: They changed the name because there was a Col High downstream on the Columbia that had had the name before Richland High was called Col High. So they changed it to Richland High instead of Col High. Franklin: Oh. But was the mascot always still the— Barnett: All the bomber. Franklin: --bombers? Okay. So the Col High Bombers? Barnett: Yup. Franklin: Okay. And when did you graduate high school? Barnett: 1957. Franklin: And then what did you do? Barnett: I went in the Air Force. I think about two months after I got out and I went in the Air Force. I already spent 27 months in the National Guards. I got in the National Guards when I was 16, and when I went to sign up for the Air Force, the squadron commander of the National Guards was—he got shook up because he enlisted me when I was 16. [LAUGHTER] So they changed the date on my discharge papers from the National Guards. So according to my discharge papers from the National Guards, I’m 78 right now. Franklin: Oh. Barnett: Those days, they did things like that, nobody thought anything about it. Franklin: Wow, yeah. Barnett: Because if you were warm they took you into the military then. Franklin: Right. [LAUGHTER] And what did you—describe your time in the Air Force. Barnett: Well, of course there was basic training. The first place I went was Westover, Massachusetts—that’s Springfield, Massachusetts. And that was a total culture shock for me, because I grew up in a comparatively small city. And Springfield then had over 100,000 people in it. Franklin: Right, and I guess, too, at this point you would have completely grown up when Richland was a government— Barnett: Yup. Franklin: --still was all government space. Barnett: Yup, they sold it while I was in the Air Force. Franklin: Can—actually I guess maybe we can back up a little bit. What strikes you, maybe looking back on that, or— Barnett: I watched them build the Alphabet Houses. And there wasn’t one or two people on the houses; there was five or six building these houses. And they seemed to go up overnight. One of the things that I don’t know is fact or not, but knowing the government it probably was—is they were supposed to build half basements for a coal fire furnace, a coal bin, and two tubs, and place for a washing machine. The contractors screwed up on some of them and built a full basement. And the government found out about it and made them go back in and seal half the basement with dirt. [LAUGHTER] Typical government. Franklin: Were your—granted you were a kid at this point, but was your sense—were people happy— Barnett: Oh yeah! Franklin: living in a government-controlled and -owned town? Barnett: Nobody thought anything about it. There was very little crime. Because at that time, there was only about two, three ways to get out of Richland. So there was nobody causing any big deal. And if you got in a whole bunch of trouble—you didn’t live in Richland unless you worked at Hanford. And if your kids got into too much trouble, they told the parents, you calm them down or go find another job. So it was stopped. Franklin: Right. Did you—was Richland mostly a white community at that time? Right? Were there any other— Barnett: Yeah, there was—one, I think there was only one black community in Richland—Norris Brown. And I think they lived in Putnam. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: I remember we had a basketball game in Sunnyside. And Sunnyside wasn’t gonna let them play on their court. And we told them, fine, we’ll just get up and leave. So we all started to get up and leave and they finally broke it and gave in and let them play on the basketball court. Franklin: How did you know this family? Did you go to school together? Barnett: Yeah, I went to school with them. Franklin: Oh okay, and did you play basketball? Barnett: No! I’m not a sports—I had my first surgery on my knee when I was about 13, so— Franklin: Oh, wow. Barnett: I’ve never played any sports. My sporting then was hunting and fishing. Franklin: But you kind of heard about this story? Barnett: Oh, yeah. We all know them. Went to basketball games. Then there was sock hops and at noon they taught dancing in the lunchrooms for kids that wanted to learn how to dance. Franklin: So do you know what the patriarch of that family would have done at Hanford to be able to earn a place at Hanford? Because mostly from what I’ve heard, mostly African Americans had to live in Pasco. Barnett: Yeah, because they wouldn’t let them live in Richland—I mean Kennewick. Franklin: Yeah, in Kennewick. So how did—do you know any particulars as to how that family was able to live in Richland? Barnett: I think it’s just that the government—that they had to be equal on them, and they just hired them and they went to work out there. I don’t know any particulars on it, but that’s basic what it was. Franklin: Oh, okay. Barnett: They were in a government town, and there was no way that anybody could refuse—and there was nobody that complained about it. Franklin: Right. Barnett: Again, the government controlled it. They said, if you don’t like it, goodbye. Franklin: Right. And they would—they called the government for pretty much anything you needed on the house, right? For coal? Barnett: Right. Lightbulbs, chains, coal. But coal was delivered once a—I don’t know whether it was once a month or once a week. But coal was automatically delivered. And like I say, if there was anything major done, you called the housing department. They came in and fixed it. Franklin: I think sometimes for outsiders looking in, it’s kind of striking to hear about the government completely owning this town and controlling the lives of the people and having that much control on people’s freedoms and responsibility. But from the people I’ve talked to who grow up in Richland, they have very fond memories of it. Barnett: Yeah, there was no restrictions on the normal freedoms. There was restriction on if your kids got into trouble, because, like I said, the patrol would go up to the person that had the kids that were causing the problem and said you either straighten your kids out or you go and find another job. Which, to me, made common sense. And so it was actually pretty decent. Franklin: Did you ever get any sense from your parents that they felt, maybe, restricted, not being able to own their own home or do any of their own repairs, or did they just— Barnett: No, not then. I think—that was just after the Depression—I think they were just happy to be able to get a home. Franklin: Right. Interesting. Because, you know, for some people looking outside, you could look at that level of government control—because we have these big debates about the role of the government in society today, and it’s kind of interesting to hear about it. Barnett: Well, there was no control where the government come in and said, you do this and you do that and you do this. As long as you didn’t get into trouble and you did your job, and were a normal person, there was nobody ever complained about it. I remember I was back behind where the Racquet Club is. I was hunting ground squirrels with a .22 one day. And at that time, nobody had any problems with it. And one of the Richland patrol people came and picked me up and brought me back to the patrol station. And he called my dad. My dad come in and he says, what’s wrong? He says, we caught your boy shooting .22s at such-and-such area. He said, well, is he aiming at the road? Said, no. Said, did he shoot it at anybody? Said, no. Then what the hell are you bothering me about? I mean, that’s just how it was in those times. It wasn’t any of this, oh my god, he’s got a gun. It just was normal. Because I had my first rifle when I was about—I must have been about eight years old. And we used to go out and go rabbit hunting. Franklin: Did you ever spend much time in Kennewick or Pasco—in either of those--? Barnett: Not really. My wife was born in Pasco. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: I never spent much time in it because I had no reason to. I mean, it wasn’t the case of I was afraid to or wary about it—just I had no reason to. All, everything I needed was in Richland or around the Richland area. Franklin: Why did you first have to get surgery on your knee at 13? Barnett: Well, my knee locked. I didn’t find out until about 25 years later that the doctor had actually not fixed it. Because what they found out was there was a meniscus cartilage—you know in your knee? And mine was oblong and it had broke in half. And it had slipped between the joint and it had locked my knee so I couldn’t straighten it out. So I’d have to pick it up, lay it across the other leg, and pull it and pop it back out. But that was the first—I was accident prone. I had a radical mastoid when I was about 15. By the time I got out of high school, I probably had 100 stitches in me. I mean, if it happened, I did it and got it happened to me. I was playing baseball, jumped over a fence, and landed on a guard rake with the thongs up—four thongs in one of my foot. Franklin: Ouch. Barnett: Weird things like that are always happening to me. One time, when I was in school, I reached up to open a door and a kid slammed it and put my hand through the window, sliced across this way. And I looked at it, bleeding, and I closed it up and went to the nurse’s office. The nurse got all panicky. She called my mom, and I could hear my mom say over the phone real loud, again?! And the nurse must’ve thought she was the hard-heartest old lady there ever was, but my mother was just used to it. Franklin: Yeah, right. Barnett: And I didn’t do things out of the way to have it happen, just—if it’s gonna be an odd thing, it happened. Franklin: Right. Barnett: So I kind of, like I say, with all this mess I got with my knee now, I call it Young Stupid Male Syndrome, a lot of it. I don’t—I get frustrated with it, because I love to garden and I can’t garden anymore. But I don’t get worried or depressed about it, because it’s there and nothing I can do about it, so just live with it. Franklin: Right. So jump back ahead now. So you said you moved to Springfield in the Air Force for basic training, and that was— Barnett: No, I was—San Antonio for basic training, and then to Springfield. Franklin: And that was a big culture shock. Barnett: Oh, yeah. I mean, I drove a vehicle and drove into town to haul officers into town. And here is a town with 100,000 people and I’d never been in anything bigger than Richland, Washington. So you can imagine the shock it was, being in that kind of traffic. Franklin: Right. And then where did you go after that? Barnett: Well, I was there for about a year-and-a-half, two years. Then I went to Thule, Greenland. Franklin: Interesting. Barnett: Top of the world. Franklin: Yeah. And what were you—was that for the—weren’t there bombers stationed— Barnett: No, they had the fueling planes there. Yes, they had SAC planes all over the world at that time. But at Thule they had the KC-135s and the KC-97s that were fueling planes. Franklin: Right. Barnett: So we were there to support them. Franklin: And those were there to refuel the— Barnett: The B-52s. Franklin: --the B-52s that were carrying weapons in case of-- Barnett: Yup, because there was one from every base in the world in the air 24 hours a day. Franklin: Right. And can you talk—what was that like, to be in—and was the base separated from any other communities in Greenland, or did you-- Barnett: It was a base of its own. There were no other communities besides Thule, that’s it. Franklin: And how long were you there? Barnett: Year. Franklin: And what was that like? Barnett: Well, it’s an interesting place to visit, but you don’t want to live there permanently. [LAUGHTER] Let’s put it that way. They have permafrost which is—oh, I guess about two foot down. So in the spring there are all these little beautiful tundra flowers—yellows and whites and all that. And then when they’re gone it’s just green grass and that’s it. And when they went to put a pole in the ground, they put a can—a barrel of oil in the ground, and light the oil, and then dig around that barrel. Because that’s the only way to get down past the permafrost. Because permafrost is almost like concrete. Franklin: Yes, yeah. I’m from Alaska originally, and so I’m very familiar with permafrost. So after Greenland, where did you go? Barnett: Went to Mountain Home Air Force Base. Franklin: And where is that? Barnett: Idaho, Washington. Franklin: Oh, okay. So kind of close to-- Barnett: Yeah, out in Mountain Home. They had B-47s then at Mountain Home. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: I figured out that they actually phased out B-47s because they were built before the B-52s and they figured the B-47s weren't worth keeping around. Franklin: And what did you do in the Air Force? Barnett: I drove. I drove every kind of vehicle you can think of. Franklin: Oh, really? Barnett: Yeah. When I moved to Fairchild from Mountain Home, I was trained to tow B-52s in the back, in the hangars. Franklin: Oh, okay. Barnett: With a five-ton Yuke. Four-wheel drive, five ton, and you had wing walkers on the outside that would guide you, and you would back this thing up, this big B-52 into a hangar. Franklin: Wow. Barnett: They would pull it down to a fueling station or whatever. Franklin: Cool. And then when did you come back to Richland? Barnett: 1965. I got out to Richland and we moved to--I can't remember the address, but it was on Marshall. We moved to a house on Marshall. Franklin: Was it an Alphabet House, or was it a-- Barnett: Yeah, it was an Alphabet House. I remember it most because the neighbors had a monkey. And the monkey kept stealing my daughter's candy from her. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: So you said--wait, so by this point you had a family? Barnett: Yeah, I had--I adopted my oldest boy and I had two children. Franklin: Oh, okay. Barnett: They were all born at Fairchild. Franklin: Okay. And a wife, I presume? Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: And what did your wife do in Richland? Barnett: She was just a mother. But we divorced in about '70. And then I remarried. Franklin: Okay. And what did you do when you came back to Richland? Barnett: Anything I could. I worked at O'Malley's Drug Store for a while. I worked at his house--O'Malley's house, leveled his backyard. I worked at Walter's Grape Juice, I worked at Bell Furniture, I worked at—at that time, it was originally called the Mart, at that big building right next to the Federal Building. At one time, that was a big--what would you call it? They had a cafeteria and a grocery store and all the other—kind of like Walmart. Franklin: Right. Barnett: It was called the Mart at that time. And I worked there in the clippers that they washed the dishes with. And then I went to work for the bowling alley, Atomic Lanes, which was right there where the Jacks and Sons Tavern is. That was a community center and a bowling alley there. And I worked there for about a month, and then they went automatic. So, about that time, I was just about ready to get out—finish high school. And I don't think I had any other job after that, and I went in the Air Force. Franklin: Oh, so--I'm sorry. When you came back to Richland, what did you do? So in 1965. Barnett: Oh, I did everything then. You name it, I took a job. Before—I'm sorry, I got it backwards. Before I went in the Air Force, there wasn't many jobs for people in the—who were kids in Richland. And I worked the bowling alley and I worked down at a dry cleaning outfit. But when I come back to Richland, that's when I had all these other jobs. I worked all these other jobs to keep supplied for the family. Franklin: How had Richland changed in the eight years since you had been gone? Barnett: Well, the Uptown district had--the Newberry's had left. And there was a Safeway store right next to the theater. Right now I think it's a—I don't know, some kind of a multi shop deal. And both of the stores that were there originally are gone. They're now all antique stores. Franklin: Right. Barnett: So it was—when it was built, it was the first big complex for going shopping in Tri-Cities. Franklin: Right. Barnett: And after they built that, they built Highlands. And that was another big complex for shopping. So I worked everything I could, and 19--oh, what was it? [SIGH] About '67 or '68, I went to work at Hanford. I finally got on with them. Because I'd been applying at Hanford for three years. And I finally got to work with them. I won't mention how I got to work for them, because to me, it's kind of a ridiculous deal, and I don't know whether it was prejudice or not. Well, I'll go ahead. Franklin: I was gonna say, now you've got my interest. Barnett: I was--how I'd shop for a job, I'd go out and fill out an employment application, and I'd just distribute--go out all over town and fill out employment applications. And every week, I'd go back and check them. Well, one time, I was filling out an appointment application, and one of the guys I knew, I met him, and he said, hey, there's a new employment office over there at the new Whitaker School. And you might check it out. So I went over there and checked it out and signed up. And three days later, Hanford called me for a job. And I found out that that originally was a minority employment office. Franklin: Oh. Barnett: So I've always had the feeling that somebody didn't look at the records right. They didn't see the C. [LAUGHTER] Because I didn't get hired until I went to there and did an application. Because the government was required to hire a certain number of minority-- Franklin: Right. Well, but you did get hired. Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: So what did you do at Hanford? Barnett: Well, I can say as little as possible, like everybody else. [LAUGHTER] That's a common joke. Of course, it took me about--I couldn't understand it. It took me about three months to get a security clearance. When I was in SAC, I had a Secret clearance. Both my folks worked at Hanford, they had Secret clearance. But it still took me about three months to get a security clearance. And all the time, since I've been on the Air Force, I've lived in Richland, I never could understand the government—why they wasted so much money on a security clearance for me. But when I got out there, I started as a process operator. And started at B Plant. And there was no training at that time. I mean, when you went into a radiation zone, one of the guys that was experienced took you with him. And you dressed like he did, hoping he knew what he was doing, because that's how you dressed. And that's how you learned to dress right. So I started out going into the canyon--I don't know if you knew what the canyons were—okay? We went into the canyons and I helped mixed chemicals in the chemical gallery. And that's where I think I really screwed up my knees, because I can remember—remember, I call it Young Stupid Male Syndrome--I remember throwing a hundred-pound sack of chemicals on my shoulder and going up three flights of stairs with them, rather than wait for the elevator. Young and dumb, indestructible. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Actually, maybe for those who might be watching this who might not be as familiar with some of this stuff as I am, can you describe the canyon? Barnett: Well, the canyon was—well, like I say, the building was about 150-foot wide and about 800-foot long. And it was four stories deep and there was just one--the reason they call it canyon was because it was a gigantic canyon. It went the full length of the building, and they had huge cranes that moved different stuff so they could process the atomic waste. Because in B Plant, they process the nuclear waste. They ship it down to B Plant and we go through chemical stuff to separate the strontium and cesium from it. And that would be sent to the encapsulation plant. That was built about—oh, six years after I went to work at B Plant. They closed up after I'd been there for ten years, and I went to work for Encapsulation Building. But the canyon is an immensely big, empty storage building, really what it is. And I don't know how—or what they're gonna do with them now, because there is some radiation there that you wouldn't believe how hot it was. We took samples of radiation behind lead shields, and then they were so hot that they ended up having the crane pick up the samples and dispose of them, because we couldn't move them. Franklin: Wow. Did you—and so when you came back, your father was no longer working at Hanford, right? Barnett: Yeah, he was still working at Hanford. Franklin: Oh, was he still working—so you guys worked at Hanford at the same time. Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: Oh, wow, that's really interesting. So can you tell me a little bit more about what a—describe in a little more detail the job of a process operator? Barnett: Well, real basically, we were what you might call nuclear janitors. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: We clean up the messes that pipe fitters or millwrights or electricians made. We process all the chemical--mixed all the chemicals and processed—did all the processing of separating the strontium and cesium from the nuclear waste and ship them to tank farms. And that was basically what our main job was. We had a few major accidents. Now it'd be all over the world, about how bad it was and all that. But we just went about our business cleaning it up and went on our job. None of us got an overdose of radiation. We relied on our radiation monitors and they were good radiation monitors. If we were getting too much, they yanked us out of there real quick. So we didn't even think about it. It wasn't the case of being scared of it or anything else. It's like your hazardous wastes that they got, like coming from the hospital, where they work in an x-ray lab, they throw all the gloves and stuff and that. That's called mixed hazardous waste. Well, you could take a bath in that and not get any radiation on you. But according to what the public knew, those things are really highly radioactive boxes. And I think the biggest problem the government had is they didn't tell the people enough about what was really going on after the war was over. Franklin: Oh. Really? Barnett: Yeah, because there would have been less worry about things that were going on then, if they would have known. Because if you don't know anything about radiation, and you hear somebody mentions something is irradiated, you get all panicky about it. The expression for radiation out there was, you get a crap up. You get a crap up, you scrub it off and go about your business. Now, they panic and take you to town and do all that sort of stuff. There, we just scrubbed it off and went about our business. Franklin: Right. Barnett: And I never worried about it. Franklin: Okay. So you said you were a process separator at B Plant. And then you went to the Canyon, and what did you do-- Barnett: Well, I didn't go to the Canyon, I went to 225-B, the Encapsulation Building. Franklin; 225-B, the Encapsulation Building. Barnett: That's where they encapsulated the strontium and cesium. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: We all did a multitude of jobs. We worked on the cells, processing the strontium and cesium. And we worked behind the cells in mixing chemicals and we worked from when they loaded the chemicals for shipment for a long period of time when they were shipping cesium to the radiation plant for irradiating medical waste. And that ended when the guy was what they called recycling the cesium capsules too much. They get real hot. I mean, temperature-wise. And he was setting it in the water for a period of time and taking it out of water and cooling them off and stashing them back in the water. Well, one of them leaked. Franklin: Ooh. Barnett: And so they ended up, the whole place had to have all those capsules moved back. So that was a big fiasco. And again, it wasn't our fault. It was the guy doing the work was stupid enough to not check and see what he was doing. Franklin: Right. Barnett: And that's usually what happens with most—any of the radiation. And if you work with radiation, it's not the guy doing the work, it's somebody that's stupid and doesn't check what he's doing, doesn't follow regulations that causes the problem. Franklin: So did you have any other jobs at Hanford? Or what-- Barnett: I don't know, you ever heard of McCluskey? Franklin: Yeah. Barnett: Well, I was over there when we cleaned—for five weeks cleaning up that building. Franklin: Really? Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: Were you there at the time of the accident-- Barnett: No, no. Franklin: --or part of the cleanup for that? Barnett: Afterwards. They were trying to clean up the rooms so they could go in there and get things squared away. And we spent five weeks there. And to tell you how screwball the government can be, the last week-and-a-half we were there, we finally told our supervisor, look, all of worked on this radiation for 15, 20 years. We know how to clean it up. Quit telling us what to do. Let us go in there and clean it up and we'll get it cleaned up for you in no time at all. So they took a chance. And what they did is we ragged all along the bottom of the building, and we took water fire extinguishers. Because it's americium, and americium is a powder substance, it floats real easy. But it's water soluble--it'll run down with water. So we went in there and sprayed the walls with it real heavy. Then wiped everything down, moved everything that was movable, bagged it up in plastic bags and moved it out. And inside of a week, we had it down to mask only. Before then, we were wearing three pairs of plastic and cooling air and fresh air. Franklin: Wow. Barnett: And we cleaned it up in a week-and-a-half because they didn't want the people that knew what they were doing doing it. And that's the biggest problem with the government: they've always got the bureaucracy up here that knows what's going on, but they never ask the poor guy that’s doing all the work what's going on. I think you've seen that numerous times. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: I think so. [LAUGHTER] Wow, that's really fascinating. So how long total did you work at Hanford? Barnett: 30 years. Franklin: 30 years. Barnett: I had to take a medical retirement in '98. Franklin: '98. So then you were there, then, kind of from the shift from production to cleanup. Right? The production and shutdown. Barnett: No, when I left they were just getting ready to start cleaning things up. Franklin: Okay, so can you maybe talk about the shift from production to shutdown? How did that affect your job? Barnett: Well, I really didn't get in on any of the cleanup, because I left before they did. But I talked to a number of the guys out there that I worked with that were in the cleanup. The biggest problem they had is they put such a limit on chemicals they could use to do cleanup that they had to use things that they claim were not environmentally safe. They had to void all that--like Tide. They wouldn't even let us use Tide to wash the walls down. Now, you use Tide in washing machines. [LAUGHTER] Come on, give me a break. That's a hazardous chemical? And I guess it took them quite a while to get the thing cleaned up. Because, like I say, they didn't start cleaning it up until after I left. Franklin: Right. So what did you do in the shutdown era? Like after '87, from '87 to '98? What was your job primarily? Barnett: They didn't shut down--they shut B Plant down, but they didn't shut 2-and-a-quarter down. 2-and-a-quarter was still processing strontium and cesium. Franklin: Oh, okay, so then you kept in the waste encapsulation. Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: Can you describe a little bit more the process of waste encapsulation? Barnett: Well, strontium is not soluble--not water soluble. And strontium is. And what they had--they had a special process--I don't know exactly the process. I just know what we did. You would take a mixed chemicals with the cesium and you would dissolve it and then you would heat it up to--I think--800 degrees into a liquid. And then you had a machine we called a tilt-pour which would pour seven capsules at a time full of cesium. And then you'd take these capsules and you'd put a sensoring disc in them to make them airtight. And then you'd weld a cap onto that. That'd be welded by a machine. And most then it was computerized. Then that was decontaminated until it was clean. And then it was put into another capsule, and that capsule was also—put a lid on it, but it was soldered on—welded on. And that was moved into the pool cells. Pool cells are 13-foot deep. What you had is a special hole built into the wall with water that you would shove that capsule through. And then the guy on the other side in the pool cell would grab the capsule and pull it out. And he would go to the pool cell that he's designated to go to, and he would shove it through a hole in the wall. And somebody on the other side would grab it and pull it and then you'd put it into its spot. So it was quite a process. And the fear was--you couldn't get that capsule within five feet of the top. Because if you did, you'd get a high radiation alarm. They’d read millions of rads on those capsules. They were hot, no two ways about it. And one thing I've always wondered is why does cesium glow blue when you turn the lights out? Franklin: Wow. Barnett: You turn the lights out in the pool cell, and all these cesium capsules will glow blue. And I've never--I've had somebody say it's something about the speed of light and all that. But I'd like to know the real reason it does that. Franklin: That sounds kind of strangely beautiful. Barnett: It was. It's a blue glow all along the bottom. The strontium doesn't. Strontium is not water soluble and it doesn't glow at all. In fact, I got some strontium in me one time when I had a tape when one of the manipulators--I don't know if I didn't mention--all the work was done from the outside with the manipulators. You know what manipulators are. Franklin: Right, yeah. Barnett: Okay, and all the capsulation, all of the work was done with manipulators from the outside. And it was amazing what some of those guys could do. They could take a little bottle about so big with a little bitty top and they could pick up that bottle, hold it here, and took up the other--the cap with the lid and put it on it. Franklin: Wow. Barnett: I was never that good with it, but there some guys out there who got real expertise with that. It just takes a lot of work to learn to use those things. Franklin: I bet. Barnett: That's one reason my hand's tore up--my hand just didn't take it so much. Franklin: And you said you got strontium on your hand? Barnett: Yeah, I got--I couldn't handle manipulators good because my hand was falling apart on me. So I took all the decontamination of the manipulator. Because that's--a manipulator has to be pulled after so many--I think it's so many weeks, the Mylar coating on it starts deteriorating. So it has to be pulled, decontaminated, and new Mylar sheath put on it. And I was in there decontaminating one of the manipulators, and one of the—well, they were trying new bands that controlled the grips. And one of them broke and sliced my hand. And I got some strontium in my finger. It was about 700 counts. I wasn't too worried about it. But they took me to town and went on all government roads, documented and everything and brought me back. I couldn't work with radiation for about three months until that thing finally deteriorated--worked out of the body. Franklin: Wow. Barnett: But I didn't worry about it. It wasn't enough to do any harm. Franklin: Wow, that's really-- Barnett: See, that's the difference between working with the stuff and knowing what it does, and not working with the stuff. Franklin: Right. Right, I've heard a lot of similar things about-- Barnett: It's like chemicals. I'd rather work at a radiation plant than at a chemical plant. Because if you have good radiation monitors, you're not gonna get an overdose of radiation. But with a chemical plant, look what they have out there now. A guy gets a whiff of chemicals, they all go panic about it. Franklin: Yeah, I see where you're--I see your point. So you said--earlier when you said you would put the cesium in the pools—cesium cans, you couldn't get them too close to something, because they'd get too hot. Sorry--can you-- Barnett: No, it wasn't too close--they're in--oh, it probably was a--well, what would you call it? It was like a cabinet with holes in it. You would drop these in there. And they're spaced out. You couldn't pull them too high. Franklin: Oh, okay. Barnett: If you pulled them sometimes when you're getting ready to transfer them to the pool cell, they would hydroplane and come up. And if you pulled them too fast, they would come up and you'd get a high radiation alarm. You’d just drop it back down and it'd go off. Franklin: Oh, okay. Barnett: That's what it was. Franklin: I got--okay. I gotcha. So-- Barnett: It only takes one time, you remember not to do that anymore. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: [LAUGHTER] I bet. So even though your area—your work didn't change much when most of the plans ordered to shut down. You still probably worked with a lot of people whose jobs might have changed-- Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: --during shutdown. Can you talk about that transition between process--? Barnett: Well, I talked with some of the guys and they were talking about how much work it took to get things cleaned up. Like the area behind the pool cells, that had to be completely decontaminated. And we finally got it down to where it was just one pair and no masks. That took a lot of work. Decontaminating just takes a lot of hand-scrubbing. I mean, it's not a case of, you can put something there and pick it up and get rid of it. You got a scrub a lot of places until it's gone. It takes a lot of work. And I talked to one fella, and he said that they had all the cells that were down to clean—and what they consider clean is no radiation in them. And it is hard for me to believe, because some of those cells were really hot. But I never got a chance on the cleanup. Franklin: How was--so when Hanford was shifting over, how was this change explained by management, or some of the--how was it conveyed, or how did the community take it? Barnett: Management never explained anything to anybody. [LAUGHTER] I don't remember hearing the community complaining about anything, because most of the guys worked out there, and they knew what was going on. So there was no big panic about it. It wasn't the case where some guys didn't work here, they were told this was going on and got all excited because they didn’t know what was going on. Most people knew what was going on. So there was no big panic that I remember. Franklin: Okay. Barnett: We didn't panic with radiation, because we had good radiation monitors. Franklin: Right. Barnett: And that makes a big difference when you're working around radiation. Franklin: So being in waste encapsulation, how did other events--other nuclear accidents around the country or around the world, like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, kind of affect how your job or how-- Barnett: It made us see how ridiculous--because Three Mile Island actually worked. It was [UNKNOWN] what it was built for. And the moderation they got--radiation they got was not as much as you get flying from here to Denver City. Because you get more radiation from the sun than you do from—what the people at Three Mile Island got. But they blew it up so big, because so many years the government kept radiation such a secret. And that's the reason there's so much panic whenever they say radiation. Of course, there's been some real bad accidents. That one in Japan—that was a horrible thing. But as far as Hanford goes, most of the people that worked at Hanford don't—I guess they're not working around radiation anymore; it's all chemicals. Because they're getting—they get the chemicals and to me, that's the management's problem. Because they're doing something wrong in taking care of the people. The people are doing what they're told to do. If management is telling them, hey, you got to wear this, and they're not wearing it, then that's their problem—that’s the worker's problem. But when the management doesn't do anything about it, that's their problem—that’s management's problem. And I think from what I've heard and read, most of this is a managerial problem. It's not a case that the worker is going out of his way to ignore any safety concerns. Franklin: Right. What about the accident in Chernobyl? How did that--did that affect your job, or-- Barnett: Yeah, it affected it because they shut down N Reactor. And N Reactor, up until then, was as safe as any reactor in the country. It had so many safety pieces on it that you could darn near slam a door and make it shut down. But they shut it down because it was something like Chernobyl. And that's where the big effect was. Franklin: How did--oh, how did security policies change over time? Did they change with the different contractors or in response to different events? Barnett: No, the security’s main thing was basically the same. You had the security guards at like 200 East—well, they left the security guards that you couldn’t get out to Hanford without a security clearance. But that quit because they had the buses, and that stopped. And they had the security guards checking the buses and stuff as you went through. And then typical government, they started screaming about, oh, we're burning too much gas. We can't afford gas! So we'll shut the buses down. [LAUGHTER] So everybody had to drive out. But the guards at the gate checked your badges, checked your cars. If there was anything in it--you couldn’t take cameras or anything like that out there. If the guard knew you, he checked you out whether he knew you or not, because he had to make sure your wife didn't leave a camera sitting in your backseat you didn't know about. Franklin: Right. Barnett: Which happened on occasion. Franklin: Right, I bet. How did your job change with the different contractors coming in? Did it change much, or did you-- Barnett: Well, every contractor that came in, the engineers thought they were gonna remake the world. They would come up with some plan that they saw on a schematic and say, this is the way we want to do it. And we'd tell them point blank, it won't work. We've tried it that way. And they say, oh yes, it will! So we'd spend $50,000 in parts and stuff to put this together, and then it didn't work. And then they went around, well, why didn't it work? Well. The only one I ever saw that was a decent engineer is when he'd draw up a plan to do something, he would go to the millwrights, he would go to the operators, he'd go to the instrument techs and ask them to look at it and see if there's anything that needs done on it. And he had never had any problems. But these that come straight out of school and thought they could reinvent the world were a pain in the butt to us because they cost money and time. Franklin: Do you remember who that good engineer was? Barnett: He left. I don't remember who he was. But he left and went to work for a big company some place. Franklin: Oh, okay. Do you remember President Nixon's visit in--I think it was 1970 or 1971? Barnett: I might have. I didn't see him. I don't worry about politics. Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Barnett: He didn't do our place any good or any bad. Just a big political statement. Franklin: How did the Tri-Cities change from when you came back in 1968 until today? What kind of strikes you as major changes? Barnett: Well, there seem to be more, you might say, petty crimes. There wasn't as much as there was before--there was more than there was before, I should say. But the city maintained its equilibrium about the same, because the people have been here for 20 years, and then they sold the city to the town. There was no big change in the government. The police stayed the same. The biggest change was you had to call a painter if you wanted your house painted. And they sold the houses to the people, and that was the biggest change. Franklin: How about, though, since—from when you came back in 1968 until today? Has there been any--has the community changed at all? Barnett: Well, a lot of the businesses have left Richland. They moved out Columbia Center area, or up there in that area. We don't have--you got to go to Columbia Center to find a business. There's a few still there. There's Home Depot and stuff like that down there, Big Lots. But there's not as many as there used to be. And mostly antique shops or stereo shops. Franklin: Right. Barnett: But there's always the Spudnut. It's always been there. Franklin: There is always the Spudnuts, yeah. They're good too. Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that you'd like to talk about? Barnett: Well, us kids had different ways of playing that nowadays they would just panic about it. We used to have BB gun fights. We’d put on leather jackets and extra pair of Levi's and a hat and go into these orchards like where Densow's was and we'd have BB gun fights. And you haven't really lived until you've had your butt shot by a BB. [LAUGHTER] But nowadays there'd be some big panic about it that you're gonna shoot an eye out. Well, nobody ever shot an eye out because we made sure that we didn't shoot towards the head. [LAUGHTER] When they were building the houses, that's what was amazing, how fast they put these houses up. It wasn't a week or so to get a house started--it was almost a week and they had the thing almost done. And we used to go to different houses and have clod fights. Things like that that you don't dare do nowadays. Franklin: When you had what kind of fights? Barnett: Clod fights. Clodded earth. We'd get behind stuff and throw clods at each other. And the snow then was two, three foot deep. Because I remember building snow forts in my yard three foot high and never have to go to the yard to get snow. So there has been a big change in the weather. And the shelterbelt, that made a big difference, because I remember when we had sandstorms--not dust storms, sandstorms. And my dad would pull his car up in front of the house to keep the sand from blasting the side of the car off--the paint. So there's been big changes. The shelterbelt was one thing the government put in that actually worked. It’s kind of surprising. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: That's great. Is there anything else? Anything else you'd like to talk about? Barnett: Well, not really. Just that the area behind--you know, in West Richland at that time used to be Heminger City and Enterprise. They were two cities then. Franklin: Okay, tell me, were those cities that predated the Hanford Project? Barnett: Yeah. Franklin: Okay, and how big were there? Barnett: Oh, they were just little communities. It was just one run into the other. There was one called Enterprise, one was called--what did I just say? Franklin: Something city. Barnett: Heminger City. Franklin: Heminger City. Barnett: One of the elections went out for voting, they had one of the places that you went to was called Enterprise. Franklin: And how long did those communities last after Hanford came? Barnett: Not very long. I can remember Dad going out to the first town—first little town was Heminger City. And that was right where Cline's computer shop is, it was automobile shop there. And those were all owned by one group--one person. I think it was--Herricks was the name. And she had a little taco stand in one of the places. And OK Tire Shop had part of the one building that they sold tires and did car repair out of. So it was a slow change in West Richland. We had a feed store for a while. But Hanford went on strike and our feed store went down the tubes. They used to have what they called parking lot critter sells. People would bring all their animals, little animals that they wanted to sell in cages. And we would sell them for them and get 10% of the interest. It was a pretty good deal, because a lot of people had pet rabbits and stuff like that and they wanted to get rid of them. Usually had them at the un-boat races. You heard of the un-boat races? Franklin: Why don't you tell me? Barnett: The un-boat races? You ever heard of them? Franklin: Why don't you tell me? Barnett: Well, the un-boat race was you went up to the Horn Rapids Dam, and you put something in. It could not be a boat. It could be a bath tub, it could be inner tubes--it could be anything that you could see above that would float and it could not be called--it was called un-boat race. And there was a prize that they got down towards the bridge that crosses the Yakima there on George Washington Way. Got down about that far, there was a prize who got there first. But they ended up cutting that out because people left too much stuff—garbage alongside the road. They wouldn’t pick it up and take it with them when they were done with it. But that was a lot of fun. We used to stand up on the ridge. Always started about May. And we'd stand there and watch people come down the river on these un-boats. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: That sounds really fun. Anyone else have anything? Okay, well, Dan, thank you so much for talking to us today. I learned a lot of great stuff about Richland and waste encapsulation. I really appreciate it. Barnett: Okay. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Daniel Barnett Description An account of the resource An interview with Daniel Barnett conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by Mission Support Alliance on behalf of the United States Department of Energy. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-12: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Nuclear instruments & methods Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 07/13/2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities 225 B Encapsulation Building B Plant Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Hunting Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1352a8f7f26ecbe0c8bf9497266200c7.jpg e03639954e2d625b7670383e01aa50a6 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe089d768cfbc1580a325ba62d26a581a.mp4 1a5d0b226d8d91e261ba39aaba60fd79 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Franklin, Robert Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Boice, George Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Tom Hungate: Okay. Robert Franklin: You ready, Tom? Hungate: Mm-hm. Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with George Boice on July 15th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Mr. Boice about his experiences living in Richland. So why don’t we start at the beginning, that’s the best place. When and where were you born? George Boice: I was born in Ellensburg. A third generation native of the state of Washington. My father and my grandmother were born in Cle Elum. Franklin: Oh, Wow. Boice: We came through this—the tribe came through this territory and crossed the White Bluffs ferry in 1885. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Wow. Boice: And went up to the Kittitas County area. And then we came back later. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: What year were you born? Boice: ’37. Franklin: ’37. Did your family work at all at the coal mine in Roslyn? Boice: Yes. [LAUGHTER] Short answers. My grandmother’s brother, Uncle Tony, was a mine rescue worker up there at Roslyn. Franklin: Okay. Boice: You go up to Roslyn, that is interesting. Ever been there? Franklin: Yes, I have. Boice: 27 cemeteries. Just neater than all get out. [LAUGHTER] The different ethnic groups up there. They talk about one Fourth of July, the Italians were going to raise the Italian flag in the main street there. Some of the local citizens took a dim view of it. And some wagons were turned on their side and the Winchesters came out, and the sweet little old lady got out there and got everybody calmed down before the shooting started. [LAUGHTER] But the flag didn’t go up. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Wow. So what brought your family down to the Hanford area? Boice: My—[LAUGHTER] When they started Hanford—Dad was a firefighter in Ellensburg, had been for a few years. And when they set up Hanford, the first thing they did for a fire department was pick up the retired fire chief out of Yakima. Well, he goes around to the local fire departments and starts hydrating citizens. [LAUGHTER] So, Dad came down here in ’43 as the ninth man hired at the Hanford Fire Department. Always claimed that half of them had been canned before he got there. [LAUGHTER] So he went to work in ’43—June of ’43 at Hanford. We were still there at Ellensburg, and we didn’t come down here ‘til summer of ’44. Franklin: Oh, wow. Boice: And they were still moving prefabs in, and unloading them with rapid shape. Franklin: Did your father commute at this time, or did he live on— Boice: Uh-unh. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Where did he—do you know much about his living quarters or where he lived? Boice: Yeah, there were barracks. Franklin: So he lived in the barracks? Boice: Oh, yes. Franklin: Okay. Did he come back to visit at all? Boice: Oh, yeah. Franklin: Okay. Boice: Wasn’t but—hell, by the time you get up to the Hanford area, it’s just over the ridge. [LAUGHTER] So he’d come in every couple of weeks. Franklin: Okay. How many siblings do you have? Boice: One of each—one brother, one sister. Franklin: Older, younger? Boice: Oh, yeah. My brother was born in Kadlec in September of ’45. My sister was—well, they bracket the war. She was born about a month before it started—or right after it started. She was born in December of ’41. Franklin: Okay. Boice: And he was born September of ’45. Franklin: So can you talk a little more about your father’s job at Hanford? What did he—did he talk much about what he did, or— Boice: [LAUGHTER] Oh, yeah! You know. The place is building up, it’s trying to erupt. You’ve got construction going all directions. Trailer house fires. He talked about them [EMOTIONAL]—how quick people died in them damn trailer houses. They’d go up in a matter of seconds. And there were acres of them. But yeah, it was—And the amount of nothing to do. I mean, you had time to work and then there was really no recreational facilities. He worked at a grocery store for a while in his off hours stocking milk. He said it was not unusual to work a whole shift with a forklift or a handcart walking out of the stack and filling the same slot behind the counter there. We came over twice to visit him at Hanford. Franklin: Before you moved— Boice: Yeah. Franklin: --in ’44. Okay. Boice: You drive across the Vantage Bridge, and somebody had gone through with a grader and graded out a dirt-slash-gravel road. And we drove around and down, and across the Hanford ferry into Hanford. Because you could get into Hanford; it wasn’t restricted—the town. Everything else was. So getting in and out of Hanford was no trick. Getting out of the surrounding area was. So my mom and I and my grandfather went down there. Franklin: Wow. And where did you stay? Did you just go for the day? Boice: Well, we didn’t—when I was there, we didn’t stay. We just went for the day and went home. Franklin: Okay. Boice: But Mom talks about going down and staying overnight. [LAUGHTER] She says she was not warned. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Warned about what? Boice: To keep everything you wanted nailed down. Franklin: Oh. Boice: She got up in the morning and somebody stole her girdle. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Wow. So when your family moved in summer of ’44, where did you move to? Boice: 17-1. Franklin: 17-1? Boice: That was the lot number and the house number. It is now 1033 Sanford. Franklin: Ah. Boice: It’s on the southwest corner of Sanford and Putnam. Franklin: Yup. I live right by there. Boice: We went in there and it was—they had—you can’t describe to people how they had come in there and just dozed the farmland over, staked out streets and planted houses. And hauled them in on trucks and set them down. We were fortunate—I didn’t realize how fortunate it was—in the fact that we had only come about 100 miles or so—we came in a truck. We had our stuff. Mom had her piano. And I can’t tell you how many times women would come up and bang on the door, can I play your piano? Franklin: Really? Boice: Strangers off the street. Just because it was there, and it was—so we had all kind of musical stuff. Everybody could play better than Mom could. But we had the piano. Franklin: Wow. Boice: And she had her houseplants. It was different. But there was no trees in Richland. There wasn’t three blades of grass! [LAUGHTER] You’d come in, you got a garden hose and a plastic nozzle. You hosed down your lot and it immediately became a slick, slimy mud pile. Great for kids to play in! Man, we could slide in that mud across there—it was really cool! And then when it dried up, why, it reticulated like a picture puzzle. So we’re picking chunks up and stacking them up and building houses. And Mom gets up and she’s just madder than a wet hen, so we had to put the lawn back together. [LAUGHTER] But the hose nozzles were so interesting, because when you had a plastic nozzle, but you couldn’t get anything else. There was a hardware store here, eventually, but they didn’t handle stuff like that. This was a war going on. And the ingenuity that went into lawn sprinklers would just boggle your mind! The cutest one I remember was some guy took a chunk of surgical tubing—he got a bent pipe for an uppensticker. And he stretched his hunk of surgical tubing over the end of it, turned the water on, and it was not efficiently watering his area, but he could flail water all over a half an acre! [LAUGHTER] That was one of the cuter ones. There was also no shade and no air conditioning. Franklin: Right. Boice: Coming down in a moving truck, Dad brought his carpenter tools, he brought his bench, and he set to work building an air conditioner. Now, this was the dog-gonedest thing you ever saw. He got some burlap sacks and set out there with scrap lumber in the backyard on his workbench just creating shavings out of boards. Fill these burlap sacks with wood shavings for the pads for his air conditioner. He got a motor out of I-don’t-know-what. It was an appliance motor out of something. And he whittled out this propeller out of a two-by-four. And he cranked this thing up and it sounded like a B-29. [LAUGHTER] But it would blow sort of cool air, which raised the wrath of the neighbors. Number one was the racket he was making. Number two was we had air conditioning. So immediately, guys come out of the woodwork in all directions. Guy next door was a sheet metal worker. He came home with parts to make a much better, more efficient fan that was quieter. [LAUGHTER] So they set to work building him one. [LAUGHTER] We made air conditioners—you come up with a motor, and they would come up with an air conditioner. And we would deliver them on the back of my little red wagon. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Where would you put that? Like, would that just go in the window? Boice: We put it in a window. Franklin: Oh, okay. And how would you attach it to the house? Boice: Ingeniously! Most often, they would just build a rack underneath, a shelf on top, and set it up on top there. A houses, you wanted to put your air conditioner—at least about everybody did—set it at the top of the stairs where it would blow out the upstairs and cool your downstairs. They were reasonably efficient. The one thing about all the homemade air conditioners—very few of them, if any, had a recirculating system. So you had to use fresh water. This had two sides to it. You didn’t crud up your water system with alkali by reusing your water. But you did have to go out there and keep moving your hose where it drained out to water your lawn. Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Wow. What kind of house did your family move into? Boice: Well, originally we had a three-bedroom prefab. Prefabs come in three sizes and five colors. And a bunch of very ingenious kids on Halloween 1944 went out and stole the damn street signs. The buses coming back off of swing shift had no earthly idea where they were going. They wandered around town, because all the houses looked alike! [LAUGHTER] Then after a while—oh, let’s see, we moved in in August, and about the following spring—because we started out school at Sacajawea and then at Christmas vacation they changed us to Marcus Whitman. But up there on Longfitt, thereabouts, I was coming home from school and here sits the roof of a prefab right out in the middle of the street. Apparently, this guy was sleeping and a windstorm come along and picked up his whole roof and set it out in the middle of the street. Thereafter they had a crew of carpenters going around fastening the rooves of the prefabs down a little tighter. Franklin: Because at that time, right, they had flat rooves. Boice: Flat rooves. Franklin: Correct? That kind of overhung a bit, something that the wind could really easily— Boice: Oh, yeah. Franklin: --grab ahold and pop off. Do you remember when they got the gabled rooves that they all have now? Boice: No, I don’t, because I was—I think after we left, but I wouldn’t bet heavy money on it. We moved off the prefab in ’45. Franklin: Okay. Boice: And into an A house on Swift. I don’t recall when they put the gabled rooves on. Franklin: Okay. So what did your mom do? Did she work at Hanford at all? Boice: No. Franklin: No? Boice: She was a stay-at-home mom. Franklin: Stay-at-home mom? Boice: It was such an interesting place. The buses ran every 30 minutes. No charge, just go out and get on the bus. One of my main jobs was—because there was no mail delivery, everybody in Richland got their mail general delivery. So I’d take the bus, go downtown, get off at the post office, check the mail, go down to the grocery store—and there was only one—that was a brief period, but then there was only one grocery store at that time. And that’s where that ski rental shop is—kayak rental shop on the corner of Lee and GW? Franklin: Mm-hmm. Boice: That was the grocery store. The one and only. Shortly thereafter, Safeway opened up on the corner of—southwest corner of Lee and Jadwin. So things picked up. And then there was—they come up with the community center grocery store—whatever you want to call them. There was one at Thayer and Williams, which was the Groceteria. Garmo’s was out there on Stevens and Jadwin—no, Symons and something-or-other. The south end of town was—oh, nuts. He was the one that survived—Campbell’s. Campbell’s grocery store. He specialized in fresh fruit and stuff, and of the whole pile of them, he was the one that really come out of it in good shape. But the fourth one is now the school office, up there by Marcus Whitman. That was a grocery store. Franklin: Okay. Boice: But you go down, you do your post office work, and then you go and get your groceries, and if you’re lucky you get ten cents. Next bus home. You know where the Knights of Columbus Hall is out on the bypass? Franklin: Mm-hmm. Boice: That used to be—originally that was the Richland post office. Franklin: Mm-hmm. Boice: It’s up there at Knight and GW, I think. There wasn’t a whole bunch of shopping centers. The Richland Theater was in existence. The drug store next door to it was there. After a while, the big brown building, which was everything, at that time, when it opened up it was CC Anderson’s. Then there was the dime store, and, oh, we were hot and heavy then. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Can you tell me a little more about your dad’s job? What would a typical day or a typical week look like for someone who worked on the fire department? Boice: On the fire department, there is no such thing as typical. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Yeah. Boice: It was wild. In the beginning, they opened up—they were on shifts. Like everything was on day shifts, swing shift, graveyard. In our neighborhood, after my brother was born, we moved down to Swift and McPherson. Dad had come into town by that time. If you go behind the Richland Theater, you look real close, there’s two B houses back there. One of them’s a real B house and the other one ain’t. You look at the B houses over here, and the other one that ain’t is over here. And you look real close at the driveways. That was the original fire station that the City of Richland had going. That was the fire station when Hanford came in. Then they built a fire station on Jadwin in conjunction with the housing building and a couple other things, right across from the 700 Area, which is what they wanted, was coverage on that 700 Area. So that was the downtown fire station. And when they opened that up, why, then Dad came up out of Hanford. Franklin: Okay. Boice: He wasn’t too long there, and they opened one up Williams off of Thayer, in behind the Groceteria and a little service station up there with a small satellite fire station. Two trucks and one crew. Dad was there for years and years and years. Franklin: How long did your dad work for Hanford or the government here? Boice: Like I say, he came in in ’43 and retired in the early ‘70s. Franklin: Oh, okay. Boice: Rode her right on through. Franklin: So what did he do when the community transitioned in ’58? Boice: They bought him! Franklin: The City of Richland did? Boice: Yup, the City of Richland bought the outstanding time and he rolled right over. Franklin: Oh, okay. Boice: [LAUGHTER] Franklin: So can you talk a little bit more about growing up here? You said you went to Marcus Whitman and then to—and then what other schools did you go to? Boice: Well, like I say, there was no shade. Franklin: Right. Boice: And very few radio stations. With a good shot you could get in Yakima, Spokane, and Walla Walla, and that was about it. So we sat around in the shade, and my mother read us stories. [LAUGHTER] One of them was a book we picked up in Walla Walla about Sacajawea. She read us the entire story of Sacajawea and the Shoshones and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, et cetera, et cetera. And in ’44, they opened up Sacajawea School. Now, as everybody does, they did their darnedest to convert us kids to saying Sah-CAH-jah-wee-ah. It didn’t take. [LAUGHTER] Because there was already Sacajawea State Park and everybody was using the term Sacajawea. But Sah-CAH-jah-wee-ah—they tried. They gave it their level best. It didn’t take. But the time that they were doing this, Miss Jesson was a teacher there was giving us the thumbnail sketch about Sacajawea. She did a pretty good job—well, you know, she told you what she knew. And she made mention of the fact that she was married to a trapper, but they didn’t know what his name or anything about him. I says, his name was Toussaint Charbonneau. He got her off a wolf man of the minute carriage for a white buffalo robe. My status went up. [LAUGHTER] And the teachers wanted to know where in the cat hair I learned that. Well, Mom read us the book. But I’ve always liked Sacajawea School. Just kind of a kinship. We went—in ’45, they opened up Marcus Whitman. We went there ’45 was all, because when they broke for the summer, we were over by—we moved. By the next fall we were over in the area where I could go to Sacajawea again. But we were going to Marcus Whitman when Roosevelt was shot—died. So that was the event of the time. You watched the transition of one President to another. The flag ceremony—the whole thing—it was interesting for a kid. Franklin: I bet. What do you remember about during the war years that kind of focus on secrecy and security? How did that affect your life and your family’s life? Boice: You didn’t talk to nobody about nothing! [LAUGHTER] I mean, that was just the words. You didn’t talk about—if somebody asks you what your dad does, you talk about something else. It was so interesting here in the last year, I think—time goes quicker now. A whole bunch of us from that neighborhood on Swift went to a funeral—this boy’s mother—well, yeah—Bill’s mother’s 100th birthday, after the funeral they had a sit-down dinner. I happened to sit down at the table with the whole kids of the old neighborhood. And we’re talking about all this stuff, and the secrecy, and the ones you watch out for—this girl over here. Yeah. She didn’t share the secrets with the neighbors when they were talking about who’s got butter on sale. They didn’t tell her anymore. She fried her food in butter. So no one would tell her where the butter sales were when it was available. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Was there any mention of the work going on at Hanford at school that you can remember? Boice: The one thing of what was going on, and it wasn’t the work at Hanford, because nobody talked about that. But when the Japs were sending over the firebombs— Franklin: Yeah, the balloon bombs. Boice: Yes. We were told to write no letters, tell nobody, because they didn’t want it to get out how blinking effective they were. Franklin: Right. The fear of these bombs from the sky— Boice: They were hitting, and they were working. Franklin: Yeah. Boice: You guys are in the right position to find out. But there was a rumor going around that a balloon-loaded Jap had landed out there in the area and they caught him and bundled him up and carted him off before they did any business. Okay, la-di-da-di-da. There’s rumors about one thing and another. And four or five years ago, CNN or one of these, they were talking about the weather balloons. They showed the colored pictures taken out here at Hanford of the balloons landing in the BPA lines and burning up. [LAUGHTER] End of speech, end of story. [LAUGHTER] But I was surprised to find out that something had happened. There was no soldiers attached or anything else, but there was an incident. Franklin: Yeah, we’ve—there are a couple confirmed reports of—we actually did an oral history with a gentleman whose father had been a patrolman and had seen one of the balloons land and had to chase it down and didn’t realize right away that it was—had explosives attached to it. The others—there’s a couple reports of them touching down onsite. And there was a family that was killed in Idaho where they were picnicking and a balloon came down. Boice: Idaho or Oregon? Franklin: I think it was—oh, that’s right, maybe it was Oregon. Boice: K Falls. Franklin: Yes. Boice: You go to the museum in Klamath Falls had the—or when I went through it—I was working down there twenty years ago or so—they had a big display of the family that was picnicking and the kids went to prod on it, and it went off and killed a girl. Franklin: Yeah. Were there—when you were—so we’re still in the World War II era and we’ll definitely get to the Cold War in a bit—but were there any kind of—what do you remember about like emergency procedures in school? Was there anything special, kind of drills or something during World War II? Boice: You mean the duck-and-cover? Franklin: Yeah, that kind of stuff. Was there any duck-and-cover during World War II? Boice: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Of course—my kindergarten days—now, man. Lived across the street from the college there at Ellensburg, and firebombs were to be worried about. But I was covered. I had a bucket full of sand and a shovel, and it was there on the front porch. When the firebomb came through there, I was going to put my sand on it. So we were prepared. God help us if it landed any place else. [LAUGHTER] But the beginning of the war when I was a kid in Ellensburg was so funny, because we were living right across the street from the college and everything was just the standard college. And the war started, and immediately, there’s all these people running around here that can’t count. Hup, two, three, four. Hup, two, three, four. I wasn’t even in kindergarten, and I knew about my ones! [LAUGHTER] And there was—you go across the street and around the corner, and there was this one half basement room where I could stand there and watch the guys play shirts-and-skins basketball. And the next time I looked, here’s a skeleton of a single engine aircraft, and a guy instructing people on how to make dead stick landing. Now, of all the damned things for a four-year-old kid to remember, dead stick landings was what he was talking about. And they had this thing skeletonized where they could show the internal workings of all the aeronautics. Franklin: Wow. Boice: But in Richland—oh, yes. Duck-and-cover fire drills. But they never talked about nuclear, because it was yet to be discovered. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Right, right. So Ellensburg then quickly became inundated with—the state college there became a training area? Boice: Oh, yeah. Just that fast. Franklin: Wow. In your notes here, I also see you mentioned about the heavy military presence and the olive drab everywhere and the cops in Army uniforms. Boice: [LAUGHTER] It absolutely was. Richland was strictly OD. I think they only had one bucket of paint. But all the vehicles were olive drab. The buses were, on today’s standards, I’ll call them a three-quarter size school bus painted olive drab. The vehicles were anything they could scrounge up, because I remember two GIs in a ’37 Chev coupe, and I know today some farmer had taken the trunk out and made a pickup box out of it. But they scrounged this thing up someplace, painted it OD, and here’s the MPs running around in a ’37 Chev pickup. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: [LAUGHTER] A homemade pickup? Boice: Yeah. It was years later that I found out—Dad didn’t say anything about it, and he certainly knew—that it was simple, because the war was going on. Everything was prioritized. But they had unlimited supply of uniforms. So they put the cops in soldiers’ uniforms; the firemen were in Navy uniforms. The firemen stood out and were very easily recognizable, but you couldn’t tell the soldiers and the cops apart, because they all had the same stuff on. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Wow. A couple oral histories we’ve done with people that were children in Richland, a couple of them mentioned their fathers had taken them onsite somewhat clandestinely. Did your father ever take you onsite into a secured area? Boice: No. Franklin: Did you ever get access to any of that some way? Boice: No, I did not go to any secured area. Franklin: Okay. Boice: I was raised running in and out of fire stations. To this day, when I go through the door of a fire station, my hands go into my pockets. You’re allowed to touch nothing. Because you leave fingerprints. [LAUGHTER] It’s just a genuine reflex. Franklin: Yeah! So you said that you went to Sacajawea, then to Marcus Whitman then back to Sacajawea. Then where did you go to high school? Boice: We went through all of the—I’ll call it the school construction. They couldn’t build schools fast enough in Richland. Franklin: I bet. Boice: We had double shifts. Now they have these temporary quarters—whatever you call them. But we had hutments. Sacajawea had six hutments out there. They built the hutments, and then they went to double shifts. So you went to school at 8:00, and at noon they marched out, teacher and all, and our class marched in, and we went home at 4:30 or 5:00, something like that. So we went through all of that, and then in ’49, they opened Carmichael. A brand new junior high school, man, this is cool! And I was in the seventh grade in Carmichael and I are still the proud possessor of ASB cord 001, 1949, Carmichael Junior High School. The first one they ever gave out. [LAUGHTER] And that was neat, to have a real hard-built school. It was—oh, we had class. After three months, we moved to Kennewick. The Kennewick school system— Franklin: Your family did, or--? Boice: Yeah! Franklin: Oh, okay. Boice: Dad stayed in Richland, but they were selling off. And if you didn’t have priority, the houses went to the guy that was there first. And in that A house, we were in second, so we were not in line to buy the house. Franklin: Right. Boice: So, Dad got a piece of property in Kennewick and we moved to Kennewick. And what a school system mess. Franklin: Why? Boice: They were behind. They couldn’t get money quick enough. They couldn’t build stuff fast enough. They had the red brick building—forget what it was called. It had been a high school at one time, and they pressed it back into service. It was so overcrowded you couldn’t believe it. But they finally built the high school that’s there now. It opened in ’52, I believe. ’51—yeah, class of ’52 was the first one to graduate—’52 or ’53. Graduated from Erwin S. Black Senior High School. And it was Erwin S. Black Senior High School one year. Because he was the school superintendent, and they built the school—they named the school in his honor because he had gone to bat and made trips back and forth to Washington, DC to cash some money to use for the school system. Then they got in a shooting match with the Tri-City Herald. [LAUGHTER] And Erwin S. Black and the schoolboard got run out of town, and they chiseled his name off the front of the school. But for one year it was E.S. Black. Franklin: And then it just became Kennewick High School. Boice: It became Kennewick High School. Franklin: Can you talk a little bit more about this disagreement between Erwin S. Black and the schoolboard and the Tri-City Herald? Boice: It was several things. One of them, there was a book—and I can’t recall—Magruder? McGregor? Somebody. It was a history book, and it mentioned communism. And that was brought up and made a big deal. This was back in the McCarthy era. Franklin: Right. Boice: That was brought out. And there was a lot of talk—Black was a certified building inspector, and he inspected the construction of the high school. It was said by a lot of people that it wasn’t up to standards; that the concrete wasn’t what it should have been. And I don’t know what the specs were. I wasn’t into concrete work at that time. I have been later. But I know when we were hanging the benches in the ag shop, where you would put a concrete anchor in the wall ordinarily and it would hold, they didn’t there. And they had to through-bolt through the wall to get to things to hang. So there was—and transfer of equipment and stuff—this was swapped for that, and that was swapped for this—and I don’t remember that, and the only guy I know that did know has died. [LAUGHTER] But one of the kids that graduated from Erwin S. Black, one of the few that was in that class, worked with him off and on and was aware of what went on. Franklin: When you said that there was a book that mentioned communism, did it mention it in a favorable light, or did it just make a mention to communism? Boice: More or less, it just made a mention. Franklin: Okay. Boice: I was on the—oh, we had the open house at the school, and I was one of the tour guides. Yeah, I showed them the book and what it had to say. And I don’t recall anything drastic. Franklin: So then did you graduate from Kennewick High School? Boice: No. [LAUGHTER] The military had a hell of a sale. Anybody that enlisted by the first of February got the Korean GI Bill of Rights. And those that enlisted afterwards didn’t. So I drug up in January and joined the Air Force. Franklin: Oh. Without graduating. Boice: Without graduating. Franklin: Okay. Interesting. Boice: So I served my illustrious military career in a photo lab in Mountain Home, Idaho. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: And how long were you in the Air Force? Boice: Two years. Franklin: Two years, and then you were discharged? Boice: Yes, yup, yup. Franklin: When you were in school, you mentioned being in school during this McCarthy era, one of the real hot points of the Cold War. Can you talk a little bit about the civil defense procedures and kind of the general feeling of that time as it related to—because I imagine with Hanford so close, and now knowing what was being produced there, that would have been a likely target. It’s a major part of the nuclear weapons stockpile. So can you talk a little bit about that time and just the general feeling? Boice: Well, you knew what was going to happen—or what they said was gonna happen. It was the duck-and-cover thing. And we had drills. A lot of what they said what was gonna happen—now they talk about getting into water to modulate it. Then, it was one of the things that they didn’t want you to do. Because we had the irrigation ditch that was running right alongside of the schools. But then they didn’t want you to get into it. So, it’s changed. They had the civil defense procedures—Radiant Cleaners, they’re in Kennewick. They had panel delivery cleaner trucks. They were rigged for emergency ambulances. They had fold-down bunks in them; they could handle four people. [LAUGHTER] It was taken serious. Franklin: Did you feel any particular sense of worry, or did it not seem to really affect you, your daily life or your psychological— Boice: It never bothered me ‘til years afterwards. When they talked about the Green Run, where they turned a bunch of that stuff loose, just to see what it would do to the citizens and count the drift on it. The people that had—the down-winders, and the people that had the thyroid problems. My sister was one of the first rounds that went to court over that. Franklin: Really? Boice: Because she was—we moved into Richland. She had her third birthday in the prefab, when they were still practicing how to build this stuff. And then we moved in on a farm where the alfalfa grew, the cow ate it, gave them milk, and everything was recycled and nothing went over the fence. And so it bothered me, then, that they used us as guinea pigs. But the other hand, they really didn’t know what in the cat hair that they were doing in a lot of cases. The nuclear waste? You’ve heard about the radioactive rabbit turds. Franklin: I have. Boice: You have? Franklin: Yes, I have, but why don’t you mention that? Boice: I was working with Vitro out here—’72, I think it was. The radioactivity, of course, is settled on the sagebrush. And the rabbits went around eating the leaves, just leaving fat, dumb and happy, and concentrating everything into the rabbit turds. And they were contemplating taking the top six inches of about two or three sections and burying it. Only they couldn’t decide where they had to build the hole. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: When you—you mentioned just a minute ago that you were on a farm, and you had the cows that would have eaten the tainted alfalfa—was your milk ever tested? Or did anyone ever come and-- Boice: Nah. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: test your—Were you ever tested for—or your family, anybody in your family, ever tested for radiation? Because I know that they, at one point, had those Whole Body Counters that they would test—some children in Pasco were tested through those machines? Boice: You ever been through a Whole Body Counter? Franklin: I have not been through a Whole Body Counter. Boice: Depending on where you’re at, there may or may not be a—they’re kind of a joke. Now, when I was working here at Vitro, we went through the Whole Body thing, and they were serious. I mean, before we got cleared out, we went through the chamber, and we were counted. I went to work in South Carolina. They—as far as I was concerned—were very sloppy with their radiation handling and their checking and their radiation monitoring. We had a hand-and-foot monitoring station where we was going in and out of. You stick your hands in and they check it, and your feet were there at the same time. Well, this one time, I come up pretty hot, so I found an RM. I says, that machine gave me a bad reading. Oh, he says, that machine’s no good anyway. Come around to this other one over here and we’ll check you out. Well, if the blinking thing’s no good, why in the cat hair are we using it?! [LAUGHTER] Franklin: So, just a second ago, you mentioned you were working for Vitro? Boice: Uh-huh. Franklin: What is or was Vitro? Boice: What was Vitro? Okay. Vitro Engineering—and I don’t know how many times the name changed hands. But these guys were the ones that laid out the City of Richland—laid out the Hanford Projects. These were the strictly insiders. There was pictures on a wall of my grade school buddy’s dad, who I remember being a surveyor in Richland there. And these guys—this has gone on forever, and they were a pretty dug-in organization. To the point that they were not really aware that there was a world outside the fence. They’d heard about it, but they weren’t too sure it existed. [LAUGHTER] But I ended up at Vitro, and we did the Tank Farms that they’re having problems with, the hot tanks? We were in on the modification of that farm. We surveyed in there quite a bit. Whenever they show the pictures on TV, they always show you the evaporation facility. They show you that same picture. Warren Wolfe and I—I say Warren and I—it’s a little—our crew brought that up out of the ground, and we modified the tank farm, and we laid out the construction on that building from the ground right through the top. Franklin: Okay. Boice: And I was very fortunate, because all my surveying experience to that point was with the railroads and pipelines and longline work. Construction surveying was new to me. And I got throwed in with an old boy that was good at it. [LAUGHTER] And I learned a bunch working with him. And rolled right over, later on, into Hanford, too. We got in on the end of that—[LAUGHTER] Franklin: Hanford II? Boice: Yeah. Franklin: Oh, as--T-O-O. And which building was this that you and Warren Wolfe and your crew built? Boice: All I remember is the evaporation facility. Franklin: What was your specific job at Vitro? Were you a surveyor? Boice: I was a surveyor. I was an instrument man. You get in the hot zones—we got inside the Canyon Building on several different occasions. And you got suited up, and I was instructed very specifically and emphatically to touch nothing, because anything that got crapped up, they kept. And we couldn’t get the instruments crapped up. But that stuff was so hot that the paper—the Rite-in-the-Rain books have got a specific paper there that has pitch in it or something—it attracts radioactivity like a sponge. And when they kept the notes, then one of us would stay inside and the other guy would get out in the clean zone, and we’d have to transcribe all the notes, because that book was so hot that they wouldn’t let it out of the area. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Wow. Boice: There was some weird stuff going on. Franklin: Any other— Boice: Yeah, but there’s some I ain’t gonna talk about. [LAUGHTER] Okay. We came so close to having a nuclear disaster, it wasn’t even funny. We were good. We were awful good. And we were fast. And we were set up out there on an offset, and Rosie the labor foreman come over. Somebody said you needed a shot here for a hole for a penetration into the tank. Man, we whipped that out and figured the pull and what it was gonna take. Swung over there, put a distance and an angle, drove the stake in the ground. I figured that Warren checked it, and away we went. We come back in a week or so, or a few days later, we were back in that same farm. And Rosie comes over there and he says, would you guys check that again? Because these guys was digging a hole there and they’re supposed to hit a tank. And we checked it. And I lied, and Warren swore to it. [LAUGHTER] We forgot we was on a ten-foot offset. So they’re digging clear to one side of this tank, and just good solid dirt. Had we been just half as screwed-up as we were, they would have gone right down the edge of that tank with a core drill. And we’d have had ooey-gooeys all over the place. They talked to us. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Kind of a happy accident, right? Boice: Yeah, we were—I’ll never forget Warren’s work. He’d come back with the boss and he says, name me one guy in this world ever got through this life being perfect. He says, always pissed me off, he’s a damned carpenter. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: So you went to—you joined the Air Force, you went to Idaho for two years. When you came back—or what did you do after that? Did you come back to Richland after? Boice: We were living in Kennewick. Franklin: Living in Kennewick. Boice: And I was working at the Washington Hardware Store. And this kid—we were working on cars in my buddy’s garage. And this guy comes through and he’s surveying for the Corps. And he talked that they were setting up a photogrammetry section. Well, heck, that’s what I was doing in the service. So, I beat feet over to Walla Walla to sign up to lay out photo mosaics. And they say, we haven’t got enough work for fulltime at that job. Are you a draftsman? No, I are not a draftsman. He says, would you take a job surveying? You bet. I became a surveyor. [LAUGHTER] And we worked from the mouth of the Deschutes River to Lewiston, Idaho. The first thing was the mouth of the Deschutes to McNary Dam—we mapped from the water level to the top of the bluffs by hand. Franklin: Wow. Boice: And then we went through, starting in ’58, and we inventoried the railroad. Now, when you inventory a railroad, we inventoried a railroad. Everything they possessed was put down. First, you go through and you measure and put stations—mark station markings on the rails. 80 miles of them. Then you go back and you reference everything the railroad’s got. Ties, spikes, tie plates, rails, joints, joint bars—if the fence moves, how far did it move, from what to what? If the rail changes, if there’s an isolation joint in there, you put that in. When you come to a switch, you measure everything that’s in the switch facility. You go—everything that that railroad has got. You become very, very familiar with railroads. [LAUGHTER] And then we went ahead, and we built railroads clear up to Lewistown. We handled a railroad layout real heavy. When they—are you familiar with the Marmes men? Franklin: Yes. Boice: Luck of the draw, I was on that. Because we were the—call it the resident survey crew in that area. Franklin: Oh. Boice: And we were babysitting construction. Make sure they got sticks out ahead of them, make sure that things are checked out behind them. They’re putting in a detour, why, check that out. They’re building a bridge, make sure it’s set up right, and check it out when they get done. So, first they call up and they say, there’s a guy down here at the mouth of the Palouse River thinks he hit something, and he wants an elevation on this cave, see where the water’s gonna come when they raise the water behind Lower Monumental, I believe. Franklin: Yeah, I think that sounds right. Boice: Is that the dam? So we went down there and run him in an elevation, painted it on the cave face. Happily on our way. Well, they hit pay dirt. [LAUGHTER] They dug up bones. So we were called back. They wanted—because the drillers were in there then doing sub-cell drilling of what’s down there. So we got to come in there and locate their holes so they know where what is. That was interesting. The whole thing. Now that the world has got into this Ice Age floods and stuff, I wish so heavily that I knew then what I know now. Because the layers that they went through were very definitely visible. This thing had been covered in various floods. But it was so interesting, the stuff that they found. Because it became an international incident. One of the coolest cats in the whole joint was Pono the Greek. And Pono run the sluice box. He had been all over the world. When the girls dug everything out, then they took the dirt to Pono, and he washed it down. Pono found thread of somebody’s sewing. Then they found the needle. And that to me was so cool. They had this needle that looked for all the world like a darning needle. How in the blazes they cut that eye in there! This was a really heads-up organization. [LAUGHTER] Interesting. Very interesting. Franklin: Yeah, that was a very significant archaeological find. Boice: I’ve got to go back some day and talk to that doctor. At an anniversary of something, we’re down here at Columbia Park, and he was talking and I showed up there with the historical society doing something-or-other. And I talked to him for about five minutes. He mentioned the fact that he wanted to see the guy that painted that elevation. I said, well, you’re looking at him. [LAUGHTER] It was—I got to go talk to him. Because one of the things in their report—they talked that the ditch was dug with a Cat. Now, I ain’t saying they’re wrong, because I didn’t see any digging when I was there. But just—as you’re going up and looking at a hole, and in those days we had looked at a bunch of holes—we were inspectors. They were going behind the soils guys. And it just to me had all the appearance of somebody that dug a ditch with a dragline. And I always figured it was a dragline in there, and somebody said it was a Cat. I don’t totally agree with him. But the bones were so interesting. They said that the one thing about the site was there had been somebody living on it forever. Just, the further down you went, the more primitive they became, ‘til you got past the layer of the Mazama ash, when Crater Lake blew its top. And they went past Mazama ash and suddenly things looked pretty sophisticated. That’s where the needle came from and a few other things. It was neat. I’d have liked to spend more time with them. Franklin: Yeah. I’m sure you heard about the dam failing and the site flooding after they—because they created the protective dam around the shelter, and that failed and let water in. Boice: It didn’t fail! The SOB was never built to hold! When they brought us down there to check these drill holes out, the drillers—we had other stuff to do that morning, and we didn’t get down there until 10:00. The driller had a half-a-dozen holes in. I’m talking to this old driller, and he says, they ain’t never gonna keep water out of that thing, because there’s a layer of palm wood down there and it’s gonna leak like a sieve. But they did it anyway. And we’re down there checking on settlement pins and a whole bunch of other stuff when the water’s coming up. But we’re all on the radio, and it’s like a big one-party line—you can hear what’s going on no matter where. And they’re putting in pumps, and the more pumps they put in, the more water they sprayed out, but noting changed. [LAUGHTER] So it’s a lovely fishing pond. But interesting: it was shortly thereafter that I quit the corps and went to Alaska. Within a year-and-a-half, two years, I’m up there doing the same thing, only instead of spotting holes in the ground, we’re spotting oil wells. And sitting in a warm-up shack, talking to a driller, and he made mention of the fact that they had spudded oil wells. Now, when they spud an oil well, they get in there with an oversized auger, like you’re setting telephone poles. And they go down there through the mud and the blood and the crud ‘til they get to solid rock. And then they bring in the drills. And he says, we have yet to spud a well here that we didn’t get palm wood. And that has always sat with me. Now, when they’re talking about global warming—if there has been palm trees growing at the mouth of the Palouse River, and palm trees growing at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it’s been a lot warmer than people are willing to talk about. [LAUGHTER] Just boggles my mind that there is palm wood in Alaska as well as Marmes Rockshelter. Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting. So you were—Marmes, then Alaska. When did you come to work for Vitro at Hanford? Boice: That was a pretty short season. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: At Hanford, or in Alaska? Boice: At Vitro. Oh, at Alaska I worked for various contractors. But Vitro—we didn’t philosophically match. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Ah. Boice: Their minds were all inside the fence. And I’m too antagonistic. [LAUGHTER] If we had a problem—thou shalt not speak bad of Vitro. And we’re laying out penetrations on top of a tank. And they’re all done. Radius and angle—which radius is—and they had them at different stages there, and other people had been doing them. And this tank had been there for quite a—not quite a while, but every once in a while someone would come in and set some more holes, set some more holes. Well, they didn’t continue their circle around—nobody closed the circle. So by the time we get there ‘til the end, we have to figure out by adding up each and every hole all the way around the circle at every different radius to get the dimensions to where we’re at. Where if the guy had closed out his circle, you could have backed him out and been out of there in about a tenth the time. So I happened to make the statement, I said, Vitro drafting strikes again. And I was a marked man. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: How long in total, then, did you work out on the Hanford site? Boice: Well, in ’56-’57, or ’57-’58, they were doing a lot of military work out there. And we did the roads up Rattlesnake—was in on that. The road up Saddle Mountain. A lot of RADAR sites. You’re aware of the Nike sites on— Franklin: Yup. Boice: --the north side of the river over there? Franklin: Yup. Boice: Been there, done that. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: So—that wasn’t for Vitro, was that when you were with— Boice: That was the Corps. Franklin: Okay. Boice: And we also did a lot of work up at Moses Lake. Franklin: Okay. Boice: All the runway extensions up there, we were in on. They throwed us in the clink. They did not like our very presence. Franklin: Why? Boice: Apparently Moses Lake had two different structures. There was the Strategic Air Command structure up there, and there was the Military Air Transport Service. I didn’t know the difference. Les was—we were doing some mapping work. And the three of us were just gonna run some levels out to the next site we were gonna work at. And we took off the BM—benchmark—at the control tower. And we get about two turns out across the flight line there. And a bunch of guys come out, like a changing of the guard or something. Two or three of them stopped to talk to Kirby and George. The other five come out along, and they walked, just formed a circle around me, and they wanted to know if I wanted to go with them. They had submachine guns and a whole bunch of other stuff, and I said, heck, there’s nothing I’d rather do! [LAUGHTER] So they called up Walla Walla and they verified our existence. Then we had to go through security and get badges to—and we’d been working on that thing off-and-on for months. But we just hadn’t stepped in the right zone. Franklin: Oh, wow. Boice: [LAUGHTER] Franklin: They were just kind of waiting for you, then, to— Boice: Just different—different bunch of stuff. Franklin: Right. When you were in school in Kennewick, so after the—or even just after the word was out about the Hanford site, after August 6th, 1945, when you were in school, did they teach anything about Hanford history? Was it— Boice: Go back to August 6th. Franklin: Okay. Boice: What a day. [EMOTIONAL] What a wonderful day! I’d been down at the Village Theater—now the Richland Theater. I don’t even remember what was playing. But we came out, [EMOTIONAL] and the bells were ringing. The church down there, they were ringing their bells. And everybody was whooping it up—the war was over! And I’ll never forget, some gal in there alongside the street, she had half a dozen kids with garbage can lids and a parade going, and they’re banging and clanging. And the festivities that the war was over. And then we went back and they came out with the thing and Truman said, It’s the Atomic Bomb, and that’s what we’ve been building. And Mom went over and talked to the lady next door. She mentioned the U-235. And the gal says, they didn’t talk about that, did they? And she’d been keeping files, and her husband had been working on it. And neither of them would ever admit that they knew what the other one was doing. It was that tight. And the security in Richland. The FBI knew everybody in town, because it was not uncommon—it was a regular thing that they would come around and they would talk to you, and ask about him. And then they’d go talk to him and ask about you. It was just—it was what was going on. We didn’t know why. Well, after that—yeah, after it came out what was going on out there, then we knew what was there. But until Truman come out and said, here’s what was going on, we didn’t know. Franklin: What about V-J Day? Was that a separate kind of a big celebration? Boice: Yeah. Franklin: Was that as big as the news of the bomb drop? Or was the bomb drop more of a pivotal moment here in the— Boice: Well, the V-J Day, the end of the war, was the big day. That’s the celebration that I’ll never forget. Franklin: Can you talk about it? Boice: June—you heard about Harry Truman, didn’t you? When he come out to Hanford? Franklin: No. Boice: [LAUGHTER] The head of security was a guy by the name of McHale. And Dad worked pretty close with him with the fire department because everything was safety and security and if you had a problem, see McHale. Now, the guy had taken—he was pretty much high up in intelligence—but he had assumed the position of a first sergeant. And Sarge McHale was the guy. No matter what happened, Sarge McHale. Harry Truman did a fantastic job, and made his reputation just going from plant to plant—the Truman Investigating Committee, cutting down waste. And I guess he did a heck of a job. But he come out to Hanford and demanded to be let in. Franklin: Sorry, was this when he was Vice President or President? Boice: He was a senator! Franklin: Senator—Senator Harry Truman. Okay. Boice: And he comes there and demands to be let in. And of course, the guard says, McHale! And McHale comes over there and meets him head-on. He says, I’m Senator Truman, and I demand to be let in. McHale says, I don’t give a damn if you’re President of the United States; you ain’t coming in here. And he didn’t. Well, years later, and I believe it was when they were dedicating the Elks Club in Pasco, Truman was back up in this area. And he was President. And he come out to Hanford and he looked up McHale. And he said, uh-huh, you son of a bitch, you didn’t think I’d make ‘er, did ya? [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Wow. That’s a great story. [LAUGHTER] But thank you. So after the war was over, was what went on at Hanford taught in school? Was there mention of the work at Hanford that built the bomb? Was that part of the curriculum here in town? Boice: The local lore. Franklin: The local lore, but nothing in the school at all? Boice: Not that I recall. Franklin: Okay. Boice: Everything was—there was a terrific amount of pride. The Atomic City, the atomic this, the atomic that. The first barber shop quartet come to town, when GE left—no, DuPont left, GE come in, four guys come in from Schenectady, New York with a barber shop quartet. First ones I ever saw. And they were the Atomic City Four. And the next one were the Nuclear Notes. [LAUGHTER] But there was an atomic pride, all over the area. Then there was the people that thought we should be ashamed of it. That we had built this device that killed a whole bunch of people. Franklin: Now, were these people in the community? Or people outside? Boice: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Franklin: And this was right at the time— Boice: Oh, no, no, no. This is-- Franklin: Later? Boice: Last week? [LAUGHTER] Last few years ago, yeah. Franklin: Okay. Boice: I got my—I’m still behind Hanford. Franklin: Okay. Boice: Screwed up and all. Back to Vitro for a little bit. Like I say, they were—the organization that literally purchased and built the city of Richland—now, at that time I was flying, and I was flying out of the Richland airport. And there was an old geezer out there called Norm. Norm flew the bench. He was always on the bench out in front of the airport, there. And if somebody just going up to burn up some hours or play, why, Norm was willing to go along. I saw Norm and I hauled him around and then I went back to work for Vitro. And Pritchard brought this guy through—it was Norm! Norm had been the head of real estate when the entire city of Richland and the whole Hanford Project was bought. He was in charge of it. And he retired and trained his successor, who died. And he trained the next guy, who died. So they had Norm on a retainer. Just to ride dirt on real estate. Quite an interesting character! Franklin: Yeah, I bet. I think I’d kind of like to return about something we were just talking about a minute ago, where you were talking about people that—especially in the later years that have been critical of Hanford. I’d like to get more of your feelings on that. On how you feel about that, or kind of what part of their argument or their viewpoint that you don’t agree with. Boice: They were talking about—well, first there was the Richland High School and their bomb insignia. It was felt that they were making a big deal or prideful about this terrible event. And I always go back to a group from Japan that came over and were very critical of Richland for the same thing. And the gentleman who was interviewing them or was talking to them, when they got done, informed them in no uncertain terms, that we were invited very unceremoniously into that war, and we’re sorry if you didn’t like the way we ended it. [LAUGHTER] You get to researching, I’d like to bring up, why didn’t they drop the bomb on Tokyo? Because there was nothing left on Tokyo to injure. If you read about Curt LeMay and the Strategic Air Command and the bombing of Japan, he had eliminated that thing down to—the B-29 was supposed to be a high altitude bomber. And it wasn’t as great at it as it was advertised to be. But they had eliminated the defenses. And they made the B-29 into a low-level trucking company, and they were just hauling stuff over and unloading it. And the firebombing of Tokyo—the movies they showed us in the Air Force was something to behold. I mean, they—it was so much worse than what happened at Nagasaki or Hiroshima, either one. He was told to save two or three targets—clean targets. And when they come over there with the bombs, then they used these clean targets and saw what they could do. Of the four devices—the four nuclear devices, we used—was it four or three in World War II? Franklin: Are you referring to— Boice: All but one of them came from Hanford. Franklin: Yeah. Boice: The first one at Los Alamos was plutonium. And then Hiroshima was Oak Ridge. Franklin: Yup. Boice: And then Nagasaki was plutonium. Franklin: Yeah. Boice: But there’s those that—and there were at the time, there was a big discussion on, should we demonstrate to them what this thing could do? And the big argument was, what if it doesn’t do? What if you drop it and it don’t do nothing? [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Interesting. Can you speak to—or do you remember anything about the Civil Rights era in the Tri-Cities? Boice: [LAUGHTER] Franklin: There were reports of—you know, it’s known that Kennewick was kind of a sun-down town, and that many minorities were forced to live in East Pasco. And that during the war— [NEW CLIP] Franklin: There had been a sizable African American population at Hanford, but that after the war many of them left. So I was wondering if you could speak to the Civil Rights action you might have seen or you might have observed or anything in the Tri-Cities? Boice: Well, I was up in Lewiston when their civil rights march come through. But it was well-advertised. People knew what was gonna happen. And I was at the hardware store, and there’s a black cement finisher I’d worked with building houses in Pasco. I says, Leroy! You gonna come march on Kennewick? He said, [AFFECTED DIALECT] shee-it. I wantsta live in Kennewick just about as bad as you wantsta live in East Pasco. [LAUGHTER] They had a march on Kennewick—a bunch of people that—I am told, because I was living in Lewiston, and I was in Lewiston at the time. But there’s a group out of Seattle and a group out of Portland come up to Pasco, and they marched across the bridge. They marched down Avenue C, up Washington Street, down Kennewick Avenue. And Kennewick yawned. Nobody particularly cared. They got to the Methodist church, and the groups come out and says, you look hot. Come on in and have some lemonade. They sat down at the church, had lemonade and went home. And that was the civil rights march in Kennewick. But there is—when I was there growing up, there were no blacks in Kennewick. There were blacks in Pasco, and there were no blacks in Richland. With the exception—the guy that run the shoeshine parlor at Ganzel’s barbershop lived in the basement, and they tell me that there was two black porters at the Hanford House. And that was the total black population of Richland. Franklin: Wow. Boice: But they were not welcome in Kennewick. It wasn’t that big a deal when I was walking down Kennewick Avenue when a couple of black guys—they were bums, hobos—come walking down Main Street, you might as well say. And a cop pulled up and says, the railroad tracks are two blocks down that way. They go east and west. Either one will get you out of town. And they went to the railroad track. I always figured that the blacks wanted to move to Kennewick because they couldn’t stand to live next to the blacks in Pasco. [LAUGHTER] And if you want to get right down to it, well, all that hooping and hollering they do right now, you go down to Fayette, Mississippi, which is 98.645% black, and all the blacks in Mississippi can live in Fayette and nobody cares. Go down to Van Horn, Texas, which is all Mexicans, and they can all live in Van Horn, Texas, and nobody cares. But you let half a dozen white guys go up in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and they just have yourself a storm. Why, these are a bunch of white separatists! If everybody else can live together, why can’t the whites? Franklin: Interesting. Some might say they were kind of starting a separatist movement up there, I think—claiming their own territory, and— Boice: So what? Franklin: Well, living together communally is often different from claiming that you don’t—aren’t subject to the law, the jurisdiction of the United States. Boice: Nobody said that they weren’t subject to the law. Franklin: Well-- Boice: They kept trying to integrate Prudhoe, but he kept getting cold and going home. Franklin: Oh, in Alaska? Boice: Yeah! Franklin: Yeah. Boice: They had a heck of a time keeping Prudhoe integrated. Because them black people do not like cold weather! [LAUGHTER] Franklin: I don’t think a lot of people like cold weather. Boice: It was a big joke when we went down south there, to work at Savannah River. Because—hell, we’d come out of here and it was Thanksgiving. It was cold. We got down there, of course, if you’re traveling you’re gonna get nightshift. We left having the cold weather here at night down there. And I says, that’s okay, you’ll get yours come summertime when it heats up. But surprisingly—and I was really surprised that they didn’t take the hot weather any better than we did. I mean, it was miserably hot, but they were just as big a problem as a rest of us. Franklin: I imagine it’s quite a bit more humid down there, though, with the—when it gets hot, you know. Because the heat with the humidity is— Boice: Yeah, it is. Franklin: --much worse than the dry heat. Boice: Yeah, yeah. Franklin: Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention? Or any question I haven’t asked you that you think I should— Boice: I don’t know what it would be. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Yeah, we’ve really gone—really jumped all over the place. It’s been great. Anyone else have any questions? Hungate: No, the only question—you said you’d done some work with the railroad. What railroad? Boice: Name one. [LAUGHTER] Hungate: All railroads? Union Pacific, all the different--? Boice: Yes. Right now they’re talking about the oil trains, and their problems with them tipping over? I wonder how long it’s gonna take them to get to the problem. In the beginning, railroads were 39-foot rails bolted together. Measured mile after mile after mile of it. Then in about, oh, the middle ‘60s—’67, thereabouts, ’66—when they were putting in the SP&S, that’s now the BN—the Burlington Northern on the Washington side. They went with quarter-mile steel. And the first question that we had as surveyors—because you’re constantly working with the expansion and contraction of steel—was how are they going to control that in long rails? Because if you’re working on railroads very long, first thing you realize is do not sit on the joints in a hot day. You get your butt pinched! [LAUGHTER] When those tracks expand. So we brought this up and the first thing they told us was, well, they’ve got special steel and it’s only going to expand sideways. Well, that story lasted about as long as it took when they started putting it together. Because when they started—they’d set up a factory down here, if you’ll call it that. Brought in 39-foot un-punched rail, and just rolled her off, welded her together and ground down the joints and put her in quarter-mile sections. They were very particular when they put it in at the temperature that they laid that down on, where before—you know what a creeper is? Okay, it’s a kind of a hairpin device that you put over the rail so that it will slide less. But in the old days, the 39-foot rail very seldom saw any creepers. When they put that quarter-mile steel together, you saw a lot of creepers. Now they have gone to ribbon rail. They welded the quarter-mile steel together. You drive down to Portland, and you look at that rail, and you’re gonna go a long ways before you see a joint. There at Quinton and Washman’s dip—which don’t mean a thing to you guys—[LAUGHTER] about a mile post from 120-whatever, they have got a creeper on each—alongside of each and every tie. I mean, they were using creepers like they were going out of style. To me, the expansion’s the thing that they got to worry about, but then they should have figured this out because they’re running it. But it’s a factor. You got to factor it in when you’re doing a pipeline, when you’re doing a railroad. When we were doing the pipeline, Maurice Smith of British Petroleum, who was the head pipeline engineer, I had lunch with him. [LAUGHTER] It ain’t like we sit down at a specified lunch—he dropped in at the chow hall I was eating and sat down at our table. So we got to talking about it. And that was the question I brought up, was how are you going to handle the expansion in the steel? And he says—he admitted it was a heck of a problem. And that you got to run as many Ss as you can so that it’ll take up and accordion itself. And when you’ve got a long straight stretch, it’s gonna give you problems. [LAUGHTER] Because it’s gonna go someplace. And that’s the thing that—after they started the quarter-mile steel, a couple of years later, we had a hot summer. The article in the Tri-City Herald called it the long, hot summer, where we had over 90 days of over 90-degree weather. But they were cutting chunks out of that railroad to keep her on the road bed. And at that time, when the SP&S was having these problems, the UP was laughing at them. They said, we tried this stuff in Wyoming. It didn’t work. And they’re using 39-foot stuff, and it was just whistling down the road. But now I see that they’re using the ribbon rail like everybody else. I can’t see how it’s gonna work, but the they’re doing it. [LAUGHTER] It ain’t my role! [LAUGHTER] The other one was the Camas Prairie. And that starts out, oh, about ten miles above Ice Harbor Dam, thereabouts, breaks loose, and goes clear up past Lewiston, up into Grangeville, Idaho. That’s a crazy little river. Franklin: That’s the one that they filmed that Charles Bronson movie. Boice: Breakheart Pass? Franklin: Breakheart Pass, yeah. Boice: Yeah, that was done up there. You get into railroad history—this area is knee-deep in it. Vollard was the great character in that. He started out with a little portage railroad around Idaho Falls and that area. And then he got the Walla Walla line—I call it the WWWWW&WWW line—Walla Walla, Waitsburg, Washtucna and Washington Wail Woad—which was a money maker. But he ended up getting a lineup from Portland out here. And then when they started building the Northern Pacific, they were building from both ends, and he was hauling Northern Pacific rail over his tracks and taking it out in railroad stock. By the time they got connected over in Montana, he owned a sizable chunk of the railroad. [LAUGHTER] And it was—you get into that railroad history, and it’s just takeover checkers. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much, George. Boice: Okay! [LAUGHTER] Franklin: It was a pleasure talking to you. And, yeah, thanks for coming in today. Boice: All righty. Write if you find work! [LAUGHTER] Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1943-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. ca1956-1958 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Wolfe, Warren Truman, Harry Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with George Boice Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Subject The topic of the resource Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Richland (Wash.). Public Schools Description An account of the resource An interview with George Boice conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by Mission Support Alliance on behalf of the United States Department of Energy. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-6-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-8-12: Metadata v1 created – [RG] FBI Housing Richland (Wash.) Secrecy https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F7022bb74a0ba57959267cd96ac015ced.jpg 0aafabc17d93e102362c6d2e53e8abc5 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F061db68a7c1d8e77ce0f3f249b8a7e72.mp4 dad1f7349628cab3706efa956239db82 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Franklin Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Alice Didier Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Alice Didier on July 12th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Alice Didier about her experiences working at the Hanford site and homesteading outside of—Connell? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Alice Didier: Eltopia. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Eltopa. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Eltopia, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Eltopia, okay. So why don’t we start at the beginning. Where were you born? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I was born in Portland, Oregon. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I was a city girl. Met my husband, who was born in Condon, Oregon, and he came from wheat farming country. However, his dad was not a farmer; he ran a machine shop in Condon. However, Don worked on many of the farms up there in Condon. We were married in 1951, and Don was in the service. He was in the Air Force. So after he was discharged, we came home to Condon. Our dream was to have something of our own—a farm, or—you know—mainly a farm. But the ground in that area was way too expensive for us to ever dream of owning anything. So we had the—we decided to make a trip to Canada. We went all the way to Prince George looking for land to buy, because they were encouraging American citizens to come up there and settle. Well, after that trip—before that trip, Don got an inquiry, or got a letter from the—I don’t really—it was the Bureau of Reclamation? I don’t know. It was if you were a veteran, you were entitled to throw your name in the hat, and if your name was drawn, you might have an opportunity to draw some land up here in the Columbia Basin. On a whim, he filled that out and mailed it before we left. And we were very glad we did because Prince George was a pole thicket up there. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: It was a what? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: A pole thicket. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: A pole thicket. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: My goodness gracious, if you had to clear that land it’d take you forever and a day. Plus—what is—peat? It had a peat—you couldn’t burn it, because you’d burn off everything that was worth—of value to farm. So you had to clear everything by hand. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: So, anyway. Very glad that when we got back, he had sent this in, and he was informed to come for an interview in Connell by a board of people that would determine if we were qualified. You were supposed to have assets, I think, of $1,500. I don’t remember what the qualifications were. But we did not have—we did not meet the qualifications. But we decided that we’d bluff it through. [LAUGHTER] So we came up in the fall of 1953. To Connell. I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with my daughter. First thing I did was look up the name of the doctor in the phone book in Connell, because I thought I might not make it back to Condon before she appeared on the scene. But anyway, didn’t work out that way. But they took Don out in a Jeep, and bounced over hill and dale, and showed him the land that they had laid out that was available for drawing at that time. Not everything was available at the same time. So he picked out our farm unit. I had never—I didn’t get to see the land. I didn’t have any part of that, because I didn’t want to chance taking a trip in the Jeep in my condition. February of ’54, his dad and Don loaded up—we bought this Army tent, and he loaded up everything we owned in the way of furniture and moved up to our unit. It was nothing but rock, sagebrush, rattlesnakes—[LAUGHTER]—and, yeah, sagebrush, I said sagebrush. A lot of sagebrush. All of that had to be cut and burnt—cleared, in other words, in order to farm anything in the area that we picked out. Some land around there had been farmed—wheat farmers had tried their hand at raising wheat in that area, small areas. But not enough rainfall. And there were sheep camps in there. They had been running sheep, some of them. When Don brought me up, he pulled up on this—we had to come in from Eltopia; there were no roads built. So we had to come over hill and dale to get out to our farm unit. And he pulled up, and he said, this is it. And I said, this is it? I mean—[LAUGHTER] there was nothing there, period. It was sort of a shock. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And you hadn’t seen it before this? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I had not seen it before then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: It had been purchased sight unseen by you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yes, yes. And he and his dad had preceded my coming up there to drop our stuff off and build a wooden floor and side—what would you call it? Sidewalls. Sidewalls for the tent. So they had it pretty well constructed. Anyway, that was the beginning. [LAUGHTER] Don had borrowed from a farmer in Condon a small little D4 Cat, I think it was. We hauled that up here. And he and his dad had built a scraper, a small scraper, to put behind it. So Don started developing a piece of land behind where we had pitched this tent. My daughter was three months old when we moved up here. Let’s see—October, November, December—four months old, I guess. And my son was about a year-and-a-half, or less than two. So we took up residence in our tent. [LAUGHTER] And when we finally got our power, we had a refrigerator. Like I said, I had a Sud Saver washing machine that you could dump the water. We had two tubs out front—laundry tubs, like there used—women used to have in their house. So I’d save the wash water, and I’d save the rinse water, because we were hauling every drop of water. It was pretty precious. You reuse it a couple of times. Maybe not the most sanitary, but that was the—[LAUGHTER] That’s what we had to do. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: How long did it take from when you moved in to when you got power? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I’d say two weeks at the most. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Big Bend came in and dropped power in. But we still had no roads. We had a little ’51 Oldsmobile and we had a water trailer, and we had to go into Eltopia to the railroad—there was a railroad well. And we’d fill there. It took a half a tank of gas to get down to the well and back with a tank of water. Yeah. And we had no neighbors. There were no neighbors. It was just Don and I out there. Over the hill was a couple. She was an English war bride. And they had settled in there before we did. And then we had another couple to the south of us. But we were the only people in that whole area. It was pretty dark at night, I’m going to tell you. There were no lights. There was nothing. It was black. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. So how fast did the land clearing go? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Not very fast. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Not very fast? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Because we didn’t have any money. We used a big Noble blade and cut the sagebrush. Then we’d have to go out and pile it by hand in big stacks and burn it. Don managed to level off, I think—well, I don’t know, what was it? 14, 15 acres was the first—because in those days, there were no circles. It was all either you had hand line—irrigation hand line, or you had to level the ground to a grade that you could put in a ditch and use siphon tubes—rill irrigation, they called it. And Don didn’t want anything to do with the hand lines. So he was leveling it for rill irrigation. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And so you used real irrigation? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: We did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And how do you spell that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: R-I-L-L. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: R-I-L-L. We did a previous oral history where someone mentioned that and we didn’t— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Know how to spell— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: No one at the Project had heard of that and we weren’t sure how to spell it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So it’s R-I-L-L— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: --irrigation. Thank you so much. Can go back and fix some transcripts. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So it’s—just will you explain that again? That’s when you lay down—where you grade— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier; You have to grade the land so that the water will flow from the top to the bottom. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: You know, enough of a grade so that the water will flow down the—well, you put ditches from the head ditch up here that carries the main body of water. You would back up to that with ditch shovels and make ditches every so far through your crop. That’s where you would set the siphon tube and the water would go from the top to the bottom. When it reached the bottom, then you’d pick them up and move on down. You could only set so many at one time, depending on how much of a head of a water you had—or how many feet you had coming down the ditch. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So that’s a much more labor-intensive type of irrigation. I imagine, probably an older type of irrigation, as well. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Right, but not maybe as labor-intensive as packing that hand line. That’s work. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And what would the tubes be constructed out of usually? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Aluminum. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Aluminum tubes, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: And there’s a picture, I think, in that magazine I gave you from International Harvester, showing me priming one of those tubes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, okay, great. Wow, that’s great. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: You had to learn how to do that. You had to learn how to give it a deal like this and flip it over quick so you didn’t lose your prime. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: A lot of people didn’t know how to do it in the beginning and they’d suck on it, if you can believe that, to get the water running. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Kind of like siphoning gas? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah, only—the water was much cleaner than later on. I mean, after more—we actually, on this end of the Basin, reuse the water that comes in up north. So a lot of it’s recovered—what is that lake up there that—there’s a lake—I can’t remember the name of it right now. So, that was our first—and our first venture was to plant some hay. There was nobody to buy what you raised. We had no markets then. So I remember the hay that we baled—we finally got it baled and it sat out there until the hay grew up over it, because there was no sense picking it up; we didn’t have anybody to sell it to. [LAUGHTER] So it wasn’t a very productive, I guess, in the beginning, as far as producing money. So I went to work at Camp Hanford. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Do you remember what year that— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: No. Well, it’d be—okay, ’54 we moved up here. It was probably during ’54. Because we had to eat. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Right, you needed some cash coming in. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Hay wasn’t going to cut it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: No. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So what did you do at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I was a secretary. I was interviewing people for jobs out there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: All kinds of jobs, or--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: You know, that—I didn’t work there a whole long time. That was a long trip for me, clear from Eltopia. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I imagine. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I had to drive that every day. I don’t remember. Not all kinds of jobs, I’m sure, because I’m not versed in scientific things, you know. I’m not sure it was Camp Hanford, so I don’t know what did Camp Hanford do? They were—it was long before all this Project stuff started out here in—I think it was—wasn’t that a military type of camp? Camp Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: There’s a few different things that are referred to as Camp Hanford. There’s the actual Camp Hanford, as it’s oftentimes noted as the camp where the construction crews lived. Then there was—there were a couple—there was a military camp-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I think that was it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: --called Camp Hanford as well, where they—when they had the military stationed there for— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: But I wasn’t interviewing for military; it had to be civilian people they were hiring or stuff. I wasn’t military. Because I was not in the military and whatever. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Right. So you said you were a secretary, but then you said—didn’t you do something with the whole body counter? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: That was for GE. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: For GE, okay. So in the beginning you worked at Camp Hanford, secretary/interviewer. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: And then I went to Bureau of Reclamation in Eltopia. They had a construction office there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: So I went down and applied for a job there, and I was so happy when I got a job, because I didn’t have to go very far to go to work. They were still completing canals and doing work. So I worked down there for a while. And then I decided, I guess, that I guess that I needed more money—or that we needed more money. So I went out—I applied to go to work at GE. And the first job I had was for Roy Lucas in tech shops. That was 300 Area. All my jobs that I held during that time that I worked out there were all for GE. It was just as GE was phasing out. And I forget who the next contractor was that came in, but GE—yeah. I left just as GE was—they were changing over. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And you said you worked for Roy Lewis at— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: No, Roy Lucas. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Roy Lucas. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Lucas, L-U-C-A-S. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: At the tech shops? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Tech shops. He ran—it was like machining. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: They did machining. They had these tech shops—T-E-C-H—tech shops. And then I went to work for—well, there was a little incident between there. I got pregnant again. So I had to take a leave of absence, and my youngest son was born in 1960. So I think three months after he was born, I had taken a leave of absence, I came back, and I got a job at the Whole Body Counter—I think that was next—with Frank Swanberg, where they did all the testing on people that were working out there with their dosimeters or whatever they were wearing. They did a lot of testing on people that had worked out there for their levels of radiation exposure. Then I got a job—I got a promotion and went out to 300 Area again, and I went to work for Ward Spear. I don’t remember the name of that. They were all scientific people there. The papers I typed up were horrendous, with all their equations in them. [LAUGHTER] Then I worked for the boss of that whole group and he eventually became the CEO of Battelle, Ron Paul. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: You know Ron Paul, or have you heard of him? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I’ve heard the name, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah, he was—I can understand why he was promoted to what he was. He was one of the best bosses I ever worked for, let’s put it that way. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And why was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Very well organized. Never, ever last minute, I got to have this like ten minutes ago. No. He was always—I don’t know—just was a very personable man. Yeah, I really liked him. And then I got another promotion and I went to work for Art Keene in radiation monitoring. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So kind of back to radiation monitoring. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. And he was head of the whole group that supervised the Whole Body Counter and whatever work—you know, all the people that were doing the monitoring out there. And that’s when I decided that I’d better call it a day. I had five children, and I was driving—I was spending ten to ten-and-a-half hours a day—well, ten hours, I guess it was—for eight hours of work out here. I mean, it took me—we still were not financially doing that well, so I hopped car pools. I had three car pools by the time I got to work at 300 Area. I had to switch and pass go. [LAUGHTER] And then had one more switch, I think. I can’t remember, but anyway. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So then you moved back to the farm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I went back to the farm, and that’s when things started to pick up, and our markets were better, and you had more choices of what to raise. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Do you know what year that would have been? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, Brett was born in 1960—oh, gosh. I think he was two, something? Probably 1962 or ’63. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And so you said things had kind of improved, at least market-wise by that time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Right, well there were more variety of crops to raise. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So what were you—so you started with hay, so what were you expanding out into? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, we raised—in the beginning—well, we tried beans. We tried beans, we tried—I can just give you a repertoire of everything we raised. We didn’t do all that at one time. We raised sweet corn, we raised sugar beets, we raised potatoes. We were into potato growing—my husband loved to raise potatoes. Let’s see, sugar beets. Asparagus. We had 80 acres of asparagus once. So, we—can’t think of anything else. Wheat. We’ve had wheat off and on. I can’t think—and hay. Mainly, here in the last years, we’ve been mainly hay farmers. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Because potatoes were always a big gamble. And we had a very bad year one year and almost had to go into bankruptcy. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Is that because of weather or— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Because of circumstances. We had two circles of potatoes, and they had out this chemical that they claimed if you sprayed it at a certain time, that it would set your potatoes so they didn’t put on any more small ones—undersized, which paid you nothing. That you’d get bigger growth on the potatoes that were already set underneath the vine. It was MH-30, was what it was. So we tried that, and they sprayed it on on the hottest day of the year, I think. It was very hot that day. In two days, our potatoes were dead. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So you literally could watch them perish. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. Our field man came and he said, Don, the potato vines are dying. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Because it was a salt solution, and they had no warning on their label that you should not spray over a certain temperature. And other people had used it and came out fine. But not us. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: But what was there we harvested. It was pretty sad. And then that was the year we got a rainstorm. We had wheat and we had a really hard rain. Then next day was like a pressure cooker. And all that wheat sprouted in the head. So it was feed wheat. It was not marketable. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Just—you know, one of those years. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. Where nature seems to be throwing everything at you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yup. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. I grew up on a farm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: This year seems to be that way, too. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I grew up on a farm as well. My mom still farms. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Then you know what I’m talking about. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah, I’ve heard lots of stories. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: When things start going wrong they just sort of escalate, you know? But potatoes, you had—at that time, you had $1,000 an acre into potatoes before you ever put a harvester in the field. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. So— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I guess that explains the switch to hay. So you said that you had done—the people—I’ve read that the people in that Bend area had tried wheat in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and kind of gave up. But you guys also tried wheat. Did you try that with irrigation or did you try to— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh yeah. We had nothing dryland. Everything was irrigated, everything we farmed. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And how did the wheat do, besides that one awful year with the pressure cooker? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, you’d better expect over 100 bushel of wheat or—you know, I’m not as up on yields now as I was then, because my son farms our operation since my husband died. I always kid him I’m on a need-to-know basis. [LAUGHTER] I have to ask questions if I want to know—[LAUGHTER]—if I really want to know the nitty gritty about things, and then sometimes he gets sort of upset with me. So I’m saying 120 bushel—120 bushel is not unheard of, and over. Depending on the variety of wheat, you know. The year, the weather, everything. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So you said that right now you’ve pretty much just reverted to planting hay now—growing hay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Until this past two years. And the hay farmer’s in a world of hurt out there now after that port slowed down over in Tacoma. Sort of ruined the foreign markets. And then, too, our dollar’s been so strong, those people that depended on—I guess that were our markets, they went elsewhere when they weren’t getting their shipments. So you have to work to get those people back buying again. And there is hay stocked all over the basin. We’ve got hay from two years ago we haven’t sold. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: And this year we have had rain, rain, rain on about every cutting which makes it feeder hay. My son had an offer the other day of $60 a ton. You got $150 into it to break even. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: So you take your licks and walk on, hopefully, if you don’t get your financing cut off. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. Did you spend a lot of time in nearby communities, in Eltopia? Were you involved in any organizations there, or social groups, or church groups or anything? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh, yeah. Yes. I belong to St. Paul Catholic church. We actually built that church, the people that moved in there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. The people of that area, we built the St. Paul Catholic church at Eltopia. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: How large was Eltopia when you moved there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh, the town of Eltopia? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: [LAUGHTER] Ooh, not very big. There had been a bank there once. There’d been—well, when we first moved in there and we had no refrigeration and I had a new baby, there was a Streadwick that opened a little store there. And he carried milk and bread, thank heavens, because I could buy milk from him. Because I couldn’t keep milk without it going sour for more than a day or so at a time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: There was a who? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: A Stredwick. His name was just Stredwick. There was a Stredwick family that owned a filling station on the old highway there. And Millie, she was a widow, but she had a pack of kids, and she was the switchboard operator in Eltopia. If you wanted to make a phone call in the beginning, you had to go to Millie’s house to make the telephone call. Because we had no phones. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Or if you received a call, they’d have to come out and tell you that somebody was trying to get ahold of you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And how far away was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, about the same distance as getting the water. A little bit closer, but not much, because we had to go right into the town of Eltopia to get to her house. She lived in Eltopia. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I would say there wasn’t more than 150 people, or less, in Eltopia per se. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Where did the children go to school? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: They started in Eltopia, my two oldest. But then we—they decided school districts. You either were going to go to Pasco or you were going to go Connell. We were—the dividing line was Fir Road, which was one more road to the south. Well, no, it’s more than one for me, but Eltopia West is the main road now that comes off of 395. It’s one road over from Eltopia West—Fir Road—was the dividing line. If you lived on the left side of Fir Road, you went to North Franklin School District, which was Connell. If you lived on the other side, you went to Pasco. So we went to Connell. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Mesa—they built a grade school in Mesa, they built a grade school in Basin City. That’s all North Franklin. Then they had a grade school in Connell, then they built a junior high and a high school. So my kids all went through—finished. Some of them completely went through the North Franklin School District. The two oldest had a few years there in Eltopia. There actually was an old high school in Eltopia. But they closed it down, too. We used to have dances down there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: The floors went up, and the floors went down, but we had an orchestra that did the playing. In the middle of the music they’d just stop. [LAUGHTER] We’ve laughed about that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wait, why did they stop? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Just decided to stop! [LAUGHTER] And you’d be dancing away, all of the sudden the music just stopped. I don’t know. Probably had too much to drink. Everybody had to bring their own bottle, you know. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah, oh, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And who put these dances on? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, we sort of had a—hmm, I don’t know. Don’t remember that. Just—I don’t know—we didn’t have an association, particularly. It was just our local group around there decided, you know, like New Year’s Eve or something, is about when—it wasn’t all the time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Was the high school being used at that time, or was it just kind of an empty— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: No, no, it was going downhill. And that’s what I said—the floors were warped because the roof had leaked. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, my. Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. And so you had to watch your step. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I bet. So were these adults-only dances? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, it was adults only. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: That’s great. That’s really interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: We were involved—I had a 4-H club. Don coached Little League—yeah, Little League, down in Eltopia. We had a team, because our boys played on that. We were big boosters of Connell High School, because all our boys—Clint played—my one son played in the NFL for nine years. The other boy was the one we thought was going to be the NFL player. But he wanted to farm more than play football. He’s the one that’s farming my place now. But our boys all participated in sports up there, so we were big sports boosters. Don helped build the bleachers. The old—we used to have our games down there in the—well, it was in the town of Connell. Since then it’s all moved up by the high school. But he helped build the bleachers into the side of the hill. He had a trophy case built for them. And then the boys went to CBC, both Clint and Curt. And we donated there, the foundation or whatever it is. Still do—Clint still supports that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Did you or your husband go to college? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Don did for a year. He was going to be an engineer. I went to college at night school for a while, but I never got a degree, no. I came out of a high school in Portland that you learned bookkeeping, shorthand, and so when you graduated, you also had a degree—you had English and a language and everything else—but you could go out and get a job. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, okay. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: And then they had Benson at that time for the boys where they learned how to—you know, like shop and things like that. And then they did away with that; we don’t have those kind of things anymore. Big mistake. I think we should still have those type of—because some kids are just not college material. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: To be able to go out and work and do something when you come out of high school. Because kids nowadays, they need work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Right. To have a trade or at least to have—maybe have post-high school schools that are geared for trade instead of— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah, instead of—because when you come out of high school now, what do you have? You don’t have a trade of any kind, or a skill of any kind. Except supposedly your brain, and then you got to go on to another four-year school, and you’re still—if you want to really amount to anything, that isn’t adequate now either. And then we wonder why we have such high debt for these kids that are—[LAUGHTER]—you know, trying to get a college education or get a trade or whatever. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. Oh! How did you meet your husband? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Uh-oh. [LAUGHTER] Do I have to tell you the true story? [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Well if it’s racy or saucy, then yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: For the good of history. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Okay, well-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I’m just kidding. Whatever you’re comfortable with. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, every year in Portland at the beginning of the football season, they would have sort of a roundabout where each high school came and played a quarter or something against another one of the other teams. I had been a cheerleader at my high school. This is since I had graduated, and I’d started to work. I went to work at 16 for the Soil Conservation Service in Portland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, really? Okay. Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: So, my girlfriend and I decided that we were going to go to this celebration—the football thing—that night. So I took a bus and I got off the bus where I was to meet her. And Don and a friend were standing there on the corner. He was enrolled at the—is it University of Portland is the Catholic school down there, or Portland U? No, it’s University of Portland, yeah. Anyway, he’d just started college there. So he tried to strike up a conversation, and I—my mother told me never—[LAUGHTER]—Don’t do those kind of things. I’m just kidding. But anyway, I wouldn’t talk to him. I walked across the street to meet my friend, and we had to walk back in front of him to get back on the bus to get to where we were going. He says, why don’t you let us give you a ride? And I said, no. I said, we’ll just take the bus. So we did. We got on the bus. So they ran around, got in their car, and they followed our bus over to the stadium. Later in the game, I went down and was sitting on the bench with my friends from my high school there. And around the corner walks Don. That was the beginning of the end. He said, well, as it turned out we had a mutual acquaintance—my girlfriend did. So we went to the dance at Portland University that night with them. And that was the end of me ever dating anybody else. Next day, he called me and—[LAUGHTER] So. And it was ironic because my son, Clint, you know, played for Mouse Davis down there, and years later he played in that stadium. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: [LAUGHTER] I call that sort of ironic coincidence, that years later we came back to the place where we actually engaged in a conversation that night. Anyway. So it was a pick-up, I guess you’d say. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. Sounds like he was pretty persistent. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, he wasn’t very talkative. But I was impressed. He was pretty good-looking. [LAUGHTER] I liked what I saw. So anyway. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: That’s—aww. And was he drafted, then? You said he was in the Air Force. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah, he was in the reserve. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: And he got—it was the Korean situation, and he got called up. So we were married just as he—right after he got called up, his commander was gracious enough to give him a couple of days off to have a honeymoon for—what did we have? Three days or something, when it was supposed to be boot camp. He happened to then be stationed at the Portland—there in Portland, for almost a year. And then he got orders to go to Nashville, Tennessee. So we up and moved. I went with him. Didn’t have any children then. We went to Tennessee for less than a year, I think, before we came back. And when we came home, we went to Condon, Oregon and Don went to work for a wheat farmer there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, okay. So he was drafted in Korea, but didn’t—he never— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: He never served overseas, no. He never had to serve overseas. He was a lineman—supposed to be his—whatever, what do they call it? His MO, or whatever? It was supposed to be—oh, I don’t know—what’s the second in command? I don’t know. Anyway, they found that he had been a telephone lineman at one time, so that’s what he ended up being, was a telephone lineman. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Do you—when you were homesteading out there, did you have any run-ins or—well, not run-ins is the right word, but interactions with Native Americans who would have inhabited that area long before? Did you ever see, or were you ever aware of-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: No, there was nothing. The only thing, we found a couple of arrowheads on our place once. No. Some old sheep camps, we found some things in that, but there was no—no, there was no indication of any— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: From earlier settlement days. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: No. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: How has farming changed over the years for you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh, my gosh. Well, what are we talking here? ’54 to—is that 60-what? ’62 years? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: 60 years, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Phenomenal, I guess, would be my word. Equipment-wise. Everything now if possible is circles, for irrigation. Tractors are—how many times bigger should I say than what we started out with? My son owns a quad-trac, which—I don’t know, what are they? $280,000 or $300,000-some-odd and it’s monstrous. You have GPS now; everything is—you plant by that. I guess—I don’t really have a word to—I guess express how much it’s advanced. Planters are all—well, just like we planted some beans this year, trying to find out something else besides hay to plant. This guy just pulls into field we had with timothy hay, and you don’t have to disc, you don’t have to do anything. He just sets down, and he’s got things that open it up to plant the seeds, so you don’t have to worry about the wind problem you used to. It used to be, we had horrendous winds and dirt. You’d plant a crop, and you’d pray that you didn’t get one of those winds or it’d be gone—the seed would be gone. A lot of replanting back in the old days. We could look towards block 15 and see this wall of dirt coming at us. Yeah. One of the windstorms hit 90 miles an hour here. It blew down the drive-in screen in Pasco. It blew the side out of a block building. And we were in that tent. My husband said, load the kids up, we’re going to town. We’re not going to be here when it goes down—if it goes down, is what he said. So we loaded up the kids, drove to town, spent the whole day in town. As the day—as the sun started to set, the wind went down and we headed back out there and didn’t know if there would be anything left of everything we owned in the world because it was all in that tent. And it was still standing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: But he had a pretty hefty crossbeam—is that what you call it, the main deal at the top? But he said it put a permanent bow in it, though. That wind against that canvas. So he took that thing down and put up a four-by-six by himself. How he did that, I don’t know. But he says, not going to have that happen again. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: And then we had just a few incidences of some of the things that happened out there. We had a winter that first winter when we still in the tent. My husband was doing land-leveling. He got this D7 Cat and he was out working for other people, leveling their ground. That day, it was a beautiful day, that day. When he got off the Cat, he started home, and for some reason he turned around, and he drained that Cat. Because there was no antifreeze. We didn’t have antifreeze in it. That night, it dropped to 19 below. I don’t know—we’ve never, ever had that happen again. Don stayed up all night. We had a wood stove in that tent, and we had an oil stove. He had both of them cranked up as high as they would go. The next morning, he reached over, and we had packing cases for cupboards. He reached over for the coffee pot, and when he got it, it was all slushy, after he—and it wasn’t that far away from the stove. [LAUGHTER] And sagebrush—he was burning sagebrush in the wood stove. That puts out a hot fire. So decided it was time to move. And I was working at the Bureau then, so we were entitled to one of their Quonset huts down there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: So we picked up and moved that day. And it was wonderful not to have a roof flapping in the breeze, and it had running water, and I had wall—baseboard heaters, and they paid the bill. You could be as warm and toasty as you wanted. So I was in seventh heaven. [LAUGHTER] We lived there until—well, then I got—while I was working there, I got pregnant with Curt. And the Bureau wrote us a little letter, saying, you have not proved up on your land. You had to put in 12 months out of 18 to establish residency. And said, if you don’t move back on your unit, you’ll forfeit it. We didn’t have a house, didn’t have anything. So went to town, and started tearing down—we called them Navy homes. I don’t know. Somebody said they were Victory homes or something. They had a lot of them in Pasco, they had a lot in Kennewick. He and his dad went in there and they tore—we got enough money from the bank to tear down a section of that housing, and used all the materials out of that for our house. When we moved in, the eaves weren’t boxed in, the sub-floor was the roof, like, slats. So the dirt just settled between the slats. And we had no running water again, because we didn’t have a well. And I found a rattlesnake in my closet one day. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh my. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: [LAUGHTER] Came home from town, and I walked in to take off my blouse and hang it up in the closet. And I heard this noise, and I thought—out of the corner of my eye—I thought, there’s a snake. But it had curled up on top of a suitcase. We had no bathroom—we had an outhouse. Had no bathroom, and he found his way into our bedroom there, and the light—the sun was coming through the bedroom window, and he was sunning himself. He’d crawled up on this suitcase in an old army hat that Don had laying on top of the suitcase. And he was telling me, you’d better back off. I screamed, I said, there’s a rattlesnake in here! And Don says—he didn’t believe me, he thought I was having pipe dreams. He told everybody afterwards I made a new door out of the bedroom, which I did not. But anyway, he grabbed a weed fork and killed it. Believe me, we stepped out of bed gingerly for a while, thinking where you find one, you usually find two. But we could see where he’d come up through the—we had the sewer pipe laid for the bathroom that was not in. And the kids had been out there playing in the dirt with their trucks and stuff. He had a piece of tar paper thrown up against it and some dirt that he’d thrown up against it. Well, they’d knocked that down and that snake found that pipe, and he decided that was a nice cool place to be in. Yeah. We had quite a—in fact, we have a big rock bluff behind my farm unit there to the east. And the people at the Bureau called that Rattlesnake Mountain. In the spring, they’d go out there, and when they’d come out of their dens they’d kill a lot of snakes. So we encountered rattlesnakes off and on quite a bit. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: We were pretty worried with our kids that they might get bitten. We actually went to town and got a kit—not the normal kind—it had a hypodermic needle or whatever. Whether I could have used it [LAUGHTER] I don’t know. We had to keep it in the refrigerator. But just in case, because we were a long ways away from a doctor. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: But anyway, didn’t happen. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: That’s good. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier; Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And now how—when, roughly, was your house built? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, it was built in stages. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: When did it— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, right as Curt was born, which was 1957. ’57. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And is that still the same—is that house still out there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: It is. Only we’ve added on to it. You’d never know what part of it is built out of. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: It’s all bricked. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. I have a fairly nice home. It’s nothing luxurious or anything, but it’s very comfortable. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And you have roads out there now? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, we’d better have. But that was something, when you didn’t have any roads, I’ll tell you. They were putting them in, but they were just the bases. I remember one day, our neighbors across—that turned out to be our neighbors across the road on Holly Drive—we saw this truck with all of their stuff loaded on it pull in over there. We thought, wow, are we getting a neighbor here? But they pulled in and dropped off a bunch of stuff and then took off again. So we jumped in our car and we followed them to find out who they were, and were they going to be our neighbors, and whatever. Because we were excited that we had another human being that was going to be that close to us. That was Johnsons. Were our neighbors for years and years. They both since have passed away. Don and I were probably eight to ten years younger than the majority of the people that settled out there, because they were World War II veterans, many of them. So we’re losing them one by one. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah, most of them are—well, just lost one down the road here. He was 93, I guess. Year before last. He was a bomber pilot in World War II. Flew 70-some-odd missions, and made it through. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: That’s really incredible odds. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. Yeah, it is. I did his eulogy at the church, and—those guys really—anyway, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So working out at Hanford, you would have been privy to—you would have known what was produced there. Did you ever feel—how did you feel about making your living off the land so close to Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I never worried about it. Some people tried to prove, or think that they got thyroid cancer, whatever. But I—working in the monitoring, I knew they were monitoring the milk. They monitored milk, anybody that was dairying out there. Plus, they had instrumentation across the river. They were monitoring the river itself. However, you never knew what the figures were. I mean, I—yeah. But I really never worried about it. But maybe out of ignorance, in a sense. Not really, it’s not like, I guess, Chernobyl or something, where you had—although you had reactors out there. But a lot of them were not even active at that time, even. But there were a few, wasn’t there the—was it Fast Flux? I don’t know. I worked on that project, trying to save that Fast Flux Facility. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Really? So in the ‘80s, then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. Who was the commissioner? Yeah, I got involved in that. That was a travesty that they ever destroyed that, simply for the fact that medical isotopes—they had no idea what they could have engineered from that reactor that would have helped in the medical field. The dream was the guys that knew—he since has died, too. He moved to Portland. That if you had cancer, you’d go in, and you’d sit down, and they’d do, I guess, an injection. Sort of, probably, like chemo now, but in 15 minutes you’d be out of there. The possibility was there to make medical isotopes. If you know what medical isotopes are. I’m not a scientist, but because of the way the Fast Flux—it was one of a kind in the world, I think. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Mm-hmm. How did you become involved in the committee to save it? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I don’t remember who got me into that. [LAUGHTER] I don’t remember. Claude Oliver, for one, was active in that. Wanda Munn, who is still alive, and she’s still—yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah, I’ve— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I know Wanda and I talk to her quite often and she was very active in that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. She was very supportive. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I just went down to the office and did what I usually do, you know. Write thank-you letters for donations and filing and that kind of stuff. But I was very interested; I thought it was a very good project that our government—all the money that had been expended thrown down the toilet, to put it bluntly. I see in the paper they’re going to use one of the warehouses they built, though, to store the sludge or something. Did you see that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I didn’t. I do know that our collection that we manage—the Department of Energy’s Hanford Collection, which is a historic collection of artifacts and archives gathered onsite that document history, and that’s actually stored in one of the Fast Flux Facility warehouses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Is it? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. We’re moving everything out, but I go up there once or twice a week to do work on the collection, yes. It’s one of those warehouses that was built for Fast Flux. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I hadn’t read about storage of waste. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah, sludge or something. So they can—I don’t know—something about the tanks, they can put it in there? Something that had been built for the Fast Flux reactor. So at least maybe something’s being—[LAUGHTER]—what should I say? Salvaged. But anyway. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin:Um, what do you recall about living in the Cold War—during the Cold War era? Especially—was there any sense of danger or even pride living so close at Hanford or working at Hanford, given its role in the US nuclear weapons arsenal during the Cold War? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, all that was sort of over with when I was out there. No, it was a job, and it was money. [LAUGHTER] Better money than I could make anywhere else. And the people were great to work with, and they were always interested in what we were doing out there. You know, you would have thought being of the scientific community and whatever—completely different ideas than being a farmer. But you know what? It’s interesting—there’s always a bit of farmer in everybody. Have you ever realized that? I mean, guys particularly. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Well, I grew up on a farm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I know that’s what you said, but it seems like no matter what they’re line of work is or whatever, there’s always this curiosity about farming and what to do and whatever. I used to have a lot of questions. They always treated me very well. I really hated to quit out there. Because I enjoyed the people. I enjoyed getting away from the farm, and the worries and the whatever. I could go to work and have a different scenario for the day, you know? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Right, right. So when you were out there, you—all of the children were with your husband? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: No, I hired a babysitter. She had to come to the house, because I couldn’t get five kids up—I had to leave at like seven in the morning, something, to be to work. We started earlier than 8:00. What was it? I don’t know what time I had to leave, but she had to come to the house and get the kids dressed and whatever. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Was that a— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Don was not a babysitter. [LAUGHTER] He had better things to do, you know. No, I had to hire someone to come in. And sometimes you wondered if—that’s when I finally decided that I needed to quit and come home, because there’s a fine line there about whether you’re really—how much are you contributing here, when you have to pay someone to look after your children, cost of getting to work, better clothing—had to dress better—you know, all these things you got to factor in. It was better when I did come home, because my husband—he liked conversation and people. So he sometimes got sidetracked at the neighbors’ and stuff when I thought he should have been home doing some things. So when I finally came home for good, it was better. Things improved. [LAUGHTER] In my eyes, anyway. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, it was lonely out there if you were—he just liked, as all farmers do, they like to talk a lot. They still get together. We’ve had some restaurants up there at the corner, and that was the gathering place every morning, the coffee shop and all the BSing that goes on. They’ve come and gone. So now we have a small Mr. Quick’s up there, and some of them still meet up there. Yeah. Got to compare notes, you know. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, yeah. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: A lot of things to talk about, I’m sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yup. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: How—you mentioned, especially when you were growing some of the other crops, maybe not the hay, but like the corn and potatoes—how—did you rely on migrant labor at all? Or have you noticed--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: We did in asparagus, but they really—the families we had I don’t think were migrant. They came from California every year. We furnished housing for them. When amnesty was declared, that’s when we tore out the asparagus. The next year, it was—well, they got better jobs, they stayed in California, they didn’t come back. The people we were getting were not—well, that’s when they also made the deal that if—before, you paid by what they cut a day. I guess you’d call it piecework. They could make good money. But then they said, okay, if they don’t cut enough to equal so much an hour—and I forget what the minimum wage was or whatever it was—then you’ve got to pay them that. So you had to keep track of both things. Well, then you started getting people that would start at the top of the road, and they’d get to the bottom of the road, and then they’d sit down on their box or whatever they had down there and smoke a cigarette. They didn’t care if they made—yeah. They got paid so much no matter what. The caliber of people changed drastically. We got a crew leader or something out of Texas to bring us people, and that was not good. So we just decided to tear it out. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: That’s when you went to a more mechanized--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, yeah. Just planted other crops. When we lost the sugar beet industry here, that was hard, because that was a very, very dependable cash crop. That hurt. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: What happened to the sugar beet industry? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, they decided to pull the factory at Moses Lake out of here. So we had no place to ship the sugar beets. I think, took acres and stuff back to Idaho. So we lost our sugar beet industry here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Is there anything that I haven’t talked about that you’d like to talk about? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what it would be, except that I think at the end of my composition in that book that I gave you there on the block, I just said I was so grateful for the opportunity that we had here. I think this probably was the last—what do I want to say—the last land that was opened up for development, like the Columbia Basin, the last project. We raised five great kids. They learned how to work. I’m proud of all of them. I just felt, being a city girl, my mother-in-law particularly didn’t think I’d ever make it, but I did. [LAUGHTER] It was a great opportunity. A lot of people didn’t stay. There were a lot of women that—it was hard. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: It was hard out there. We had a couple of suicides. You’d get—yeah. I don’t know what else to tell you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Did your parents stay in Portland? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: My dad had died early in life. My mother, yes. I was an only child. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: She lived in Portland, yes. And-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: What did she—oh, sorry. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: That’s okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: What did she think about— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: --your going out to homestead in—I’m sure she thought it was— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Not too much. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: --kind of the middle of nowhere. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Not too much. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Did she ever come out? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. She came up. She always came up whenever I had a baby and helped me. In some of the rougher years, so she knew what was actually happening. Of course, you know how you feel about your kids. You don’t like to see them—think that they’re being—what should I say—deprived. [LAUGHTER] And Don’s folks were very helpful. They—his dad came up and helped us many a time work on the house. She’d come up and do the cooking, since I was working. I’d come home to a meal, which was great. She made the best cinnamon rolls. My kids have never forgotten that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, she—anyway. Yeah, they—we also were in sheep. I guess I forgot to say that. We all had a—I used to do the lambing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah, we bought a bunch of old ewes, which was not the best idea. But that’s all—his dad and Don went together and bought this bunch of old ewes. And so we lambed—I think we had lambs for—or we had sheep for—what? I don’t know, maybe five, six years. We never were much of a livestock people. My husband, when he was young, his dad went to some auction or something, came home with some milk cows, and Don got the job of milking the cows. He says, I’m never having a milk cow, and we never did. [LAUGHTER] We had a guy actually delivering milk out to the farm, come to think of it. And he left a big supply everyday with the boys I had. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Wow, yeah, I bet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I ended up with four boys and one daughter. My daughter’s a school teacher here in Kennewick. Has been for umpteen years. And Brett works at Battelle, my youngest. Curt and Clint and Chris—Chris is my oldest—they all are in the farming deal out there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: And Clint’s a local politician, right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh, yes. Yeah. He thinks he has to try to make a difference. But anyway, it’s a rough go. But he’s determined—stubborn. [LAUGHTER] No, I admire him for his, I guess, bravery, because it is—you do have to be brave. You take a lot of flak, I’m going to tell you, and a lot of—after he loses, which he has, takes him a while to recover. It’s a rejection, is what it is. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Yeah. That’s understandable. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: And then he takes a bit to regroup, and turns around and comes back for another go at it. And I tell him, I said, I don’t understand you, Clint. [LAUGHTER] Anyway. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Well, great, well, thank you so much, Alice. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: I probably talked your leg off. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Nope, my legs are still here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, I don’t know what else I could tell you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Did anyone else have any questions? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Oh, I could—I guess I should have told you, I did a lot of tractor work. I was not just a housewife. I ran almost every piece of equipment, except I never ran the stacker or—but I drove tractor. Did cultivating. Never rode a—I never ran a potato harvester, of course, but I worked on enough of them sorting potatoes. You know when you’re digging in the field? I’ve eaten a lot of dirt in my day. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Tom Hungate: Did you ever notice a difference, was there a boys’ club that you kind of had to work through? Or was it just you were a good worker and so you were accepted as a worker on the farm? Or there weren’t enough people even to judge you as a woman out there working on a farm? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. Most all the women out there—not every woman worked in the field, but the only one that I worried about judging me was my husband. [LAUGHTER] Which, sometimes—[LAUGHTER]—I would pull something that wasn’t—I mean, do something that wasn’t too good. We had a big windstorm one night, and I thought I had to go down—we did have wheel lines at the far end of our place, down in—well, it sloped down pretty readily there. And those wheel lines, if you don’t block them, will take off in the wind and tear them all up. So the guys headed down there, and I thought I had to go down and help. Well, the first thing I did was run over the pipe that hooked into the main line. [LAUGHTER] I got told, why don’t you just go to the house? Because I hadn’t helped the situation any. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Emma Rice: Another thing I was kind of thinking, did you have anything else to add about being kind of a working mom in the 1950s and ‘60s— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Rice: --to watch over your own [INAUDIBLE] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Well, funny you ask that question, because I have granddaughters now that are—well, I have two granddaughters that are CPAs. One just moved—she was working out here on the Project, and she just moved to South Carolina. And I look back on the days when I was working, and they never come again. You’ve lost some of the years of your kids’ life. As things happen, when they learn—when they walk, when they—first time they do something. And not being—and I remember I came home, and I was so tired. I gave my best at work, and there wasn’t a whole lot left over at the end of the day. And I know I was cranky. [LAUGHTER] And I just think sometimes—I’m sort of like my granddaughter, I kept wanting to—each time I got a promotion, it was—how do I want to put that? Not a feather in my cap, but made me feel worthy—more worthwhile, or whatever. I enjoyed working, I admit that. But I just look back on it now as—I’m going to be 85—August. I think, was it really that important? And I wish, maybe, some of our younger generation had the benefit, maybe, of my years later on the road. That’s just my— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Rice: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: But I have thought about that a lot. Whether I would have done it any differently at the time, because we needed the money. But sometimes we get—we forget what’s most important in our life. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: I agree. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Rice: Yeah, great. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: So what we might do now is—we’ll maybe have you kind of narrate some of these, some of the items you brought along. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: Where you go across it, when I was— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: But with these—this is hay we’ve laid down, and I thought it was quite—yeah, there. I thought it was sort of a neat view of how things look now, compared to that other slide you’ve got there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Franklin: Right. Yeah, no, that’s really— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> Didier: So I don’t know if you want me to bring in that picture or not, so you— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX146332551"> </div> Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:10:43 Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 300 Area Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1954-2016 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1954-1960 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Didier, Clint Didier, Don Didier, Curt Didier, Chris Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Alice Didier Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) Kennewick (Wash.) Pasco (Wash.) Eltopia (Wash.) Connell (Wash.) Agriculture Irrigation Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 07/12/2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-12: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Description An account of the resource An interview with Alice Didier conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Relation A related resource <a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/15">Alice Didier Oral History Metadata</a> 300 Area Connell (Wash.) Eltopia (Wash.) Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Kennewick (Wash.) Pasco (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F8fd2a955bab5ca49f4c116afc3f3dcde.JPG babb31b987d1e2e7508918ac0c28f0f7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Franklin Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sharon Kent Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Robert Franklin: Okay, let’s go. My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Sharon Kent on July 26, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Sharon Kent about her experiences growing up in Richland. So, I—the best place to start is at the beginning. So when and where were you born? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Sharon Kent: When was I born? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: In 1941. I was born in Salt Lake City. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But we were one of the first people that moved into Richland. In fact, we lived in Moses Lake and Sunnyside until the prefabs were built. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. So coming to Richland at that young of an age, you had to have had family that worked at Hanford. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: My father worked here, yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. Then what did he do at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I think he was a policeman at that time, but I’m not sure. I know he was a policeman, and when he retired he was a safety engineer. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: So he had several different jobs then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: When did he retire? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, he died in 2000. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. He lived for quite a long time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah. And probably 1980 would be my guess, but I really—I don’t know. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay, well— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Whatever 65 was, he retired. And he was born in 1913. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. ’76. So needless to say, he spent most of his career out—he had a long career at Hanford. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay, wow. That’s really—and did he have any other jobs besides policeman and safety engineer? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, you mean a side job? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Any other job, any other careers out there or jobs out there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: At Hanford, no. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: No? Okay. Do you know how your father found out about—what was he doing before he came here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: He was at a plant in Utah and a lot of people came from it. I can’t remember the name, but a lot of people came from that particular plant. I don’t know if they went there. I guess they went there and told people about it and a lot of them came here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Do you know what kind of plant it was? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: No, I don’t. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. Did your father talk much about his work as a policeman? Maybe not during the time, but after, did he talk about where he patrolled or anything interesting he saw, or--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: No. Not that I can remember. We just talked about—what I remember, one time he said—this is probably too far—but somebody asked him if he knew what they were doing here. And he gave this answer and he says, sir, don’t say that to anybody. [LAUGHTER] So he’d figured out pretty close what they were doing. But I—you know—I don’t know. We just—I was young enough that—in fact, my first memory is the day that Japan surrendered in the Second World War. I can remember we were lived in a prefab, and the sirens were going. They had sirens at noon and different sirens. And my mother and all the people were outside yelling. I can remember my mother says, our brothers are coming home, our brothers are coming home! And that’s my first memory. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: So I don’t remember any of the problems people had during the war with lack of this and that. Just the prosperous time. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. What size of prefab did you live in? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: We lived in a three-bedroom, and because we lived in a three-bedroom, at one point they had a gentleman living with us. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And I don’t remember that. But right at the very end, before we moved—just before we moved, Mother had the third baby. And we didn’t have anybody living with us. And I remember—it must have been a peach orchard, because I remember peach trees. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. That makes sense, because most of the prefabs were on the western side of Richland at that time which had been orchards. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: And I’ve heard stories from other people about all of the fruit orchards that were there in that side of town. So where did your family move to after the prefab? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: We moved to 321 Goethals, which is now 321 Jadwin. And that was an H house. And that’s pretty close to—[LAUGHTER]—I forgot the school. Lewis and Clark. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And we were real close to—there was a market there and a gas station. I remember—we didn’t have freezers in our home then. So there was just one house between us and the market, so we would rent a space in the freezer and go get it. I remember going in there once and pushing the alarm button. [LAUGHTER] Oh, kids! I thought, oh, boy. I was a pretty good kid, but I—[LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Did you know it was an alarm button? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes, I did. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, a troublemaker. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Not usually. [LAUGHTER] Not usually. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: How long did your family live in the H house for? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, the family—I got married in 1959—the end of ’59, and they were still there. They moved out of the H house when—let’s see. Sterling was three years old, and he was born in 1966. So ’69. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. So then your family purchased the H house after Richland— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes, they did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: After Richland became a [INAUDIBLE]? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: They did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Do you know offhand how much they would have paid for that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: What comes in my mind was $7,000. My husband-to-be lived around the corner and up a ways, and his two-bedroom prefab, I believe, was between $2,000 and $3,000. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. So you grew up next to—how did you meet your husband-to-be? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, he lived, like I say, close by, but where we actually met was at church. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: There was a group of people that—young people that would get together, because there were soldiers here. And then there were people like my husband that had been in the Korean War and had their education and they still weren’t married. So there were a lot more men than there were women. So one summer when a lot of the girls left, they went down to a younger age girls that were part of this group. My husband happened to be the oldest, and I happened to be the youngest. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: How much older was your husband? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: 13 years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, that’s what my mother said. [LAUGHTER] But she didn’t know how old he was until—at the reception. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. What age were you when you met him? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Met him? I was 15 or 16. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: How long after that did you get married? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I got married at 18. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. Interesting. And then did you settle in Richland after that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes. My husband was working—I don’t remember—GE. Then it was GE. And we got married in December, and in September we left. My husband got a full fellowship for Berkeley in health physics. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: So we went there and then when we came back, we came back and came back here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: When would you have left? Do you remember what year that would have been? When you left to go—sorry—when you left to go to Berkeley? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: 1960. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: So then Richland had passed into private. So tell me—I imagine that leaving—because you—so you were born in Salt Lake City, but really your formative years were in Richland. I imagine moving to Berkeley would have probably been quite a culture shock. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, it was very different, that was for sure. My in-laws lived close by and my brother-in-law worked at Berkeley as a paleontologist. So we saw them often, and that helped a great deal. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: How so? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Just knowing family was close by. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I didn’t feel like I’d just been let off. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Can you describe some of the ways in which Berkeley was different from—or some of the kind of maybe new experiences or differences that you encountered at Berkeley? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, the buildings were a whole lot older. And we lived in a very old two-story house, and we had the basement apartment. I remember we went to Goodwill or something like that and got one of those wringer washing machines and hung the sheets out. But my husband knew his way around and this type of thing. So it was a much bigger city—much bigger area. When we settle in a place, we go and take advantage of it. So we saw a lot and did a lot. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: So your husband was from the area, then, originally? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes. He was born in San Francisco. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. And how did he get to Richland originally? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I don’t know; when he graduated from Berkeley with a physics degree, he somehow got to Richland. I don’t— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, I guess GE. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: And he’d been in the Korean War before that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: He was in the Korean War, and he did that so his education was paid for. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: He knew that—you know, that was the way to get an education. His brother was already in the Korean War, so he didn’t have to join, because there were just the two boys. And if one’s in the war, the second one doesn’t—you know. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Doesn’t get drafted. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But he wanted to get an education, and this was the way to get it. And he said it worked for him. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin; Do you know what he did when he was in the Korean War? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes. He repaired Sabrejets—the radar equipment in Sabrejets. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: So he was about 55 miles from the line. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. Backing up a bit, what did your—did your mother have a job at Hanford or working during the war or after the war? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes. When I was a teenager, they called and begged her, begged her and begged her. She says, I don’t want to go to work. I have children. And to work in one of the libraries. So she went to work and it turned out she enjoyed it. And I remember there was a graduate school—somehow there was schooling there. It wasn’t a campus like this, but she worked in that library. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And I remember I could go with her sometimes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: And how long did she work there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I don’t know. I know then she went out in the Area and then she worked in the Richland City Library. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: What do you mean, out in the Area? You said then she went out in the Area? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: She worked for Battelle. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, she worked for Battelle, okay. Out onsite. Or at the--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: That’s what I thought. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I’m not—I could make mistakes, but— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, no, that’s totally understandable. And then you said she worked for Richland? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Richland City Library, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: So how long did you and your husband live in Berkeley for? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: One year. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Just one year? Okay. Then what happened after? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Then we came—oh. He decided—he got his degree in physics, and he got his fellowship in health physics, and that wasn’t the right field. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: So he came back in physics, and then as soon as computers came to the Federal Building, he went into computers. And that was definitely his thing. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Oh, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Then he worked with computers for the rest of his career? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. So those would have been the days of punch cards and the—yeah. What did—you said he worked with computers; do you know a little more about what he did in the Federal Building with the computers? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: No. All I know is—well, I remember my daughter, my youngest daughter was old enough to remember the incident. They let us go down, and it was in the basement of the Federal Building. We couldn’t go into the room, but they had these white coverall things on, and it was temperature-controlled and everything. And she was old enough to remember. That was the first computer I saw. That was my youngest child, so—[LAUGHTER] And then it wasn’t too much longer before we had a computer in our home. And my husband said, this runs circles around what was in the Federal Building. But at the time, the Federal Building, it was phenomenal. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. So was it a large mainframe? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Rooms and rooms—yeah. Room after room after— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. Do you have any siblings? I forgot to ask. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I do. I have two sisters and three brothers. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Older, younger—or where are you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I’m the oldest. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: You’re the oldest, okay. So were they all born in Washington? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: No, my sister that’s younger than me, she was also born in Salt Lake City. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. And the others were born in Washington? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Right, Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay, and what’s the age difference between you and your youngest? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Youngest? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: 19 years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh my. That’s a good span. And how many children did you have? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I have five. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Five children as well. And you said your son was born in 1966? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: ’60. Oh—the third son—or the fourth son was ’66. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: The oldest was 1960. And then I had four sons and then in 1972, we had our daughter, and she was born on the first day of school that my youngest went to first grade. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: [LAUGHTER] So I’ve never had much alone time until the last ten years, after my husband died. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Finally some peace and quiet in the house. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah. I’m surprised that you haven’t asked me about what life was like when I was a child. I had some interesting— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: I was getting there, but please, take over. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: No, no, no, go ahead. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, what I remember was before the houses were owned, there were no fences. So there were no big dogs. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: You just—you didn’t own your yard, so you just walked through and everybody—you know. We just walked through the middle to go to the grocery store and whatnot. And I liked it that way. I didn’t have any problems with the neighbors. Some other people did but, I, myself, didn’t. It was just so different once they bought the houses and built these fences. Of course, then, that’s when the big dogs come in. Before, they weren’t—you know. There weren’t the big dogs—I don’t remember—where I lived. There were cats and we had a dachshund that we kept in the yard—you couldn’t just let them run. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right, so I guess they would have been indoor pets a lot of the time. Because without the fences they could just run off. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, to me, it just made such a huge difference once those fences went up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, I bet. Well— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It was just a whole different feeling. It wasn’t near as warm and friendly. Whereas—and then there were a lot fewer people then, too. You know, you felt like you knew everybody. In fact, I think it was only about 20 years ago before I went anywhere that I didn’t see somebody that I knew. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: [LAUGHTER] And then all of the sudden I go places all the time that I don’t know somebody. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right, right. What about—I guess it’s interesting to hear you say that, with this lack of fence—because we, nowadays, we associate fences and things like that, with the feeling of security and privacy. But you’re saying, at least for you as a child, it was much more of an open, friendly feeling. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, that’s what it was to me, but like I—you know. Nobody teased me. I had a brother that got teased something fierce, but nobody bothered me. So it felt good to me. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: To just kind of be able to wander around. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: And what did you do for fun, growing up, what kinds of activities did you do? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, we went swimming. My dad enjoyed swimming and they had a pool down in Howard Amon Park. They had the little pool and then they had the big pool. If you went to the big pool, you had to be a certain age—I can’t remember—if you went without your parent, and you could only swim for one hour. But if you were with an adult, you could swim all the time. And there just happened to be a lady that lived across the street that liked to swim that didn’t have any children that liked to take us. So we didn’t have to stand in line, we just went in and swam as long as we could. I always loved the river, and swimming was something I did a lot of. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Was the pool in the river, or close to the river--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Close to the river. You know where that little pool is now at Howard Amon Park? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It was right close to there. And the tennis courts—my husband and I played on the tennis courts. I’m sure that they have renewed the surface, but it’s the same place as when my husband and I played. And he claims we played at 115, but I keep saying the weather man never says it got that hot. But it was plenty hot. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: I’m sure it felt like 115. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: We—you know, there was no air conditioning. There were swamp coolers, but my mother had asthma, so we couldn’t have a swamp cooler. So I felt very put-upon until I got married and my husband had a wall air conditioner. I just thought I was in the Ritz. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But we had an interesting—we were in Lewis and Clark, and supposedly there were a canoe out there that was decayed. And supposedly, it was from Lewis and Clark, I think. My brother’s wondering if it wasn’t from the Wanapum Indians. But the other thing, we had a principal named Lee Carlson. And he went around traveling around the United States. He was a rock hound, and he got these big, big blocks of the state rock. And on George Washington Way—oh, just north of Lee, on the east side, I—oh, yeah, it was a theater, the Liberty Theater. And anyway, they built this water fountain and had each one of these rocks from the state. And I’ve often wondered what happened to that, because it was very nice. I hope they put it somewhere, but if they have, I haven’t heard about it. Also, it wasn’t—then in those days, not very many people traveled that widely, so it was very interesting to—you know. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, right. Well, especially, I imagine, growing up in Richland, until ’58, the only people that could live in Richland were people—employees of Hanford. So I imagine that, as you were saying earlier, always knowing everybody, I imagine that would be exceptionally true in Richland where everyone you knew worked at Hanford, or was a family of someone who worked at Hanford. So the community had kind of a close knit feeling? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It did to me. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: What else about your childhood strikes you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, I was in high school when the houses sold. And other than the Globetrotters—anyway, I had hardly seen black people, other than when they came in town. They did a thing at Columbia High School that’s now Richland High School. And then the houses sold and four black families—maybe more than that—moved in. But anyway, they were in high school and the two brothers were CW Brown and I can’t remember his brother—Norris. And he was married to one of the girls. And the other brother, Norris, was engaged to other. They were really good at basketball and we got number one at state in basketball that year. There were other great men, too, but I don’t think anybody contested the fact that they were a big thing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Big part of it. And I never saw any—I was raised without prejudice because I didn’t see it, if you know what I mean. And another interesting story is I went to high school with Sharon Tate. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And the incident I remember is I was in the bathroom, and there was a lady—well, a girl I guess, and anyway Sharon Tate was there by the sink. This big black girl asked her if she would help her, and she says, very graciously, said yes. I mean, you just didn’t see any prejudice. And that was my—so when I hear about this other stuff—in fact, people would come to our high school. This one girl just came from the South and was talking about all these murders and this kind of thing. I just hadn’t seen it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: You mean during the Civil Rights era? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Right, right. Like I say, I saw no prejudice whatsoever. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: It’s very interesting you mention Sharon Tate, because I used to ask that question of people who grew up here, and I’d never met anybody yet who had actually met her. So did you know her well, or did you— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: No. I knew she was in high school. I never had a class with her. That’s the only—that was the closest. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But she was very gracious. And everybody knew she was gonna be a movie star. She made no ifs ands or buts about that. And then she was Miss Richland, which was one of the last Miss Richlands. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right, then, yeah, she moved away. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: She moved to Germany just a few weeks later. She knew when she became Miss Richland that she was gonna do that, but— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. And then of course you obviously remember the tragic event that happened to her. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: In fact, I think I lived in California at the time. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I think I lived in Los Angeles County when it happened. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. Did you have any other friends that knew her or had grown close to her, kept in touch with her? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Not that I’m aware of. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. That’s just interesting to have finally met somebody who actually had some sort of experience with her. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But I—what it was, was I was just really overwhelmed at her beauty and how gracious she was and patient. You know? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: That’s great. Do you remember—well, I guess you would have been gone for the Civil Rights activity in Kennewick. There were marches— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: What year was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: ’64, ’65. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: We were back. Oh, no, we left again in ’65 and ’66. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But I don’t remember. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: So I’m sure you’re—did you ever go much to the other two cities, Kennewick and Pasco, for any shopping or social events, or anything like that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I know we did, but I can’t—and I remember when we passed East Pasco, you knew where the blacks live. There was one very lovely house that was a black man’s house. The other thing is, the whole time I was growing up, if I ever saw a Hispanic person, they were in the field, working. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Did any of them live in Richland to your recollection? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: If they did, I wasn’t—like I say, the only time I saw them was when we drove to Sunnyside and they were working in the fields, the whole time I grew up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And my daughter worked at Wiley School in Pasco, first grade, and the Hispanics live where the black community was now. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: So that has definitely changed. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah, Pasco is heavily Hispanic now. What can you tell me about civil defense growing up? Because you would have went to school and gone to school at the real high point of the Cold War-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Duck-and-roll? [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah, exactly. What can you tell me about what you remember about that and how it made you feel? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, I can remember my father was in safety. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: He also, on side jobs, he went around teaching first grade and things like that. So we were really into that kind of thing, and we were very safe. But I remember the duck-and-roll, and I remember the—oh, is it Jason Lee that was built, and it was a bomb shelter and whatnot? I don’t think Lewis and Clark was built that way. Jason Lee was built later. You know, we were told what to do. Exactly what it was, I don’t remember. But I knew that we knew we were vulnerable and we also grew up with the feeling that as soon as the war was over, the town would be taken apart. Which, obviously it wasn’t. And I think—I don’t know, but I have a feeling the Cold War really kept us in there a lot longer. Now we—[LAUGHTER] I remember hearing about it and learning about it. The other thing I remember was when I was young, Dr. Corrado came to the house and I had scarlet fever. He gave me one of the first shots of penicillin that they were giving the public. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It was a thick green goo. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: When was this? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I was five, so it was ’46. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. That is very early. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, yeah. So Dr. Corrado at that point—well, these were—they worked for Hanford and it was very different. Different size and whatnot. And that was—big quarantine sign. It was by Christmas and, like I said, the grocery store was right there; it was Campbell’s then. And my father—our heritage is mainly Swedish—and my dad had invited all these people for lutefisk. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: That Swedish delicacy. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah. And they put this quarantine sign up on our door. And this fish came in to the market and they call up, Mrs. Roos, you’ve got to come and get this fish. It stinks up the whole store! [LAUGHTER] So that’s one of my fun memories. I mean, it wasn’t fun for her, but— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Did you ever develop a taste for lutefisk? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well as a—a few years ago, when I was widowed—you know, they have the lutefisk festival every February or March at the Lutheran church, and I have a friend that is Finnish. So I called her up and I said, let’s go. And she said [GRUMBLING] but she went with me. Well, we had no idea where to go in this church, and we just laughed and said, well, we’ll just follow the smell. And by gum, there was no smell. They do it differently now. And it tastes like cod. I guess it is a cod, prepared. So we go almost every year now. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But we figured if anybody knew how to prepare it, it would be the Sons of Norway. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah. Yup. [LAUGHTER] That makes sense. Anything else about growing up that you’d like to—that comes to mind? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, I remember when the fireworks down at—just below the high school on whatnot, that’s where we saw the fireworks. Then they had a baseball field down there at one time. But this was—I think I was an adult then. They had a team called the Triplets, which is similar to the Dust Devils. And I remember they gave out jackets and I still have my Triplets jacket. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And the circus came to Sunnyside—the great big one—and we went there. Well, the other thing is, one of the first things that happened was the Richland Players. And Mother said, there was this man that was there on business and he had nothing to do that night but go to—so he went to the Richland Players. And he stayed over the next day to go and tell people how extremely impressed and surprised on how good they were. The community concerts came. Anything like that that came—they brought things in like that. I remember Ronald Reagan came. He worked for GE. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, right, doing the promotional films, right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, I remember going when he was here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Were you living here when President Kennedy visited to dedicate the N Reactor? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: That was in November of 1963. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes, I was, in fact— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: September, I think. Sorry. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: In fact, my brother was a Boy Scout. And he was right there and he got to shake his hand twice. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, really? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Did you go to the dedication? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I don’t remember that I did. I think I had a brand new baby or something. [LAUGHTER] But about—when we had a brand new baby in the ‘60s, we were going through one of those trees that you could drive through as President Kennedy was giving the oath of office. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, in— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: In California. In California. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: The redwoods on the highway, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I remember that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Do you remember President Nixon’s visit in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: You know, I can’t say that I do. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: That’s okay. I haven’t met anybody who has yet. I’ve seen pictures of him at Hanford, but I don’t think it was as widely touted as President Kennedy’s visit. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Right, right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: He seems to have a little less mystique. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: How was it, raising—I imagine that—I guess I’d like to ask you to reflect on maybe how the experience of raising children in Richland, and maybe how their experiences would have been different from your experiences growing up in Richland? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Oh, that’s interesting. Well, we had fences. [LAUGHTER] And more multicultural. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: How so? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, anybody of any race could move in. There were very few Asians and very few Hispanics. Hmm. That’s a good question, but—well, they still knew it was a nuclear situation. I don’t have a good answer to that, other than it was a nice place to live. We felt safe. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: That’s interesting. It’s interesting, I guess, for many people who might be—who might ever see this or who aren’t as familiar with Hanford to hear in the same sentence that there’s all this nuclear material being produced here but that it was also a very safe community. Did you ever feel any greater existential fear from the Cold War? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I didn’t. Well, not that I remember. I certainly didn’t when I was a child. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And I think I was just so used to it, I don’t remember. But another thing I do remember about my kids and whatnot is when I grew up, everybody had the same furniture. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right, because it was government furniture. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, and everything else. So when my kids grew up, we went to Bell Furniture. People had different furniture. And like I say, they had dogs and whatnot. More cars during—when I grew up, the men always went to work on buses. Everybody usually had a car, but they had one car. So as my kids that—a lot more people had two cars, and the bus system wasn’t near the thing that it was. Where I live now is right by where the bus barn is, and they just built that new facility and then they stopped using the buses. But I thought the buses were real nice, because you knew when your dad or your husband was coming home and this type of thing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. And probably a bit safer, too. Less cars on the road. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, and it—you know, a lot less—fewer of us had two cars when the husband had a way to work every day. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. So then he wouldn’t need to drive—to take the car with him all the time. So how long did your husband work out onsite for? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Until he retired. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. How long was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, he came in like ’56 or ’57. He was born in ’29. And he retired at 65. So—[LAUGHTER] what would that be? ’86? Or something like that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Kind of right when things were—production was starting to drop off. It says here that you’d been in the same house for 48 years on Saint Street? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: On Saint Street, yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: And is that an Alphabet House, or is that a newer— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: No, it was—we’re the only family that lived there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And it was a Stanfield-Nelson house. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And—no, it was—we were gonna build in that area, and I hadn’t picked a plan yet. But we were on our way to buy a lot around the corner. And I said, hey, look, this house. Let’s go see if we can walk through. And we walked through, and I says, well, that’s what I want, build it over there. And they said, why not here? And I said, well, you’ve already picked up the carpet and whatnot. I’ll probably have one new house—I’m gonna pick out everything. They said, it’s on hold. And it was—I’m real glad I did, because I have four little boys, and they had all these things done—you know, the people that built from scratch—running into all these problems. And the cabinets were in, they were beautiful. They built them right in there. And they were beautiful; they were walnut—I loved walnut. And they did—and outside, the patio, there was a hole there and I said, I can’t have that. So they custom-built a beautiful bench that we sat on top of—you know, where the window was for the dryer. And I’ve been there 48 years, and there isn’t another house in the world I’d rather live in. I wish everybody felt that way about their house. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: I wish I felt that way about my house, honestly. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Did any of your siblings ever go to work for Hanford— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Hanford. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: --end up staying in the area? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, my brother Richard is here now. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: He would be somebody—and I forgot to bring his number—that would be interested. He works out on the grounds and keeping track of radiation from the animals and this type of thing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh. Wow, interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I don’t know—I think I can tell the story. This one man came to him and he said, there’s a building out there, and these people won’t let me go in and check on things. And he says, there’s some birds on top of this building. And he says, I had an idea that they have a lot of radiation, and they won’t let me in. So he and Richard went and said, we’re coming in. And the birds were full of radiation. By the time they decided what to do about it, they were in Argentina. [LAUGHTER] But he says, the saving grace is whatever kind of bird it was, it wasn’t the kind people ate for dinner. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, right. So— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: At least there’s that. It’ll have to work its way through another couple animals to get into the human food stream. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And the other thing was when Rattlesnake Mountain—I have allergies. And when Rattlesnake Mountain burned, my allergies were the best they’d ever been. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Really? What is it that you’re allergic to? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I don’t really know. I’ve been here so long, I’ve just—but anyway, guess who was the one that had them helicopter to reseed it. My brother. [LAUGHTER] They came in with helicopters. I said, I don’t know about that. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Since you’ve—we’ve talked a bit about how the neighborhood changed from—or how kind of the town changed from—in ’58 when things were—when they privatized, and you said some African Americans came in, fences came up, and things. How was—what changes have you noticed in your house now, where you’ve been living for almost half a century— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, yes. We were one of the first houses in that area. And where Lynnwood Park is now—I don’t know if you’re familiar with that—but anyway, when they put the park in, it was in the paper, and I think on the news, there was this big oval spot that they couldn’t get grass to grow. And Mark says, well, I know what that is. That was clayed in for water for the horses. There were horses out there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, right. Like someone’s ranch. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Only, what was interesting was the mobile home park was—this was my house, and this is where the horses are, and the mobile home park was up there. So anyway, he says, well, that’s what’s the matter with that. So, yeah, we were one of the first ones. So it’s really built up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, yeah, I imagine. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And my kids—we moved there just before Sacajawea was built. So they went to Jason Lee, I believe. One day—the two older ones went to school; the two younger ones didn’t go to school yet. And they horsed around, and I didn’t have a car that day. So I told them get out and walk, and it was quite a ways. But they had only walked a couple of blocks and the bus that was picking up the kids more north was passing by. And they said, they’re from our school! So the kids said, we only walked a couple of blocks. [LAUGHTER] But they weren’t late again. [LAUGHTER] And then after that, they went to Sacajawea and then Hanford. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. And when was Hanford built? Do you remember? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, I know they started—Mark was born in ’60, and he started junior high there. He was one of the first. I don’t think it was the first year, but it was pretty close. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Were you involved in any groups or social organizations when you were being a mother and raising children? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I was—one of the things—Robert Leduc was the superintendent of schools. And I was in a group called citizens for something-or-other. We met with Robert Leduc, I believe once a month. And I really enjoyed that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: What did you do in this group? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: We just discussed all kinds of things and gave our feelings. Only other person I can remember that was in it was Dr. Sara Gergel. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: And who was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: She was a pediatrician. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. So I imagine this was school-related? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: This was all—this was Richland Schools. I can’t remember the exact title, but it was citizen—you know. And how they picked us, I don’t remember. I was also vice president of PTO at Sacajawea. We decided not to be PTA, so we were PTO. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, and why was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I can’t remember. I can’t remember. I know I was in a discussion, but I can’t remember. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: What—is the O for organization? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Organization. For some reason, they didn’t want to join the PTA. Now I kind of laugh and wonder why, but we didn’t. I was in Girl Scouts, in fact there’s a house on Falley—George Washington Way and Falley—that was unused at that time. But it was owned by an uncle or something of—it was one of the old, original houses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: The pre-Manhattan Project? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Right. And anyway, we had Girl Scouts there. The building is still there and nobody—I don’t think it’s ever been occupied in all these years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh. And where—this was at--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It’s yellow. Fallow and George Washington Way. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: And Fallow? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Fallon? I think. It’s right at the end of downtown Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Hmm. Interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I’m pretty sure it’s yellow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. I’ll have to look out for that next time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But—yeah—I know I enjoyed going to the things here and most things were free except—you know. They had a lot—GE had a lot of things for the people. I do remember the dust storms and the women didn’t like them. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Why is that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, they called them termination winds. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: You know, the women would clean up, and those winds would just seep into the house. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Would these even happen when you were an adult? How long did these dust storms continue for? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Until all the irrigation started. The more the irrigation, the less of this. And one of my sons—Sterling—was talking to me. He says, the other day, you know, when I grew up here it was very little humidity. He said, now there’s a lot of humidity and he says, if you’re out driving at five or six in the morning, there’s all this water going up in the air from sprinklers and whatnot, and it’s a lot more humid. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: That’s a definite difference. But that hasn’t bothered me. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. I imagine that—didn’t really think of that. Do you remember clearly when kind of the big irrigation projects were happening? Do you remember that—what kind of era that was, or decade? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Not really. I remember going out and picking fruit from when I was a kid and when I had young kids. That’s what I remember. And asparagus and things like that. But I don’t ever remember it without all this. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right, okay. Interesting. What can you tell me about the history of the Latter Day Saints in the area? Was that—were there any Mormon settlers in the area before the Manhattan Project, or was the main bulk kind of brought in during World War II? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, the main bulk was brought in, but—I don’t know if you know anything about Bickleton that’s out there. The Brinkerhoffs lived in Bickleton. And they came in, and he was the one that not too many years before he died and not all that long ago, he remembered as a child, there were bluebirds in Bickleton. So he did a project—oh, I don’t know how many years ago—20 or so, but not—where he made all these houses or had all these houses made, and now the bluebirds have come back to Bickleton. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: You mean like birdhouses? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. And where is Bickleton? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It’s not too far from here, but I’ll tell you—when we went there, I didn’t see any street signs or anything else. It’s just out, you know. My brother knew how to get there. I thought, well, I couldn’t drive there. There’s just—it’s farm and whatnot. He was saying, there’s a bluebird, there’s a bluebird, there’s a bluebird. But they were one of the families. But most everybody else came. And I can remember, we were in schools and whatnot and then in 1950, the steakhouse on Jadwin was built. At that time, we stayed a branch. And when the church was dedicated, we went in and we were divided into two wards—branches are usually quite small. Also, I was—the first baptism in that building was April of 1950, and I was baptized during that baptism. I know my mother didn’t want me baptized in December in that dirty, cold Yakima River, and I didn’t put up any fuss. [LAUGHTER] We’ve really grown since then, that’s for sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: I imagine. Do you remember any—was there any sort of—did early LDS settlers or people who came come across any hostilities or were there any troubles between—any types of persecution or anything like that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, if there was, I didn’t see it. But I’m one of those that—I don’t—if something happens, I just walk away and it’s gone. So I didn’t see any of it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And I don’t remember my folks talking about that at all. We get in and we do things with the community. We usually are quite an asset, and I think we were looked at that way. One of the things I remember as a kid that I loved, that I really miss now was the Atomic Days—they had Atomic Days. One of the things that—they had floats, I mean gorgeous floats. I know Mother and Dad would work on these floats for Toastmasters and Toastmistresses. I remember all that crepe paper and whatnot. I miss those kind of floats. It was fantastic. They really put a lot of effort in that. I can’t remember what else but Frontier Days, but there was all—and I don’t know exactly when Art—first it was Sidewalk Show, for this, that’s coming up this Friday. And it was on the sidewalk in downtown. And then it’s turned into this big thing. And then it was local artists, and I’d—oh, I know her, I know her. And even as an adult when I was taking a lot of painting classes, I knew a lot of the people that were showing down there. Now, I don’t. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Did your husband share a lot of what he worked on, or was there still a culture of secrecy that kind of persisted-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Oh, no, he did not share what he worked on. But I do know that he was this kind that could be very isolated and very—so if there was something that people didn’t want to work on because it was tedious or they had worked on it for years and couldn’t solve it, they just handed it to him and gave him no deadline and he solved all the problems. That’s the only story I’ve heard. So he was very highly valued. Then his bosses, they honored him and this kind of thing—paid as somebody like that. And his bosses that were his age or a little younger, when they were retiring, says Roy, you’ve got to retire. This young guy does not have any respect for overpaid, old geezers. So he retired early—he retired at 65, where he would have gone to 70. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But they said, no, no. And it’s really a shame, because—you know. They lost a very valuable person. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. All that learned experience on the job. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Not that I can remember at this time. I’m sure as I walk out, it’ll fill my head, but—[LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Lightbulb going off? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But it was a very happy experience for me. It wasn’t—my parents, I could see that—well, the other difference was between—everybody here, on vacation, always went home to their parents, because the parents didn’t live here. Whereas with my kids, my folks lived here. My husband’s folks didn’t, but my folks did. And that was a big difference. So when we went, we went to his folks’, but we weren’t trying to equal our time to both families. So also then we took time to go and do other things. That was a big one, to have the grandparents and the aunts and uncles here which my kids had and have really enjoyed. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right, that larger extended family structure would have been missing—or if your aunt or uncle didn’t work for Hanford, right, they wouldn’t live in the area. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Oh, I have another funny story. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: My folks, when they moved from Jadwin which turned into Goethals, at—there’s Jadwin in the Uptown, and then Williams, and then south of Williams, it wasn’t Jadwin, it was Goethals. Why it was that way, I don’t know. But then they—several years ago, they changed it so it was Jadwin all the way down. But anyway, when they moved from Goethals, they moved to Hains, which is across the street from the dike. They had that wonderful walking path, and if you haven’t walked on it, it’s marvelous. I just love to walk there. Anyway, one year, all these walkers were complaining to the City of Richland about the skunks, the skunks, the skunks. So they went in and got rid of a lot of them, and all of the sudden, all the neighbors were just covered with mice. But nobody was talking about it. I can remember my mother was real sick, and the cat came and dropped a dead mouse on her chest. My little daughter, who is real little, came in squealing with a mouse. And then she flushed it down the toilet. The neighbors just didn’t say a word ‘til it had gone on for quite a while. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: So that’s a funny story. I mean, it wasn’t funny to my mother at all, and she certainly didn’t like the present the cat gave her. [LAUGHTER] She couldn’t believe that my daughter would run around with a mouse. Why they flushed it down the toilet, I don’t know, but that’s what she did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Do you remember the flood of ’48? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes, I do. In fact, it was on a Sunday morning, if I remember right. There was a friend and I—he was in the church, but he obviously wasn’t active and he was working at a tavern just south of what was Richland there, on the way to Richland Wye. And he went up to change a lightbulb and was electrocuted. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And, like I say, I switch the names around, so I don’t know what his name was. All I know is I knew him from church. But at that point he wasn’t very active. And yes, I do remember the flood, but not—that’s what I remember. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: That’s what you remember? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And that’s when they built the dike across from Hains and whatnot. But it didn’t get to our house. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. And then they built what they called the Miracle Mile then as well—the long structure there to keep the water out. How else has Richland changed since you were—I mean, obviously there’s so many changes since you were small, when you first remember. But what else strikes you as— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, at first, until I was a teenager—it started a little before I was teen here—just downtown Richland. And then the end of Uptown was finished when I was 13. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: The Uptown Mall? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah. The movie theater and Spudnuts were one of the first ones built and then the north end was finished when I was 13. That added a lot of stores and this type of thing. And more and more and more people, and—so, like I say we kept—well, I didn’t worry about it, but you kept expecting it to close up. I remember my dad saying, they found out that once a community like this can get over 100,000 then they can support themselves when that one plant moves out, and can survive. They won’t be what they were before. But I’m not worried about it finishing before I die, so—[LAUGHTER] Plus, I’m on pension and social security, so— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Well, at this point, I don’t even—it’s hard to say when they’ll finish, given the task before them. It’s a really, really big one. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, there is something that I’ve never figured out and they keep doing it. I remember my whole time when I was a kid and through the whole thing, is when they took a bid, they took the low bid. I don’t remember that there was ever once that it didn’t go way, way, way over. But they kept taking the low bid! They didn’t learn. And the other thing I don’t understand is, why, when somebody got the bid, why didn’t they say, you have to finish it at this amount of money? That, to me—now, if I was doing something on the site, I would have something in there like that. [LAUGHTER] It just never made sense to me, and they’re still doing it. Does it make sense to you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: No. No, it doesn’t. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: You know, because I think they lost out by taking low bids. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah, there’s definitely a—well, part of the issue is that, I think, that they’re spending taxpayer dollars and people want to know that they’re getting—that they’re going with the least expensive option. But if I’m understanding your point correctly, it’s that the least expensive option sometimes turns out not to be the least expensive option— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, it never did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: --if it’s not quality work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Oh, I see, I see. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Or yeah, the nature of it is cost overrun. And yeah, there should be a-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It always went way, way, way, way, way—I mean it wasn’t—it was way, way, way, way, way over there. And it never made a bit of sense. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah, I’ve never heard of someone finishing a project at Hanford on time and under budget. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Or anywhere close to on-budget. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah, they just—like the Vitrification Plant keeps getting delayed, and finishing the closing down of the Plutonium Finishing Plant. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Once they got the contract, they—they don’t always get to keep it forever, but—so I don’t know. That’s one thing that’s never made a bit of sense to me. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: That actually—brings me to another question. Did you notice any changes in the town when Hanford would change contractors? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Not really, except when they brought in new contractors, then they brought in more people and different types of people—you know, different expertise and this type of thing. But it’s just changing—when it was just one company, I don’t really— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: What about during the shift in the late ‘80s from production to cleanup and kind of the rise of the environmental consciousness, if you will. Can you talk about what you remember about the community at that time, and kind of how the people negotiated that change in Hanford’s role? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: You know, I don’t remember that at all. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Like I say, a lot of things, when I had a bunch of little tiny kids, I had my own little world. [LAUGHTER] The ‘60s are a pretty big blur. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. What about later, in the ‘80s and the early ‘90s when cleanup started to become a high priority? And the actual production was being shut down. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, I just remember, maybe this is coming to an end kind of a thing. But it didn’t affect me. I didn’t see anybody seem to be bothered. You just get—because you’ve been there for so many years, and it just kept going on. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: So—my husband didn’t talk about how it affected him or anything, or my dad. My mother—but I remember one thing, she—the last library she worked on was the old Richland Library. They—I guess the new one’s over 30 years old? A lot older than I thought it was. But anyway, she says, they just had to build this new one. They just couldn’t—they could not use that building anymore. And then they build a new one, and somebody was in it for another 30 years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: The old building? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: The old building. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Where is that building? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It was between George Washington and Jadwin and Swift. You know, where the city hall is? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: It was right south of the city hall. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And it was a domed—orange dome. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, okay. Isn’t that a vacant, or an empty space now? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: They took it out, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Interesting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Just like the old community house. They cut it in half. [LAUGHTER] But I don’t know. And yet, to look at the theater—the Richland Theater, that’s still there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: It is, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But the one we went to as kids was the Village Theater, which was just a couple blocks away on George Washington Way. On the other side of Lee. They had the westerns on Saturday morning. So we were there for the westerns. The other thing I remember about the movies that’s so different from now is that we didn’t get the movies for two to three years, until—you know, the big—evidently, they didn’t make a jillion copies. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And we didn’t get them for two or three years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: I can remember that. So a lot of the big ones, people had gone on vacation and already saw it. But there was enough of us that didn’t that there were still big, big, big lines. That’s one thing I remember. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Do you think maybe that had something to do with government procurement, maybe? Or the movie theater being run by the government? Or do you think it was the availability—just the size of the city— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: The availability of the film is what always entered my mind. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Huh. Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And the other thing is not a lot of people flew when I was a kid, because—and I might be way off—but it seemed to me that they were paying about as much then as I—to go to Arizona as I—going to go this Christmas. Very few people flew, and it was in the hundreds of dollars. And I’m paying $300 to go to Arizona at Christmas. [LAUGHTER] And that’s another thing that interests me. Of course, now, most of us fly nowadays. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. Yeah, that’s kind of the default. Or we get prepared to drive long distances, which—I imagine would have been—I imagine getting to Kennewick and Pasco when you were a child would have been quite an undertaking, in terms of just the roads. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: We didn’t go very often. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: You didn’t go very often. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: But the other thing that isn’t mainly about here, but—I don’t know if you’ve ridden much in Benton City, but there’s Acord Road, that is a two-lane road, and not much on the sides, and it goes ssshhh on a canyon. Well, that’s what our highways were when I was a kid. It took—the two places we went was either Salt Lake or the San Francisco area. It took us 18 hours to get to either one. Well, it takes us ten now. See, these freeways, they’re wide, they’re one-direction. You’re not loofing around— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Safer, too, I imagine. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Only place you loof around is on Cabbage Hill, really, to an extent. That has been a big change. But I remember, we’d have the kids in the car at 4:00 AM and get to Grandpa’s at midnight. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. That’s a long day. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: That is a long day. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: With kids in the car. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, but it was easier than stopping. But we didn’t always do that. In some ways, when you have four little kids, it’s easier to do that than to stop. That’s one big difference. But that’s just in general; that has nothing to do with this area. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. Well, that’s still a really, really important difference. You mentioned earlier that your parents had worked on Atomic Frontier Days floats. Do you remember which floats specifically that they worked on? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yes, they were Toastmasters and Toastmistress. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And I think Dad worked on one of the Lions’. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. Was that something they just kind of did for fun to help out? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Yeah, they were in those organizations, and— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And, boy, they put in the work and the designing. People were—well, when they first moved, when they were just building the place, it wasn’t a high-educated group of people. And then when they built and whatnot so they could come in—the scientists. And then I remember Dad saying when I was in high school, it had the highest percentage of PhDs in the world kind of a thing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: When people talked about, nobody talked to them about going to college, I said, you’re kidding. I just—everybody I knew went to college from here. The schools were very good here. At least the ones I went to—very, very good. Then I went to BYU and got married the last day of the quarter and came back and started at CBC. I think that was the third or fourth year of CBC—but it already had a good reputation. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. Did you finish? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: No, I didn’t. I’ve been taking courses—until just a few years ago, I’ve been taking courses off and on. And then I was in the seniors programs that they had, and they quit that. So— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: What kind of courses did you take? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, we had two businesses when the kids got to teenagers, my one son—well, he was a scout, and for one of his merit badges—my husband’s boss was the scout master. He also, on the side, had bees. So we checked with the neighbors, and they were okay, and we had two or three hives in our backyard. My son couldn’t find a job for the summer, so he said, Dad, can we have bees? So I don’t know, we had big contracts and whatnot and we worked together with the other ones, and were very involved in the state bee organization. It was the most wonderful thing for our family. We just—we worked hard, and we worked together. But then the older ones were leaving, and the two younger ones got deathly allergic. So then when we didn’t have the bee business anymore, our son says—I knew a man that was selling his carpet business, so we bought the carpet business. But anyway, when we had the bee business, I took two years of accounting. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Okay? [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I kind of went off on that, didn’t I? And I’ve taken about every--oil painting, whatever it is kind of thing. But when I first went, I was taking the basic courses. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right, the general education. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: The general education. And then I just went off on the different things. So I kept the books for the businesses and answered the phone. We liked the beekeeping business much more than the carpet cleaning business. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: I bet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And like I say, we worked together. One of the things is, one of my boys took them out—you know you move bees at night? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Mm-hmm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And he was out in the farm somewhere and the truck turned over. They said there were policemen all around keeping cars from going, but none of them were out helping. [LAUGHTER] It was a stinging proposition, but it was good for us. It really brought us close. The kids learned if you work hard, you could have anything you wanted. They got the skis, they went skiing. They’re still real hard workers. They found the benefit of that. My one son, when we were getting rid of the carpet business, he decided to—he was going to go to college, and we had some problems—well, some men that worked for us came in and had keys to our house and came in and stole our truck and a few other things and whatnot. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: And we got a call from a policeman in Oregon, and there was this little box that looked—that was locked and whatnot, and they took that. It didn’t have anything that they wanted, but it had a lot of personal papers. So the police sent it to us. Anyway, when we were getting out of the carpet keeping business, my son, David, took it with him to school and took the debt and whatnot and built up a carpet-cleaning business in Las Vegas. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Oh, wow. Does he still do that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: No. He works for Costco now. And he’s in Selah. He was at the Kennewick store and they transferred him to Yakima. They have moved to a house that’s over 100 years old. And they’ve kept adding to it and adding to it. I don’t go upstairs because I need the bathroom often, and you have to know exactly which staircase you go up to get to the bathroom up there. [LAUGHTER] His wife’s family grew up there, and they said, oh, we’re so interested. We always walked past this house. We wondered who owned it now. And so it is a very interesting house. But—[LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. Well, Sharon, is there anything else you would like to add or that I haven’t talked about before we— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Not that’s coming. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Right. Well, I just want to thank you for sharing so much about your life. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, you’re welcome. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: And opening up to us about your experiences growing up in Richland. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Kent: Well, you’re welcome. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX157585748"> Franklin: Okay. <a href="https://youtu.be/56vU5WxUfWo">View interview on Youtube.</a> </div> Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1943- Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sharon Kent Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 7/26/2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-08-19: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Description An account of the resource Sharon Kent moved to Richland, Washington in 1943 as a child. An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by Mission Support Alliance on behalf of the United States Department of Energy. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities General Electric Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963; Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1b39c44e0645b8bb7c36d899155100b7.jpg ff1688264f1cdc46affce75c4135df46 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Black and white, 6.5 cm x 9cm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richland Alphabet House Subject The topic of the resource Housing; Housing developments; Labor housing; Dwellings; Neighborhoods; Residential streets; Government employees; City planning; War work Description An account of the resource View of a Richland "L" house. "In 1943, the United States Government contracted Gustav Albin Pehrson, an engineer and architect from Spokane, WA, to design the Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) Village. Pehrson labeled the house floor plans by letters, hence the common references to the historical homes as “Alphabet,” “ABC,” or “Letter” houses" (http://reachstories.org/). Noted in caption, "A four-bedroom dwelling constructed during the war in Richland, WA." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charles McVey Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s Language A language of the resource English Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0001 City planning Dwellings Government employees Housing Housing developments Labor housing Neighborhoods Residential streets War work https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ffc38636095839e162b2274aed0023852.jpg bcda2a7639818abfe5613d5f75f4a03e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Black and white, 6.5 cm x 9cm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richland Hotel Subject The topic of the resource Hotels; Lodges; Cities and towns; City planning; War work; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of the Desert Inn Hotel and Dining Room near the Columbia River. Noted in caption, "Richland's hotel sprawls along the banks of the Columbia River." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charles McVey Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s Language A language of the resource English Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0002 Aerial photographs Aerial views Cities and towns City planning Hotels Lodges War work https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F16fbf06b0d90bc64f033e5273b28c4c8.jpg 2e879d2318b7851ce289bbe3cc96e940 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 photo: Black and white, 6.5 cm x 9cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hanford Atomic Energy Plutonium Plant Subject The topic of the resource Factories; Industrial facilities; War; War work; Plutonium; Nuclear reactors; Nuclear weapons; Atomic bombs; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of the Hanford plutonium plant, with B Reactor on right and Water Treatment Plant behind in the 100 Area of the Hanford Site. Noted in caption, "A plutonium plant at the Hanford Atomic Energy Works on the banks of the Columbia." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charles McVey Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0003 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Elements-7-2-text Aerial photographs Aerial views Atomic bombs Factories Industrial facilities Nuclear reactors Nuclear weapons Plutonium War War work https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff43815690bd05b81b01a4f5731a526e1.jpg d67318043573b4919edfcc9423d1177a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 photo: Black and white, 6.5 cm x 9cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richland Church Subject The topic of the resource Churches; Spiritual life; Religion; Religious facilities; Christianity; Steeples; Cities & towns; City & town life Description An account of the resource View of the United Protestant Branch of the Council of Churches. The first service was conducted on December 24, 1944, though the church was formally dedicated on January 6, 1945. The current structure, Central United Protestant Church, is located in its original position on 1124 Stevens Drive in Richland, WA. Noted in caption, "Spiritual guidance for an increasing population in Richland is offered by this church among others." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charles McVey Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0004 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Christianity Churches Cities City Religion Religious facilities Spiritual life Steeples town life towns https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb125684e0766bd19b8c9f0382601bed9.jpg 24491266d01a1d19cddc5b4e8ed2076a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 photo: Black and white, 6.5 cm x 9cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Aerial View of Richland Subject The topic of the resource Cities & towns; Cityscapes; Administrative agencies; War; War work; Neighborhoods; Residential streets; Housing developments; Labor housing; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of Richland. Noted in caption, "Richland, Administrative Center of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Hanford Works." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charles McVey Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0005 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Administrative agencies Aerial photographs Aerial views Cities Cityscapes Housing developments Labor housing Neighborhoods Residential streets towns War War work https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F175a6943e87bf9491024e66e1ebd90a7.jpg 5d01132cadd070142b65e90c2e090473 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 photo: Black and white, 6.5 cm x 9cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hanford Atomic Works Subject The topic of the resource Factories; Industrial facilities; War; War work; Plutonium; Nuclear reactors; Nuclear weapons; Atomic bombs; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of B Reactor center right and the Water Treatment Plant behind left. Noted in caption, "A close-up of part of a process area at the Hanford Atomic Works, Washington." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charles McVey Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0006 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Aerial photographs Aerial views Atomic bombs Factories Industrial facilities Nuclear reactors Nuclear weapons Plutonium War War work https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F7be460ec051aa3990899db9bedc3aad7.jpg cc38b7b776ed41d13a48d924f51a2637 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 photo: Black and white, 6.5 cm x 9cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richland Alphabet House Subject The topic of the resource Housing; Housing developments; Labor housing; Dwellings; Neighborhoods; Residential streets; Government employees; City planning; War work Description An account of the resource Close proximity view of a Richland "A" house. "In 1943, the United States Government contracted Gustav Albin Pehrson, an engineer and architect from Spokane, WA, to design the Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) Village. Pehrson labeled the house floor plans by letters, hence the common references to the historical homes as “Alphabet,” “ABC,” or “Letter” houses" (http://reachstories.org/). Noted in caption, "A dwelling built during the war in Richland, home of the Hanford Atomic Workers." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charles McVey Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0007 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 City planning Dwellings Government employees Housing Housing developments Labor housing Neighborhoods Residential streets War work https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0dea3d1213b7414816b1257c6217d6a1.jpg b2346246b4de229c96299f0923f9096d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 photo: Black and white, 6.5 cm x 9cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hanford T Plant Subject The topic of the resource Factories; Industrial facilities; War; War work; Plutonium; Nuclear reactors; Nuclear weapons; Atomic bombs; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of the Hanford T plant in the 200 Area of the Hanford Site. "Construction began in 1943, with the plant becoming operational in 1945. This facility was used to take the irradiated fuel rods that had been in the B Reactor and expose them to a series of chemical processes" (http://www.hanford.gov/). Noted in caption, "This 'atomic' building housed part of the world's greatest secret during the war." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charles McVey Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0008 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Aerial photographs Aerial views Atomic bombs Factories Industrial facilities Nuclear reactors Nuclear weapons Plutonium War War work https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0f1d4d9b0fdd9c2d01dadee38083355e.jpg f3168d8367ab4e534e98cdf0f11f6d30 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yakima Street Scene Subject The topic of the resource Cities & towns; Business districts; Commercial streets; Shopping; Shopping centers; Hotels; General stores; Skyscrapers; Cobblestone streets; Parking Description An account of the resource Street view of downtown Yakima, with the A.E. Larson Building in the background left. Noted in caption, "Street scene - Yakima, Wash. Ellis 6804." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s/1950s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0009 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Business districts Cities Cobblestone streets Commercial streets General stores Hotels Parking Shopping Shopping centers Skyscrapers towns https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F4b01364062c2a3946a5b1d8c18f6cc9e.jpg 8639facb96f23bbba8bc1ae012d94b15 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yakima Street Scene Subject The topic of the resource Cities & towns; Business districts; Commercial streets; Shopping; Shopping centers; Department stores; Pedestrians; Crosswalks; Street railroads; Cable railroads; Street railroad tracks; Brickwork; Bricks; Parking Description An account of the resource Street view of downtown Yakima, with a Pay Less Drug Store and J.C. Penney Company in foreground. Noted in caption, "Street scene - Yakima, WA Ellis 6809." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s/1950s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0010 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Bricks Brickwork Business districts Cable railroads Cities Commercial streets Crosswalks Department stores Parking Pedestrians Shopping Shopping centers Street railroad tracks Street railroads towns https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F35b9ac2e24f00a9bf594392d170c89e6.jpg b0adff70cb6d4c6431f17d5a66664cc6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yakima Street Scene Subject The topic of the resource Cities & towns; Business districts; Commercial streets; Shopping; Shopping centers; Stores & shops; General stores; Street railroads; Cable railroads; Street railroad tracks; Cobblestone streets; Parking Description An account of the resource Street view of downtown Yakima. Noted in caption, "Street scene - Yakima, WA Ellis 6810." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s/1950s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0011 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Business districts Cable railroads Cities Cobblestone streets Commercial streets General stores Parking Shopping Shopping centers shops Stores Street railroad tracks Street railroads towns https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc6e2e09fd6f34831ad71d71fe3d3865e.jpg 477aecac2c3817f69a70329ffbc2084c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yakima Street Scene Subject The topic of the resource Cities & towns; Masonic buildings; Fraternal lodges; Fraternal organizations; Business districts; Commercial streets; Shopping; Shopping centers; Hotels; Stores & shops; Department stores; Pedestrians; Street lights; Street railroads; Cable railroads; Street railroad tracks; Cobblestone streets; Parking Description An account of the resource Street view of downtown Yakima, with a street lamp in foreground and a "Masonic Temple" mural in the background, designating the historic building of the same name, which was constructed in 1911. As of 1996, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and despite serving as a meeting hall for Yakima's Masonic Lodges for several years, this function is currently obsolete. Noted in caption, "Street scene - Yakima, WA Ellis 6806." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s/1950s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0012 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Business districts Cable railroads Cities Cobblestone streets Commercial streets Department stores Fraternal lodges Fraternal organizations Hotels Masonic buildings Parking Pedestrians Shopping Shopping centers shops Stores Street lights Street railroad tracks Street railroads towns https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ffc267d8fae6236409b8ba19be7fe6e7d.jpg fd7fdfdad2a94c5710a71b9d957f2a35 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Brick House Subject The topic of the resource Housing; Dwellings; Neighborhoods; Trees Description An account of the resource Close proximity view of a brick house with a tree branch traversing top of image (identity of building cannot be positively determined). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s/1950s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0013 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Dwellings Housing Neighborhoods Trees https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa652c82de197d319ed170e9338de587b.jpg 3b563a330186bb3c369579e8f760e0fc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Tree-lined School Subject The topic of the resource Schools; Trees; Benches; Roads Description An account of the resource View of large, tree-lined building that is likely a school (identity of building cannot be positively determined). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s/1950s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0014 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Benches Roads Schools Trees https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F353772c4f3ff38a5ecbefaf12e0328fb.jpg c15bae4f63bb7867b06c8d7463c766a2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Tree-lined Building Subject The topic of the resource Schools; Trees; Benches; Dirt roads Description An account of the resource View of building with many windows, thick tree canopy, and a gravel road in foreground, possibly a school. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s/1950s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0015 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Benches Dirt roads Schools Trees https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F79137b5a545f5d4a3a8d6bb7baf49db3.jpg fa1daa7ac5a63864ff6091154e85fcc6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hanford Energy Works Bomb Plant Subject The topic of the resource Factories; Industrial facilities; War; War work; Plutonium; Nuclear reactors; Nuclear weapons; Atomic bombs; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of the Hanford plutonium plant, with the B Reactor mid-center. Noted in caption, "H.E.W. [Hanford Energy Works] Atomic Bomb Plant - Process Bldg. [Building], Photo by Robley L. Johnson." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940s/1950s Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0016 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Aerial photographs Aerial views Atomic bombs Factories Industrial facilities Nuclear reactors Nuclear weapons Plutonium War War work https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F4adc357826e7ef09a414acb421cab89e.jpg 152a95c390af802b3ffd4af2183fe260 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Columbia River 1948 Flood Subject The topic of the resource Floods; Rivers; Railroad tracks; Railroad bridges; Trestles; Trees; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of the flooded Columbia River in 1948. Noted in caption, "Looking east from Richland towards 'Y', Rob Johnson Christian 9-5." (x2) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1948 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0017 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Aerial photographs Aerial views Floods Railroad bridges Railroad tracks Rivers Trees Trestles https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F4e047c6a5a7a46a70ec5f2e96225d350.jpg 6b2daa9dd3260ddd8a4ca300491e01b1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Columbia River 1948 Flood Subject The topic of the resource Floods; Rivers; Markets; Roads; Trees; Housing; Housing developments; Dwellings; Neighborhoods; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of the flooded Columbia River in 1948, with waters reaching the Riverside Market. Noted in caption, "Highway 410 - Between Kennewick and Richland, Rob Johnson Christian 7." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1948 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0018 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Aerial photographs Aerial views Dwellings Floods Housing Housing developments Markets Neighborhoods Rivers Roads Trees https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F37a8684ac02d9c99797fe9ab99ea3d6d.jpg 49e31b8685f6a9062a4100b79d0852f8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Columbia River 1948 Flood Subject The topic of the resource Floods; Rivers; Roads; Cities & towns; Business districts; Commercial streets; Trees; Housing; Housing developments; Dwellings; Neighborhoods; General stores; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of flooded Kennewick Avenue and Columbia River in 1948. Noted in caption, "Kennewick Avenue 'C' looking west, Rob Johnson Christian 2-5." (x2) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1948 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0019 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7448 Aerial photographs Aerial views Business districts Cities Commercial streets Dwellings Floods General stores Housing Housing developments Neighborhoods Rivers Roads towns Trees https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff43488d935bb881318c745044e33a00f.jpg aa717432dd7df12e8da9d064a4b9e529 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Columbia River 1948 Flood Subject The topic of the resource Floods; Rivers; Roads; Cities & towns; Business districts; Commercial streets; Trees; Housing; Housing developments; Dwellings; Neighborhoods; General stores; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of flooded Kennewick Avenue and Columbia River in 1948. Noted in caption, "Kennewick Avenue 'C' looking west, Rob Johnson Christian 3-1." On back of card, "Just off Pasco Bridge going in to Kennewick." NOT a duplicate of RG1D-4-cpc-019 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1948 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0020 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Aerial photographs Aerial views Business districts Cities Commercial streets Dwellings Floods General stores Housing Housing developments Neighborhoods Rivers Roads towns Trees https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb4fb8761fb93925a60de10f24f75d6ad.jpg c490281c5c37859998e027afc09a4c66 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 9 cm x 13.5cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Columbia River 1948 Flood Subject The topic of the resource Floods; Rivers; Roads; Cities & towns; Business districts; Commercial streets; Trees; Housing; Housing developments; Dwellings; Neighborhoods; General stores; Aerial views; Aerial photographs Description An account of the resource Aerial view of flooded Kennewick in 1948. Noted in caption, "Entering Kennewick - Hwy. [Highway] 410, Rob Johnson Christian 8-1." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1948 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0021 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Aerial photographs Aerial views Business districts Cities Commercial streets Dwellings Floods General stores Housing Housing developments Neighborhoods Rivers Roads towns Trees https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F732dc4bda10e9794a4dc7f857a55fad8.jpg 7863628090b57d3fd722e25607a5e12a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Community Photograph Collections Subject The topic of the resource History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities area Description An account of the resource Photographs donated by the community to the Hanford History Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. The Community Collections of the Hanford History Project have been graciously donated by community members for preservation and research use. Many of these are collections that were donated to the former Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology (CREHST) and transferred to WSU Tri-Cities in 2014. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. [Item ID], Community Collections, Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 1 postcard: Black and white, 8.5 cm x 14cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Columbia River 1948 Flood Subject The topic of the resource Floods; Rivers; Hotels; General stores; Roads; Cities & towns; Trees Description An account of the resource Street view of flooded Anchor Inn in 1948. Noted in caption, "Columbia Flood - 48." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marie Hartman Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project, Washington State University - Tricities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1948 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/ tif Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG1D_4A_0022 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. For permission to publish please contact the Hanford History Project (509) 372-7447 Cities Floods General stores Hotels Rivers Roads towns Trees