Mosby, David

              
ORAL HISTORY OF DAVID MOSBY
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
November 18, 2016
 
MR. MCDANIEL:  This is Keith McDaniel and today is November 18th, 2016, and I'm at my studio here in Oak Ridge with Mr. David Mosby. David, thank you for coming in and taking time to talk with us. MR. MOSBY:  You're very welcome. MR. MCDANIEL:  I appreciate it. MR. MOSBY:  Thank you for having me. MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure. You have quite the history in Oak Ridge. You raised a family here. So we're going to talk about that but let's go back to the very beginning. Tell me where you were born and where you were raised and something about your family. MR. MOSBY:  I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. I have three brothers and a sister, sister’s older than I am, my brothers are younger obviously, and we grew up in Atlanta. My mom went to Spelman College in Atlanta, my dad went to Morehouse. Even though the campuses are right next to each other they never met. My dad was big friends with my mom’s brother, and my mom was from Florida and so her brother invited my dad to his house for a holiday, and that's where he met my mom. It's pretty interesting. They graduated. My dad went to the military, came back to Atlanta, and was only able to get a job working at the post office. Affirmative action came and- MR. MCDANIEL:  About what year was that when he got out of the military? MR. MOSBY:  It was probably about '55, 1955. MR. MCDANIEL:  Before desegregation. MR. MOSBY:  That's correct. MR. MCDANIEL:  Still segregated South. MR. MOSBY:  We lived in Atlanta. My sister was born first and then I came along. About the time I was maybe six or eight or so, we moved to Miami. My dad got a job with the Federal Aviation Administration, so we went to Miami. We stayed there for about six years. We came back to Atlanta, F.A.A. transferred my dad back to Atlanta and that's where we stayed. My mom and my brothers and sister all still live in Atlanta. MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right? So basically you grew up in Atlanta? MR. MOSBY:  I did. MR. MCDANIEL:  Pretty much, your teenage years. MR. MOSBY:  All my teenage years was in Atlanta. Had a recruiter come to my high school in Atlanta and talk to some of the college bound students from Tennessee Tech. I really loved the school, I loved the guy’s description of it. I did not want to go to Georgia Tech, because I would have had to stay at home and I did not want to do that. MR. MCDANIEL:  You were ready to get out of the house weren't you? MR. MOSBY:  Well, I recognized that I would stay in the same circle. I wouldn't expand, and I knew that going to college you get engaged with folks from, not only nationally but internationally. I knew that my options would've been more limited, even going to an international school like Georgia Tech, I felt like I would go to class, then I would go home. MR. MCDANIEL:  Then you'd go home, you wouldn't get the whole college experience. MR. MOSBY:  That's correct. My dad was really impressed with Tech. I never knew it was a big deal but my mom and dad had said, "You can go to Tennessee Tech." MR. MCDANIEL:  But it was a big deal for them wasn't it? MR. MOSBY:  I think it was, I think it- MR. MCDANIEL:  It was an out-of-state school. MR. MOSBY:  I was going to college and my dad was taking me to school. He said, "You know, I could afford to send you to Tennessee Tech, pay out-of-state tuition, room and board, books, cheaper, then I could've send you to Georgia Tech, and you stayed at home." MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right? Well, I know my son as I told you earlier, my son is at Tennessee Tech, and he was looking at three schools, they were all, UT [University of Tennessee], Carson-Newman, Tennessee Tech. Tennessee Tech was by far cheaper, but anyway that's beside the point. MR. MOSBY:  I really appreciate the education I got at Tech, I think it was of tremendous value and- MR. MCDANIEL:  What did you get your degree in? Engineering? MR. MOSBY:  Yeah, Civil Engineering. MR. MCDANIEL:  When you were in high school, did you know what you were interested in, what you wanted to study. MR. MOSBY:  Kind of, sort of. My dad was a man about town of sorts and he would always have people over to the house of varying background. He had several engineers come over, and he was a big alumni at Morehouse, so he had a lot of the instructors come over. So I was familiar with a lot of the professional people. My dad sat me down one day and told me that he thought that if I wanted to write my own ticket, I'd major in engineering. Well, he really wanted me to become an architect, and then become a city planner and then a city manager. I recognized that engineering was something that I had a real liking for. I did a little checking up on engineering and it was all the things I wanted to do, especially in civil engineering you were working with your hands a little bit, you got to guide it and get outside. It was all the things I was looking for. MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay, well good. I guess it was obvious, you said, both your parents went to college, I guess there's probably no question as to whether or not you were going to go to college was there? MR. MOSBY:  That's correct. I had a part time job at Winn-Dixie, and that summer that I had graduated ... I really enjoyed the job and I thought it was a great job, I was really good at it. It was the time when they had the stock boys, or the bagging of groceries for each of the ... and then you take it out to the car. I would come home and have big huge pockets of change because they would tip you. I was really good at it, all of the cashiers there they kind of, I don't want to say they fought over me but they all wanted me to bag for them because that meant, I was so good at it, it was less bagging that they had to do. Towards the end of the summer, my boss, Mr. Gimmer called me over, he said, "Dave, you're one of the best workers I've ever had. I think you can go really far in this company. What I want to do is, in September, I'm going to transfer you to another store so you can become an assistant manager, and your career takes off from there." I said, "No, Mr. Gimmer, I'm going to college, I can't derail that plan, that's my ...", and so it was always in my mind that that was my path: to go to college. MR. MCDANIEL:  That's good. A funny story, just a sidetrack here, I told you my son at Tennessee Tech. He worked at Kroger here in Oak Ridge when he was in high school. For almost two years, he was there on time, he did everything he was suppose to, and when we took him to Cookeville, to Tennessee Tech, we got him loaded into his room and then we went to get him some food and things such as that. So we went to Kroger. It was busy and they didn't have a bagger available, so he just bagged his own groceries. The woman, you could tell she'd been there a long time, she said, "My, you know what you're doing," He said, "Well, I just finished working at the Kroger in Oak Ridge for two years, and then moving to college," She says "We need somebody like you. You need to get an application in," and he said, "No, I'm not going to work." MR. MOSBY:  You want to focus on the transition. MR. MCDANIEL:  Exactly. MR. MOSBY:  That's a big deal. MR. MCDANIEL:  It's a big transition, so you went to Tennessee Tech and you graduated there in what year? MR. MOSBY:  1980. MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay, so you got through it in '80, with a bachelor’s in civil engineering? MR. MOSBY:  Civil engineering, correct. MR. MCDANIEL:  What happened next? MR. MOSBY:  Well, I was working as a design engineer and really loved ... Let me step back a ... Before I graduated, my first year in college, my dad told me to make sure that I found the placement guy, and to see if I could get a summer job because they were working on the MARTA [Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority] project back then in the mid 70's. MR. MCDANIEL:  What was that? MR. MOSBY: That was the transit system, the rapid train system. MR. MCDANIEL:  That's right, right. MR. MOSBY:  My dad said, that I could get a job, since I was civil engineer and it was mostly civil work, he thought I'd be a good fit. Well, I found the placement guy and I said, "Listen, my dad suggested that you can call somebody at the MARTA station in Atlanta, see about me getting a job down there." We started talking and he started talking about a co-op opportunity and I said, "Yeah I'll take a co-op opportunity." He said, "Okay." He'll try to find something out. So I guess about a couple weeks later I went back and he said, "Listen, I called and they didn't have any opportunities, but would you like to go Oak Ridge?" And I said, "Yeah, where is Oak Ridge?" After a year at Tech I came to Oak Ridge in 1975, and I worked for a year, I first worked at K-25 plant. MR. MCDANIEL:  You came and you worked for a whole year so it was a co-op time thing. MR. MOSBY:  Right. I went back to Tech, and then after another year I came back to Oak Ridge, and this time I worked at Y-12. Then I went back, came back for another summer, and then I graduated and I started working at K-25 as a design engineer. I really liked the people in Oak Ridge, I liked how friendly everybody was, I really liked the work, it seemed like my managers, or the management at the union core right at the time really valued their co-op opportunity, because they gave me all kinds of great work experience. I was designing beams before I had taken the class at Tech. I just thought it was a really good experience. MR. MCDANIEL:  It really helped you, it kind of got you ahead in your class work. MR. MOSBY:  The most important thing I think is it let me experience it, to see if I even liked it. MR. MCDANIEL:  Before you got full bore invested into it. MR. MOSBY:  There were several guys who also co-oped, and after that first year decided to get out of engineering all together because they didn't like it, so I advise everybody to do a co-op experience if that's available. MR. MCDANIEL:  When you came the first year, the first year of co-op you came to work at K-25. Who did you work with and what were some of the things you did out there? Who are people that you remember? MR. MOSBY:  My boss, the first year I was there, was a guy named John Corey. He was in charge of the surveyors, so they put me on the survey line and I had the best time working with those guys, it was a lot of fun. Hobrick Tench was a guy I worked with. Roy Alley was the survey chief crew, and then there were other guys you were just kind of on the crew. They would dispatch us to an area and we'd get measurements, elevations. We kind of do the planning for projects that were being contemplated. I really learned a lot from those guys about how you collect information, how you reduce that information down, and transmit it back to the engineer. So I got to see how that information made that journey all the way through. I just thought it was a really good experience. MR. MCDANIEL:  You got to see it from guys that did it every day and had been doing it for years. MR. MOSBY:  They were a rough, fun loving group and we just had a big time. MR. MCDANIEL:  Good. So the second year of co-op you worked at Y-12? MR. MOSBY:  That year, it was a more office type experience, they sat me at a desk. They gave me projects. I worked real close with a designer, and they would give me my own projects. I would have a project that I would take from the start to the beginning and I really enjoyed having that ... MR. MCDANIEL:  Confidence in you. MR. MOSBY:  Yeah. I thought I had some authority and I could do this or do that or whatever. MR. MCDANIEL:  Little did you know. MR. MOSBY:  Right, but I went back to school and I just had this air like, I really enjoyed my co-op experience. MR. MCDANIEL:  Like you said, when you finished you came back to Oak Ridge. MR. MOSBY:  I came back and I started doing design work and my friend, Paul Ewing, a guy who I met as a freshman, he co-oped in different places but we became real, real close friends, he decided to come to work in Oak Ridge. So he graduated about six months after I did and so he came to Oak Ridge. He called me one day and he said, "Dave, come over in here and help me at the Boys Club." I said, "Oh, Okay," I didn't know anything about the Boys Club- MR. MCDANIEL:  Now were you married? Did you have a family- MR. MOSBY:  No, I was- MR. MCDANIEL:  You're still single. MR. MOSBY:  He was married. His wife had an older son and I think that's how he got engaged with the Boys Club. So I went out and helped them. I really liked being around the kids and we just had a really good time. From that, I then started coaching a team, and then got on the Boys Club board of directors. I start looking real closely at community service-type ideas. I really had an affinity for it and I liked it a whole lot. One day my friend Paul called and said, "Dave, I saw in the newspaper where they were looking for applications for the Planning Commission." He said, "Come on let’s go down, let's get on the Planning Commission so we can start being in the big deal decision-making meetings." I said, "Sure, sure, sure, Okay." So I went down and applied and then they had the vote. Well, they didn't appoint me, found out my friend Paul never even applied. He just called me down there. MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right? He wanted you to do that. MR. MOSBY:  I really liked what I saw that the Planning Commission was doing. I liked being engaged with developers, being engaged with contractors, and working to develop the city. I thought that was really, really cool. I liked that atmosphere. MR. MCDANIEL:  You were still fairly young, I mean- MR. MOSBY:  I was, I was- MR. MCDANIEL:  Just a few years out of college. MR. MOSBY:  Yes, I was probably in my mid-20's or something and I decided that I was going to try it again. I tried it again, didn't even get selected, and tried it one for time and I got appointed to the Planning Commission. MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right? Okay. MR. MOSBY:  This was in about 1987 I guess, in the '86, '87 time frame, and I really had a good experience on the Planning Commission, I was meeting all kinds of people in the city I didn't know, and learning about things. I was really having a good time on the Planning Commission. MR. MCDANIEL:  Well, good. So you were in Oak Ridge, you were out of college, you were single, let’s talk about that for a minute. What was it like living in Oak Ridge as a single college graduate, young man? MR. MOSBY:  This is- MR. MCDANIEL:  And this is in the early ‘80's. MR. MOSBY:  I didn't recognize it at the time, but as I think back about it now I recognize that that was a time when the plants were hiring a really diverse work force, a lot of African Americans. So about that time- MR. MCDANIEL:  Which there had not been a lot of professional African Americans before. MR. MOSBY:  Correct, and most of the years after that, there was not a lot of hiring. So socially there were a lot of things going on that you could really get involved in. I'm not a really big social person but it was enough social that it kept me fully engaged and happy, and I was able to do everything I wanted to do. MR. MCDANIEL:  The reason I ask that is because Oak Ridge is a lot different to Atlanta, and I just wondered if you know, can you take the fella out of the city and put him on the farm and he'll be happy, you know? MR. MOSBY:  Well, I was driving home for Christmas break, from Tennessee Tech. I was going to leave about 3:00, it was about a five hour drive, I'd get there about eight. But something happened, I cannot remember what it was and I wound up getting a late start. So I didn't leave Cookeville until about 11 that night. By the time I got to 75- 85 split in Atlanta, it was 2:00 in the morning, and it was a traffic jam, traffic was backed up. I said, "I cannot take this, I cannot believe there are this many people in this small a space, trying to get all to the same place at 2:00 in the morning." I remember in Cookeville at 2:00 in the morning you could run down the street naked, there would be nobody- MR. MCDANIEL:  Exactly. MR. MOSBY:  Well, back then. I made the decision then. I said, that "I'm not a big city guy, I hate this traffic, I don't like being confined or constrained like that," and I think that's when I mentally made a decision that I wanted to be somewhere like ... MR. MCDANIEL:  Someplace smaller. MR. MOSBY:  Smaller, more wide-open. MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, Exactly. MR. MOSBY:  I remember my dad when he first took me to Tennessee Tech, we went through Crossville. I had never seen wide-open spaces like that, with trees far as you can see, green spaces, not passing a car for five or ten minutes on the road. That was amazing to me- MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah, but you didn't stop in Crossville. MR. MOSBY:  No, we didn't stop. MR. MCDANIEL:  Because you two would've been the only two in Crossville from what I understand. MR. MOSBY:  I think my dad got lost, I don't think he intentionally did, but I was just amazed at how wide open the country was. I thought everything was like Atlanta or Miami, you know everybody- MR. MCDANIEL:  Jammed up against each other. MR. MOSBY:  Right, not anything like it is now but- MR. MCDANIEL:  No, that's true. MR. MOSBY:  I just really loved the openness, the green space. I liked, almost the slowing down of life, to let you enjoy it. MR. MCDANIEL:  You were here in Oak Ridge and you had, like you said,, there was enough social to keep you happy and you were working. Did you meet your wife, or how did ... MR. MOSBY:  Well, ... MR. MCDANIEL:  Tell me that story. Obviously you met her but I mean, how you met her. MR. MOSBY:  Well, I met her at Tech as a matter of fact. MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, did you? Oh, okay. MR. MOSBY:  Yes, we started dating at Tech. She was from Knoxville. MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, was she? Okay. MR. MOSBY:  Yes. We got married in 1983 and I guess I had known her for six or seven years prior to getting married. MR. MCDANIEL:  Now did you get a home here in Oak Ridge? MR. MOSBY:  I did. It’s another interesting story for me anyway. I was living in an apartment on Tennessee and it was taking me like 15 minutes to get to K-25. I was thinking one day, I said, "Man, I could move over to West Knoxville or Karns, or East Knoxville, but that would add 30 minutes to my commute every day." I said, "Do I want to lay in bed 30 more minutes every day? Or do I want to leave Oak Ridge?" So that 30 minutes of laying in the bed made my decision to stay in Oak Ridge. MR. MCDANIEL:  To stay close, Yeah, but you all settled in Oak Ridge and you started having kids. You raised your, as I said, earlier, you raised your family in Oak Ridge. Tell me about your kids, how many kids do you have? MR. MOSBY:  I have four children, Brittney, Tyler, Mackenzie, and Riley. Brit was the first born, she graduated from Oak Ridge High School in ... I want to say, I'm drawing a blank. MR. MCDANIEL:  2003? MR. MOSBY:  Yes. How did you guess? It was 2003, she graduated from the high school in 2003. She went to Spelman College in Atlanta, got a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, was able to get a fellowship at the Carnegie Mellon. She got a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon and she's currently in the Peabody School at Vanderbilt, working on a PhD. My son Tyler- MR. MCDANIEL:  Under Achiever. MR. MOSBY:  Yeah. She's pretty self-motivated and I think she, too, likes what she's doing. My son Tyler graduated in '07. He went for a couple years to Middle Tennessee State, and decided that he didn't feel like it. He's going to kill me for saying this, but he once told me, "You know Dad, I'm taking these classes, and I had these classes back at Oak Ridge. I don't understand why I have to take a class that I've already taken. I just think it's crazy." He kind of got fed up with the whole bureaucracy-part of the schools I think, and he decided he was going to try his own thing. He's in Nashville now and he's trying to find his way. MR. MCDANIEL:  It takes some of us a little bit longer that's for sure. MR. MOSBY:  That's correct. Mackenzie finished Oak Ridge High School in '13, no I guess it was '12. She's going to Rhodes College in Memphis, and she graduates next year. So it was '13 right, she graduated in '13. So she finishes Rhodes College next year. She thinks she wants to do something in urban planning, which I'm really proud of her too. My youngest daughter, Riley, graduated from Oak Ridge High School this year, in '16. She's now at Howard University in Washington D. C. MR. MCDANIEL:  What's she interested in? MR. MOSBY:  She's studying chemical engineering. MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right? MR. MOSBY:  I finally got an engineer out of all my- MR. MCDANIEL:  You know, your kids, it just goes to show you, just like, even your son, this is probably a better representation. The Oak Ridge High School, the school system here in Oak Ridge, especially the high school, prepares these kids. MR. MOSBY:  Oh, absolutely. MR. MCDANIEL:  I mean, probably over-prepares them, otherwise he wouldn't be saying "Why am I taking the same courses that I had in high school?" MR. MOSBY:  Brit- MR. MCDANIEL:  It just give them opportunities that they might not otherwise have. MR. MOSBY:  Brit took a lot of advanced placement classes when she was at the high school. When she started at Spelman, she was classified as a second semester sophomore. The classes, the history and the sociology, and those type of classes that she taking, she said, "Dad, those are the same books we had at the high school." MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah, exactly, exactly. MR. MOSBY:  The very same books. So I said, "Well, Brit, that puts you so far ahead, you can be studying ahead now. You don't have to try and play catch up with the teacher, you can start doing some ahead planning." MR. MCDANIEL:  You know I guess that as a parent, you see your kids to have those kind of opportunities in Oak Ridge, because of the Oak Ridge schools, is you know, you say to yourself "We made the right decision in where we decided to raise our family." MR. MOSBY:  Absolutely. MR. MCDANIEL:  There are other schools that are good but, something unique about this. MR. MOSBY:  It is a very unique place. I remember when Brit first applied to Spelman College, we were really shocked about how much it costs to go there. So she had gotten accepted to Duke that year, and she decided that she wanted to go to Spelman. That year I think it was maybe in the low $50,000 a year to go to Duke and it was like the low 40's to go to Spelman. I said, "Brit, do not make a decision based on the cost. Pick the school that you want to graduate from." So she picked Spelman. She had done really well on her ACT's and I just knew that they were going to give her some kind of scholarship, so she sent the acceptance letter and she did all of this. So we went down for her to- MR. MCDANIEL:  Visit? MR. MOSBY:  No, this was, taking her to school. MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh wow. Okay. MR. MOSBY:  We were taking her to school, they had said, nothing about scholarships. I was just, my mind trying to figure out how we were going to do this. We got to the line and then they had like, if you're A through L, and M through ... So she said, "Get in this line." So we got into the line. We got to the desk and the lady said, ... No, this was not, okay I'm mixing up, you were right, this was the orientation. We got in this line and we told who we were and we wrote our stuff down. I mentioned to her that she went to Oak Ridge and had they made any offers or financial aid or whatever. She said, "No, no, we don't have anything." So I came back and I went to Brit's guidance and I said, "For some reason they didn't seem to think Oak Ridge was that big a deal." She said, "Okay, I don't know who you've ... We got another student there at Spelman so they should know about the quality of ... " She said, "Let me send them a letter. We didn't hear anything so now it was time to go sign her up for school and we went down, we got into the line, they had this A through L line and M through ... We got in the line and then we went to the lady and she says "Your name?" We told her the name, she says "Oh, you need to go over to this fourth line, they have something for you." It turned out that she got a full tuition scholarship and I think that they did not recognize the quality of the Oak Ridge program, where it was, and how her grades and how her SAT scores and ACT scores, what that translated from. At the end of the day it was a good news story because of the strength of the Oak Ridge program, the college gave her a ... It took a big, big weight off my shoulders. MR. MCDANIEL:  It's interesting, the ... go ahead and answer that if you need to. MR. MOSBY:  No, I don't need. MR. MCDANIEL:  When my son went to Tech this year, that was other thing, he auditioned for, as I said, he's a percussionist and he's big into drum corps, the drum and bugle corps. He and his brother go and travel around and see all these teams compete and he had auditioned for the percussion studio at Tennessee Tech, and at UT. The guy, he was trying to decide, he had some offers and we were waiting to see what the offer was, scholarship offer was, from both UT and Tech, because we had already had the offer from Carson-Newman. I got a phone call one day from the head of the music program at Tennessee Tech. He said, "I know Ethan hasn't decided where he's going to go yet, but I want you to know, and maybe I shouldn't say this, but he's our top percussion prospect this year, so we're going to go above and beyond what we'd normally do because we really want him." I was like "Okay. Good. That sounds great." He loves it there, as far as I know, as far what he tells me, so anyway, let's talk a little bit about, you worked here, you work now, you work at C.N.S. [Consolidated Nuclear Security, Y-12] is that correct? MR. MOSBY:  Correct. MR. MCDANIEL:  Talk a little bit about your career history from the mid '80s to now. MR. MOSBY:  I've had, like I said, a really great experience, I think I've progressed and grown in my job and I think they recognize that and they've given me opportunities. So I went from being a design engineer to a project engineer where I was over several other design engineers, matrixed, not really managing, but just managing those activities. Now I'm managing projects that have multi-disciplined teams coming together to execute work out at the plant. MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right? Okay, and you're at Y-12? MR. MOSBY:  Correct. MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay. You talked about this a little bit, before we get to that I want to say, have there been people over the years at the plant that have kind of made a real impact on you, or mentored you and helped you get to where you wanted to be? MR. MOSBY:  I recognize that there are people who are very instrumental in helping you achieve your professional goals, and while in my case I don't know if any of them stand out. I do know a lot of them are in the background, working, giving me opportunities. I remember I had a, he wasn't my supervisor at the time but he was in a different group, a Mr. Ed Saintclaire, I think he's provided a lot of opportunities for me to do things. Let's see, he's passed away now. Unfortunately, a lot of my managers have passed away. Charlie McLaughlin. I mean just, I can't think of a bad manager. Lisa Stenton. I can't think of a bad manager that I've had in my whole experience out there. MR. MCDANIEL:  I don't want to talk about race as an issue, because it may not be an issue, but was it ever an issue for you there? Advancing, or having projects that you wanted that maybe you didn't get because of that? MR. MOSBY:  I try to be a very upbeat and optimistic, and I can't say that I've ever experienced it. I know it's there, I expect it, I anticipate it. It was never over to the point where somebody made a big deal out of it, but I do know that we all have our preferences and I'm certain there were probably opportunities that I might have missed out of, but it was not significant enough- MR. MCDANIEL:  Overt and in your face. MR. MOSBY:  Right, it didn't make me feel like I wasn't at a place where I thought I deserved to be. I felt like I deserved to be at every station in my progression. I didn't feel like I had been extended any ... MR. MCDANIEL:  Well, you didn't feel like you were given a handout because of your race, nor did you feel like you were held back because of your race. MR. MOSBY:  That's a great way to put it. MR. MCDANIEL:  You can't ask for anything better. You moved on your own skill and confidence I guess. What about in Oak Ridge in general, did your kids have issues in school, did you have issues in the community? I want to talk about you being on city council in a few minutes and we'll get into that, and I don't want to make a big deal out of this but you have a perspective that I do not, when it comes to that. MR. MOSBY:  And you have one that I don't have and I think, as it relates to my kids. Most of the time that my kids were in the school system, I kind of feel like the system ... (and my wife was very strong in the community, she was the director of the Scarboro Daycare Center for a long, long time. She was the religious education director at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Church, so she was very well known in the community,) I felt like I had a certain amount of notoriety because of my work on the Planning Commission, Site Specific Advisory Board, all of the volunteer things I was doing. I felt like my kids never went into situations where their background was questioned, or they were challenged because of some pre- MR. MCDANIEL:  Existing stereotype. MR. MOSBY:  Correct. I can't think of any significant negative impact that my kids had coming through the school system, which is more kudos to the school system. I think that ... MR. MCDANIEL:  Kind of like you said, the school system was such that those issues were minimized. MR. MOSBY:  Correct. Now that's not to say, I do recognize that there are people who don't enjoy that same treatment and that's painful for me. Not because my kids didn't get the bad treatment, or the stereotypical encounters, but there are kids out there who are. I think we really need to focus on that section of the community that is not able to have their kids go through without receiving the impact of the negative stereotypes. MR. MCDANIEL:  What are ways for that to happen? I know, you know, do you ... Are there things in our town to facilitate that that you know of? MR. MOSBY:  I don't think- MR. MCDANIEL:  Other than churches and things such as that? MR. MOSBY:  I think that those opportunities you have to work for. I got to say I don't think that I'm aware of any organization in town that's actively creating barriers for that. I think to resolve that, I think parents have to get engaged. They have to get engaged early. They have to be aware of where their kids are and what their kids are doing in order for them not to experience any of these bad ... I do think that the administration, at least for my experience, they've been really receptive, really helpful in trying to address issues before they come to a head. I had experiences with a lot of school board teachers and they all seem to be… I hope it wasn't just because Dave Mosby, city council, was there, but this is a parent who is interested in their kid’s success. MR. MCDANIEL:  See I could be way off, my perception could be not exactly right, but to me, in the school system, they have a lot worse problems than racial issues with drugs and things that- MR. MOSBY:  Violence. MR. MCDANIEL:  Violence, you know- MR. MOSBY:  Truancy. MR. MCDANIEL:  Exactly. MR. MOSBY:  Those are serious, serious problems. When you look at it, my mom was a school teacher in the Atlanta school systems, I have cousins and nieces and nephews who participate in the Atlanta school system, and the things that I hear from them, make Oak Ridge seem like the problems it has are just real- MR. MCDANIEL:  Real small, yeah. MR. MOSBY:  Real small- MR. MCDANIEL:  I guess that was my point, It's never good when you got a problem, but man it sure could be a lot worse. MR. MOSBY:  It could be a lot worse, but when you're facing that, it is a lot worse, so if you're a parent and for whatever reason your kids are being- MR. MCDANIEL:  Targeted or- MR. MOSBY:  This negative stereotype and you want to reach out for help but you don't know how. There are not really a lot of resources at your disposal to try and figure that out so ... MR. MCDANIEL:  I can't imagine anything that would kill a kid's spirit more than something like that. MR. MOSBY:  That's correct. MR. MCDANIEL:  You know, I just, anyway, that's enough, let’s move on. So you decided, you'd been involved in the Planning Commission and you're involved in the Boy’s Club and coaching, so you decided to run for city council. MR. MOSBY:  I did- MR. MCDANIEL:  Tell me how did that come to be? MR. MOSBY:  Well, again, my friend Paul, we were really close we did a lot of things together. MR. MCDANIEL:  He's your instigator, isn't he? MR. MOSBY:  He is. So he called me again. I was on the Planning Commission. He said, "Hey, my friend, Will Minter is running for the school board, and he's asking me to help him, and I want you to help me." I said, "Love to, love to," so Paul and I, we worked on Will's campaign, running for the school board and got to meet a lot more people. It was really my first serious engagement with Helen Jernigan, I think Helen is a really cool lady, and Hal, her husband. She's got me really, really pumped up, I was really excited and we finally got Will elected to the school board. Then from there Will went to the council, and I helped him in his campaigns and I worked with Paul and we kind of did ...Then he decided he was not going to run for the council again and at that time I said, I just feel like if ... The other thing that was in the background, it was just the background, my daughter was deciding if she wanted to run for the Robertsville student body president. MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay. All right. MR. MOSBY:  I'm not sure who decided first, I don't know if she decided first and then I said, "Well, I'm going to do it," or if I decided I was going to do it and then she decided she was going to do it, but as it turned out we were both successful. She got elected to be the president of the Robertsville student body, in her 8th grade year, and I got elected to city council. MR. MCDANIEL:  What year did you get elected? What year was that? MR. MOSBY:  That was 2001. MR. MCDANIEL:  2001, okay. MR. MOSBY:  Wait a minute. The years don't work out, does it? MR. MCDANIEL:  It was 2002 maybe. MR. MOSBY:  I was elected in 2001, so she must have decided first, I guess, that's the way it worked out, but- MR. MCDANIEL:  How long were you on city council? MR. MOSBY:  Let's see, I was defeated in 2014, I've been off council for two years now. MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay, so you were on there a long time. MR. MOSBY:  It was almost 14 years. MR. MCDANIEL:  That's what I was about to say. MR. MOSBY:  It was almost 14 years and I was on the Planning Commission, I believe, about 17 years. MR. MCDANIEL:  Wow. MR. MOSBY:  It's been a lot of time at community service. Not really unusual because my family has a real strong desire to do community service. My dad was a county commissioner there in DeKalb County for a couple years. He was big ... We used to hate it because he always the principal of the high school, or the elementary school. One time he was the principal of the elementary and high school at the same time, but he was real big in community service. I got elected to the city council, the next year my sister got elected to city council it Atlanta, and then that same year my brother got elected to the Georgia legislature. MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right? Wow. MR. MOSBY:  So all of us were holding elective office at the same time. MR. MCDANIEL:  What was your biggest challenge as city council member? MR. MOSBY:  I felt frustrated when there would be people coming during the first part of the council meeting and just baring their souls about an issue that they have, it could be with junk cars in their neighbor's yard and they can't sell their house or whatever, and be powerless to not do anything about it. That was kind of my biggest challenge, not being able to really provide meaningful resolutions to people who seem like they were really at their last station. That was probably the most frustrating part of council service, not being able to make a difference when you need to. MR. MCDANIEL:  Did you, here I go again, but I think this is a fair question. Did you ever feel like other people said, "Oh there's David Mosby, he represents our black community."? MR. MOSBY:  There probably was some of that, but remember, Willie Golden and I both were elected to council at the same time. MR. MCDANIEL:  That's true. Willie was on there. MR. MOSBY:  It wasn't like it was just me. Now when Willie decided not to run, it was just me, but at that time I think the train had left the station and I never really felt like I was the token or ... MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, I understand. MR. MOSBY:  I felt like I had a lot of respect among the other council members. I'm not sure that staff always had that respect but I never let my issues get down to the staff level. I worked with a lot of the department heads but I always felt like I was responsible for the voters and not for the- MR. MCDANIEL:  Politics. MR. MOSBY:  Not for the politics in city hall. MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, exactly. Well, what have I not asked you about that you'd like to talk about? Anything? MR. MOSBY:  Well, I am really, really, really, proud, honored, and humbled to have an opportunity to have served the community for so long. I think that my service to the community has benefited my family. As I mentioned, my kids, I think they got an outstanding education here in the city of Oak Ridge. I think my career, I'm not sure if it was impacted by my community service, but I felt like my career was as successful as you could write it, if you were writing it. I just really feel like my decision to come to Oak Ridge, and to come to Tennessee, to go to Tennessee Tech, and follow that with Oak Ridge, I don't think I would ever change that, those three. I think it's turned out to be a really, really good success story and I hope there's more opportunities to come. MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, you're a young man, there's still a lot to do isn't there? MR. MOSBY:  There is a lot to do and I'm enjoying the break from elective office right now but I'm thinking that that's in my future. I want to pick the right opportunity at the right time, when I can really make a difference. MR. MCDANIEL:  One thing, you did kind of make reference to this a while ago, kind of in a reverse manner, but I want to say, did your city council or community service, did that impact your job at all? Were your employers supportive of that? The reason I ask that is because way back when, actually employees were encouraged to be on city council, but I don't know if that's stopped or ... MR. MOSBY:  When I first came here there was a time keeping, time card entity called a civic engagement, so they would allow employees to create their time for civic activities and a lot of people didn't take advantage of that. I didn't take advantage of that until I did some things with the Planning Commission. I had maybe some training and I had to miss work. They allowed me to do some civic engagement time. The companies, Union Carbide was really, really supportive, I think Lockheed was supportive ... MR. MCDANIEL:  But not quite like- MR. MOSBY:  Not quite like Union Carbide and I think it's kind of waning and I think now it's kind of, they don't discourage you from doing it, but they don't overly support you in doing it. They say, "Do it if you want to and don't let it get involved with doing your work." I've noticed that change over the years, if you do that kind of community service. Now C.N.S has its projects and they will support you supporting their projects, but anything outside of that is- MR. MCDANIEL:  You're on your own. MR. MOSBY:  Basically you're on your own. I do think that while they didn't directly benefit from my service on city council, I do think that they appreciated the fact that I had an investment in the community. MR. MCDANIEL:  How can you being their employee, being on city council, not be a good thing for them. Not directly but- MR. MOSBY:  Right, I was going to say- MR. MCDANIEL:  From a public perspective viewpoint, so anyway. Well, good, anything else? MR. MOSBY:  No that's ... Again I just really appreciate the people ... That I said, earlier in the tape. The first day I came here in the car, I was in the old shopping center, and I had a couple of minutes to kill so I thought I'd open the hood just to look in there and check the oil levels and see what's going on. Three people stopped, and said, "Hey, we see you got the hood up, do you need anything? Can I take you somewhere?" I said, "Man, that would never happen in Atlanta." MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah exactly, exactly. MR. MOSBY:  I just recognized how open and friendly everybody was, and I really wanted that lifestyle. I wanted to raise a family with people who were friendly to you and I think I found it in Oak Ridge. MR. MCDANIEL:  Well, I think for the most part it's still that way. MR. MOSBY:  We need to make sure we do everything we can to keep it that way as much as possible. MR. MCDANIEL:  Alright, David, thank you so much for- MR. MOSBY:  No, thank you for having me. MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure thing. [End of Interview]