Tewes, William (Bill), Part 1

              
ORAL HISTORY OF WILLIAM (BILL) TEWES
PART 1
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
July 28, 2011 
MR. MCDANIEL:  I'm Keith McDaniel, and today is July the 28th, 2011.  And I'm at the home of Bill Tewes, and Bill, thanks for taking time to tell us about your life.
MR. TEWES:	  Right.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Why don't you start out - just this is the way I always start.  Start - tell me where you were born and raised and something about your family and where you went to school.  Okay?
MR. TEWES:	  Okay.  And I'd like to go back just a little bit.  Say a word or two about my ancestors.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure, absolutely.  
MR. TEWES:	  My paternal grandfather was Colonel William A. - William August Tewes, and he was an internationally known marksman.  I believe it was the 28th - it may have been the 32nd Olympics.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:  He was on the marksman jury, and he'd served in World War I in the New Jersey National Guard, and the fact that he was such a good marksman helped advance him to a Colonel.  It also helped when he got a job as a sales - eventually, a sales executive with Peters Cartridge Company.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?  
MR. TEWES:  And he was of German extract.  My grandmother, she liked to be called Aunt Lou, was English and Scotch Irish.  My - they had, I guess, four children, and they tended to name them in odd ways.  For instance, I was named William Edwards Tewes, and I was named for my uncle, William Edward Tewes except that he was called my Uncle Ed.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:  And on my mother's side, my grandfather was - mercy.  I had - I never saw my grandmother.  My grandfather was Charles J. Rempe, and that comes from the same German extraction although they're a bit more Holland Dutch mixed in with it.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.  Hold on just a second, Bill.
FEMALE:  Like it lower?
MR. MCDANIEL:  Low or put it on the bottom part of his placket.  
FEMALE:  Sorry.
MR. MCDANIEL:  The microphone is scratching a little bit.  So she's going to lower it down on your shirt just a little bit.
MR. TEWES:  Oh.  
FEMALE:  There you go.
MR. MCDANIEL: There we go.  Very good.
MR. TEWES:  That better?
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah.  Oh, yeah.  I'm sure that's better.  So, anyway, you're -
MR. TEWES:  Okay and I never met my maternal grandmother whose name was Mary Elizabeth Coulihan.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  Which allows me to wear green on St. Patrick's Day.
MR. MCDANIEL:  There you go.  There you go.  
MR. TEWES:  But he managed to hire a lady named Maggie, and she had a large friend and protector, Uncle Ed, and our families got along quite well together.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.  Well, good.
MR. TEWES:  I was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and baptized Roman Catholic Church.  And the first place I remember living was in Belleville.  I spent my whole life, until I got in the Army, in New Jersey.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Did you?  Now, what year were you born?
MR. TEWES: 10-10-22.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  And I've been told that the Republic of China delayed their formal existence until the lucky 10-10.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.  There you go.
MR. TEWES:  But we moved from there to Livingston, New Jersey, which is maybe about, oh, 15 or 20 miles from Newark, but it is a rural setting.  And I can remember a good childhood there where we played in the woods or we had a ball field, and then all the sudden, I noticed that all the men were staying home.  And I asked my mother about it.  She said, "Well, that's the Depression.  We don't have a - your dad doesn't have a job anymore."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Well, now what did your dad do before that?
MR. TEWES:  He was an accountant.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.  
MR. TEWES:  And -
MR. MCDANIEL:  And you had three brothers.  I mean you had - there were four of you.
MR. TEWES:  I had no brothers.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.  Did you have sisters?
MR. TEWES:  No.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  Not for a very long time.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.  All right.  
MR. TEWES:	  So I guess I was probably in third grade.  We moved to Englishtown, New Jersey.  That's down in Monmouth County, and we rented this small farm.  At least we were going to eat.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  And it was an experience that I still remember.  It was one of exceedingly hard work.  It was a truck farm.  We had about six acres in tomatoes which were sold to Campbell's.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  And we planted their tomato sets; Marglobe, which are Heritage tomatoes, today. There was an incentive for taking good care of them because you got paid depending upon the weight of the crop.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  But they insisted on picking them, and they'd come through at least twice to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL:  So your dad - so he rented this farm, and he ran the operation.  It was his.
MR. TEWES:	  He was it.
MR. MCDANIEL:  He was it.  Right, right but -
MR. TEWES:	  Except for my mother and me.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?  And the Campbell's folks, they came and picked them.  Was that correct?
MR. TEWES:	  Right.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And the other cash crop we had was poultry.  We had built a number of henhouses, and we sold fryers and broilers and eggs.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:  And we - I think we might have had beef once or twice a year. 
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  During that period.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  I bet you ate a lot of tomatoes and chickens and eggs, didn't you?
MR. TEWES:  And we had about eight hogs.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.
MR. TEWES:  So my mother would cure the hams - that, and we would eat a lot of pork, too.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Did you - do you remember the first time you saw - did your dad slaughter them or did he take them to be slaughter?
MR. TEWES:	 I didn't hear you.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Did he - did you father slaughter the hogs or did he take -
MR. TEWES:  No.
MR. MCDANIEL:  He took them someplace.
MR. TEWES:	  We had a slaughterhouse.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.  All right.
MR. TEWES:	  Local people would come with a butcher and use ours.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And there was apparently a tradition that, when they slaughtered one of their animals, we got the innards.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  We got the liver, heart, and pancreas.  We used the lungs to feed to the dog.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	And we got the liver; really fresh liver is a delicacy even one, though you wouldn’t get much.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, exactly, exactly.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, I have no idea, and I think that was a delivered thing.  But when I was in - I'd finished third grade - maybe - no, I'd finished fourth grade.  My Uncle George and his wife, my Aunt Rose, who was my mother's younger sister, came down, and we took everything and left for Brooklyn, and my mother got a divorce.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  And I went to the divorce hearings which lasted all day, and I'd brought some books.  And I spent the time in the judge's chambers.  He didn't want me to know what it was all about.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And I never did find out.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  But he gave me an opportunity to decide which parent I wanted to live with and what kind of visitation from the other parent.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And I selected living with my mother and having my father visit me.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  The judge was very adamant in telling me my father couldn't just walk in off the street, that they had to be arranged in his office, and my father never talked to me, again.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	Divorce was tough on every - on the woman and any children.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Because there was no such thing as child support.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  It was a matter of ages because, in general, New Jersey was advanced on that kind of thing, but this meant that my mother, who was unskilled, worked as an in home maid.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And she worked for some people who were very kind.  So I had an opportunity to visit her frequently.  I lived as a foster child; the first place I lived had a girl about a year older than I and was never a problem, but her father looked like he thought there was a problem.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. TEWES:  So my mother made other arrangements.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. TEWES:  I had been living in - oh, shoot.  I never can remember, but I moved to Hasbrouck Heights in - this was a retired man and his wife.  It proved to be very good.  They had their daughter and son-in-law living there.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And when I reached - got to be high school aged, my mother remarried, and we moved to Orange, New Jersey.  And this was utterly different from anything I'd experienced.  Probably 50 percent of the people in Orange were third generation Italians.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  Their grandparents didn't speak English.
MR. MCDANIEL:	Right.
MR. TEWES:	  So they were bilingual, but the ones that thought that they'd have an easy time by taking their time and, of course, found that they didn't know anything from the standpoint of grammar.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, exactly.
MR. TEWES:	  And they - but we had about, I'd say, something like ten percent Black, about five percent Irish who lived in a certain area.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I don't know where the Blacks lived, but the whites were divided into upper middle class and just barely making the lower middle class.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  We were in that category.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  I understand.
MR. TEWES:	  But I had a good education.  I enjoyed it very much.  I was active in a lot of school activities, and about the end of my junior year, I started wondering about college.  And they had - they didn't have guidance counselors.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	But there's a young lady who was the principal's secretary.  Sort of helped me out on that and I scrounged enough to take college boards which was the equivalent of the SAT today and had  a very good score and could have gone to a couple of good schools with a room and board scholarship.  But they also had a requirement that you couldn't do outside work during the school year.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, I see.
MR. TEWES:	  And the money I'd saved from working, during high school, would have gotten me through about Christmas.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, exactly, exactly.
MR. TEWES:  I ended up going to Upsala College because I could drive there.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And that was a time, I guess my last few months in high school where I was allowed to stay at Orange, but I drove to school (from Livingston where the family had moved).
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.
MR. TEWES:  My car was rather interesting.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  It was 1939.
MR. MCDANIEL:  1939, right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I was driving a 1931 Chevrolet that had the same chassis as this Chevy with the rumble seat (it was called a Victoria Coach).
MR. MCDANIEL:   Oh, is that right.
MR. TEWES:	  Except that was closed and there were two tires on the -
MR. MCDANIEL:  The running boards out there.
MR. TEWES:	  Running boards.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And after I got it, I painted the running - the side -
MR. MCDANIEL:  The wheel covers, like the -
MR. TEWES:  Pardon?
MR. MCDANIEL:  The wheel covers?  The things that went out?
MR. TEWES:	  Yeah.  Right.  Well, I painted the front portion and the back portion on the side gray and the rest of it black, and at Upsala, it became known as the Gray Fender. The school colors were gray and blue. There weren't very many people who had a car.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, sure, exactly.
MR. TEWES:	  And I think I traded that during my sophomore year at college.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  For - I didn't trade it.  I took it to the junkyard and got $12.00 and then I bought a '33 Chevy for $30.00.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:  That was classy, and it had much better tires.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.  There you go.
MR. TEWES:	  That was really the criteria then.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, sure because you didn't - you almost couldn't get - tires were hard to get back then, weren't they?
MR. TEWES:  Oh, tires were impossible.
MR. MCDANIEL:  And it got even worse when the war came along.
MR. TEWES:	  Right.  And the one thing I remember about those years was the 1939 World's Fair.  Don Lubin and I got season tickets for it and -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Where was it?
MR. TEWES:  It was in New York City.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.
MR. TEWES:   At the Flushing Meadows.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, right.
MR. TEWES:	  The Giants ended up playing baseball out there, but we had - we must have gone to every last pavilion there was in that fair.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?  
MR. TEWES:	  And I was particular remember - we were there on a Sunday night, and they would have a light show in sort of the center of activities.  The French Pavilion was on one side, and that was the day that France and England declared war.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really?
MR. TEWES:	  And the word got out, and they opened up the French Pavilion, and everybody sang, La Marseillaise [the French National Anthem].
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  But I've been active in Affirmative Action at K-25 and Y-12 here, and I sort of went back to think about the question of discrimination in the school, and there was never any racial problems.  There - you know, we're all on part of the same team.  Our sports hero was - he graduated a year before me, Monty Irwin, and he was probably about, oh, among the first 20 or so Blacks to join the majors.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, right.  
MR. TEWES:	  He played for the New York Giants [baseball team], and there was an appreciable discrimination against both the Blacks and the Jews, and really you heard a lot more about the Jews.  There discrimination was accomplished by deed covenants which determined where they could live.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh.
MR. TEWES:  And they ended up - there was a large group of them that were in Newark that lived at the - at - where the kids all went to Weequahic High, and one of the biggest libraries in the state - Thanksgiving morning, Beranger and Weequahic High played football.  In the three years that I was in college, I got a - they were after tall people, and I got $5.00 for being an usher, and that was fantastic.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, wow.  Yeah.  
MR. TEWES:  But we just filled the aisle between the two groups.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And the visiting team was made to leave before any of the home team -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Could stay there.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Otherwise, there'd be a big fight break out.  Wouldn't there?
MR. TEWES:  And one thing I do remember was the cheer that they used, and I read this, again, in a book called Portnoy's Complaint which was a very popular book that -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  But it went something like this. “Izzy, Ikey, Mo and Sam.  We are the boys, what eats no hams.  We play football.  We play soccer.  We keep motzas in our locker.  Aye, yi, yi.  Weequahic High.”  And that was typical of the Jews that I knew, and some of them were good friends of mine that they didn't ignore anything.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  So I had really a good experience in high school.  During the summers, I worked.  I forgot to mention.  Maybe I did.  My mother got remarried.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  Your mother remarried.  You mentioned.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, he was carpenter, and he was building speculation houses in Livingston.  There was an old man called the Dutchman who provided the money for them, and I worked for about two, three years doing rough carpentry or rough electrical work.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:  Which proved to be of great value later on.
MR. MCDANIEL:  I'm sure.
MR. TEWES:	  I also worked at the YWCA setting pins in the bowling alleys.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  Before the days of the automatic pin setter.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And -
MR. MCDANIEL:  You learned how to dance.  Tell me about learning how to dance.
MR. TEWES:	  Pardon?
MR. MCDANIEL:  Tell me about learning how to dance.
MR. TEWES:	  Oh, I just asked a girl to teach me, and I was dating her.  But I never did go to a prom because I never had a suit.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really?
MR. TEWES:  My folks bought me one the day before graduation, and I had to explain to them that you don't get a date -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  For the prom on that short of a notice.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:  Besides, I had committed that I would run the flood lights that we had.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Back in those days, proms were all held at the schools.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  But and you asked about Beth.  Beth was born in '39 in my - toward the end of my high school experience.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I think it helped to solidify our parents, and it was a great experience for me.
MR. MCDANIEL:  So you were - so she was born in ’38 or '39.  You were 17 or 18.
MR. TEWES:	  Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Or close to that.  Close to 17 or 18.
MR. TEWES:	  Right.
MR. MCDANIEL:  When she was born.
MR. TEWES:  But, you know, after I got in the Army, I didn't see her - well, that's sort of jumping the boat but -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  I guess that - oh, yeah.  My college experience was really good.  I was pretty darn smart, and I always had good grades.  And there were a lot of activities that I enjoyed very much.  I was associate editor of the newspaper, and I, in my junior year, I had been elected to the head of the Footlight club, the next year.
MR. MCDANIEL:  The theatre, dramatic group?
MR. TEWES:  Uh-huh and I had - was on the debate team, and I was tagged for Tau Kappa Alpha.  Anyway, it's a National Forensic Society. I made Phi Epsilon Mu which is an academic fraternity, a local one, and I got the “Gold U”, which is a combination of leadership and scholarship, and this sort of brings me to 1941.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And specifically, December 7th, and I was - I had gone home Friday to Livingston, maybe about a ten mile drive and was driving back to school when I heard the attack on Pearl Harbor being described on the radio.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:  And I pulled off to the side and listened for about, oh, maybe a half an hour and then when on to school.  I think that we spent that night - I believe we went out and drank beers and talked about it.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Nobody had dates.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  But there was pretty good collection of us in various bars that were student hangouts.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  You mentioned that - Upsala was a very strict school.  It was the Missouri Synod, of the Lutheran Church.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Lutheran.
MR. TEWES:	  Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay. 
MR. TEWES:  And they didn't allow dances on campus.  So all of these local fraternities would have a real wingding -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, yeah.
MR. TEWES:  At the local country club.
MR. MCDANIEL:  I bet.  I bet.  
MR. TEWES:  As a matter of fact, my junior year during the summer, I got a job as a bartender, but I was somebody's saw me there from school.  And I don't mean a student -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  I mean one of the professors.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.  
MR. TEWES:	  And I was told that, if I didn't give up that job, I'd lose my scholarship.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?  Should have asked what the professor was doing there.  Oh, my.
MR. TEWES:	  But the day I remember, more than anything else, was December 8th.  We - all that - we were in various places, but I remember I was in the Student Union.  I even remember the people that were sitting on either side of me.  Jean Artsen was on one side, and my good friend, Lenny Larsen, was on the other.   And the President's speech came on PA, but there are innumerable radios there in case the PA, which was known, every once in a while, to conk out. 82 percent of the country heard the President’s speech.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:  But we were exceedingly fortunate to have a President who was one of the great orators of all time.  That helped this country more than probably ten divisions.  We also were very fortunate to have a President who had read the Constitution and who realized that the Congress has the power to declare war.  And to make that even clearer, when President Roosevelt went to the meeting with Congress, he took Woodrow Wilson's widow along with him to emphasize the way it had been done during World War I.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And our country, at that time, was pretty divided.  We had a lot of isolationists.  We had people like Lindbergh or Father Kaufman who were pro-German.  We had, in New Jersey, the German American Bund was very active.
But after Roosevelt's speech, we - the Congress only took an hour to pass resolutions, and it was very simple.  It said that the state of war exists between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And that was - there was one dissenting vote.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really.
MR. TEWES:	  By a lady who was a vowed pacifist.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really?
MR. TEWES:	  And in my opinion, that is the reason that this country came together.  You know, if virtually every member of Congress votes for war -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  Even if someone was against it, they weren't the least bit likely to say so.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And this fact was translated in the tremendous support that was given to our armed forces, and I keep hearing today people say, "We could never have a Manhattan Project."  Or like this mess we have going on right now, the question of running out of money, and you hear people say we're a divided country.
We sure were never a divided country during World War II, and I would advise anyone, who wants to study World War II, to see Ken Burns' The War.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  That was (Burns) - did a tremendous job of depicting what the citizens of this country were like during World War II.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  I think that most of my friends, a few of them went right out and signed up, but most of them had read the same things I had read that the Army wasn't anxious to have people come.  They felt like we were coming with the draft.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	And that they had a hard time.  They didn't have very much cadre, and they didn't have very much equipment.
MR. MCDANIEL:  They weren't prepared for a big influx, were they?
MR. TEWES:	  No.
MR. MCDANIEL:  They needed to get prepared for it.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, they did have a head start in one area.  They had been making a fair amount of military equipment.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really?
MR. TEWES:	  And sending it to -
MR. MCDANIEL:  That's -
MR. TEWES:	  The Allies.
MR. MCDANIEL:  That's true.  Yeah.
MR. TEWES:	  On a lend-lease basis.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  So they had joined there, but during World War II, this country, some 140 million people, had 16 million people in the armed forces.   
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And we had six million women who moved from their homes to war plants.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  I enlisted in the Army of the United States (Reserve) in, I guess, it was - I don't know.  Got the cheat sheet here.  Well, I believe it was in November 9, 1943, and I was called to active duty on January - no, no, no - on July - no, June 26th, 1944.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  I went to - through an induction center at Fort Dix, New Jersey.  Went down to Fort McClellan, Alabama.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Had you ever been to the South before?
MR. TEWES:	  I had never been more - I don't know how long Long Island is, but that's as far out away from New Jersey I had been in any of the four directions.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay, all right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I wasn't unusual.  Most people didn't travel.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Most people didn't travel.  Especially because, well, they didn't have money to travel during the Depression, for one thing.  So.
MR. TEWES:	  Right.
MR. MCDANIEL:  And, you know, a lot of people just stayed around home, I guess.
MR. TEWES:	  And, you know, that Depression was pretty well settled -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  By about ‘40 or '37.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, right.
MR. TEWES:  But we never did get people completely back to work until the war industry -
MR. MCDANIEL:  The war, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Started.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  We - did I - 
MR. MCDANIEL:  No, you're good.  You're fine.
MR. TEWES:	  Okay.  But at Fort McClellan, it was a nice area.  It's sort of in the hilly part of Alabama, and infantry basic consisted pretty much of - a lot of it was just getting us in shape, and a lot of it was concern with getting us to where we would just automatically accept an order.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Never question it.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, exactly.
MR. TEWES:	  And there was another chunk of it where we were taught how to kill people.  We're taught how to kill people with a rifle, with -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Bayonet?
MR. TEWES:	  Bayonet and with our hands or any piece of solid material.
MR. MCDANIEL:  With a canteen.
MR. TEWES:	  Anything we could put our hands on.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Exactly, exactly.
MR. TEWES:	  And the most important thing we were taught was, once you learn that, you want to forget it during the time that you're a civilian.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.  
MR. TEWES:	  Now we had a zillion people taking basic training, and after six weeks, you could go into Anniston, Alabama.  And we had three platoons there or three in our training company.  The one I was in was in New Jersey.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  There was a platoon from Alabama, and there was another one from New York City.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  Our platoon sergeant was from East Tennessee.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	And when we got ready to go into town, he told us, he said, "Now, the one thing you can do in there is go and get you in deep trouble."  He said, "That's to mess around, and if you're willing to pay money for it, you can get venereal disease." MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  He said, "There's really damn little to do."  That some of our kids figured they'd go to the church, and they'd meet a girl in church.  And he said, "And you could, and you might get invited over for an ice cream in the afternoon."  And he said, "And when you do, you'll find the girl, and you'll find her father and mother in that living room.  And they'll stay there, and they'll stare at you until you leave."
So but we found a reason to go to Anniston, Alabama.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  There was the Dixie Hotel.  Had a big sign on it.  Fireproof hotel.  But we went in there for Sunday dinner.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Really?
MR. TEWES:	And we ate food that we didn't know exists.  Had this chicken dinner and they served a sweet potato casserole.  Well, at home, my mother made very good candied sweet potatoes.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  There was nothing like that.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Nothing like that.
MR. TEWES:	  And then I was introduced to a chess pie.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay, right.
MR. TEWES:	 And -
MR. MCDANIEL:  And never had had that before?
MR. TEWES:	  No.  Never had that.  I tell you.  We went in there every Sunday after that.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Did you?
MR. TEWES:	  And the funny thing is, about ten years later, I read in Time where the fireproof Dixie Hotel had burned.  It showed a picture, and all of the brick was still standing.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, gosh.
MR. TEWES:	  Completely gutted.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, gosh.
MR. TEWES:	  After that - after infantry basic, we always went by train.  Trains were exceedingly important to this country, and the Army moved, equipment moved, everything moved by train really.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  Well, we went to - we got on this train, and they hooked it onto something, and we knew we were going through Birmingham and then we hooked onto the Illinois Central.  And it was still hot, but eventually, we got up to Decatur, Illinois, and got off.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  And there were a couple of trucks there.  There must have been about 20 of us, and we drove for about 30 miles and discovered that we were on the campus of the University of Illinois.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.  
MR. TEWES:	  And we had a sergeant talk to us, and well, he welcomed us into the Army Specialized Training Program.  This was a program which was set up - since all the young guys had been or were about to be drafted, the country finally got concerned about having enough engineers, and the Navy had a similar program. The only difference between the two was that the Navy, when you got through with it, you became an Ensign.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.
MR. TEWES:  When you got through with the Army program, you got to be - you got promoted from private to PFC.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, I see.
MR. TEWES:	  That was worth $4.00. (per month)
MR. MCDANIEL:  Wow.  My goodness.  I wanted to ask you.  We're getting ready to go into this but - now what did you study in college?
MR. TEWES:	  I studied physics and chemistry.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  I had a double major.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right and that's probably one of the reasons that they chose you for this.
MR. TEWES:	  That and I had a very high Army - let's see - GCS [General Classification Test Score].
MR. MCDANIEL:  The test score.
MR. TEWES:	  Test score was just that way.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  
MR. TEWES:	 Test scores to the college you attended before entering the Army were factors.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  But I don't - I think that's what got me chosen for the ASTP because I think, if somebody had three years of liberal arts, they weren't likely to get in.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.  
MR. TEWES:	  And at Illinois, we became Fighting Illini, and one of our treats was that Ray Elliot, who was a football coach, would handle one of our PE sessions.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  And we loved it because he would spend the whole hour talking about the fighting part, and we didn't have to do anything.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Didn't have to do anything.  
MR. TEWES:	  And I forgot to look up his name, but we had a hockey player.  He was on the Delvecchio line for the Detroit Redwings.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really?
MR. TEWES:	  That had Gordy Howe on right wing, and this fellow (Ted Linsey) was on the left wing.  Well, he came on an intermittent basis.  He was still playing, but there - he could get down there from Detroit.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And work between games.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And his expertise was teaching us to wrestle.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Really?
MR. TEWES:	  And I had the honor of being the one that he flipped up in the air through ten feet.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. TEWES:  Whatever.  I'll tell you one thing.  I learned how to fall.
MR. MCDANIEL:  I'll bet you did.  
MR. TEWES:	  But we worked.  We carried 24 hours, and there must have been another six hours of lab.  We had every day of the week, and it was a six day week.  We had phys ed, and we had military drill.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And after about a month, we all sat down.  If we weren't on sick call, we had - there was one doctor there who felt we were being overworked, and he got us off of the drills.  
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. TEWES:  But it was a very good time.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  How long were you there?
MR. TEWES:	  I was there from, I guess, September until the end of January.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  Of '45.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  '44.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, '44.
MR. TEWES:	  '44.  And we had - for the first two weeks we were there; we were guarding fraternity and sorority houses.  That's where we lived.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And we did get a weekend's leave.  We were waiting for the next class to start.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  And went up to Chicago, and, boy, Chicago is a great city for GIs.  We - there were four of us that made that trip together, and we went into a bar.  And, you know, you couldn't buy a drink.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, yeah.  I'm sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And the same way in a restaurant.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  And we did go see a hockey game while we were there, and you didn't have to make any arrangements or anything.  You just walked and found somebody to usher you to a seat.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:  That was a great experience.
MR. MCDANIEL:  I bet.
MR. TEWES:	  Now, during the year, there was a Thanksgiving vacation, and we - everybody stayed in town.  And we had turkey dinner at - we - our mess hall used to be the hockey rink.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And -
MR. MCDANIEL:  At the college?
MR. TEWES:	  That's college.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  That's University of Illinois.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  University of Illinois.  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And when we went to - we got New Year's Eve off.  And we had one fellow from - who was from a Chicago suburb, and he fixed us all up.  We went up there and had dates.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL:  On New Year's Eve. 
MR. TEWES:  And we had a great New Year's Eve, and about - oh, it must have been 3:00 in the morning, we took our girls home.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And this was in sort of a high end suburb on the Westside.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And it turned out my date lived near Northwestern.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh.
MR. TEWES:	  And I think we switched three different trains.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. TEWES:  Chicago was big on the overhead.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, I see.
MR. TEWES:	Commuting cars.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	 That - you're going to find there's a lot of times I can't come up with the right words.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, that's okay.
MR. TEWES:	  I should have done this 20 years ago.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, that's okay.  That's all right.
MR. TEWES:	  When my memory was good.
MR. MCDANIEL:  That's okay.
MR. TEWES:  But after that, it was - we might date some and - locally, and we thought - being on a six day week cuts into that quite a bit.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, oh, sure.  
MR. TEWES:	And we always had a lot of homework.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  We were all pretty smart, and there's no way you could get along if you didn't do the homework.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, I guess it was in October.  There were a limited number of us that were ordered to go to a small auditorium, and there was a Major (captain) there, and he gave about a 15 minute talk.  He essentially told us that we were going to have individual interviews.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  For an exceedingly important project and he couldn't say anything about the project except that it could have a major effect on the war.  Well, I had an interview with this major, and after I got to Oak Ridge, I discovered it was Major Miller.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	And, you know, all of us knew Major Miller from - we had this emergency group that which was known as Miller's Commanders. 
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, I didn't know that.
MR. TEWES:   And - oh, yeah, and they would march.  Every time General Groves came down here, he liked to have the SEDs and the WACs get out and march in front of him.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  And, boy, when the word got out that he was here, everybody and their brother disappeared.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  I'll bet.  Now Major Miller now that's Dave Miller's dad.  Wasn't it?  Dave Miller, David Miller's father.
MR. TEWES:  I think he was.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah, because he talks about his daddy, Major Miller, you know, and he -
[Crosstalk]
MR. TEWES:	  And here's - I'm not sure it was his dad.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really?
MR. TEWES:	  Because his dad was involved in the silver transfer, and you know, Miller's a pretty common name.
MR. MCDANIEL:  That's true.  It could have been a different one.
MR. TEWES:	  And Dave has never mentioned his father and the connection of the SED.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah.  That's true.  That's true.  
MR. TEWES:	  But then - but we had these interviews, and we sort of forgot it.  At the interview, they really concentrated on finding out if you had any - if you'd done anything wrong.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Did you - were you a member of the wrong organizations?
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I forgot it, and the last Friday in January '44, I had a date, and we were going to meet at the Student Union and go to the movies.  And I got to Student Union.  She wasn't there, and I heard, on the PA system there, calling out names, telling them to report to their barracks immediately.  Well, I heard Todd Kleinstuber's name, and Todd was in my class.  So I figured, boy, I better pay attention, and sure enough, they - I heard them call Private William Tewes.  And I'll break into that train of thought -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Where you left Tewes.  My grandfather and my - and all of his children, except my father, were Tewes. (two e's)
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. TEWES:  Right.  I had an uncle who would argue with my father, my Uncle Elmer, and he'd say, "You know, anyone should know it's pronounced Tewes because there are two Es."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Two Es.  That's right.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, it has a lot of - 
MR. MCDANIEL:  Take that phone call.  Go out and call Ethan.  See what - if there's an emergency.  Okay?  Go ahead.  All right.  So it had two Es.
MR. TEWES:	  Yep.  Well, there are a lot of other pronunciations.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  There's a poultry farm this side of - over on the Kentucky side of Cincinnati has a great big sign, and that's the Tewes Poultry Farm.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And there was a girl on TV for quite a while that pronounced her name “Twees”.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, yeah.
MR. TEWES:	  So but let me get back to - I jogged back from the Student Union, and when I got to the Zeeb house which is where we lived.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  My best friend there and roommate, Homer, and I've long since forgotten his last name.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Had everything I owned packed and told me I was shipping out.  I needed to go about a block and a half up the street where they were meeting in an empty field.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And Homer gave me a flask of bourbon to keep me warm.
MR. MCDANIEL:   Right. There you go. 
MR. TEWES:	  And I went - walked up there with my barracks bag, and there was a captain from the Finance Corp.  And he was giving out $25.00 advance pay to us.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And he - there was also a second lieutenant there who informed us that we were shipping out under sealed orders which he gave to somebody who was named Adams or something in the beginning of the alphabet.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:  And it didn't take more than 15 minutes, and we were on the back of a couple of Army trucks.  And it was cold.  It was bright, you know, the stars were shining, but it was probably about ten degrees below.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Wow.
MR. TEWES:	  And we drove for quite a while and then we're out in the middle of nowhere, and all of the sudden, we stopped and noticed that they had this flag stop set to Pennsylvania Railroad.  And we waited about 20 minutes, and these guys - apparently the cadre had done this before because one of them was standing around with his foot on the rail, and before anybody could hear anything, he turned the car lights on, and eventually, this train came to stop.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  And the corporal, who was in charge of the detail told us - he said, "From now on, you consider the conductor your commanding officer."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  And we got on, and the conductor had us put our bags out, and he came, in usual fashion of the Army, he started seating people with the As first.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And as I frequently did, I ended up with the last seat.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh.
MR. TEWES:	And in this seat was a really good looking, blonde lady about five or ten years older than me, and I was surprised because the conductor asked her can - would it be all right if I used one of her seats.  And she said, "Sure."  And I found out, later on in talking to her, that she had a compartment, but a couple of Army guys had bumped her out of it.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh.
MR. TEWES:	  And so and it was - this was the only place they could find for her.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  And she said she was glad to have me along.  Maybe we could pool our resources and see if we could stay warm.  Well, I immediately brought up my flask.
MR. MCDANIEL:  There you go.
MR. TEWES:	And she apparently had some kind of a buzzer because a porter came, and he got us some rocks glasses and some ice, and we proceeded to warm ourselves.
MR. MCDANIEL:  I bet.
MR. TEWES:	  Internally.
MR. MCDANIEL:  My goodness.
MR. TEWES:	And then Jennifer was her name, and she told me that I was likely to lose my left ear if I shorted that to Jenny.  She informed me that she thought it would be quite smart to - she had a fur coat.  If we sort of snuggled together under the fur coat and, you know, Army coats weighed a half a ton.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  They were thick.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And she also informed me, to avoid any problems during the night, she was going to - I was going to face the window, and she was going to -
MR. MCDANIEL:  That's fun.
MR. TEWES:  Snuggle up to me.
MR. MCDANIEL:  There you go.  Exactly.
MR. TEWES:	  And we spent the night, and the next morning, I asked her if I had - had acted appropriately.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah.
MR. TEWES:	  She told me - she said, "Solider," she said, "If you had acted any better, I would have felt I was losing my charm."  But -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh.
MR. TEWES:	  I had found out from her that the train went to New York, and we ended up in Penn Station.  When the train had emptied, the conductor gave the orders back, and Adams opened them.  And the only order was to report to a house on East 116th Street at 0900 on Monday.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.  
MR. TEWES:	  And then there was an information thing that said, "You can find housing - cheap housing at a nearby YMCA."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.  
MR. TEWES:	  Well, nobody knew where anything was.  I was the only one who was from that general area.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  So we went over to this YMCA.  It's a pretty good sized one.  Lot of things you could do right there.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  And there was someone from the Y who had experienced this before.  So I told him, I said, "Well, I'm going home," and I said, "I live in New Jersey across the river."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I did, and my mother was so glad.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, you just up.  Didn't you?
MR. TEWES:  Yep.  I just showed up, and my mother was suffering from stomach cancer.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really?
MR. TEWES:	  They were never more sure than that.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And having me at home, she appreciated it very much.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	So I had thought originally of just going home for the weekend, but I figured, if I could, I'd commute.  And we went to this address on Monday morning, got a security lecture that essentially explained the “need to know” process to us and then they took - they gave us a special telephone number.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  In case we got in trouble.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  We weren't allowed to say what unit we were in or anything, but that thing worked.  And then various secretaries came in and they would take us to various locations on the Columbia Campus, and it turned out - 
MR. MCDANIEL:  Let me ask you a question.  Now was the building that you reported to first, was it at Columbia University?
MR. TEWES:	  That building was just off campus to the east.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay, of Columbia University.
MR. TEWES:	 And it was a four story brownstone building that - of a style, they're all over New York City, and we only were on the first floor, but when we came in, you could hear some typing going on the floor above.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And.
MR. MCDANIEL:  So, anyway, the secretaries came and took you to different places.
MR. TEWES:	  Yeah.  The secretary's name was Mrs. Tuttle, and she told me that she was secretary for Dr. Francis Slack.
MR. MCDANIEL:	Okay.
MR. TEWES:  It’s spelled on that thing.  I said Black - Dr. Frank Slack.  No, that's - Francis Slack.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  
MR. TEWES:  And she left me in this long room that was called the bullpen, and it also had a library in it.  And I had two instructions.  One was that there'd be other people in that room, and I could share my first name with them.  I could go out to lunch with them, but I wasn't to give any personal information.  The second thing was that there were a lot of scientific books there, and I was to bone up on gaseous diffusion.  And one of the people I met there - I only knew as Jack, but after I got down here in Oak Ridge, I saw him at work and found that he was Jack Craven who taught physics and astronomy in - at UT.  Okay?  Well, I waited nine days before I got cleared and went into see Dr. Slack, and he told me - he said, "Bill."  He said - well, first he told me, he said, "Young fellows like you, and you're going to see civilians maybe a few years older than you, go by their first names here."  He said, "You see somebody older like me in a suit.  We have been college professors, and we're accustomed to being called Dr. Slack."  He said, "You're going to find a few guys in between that will tell you how they want to be called."  And he started off by telling me that I had set a record for the longest time of getting my clearance finished.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Really?
MR. TEWES:  They'd done a lot of it beforehand, and Dr. Slack asked me if I had any idea why.  I told him yeah.  I said, "My roommate at the University of Illinois, Homer, in his freshman year, had gone to three Communist Party meetings."  I said, "And they bugged the hell out of him for about two years after that, but you know, he had - he had quit in a hurry."  And I said, "I've suspect that somebody's concerned about that."  Well, he excused himself and talked to somebody in security and explained that, and I hoped that that got Homer clearance straightened that.  But then he asked me if I had any idea what we're doing here, and I said, "Yes, sir."  I said, "I think they're working on the separation of U-235 using gaseous diffusion."    And I said and, "You're probably - I think you must be using UF-6 as the media (process gas).  You've got a lot of corrosion problems."  And I said, "I've suspect that this is a really big deal and that somebody is probably working one electromagnetic separation some other place and probably gas centrifuge."  I don't know about that liquid thermal diffusion.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  That sounds messy.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And he told me.  He said, "Well, you just set a record."  He said, "I have a lot of people who come in here and figure out that we're trying to separate U235."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  But he said, "You're the first one who mentioned alternative techniques and the size of this thing."  And he expounded on need to know.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  But I mentioned to him, I said, "You know, I think that God wants us to succeed."  And he wanted to know what the hell I was talking about, and I said, "Well, He only made one isotope of fluorine, and if He'd made two, I don't know if there's any way you could make gas diffusion work."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And he then told me that I'd be working for Don Trauger, and I would be working on an inert gas separation tests of six inch long barrier tubes.  And he called Don in, and we met, and Don took me down to the room I was going to be working in down in the basement.  And here was this room, and it was just loaded with pipes.  And I noticed a lot of them had DBS on them.  Well, I asked Don about that.  He told me.  He said, "Well."  He said, "That stands for John Dunning who really runs this place," he said.  And Eugene Booth, from LSU, and Francis Slack, from Vanderbilt, he said, "They have been working on this for several years."  And he made a point that he felt like Dr. Booth wasn't getting - well, he made this point to me later.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	That he felt like Booth wasn't getting sufficient credit for things he had invented.  They had those B4 pumps which were - he had invented that had no seals, and the Booth-Croner Gauge, which was used for pressure measurements all over K-25.  It had no seal to the process gas also.  But I worked sort of in isolation there in that one room for a while and then I started meeting some people in Slack's division, and the basement of was split half and half.  There's a guard down there, and you either went into the cyclotron or you went into the Manhattan Project. At Columbia, it was called S.A.M. Laboratories. 
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  Yeah and Union Carbide that - I never did mention the name, but I have my badge from there.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  Mainly because, for quite a while when we - after Union Carbide took over, we took about three months to move from Columbia up to the Nash Storage Garage.  Nash was a popular car before the war.  It was a seven story building at 133rd Street and Broadway, and a good deal of the equipment was moved.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  We'd move on a station wagon.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. TEWES:  And for the delicate stuff, we packed in two wheel barrows and four of us members of the Army Special Engineer Detachment took turns pushing.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  We'd each put the stuff in a wheelbarrow and go down to 125th Street and go up on Broadway, about 20 blocks.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, really?  So how far was the Nash Storage Garage?
MR. TEWES:	 Oh, it was about three subway stops away.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  Pretty good distance.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, right.
MR. TEWES:	  But Carbide had took over in - officially in March 15th -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Of?
MR. TEWES:  Of '44.
MR. MCDANIEL:  '44.  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  They had, in January, agreed to be the operating contractor in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And when they took over, a certain number of the people moved from Columbia.  Some of them went over to Kellex's lab in Jersey City.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  
MR. TEWES:  I guess about May, Dr. Slack went back to Vanderbilt.  He had short interviews with a lot of us, and he told me, if I get some kind of a undergraduate degree after the war, if I wanted to, he felt I'd benefit very much from getting a master's degree.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  But other things happened.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, we worked - when I say we, the various people, at one time or another among the GIs that worked on this job, were very Larry O'Rourke and Art Kelman were my best friends both there in New York and down here Oak Ridge.
There was Mike Stanky, who never came to Oak Ridge, Bob Vogel, who came down here and stayed until the SED shut down, and Will Carpenter, who is married and his wife came down there and got a job.  He worked in the Castle on the Hill.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  The rest of us worked as the - at K-25.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  Excuse me.
MR. MCDANIEL:  We've people got about 30 minutes left.  So are we going to have to do another session?
MR. TEWES:	  Huh?
MR. MCDANIEL:  Are - we've only got about 30 minutes left.  So are we going to need to come back and do another session with you?
MR. TEWES:  Yeah.  I'm going - with more planning, I plan to do a session about my wife.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I talked to Anne Marie about trying to get a couple of other SEDs together and doing a session on that.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.  Well, we've only got about 30 minutes of time left.  So.
MR. TEWES:  Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Just to let you know.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, let me look at -
MR. MCDANIEL:	Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Okay.  Well, I'm ready to shift to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay, good, good.
MR. TEWES:  And this was the second of July, 1945, I got my sealed orders again and orders not to go back to the Nash Building.  The only personal things I had would be sent to me.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  And I was given a track number at the Penn Station, and the time - there was some time in the afternoon.  So I went home.  My mother was, by then, pretty advanced in her cancer and was staying at a Catholic facility on 23rd Street, St. Francis, and I went by and talked to her.  Went home and packed and I also went out and - Right after payday.  So I put about half my funds into liquid assets -
MR. MCDANIEL:  There you go.
MR. TEWES:	  This country has a crazy system when it came to buying liquor.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  At Illinois, if you wanted to buy a bottle of bourbon, you got to buy a bottle of scotch and a bottle of rum.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh.
MR. TEWES:	  In New York or, better still, New Jersey, which didn't have any tax on -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  If you wanted to buy a bottle of scotch, you had to buy a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of rum.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  Well, I got a certain amount because we had been in communication with the guys down here.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And I got a bottle for Larry O'Rourke and one for Art Kellman, and I made a certain amount of profit off of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I bet you did.  
MR. TEWES:   But on the 3rd, sometime in the afternoon, I went over to Penn Station and went to the track, and there was a porter there.  And I showed him this card that I had, and he told me to get on the train.  And I was amazed.  I had an upper, and you know, I'd never had an upper before.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Wow.
MR. TEWES:	  But eventually, the train loaded up and started leaving the station.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And the Pennsylvania goes under the river.  It's electric until it gets to Newark.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Where they switch to steam.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	Whereas the New York Central goes way upstate, and a - it - the rivers - I think it misses it because it goes to Buffalo.
MR. MCDANIEL:  At the end and over.  Right.  
MR. TEWES:	Well, I was sitting there and everybody else was, and all of the sudden, this pure Irish tenor starts signing, "Pardon me, boy.  Is this the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?  Track 29.  Boy, you can give me a shine.”  And, you know, and he goes on, and everybody joined.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  That's - we sang a great deal during World War II.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  But it's - it really flowed.  The Glenn Miller -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Really?
MR. TEWES:	  Description.  “You know, read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore”.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, right.
MR. TEWES:	  “Dinner in the diner”.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  “Nothing could be finer”.
MR. TEWES:  “Could be finer” and, boy, it was a good meal.  “Then you're having eggs in Carolina”.
MR. MCDANIEL:  That's right.
MR. TEWES:  And I don't know if we really hit Carolina or not.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  
MR. TEWES:  But I do know that we ate country ham.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, sure.  How funny 
MR. TEWES:	  And got down to Knoxville about 7:00, and Art and Larry - I'm sure it was Larry.  Larry was an operator - met me with a car - not a car, a truck.
MR. MCDANIEL:  A truck.
MR. TEWES:	  Told me they'd fixed everything up with the other truck that was going to cart people out except theirs was a bigger truck.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	 The other one, you're going to sit in the back.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Back.  
MR. TEWES:	  And we went out to Barracks E.  I had my bunk set up.  They were anxious to see what I had brought with me.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, I bet they were.
MR. TEWES:	  And -
MR. MCDANIEL:  How did you get that in?  What did you do?  Back it in your suitcase?
MR. TEWES:  Pardon?
MR. MCDANIEL:  How'd you get it in?  Did  you pack it in your suitcase?
MR. TEWES:	  Suitcase?
MR. MCDANIEL:  Well, you know what I mean.  Duffle bag.  Your duffel.
MR. TEWES:	  Yeah, barracks bag.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Your barracks bag.
MR. TEWES:  Yeah.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah.
MR. TEWES:  And the porter had told me he'd be very careful with it.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh.
MR. TEWES:  Larry and Art suggested that I should ride in the back of the pickup and bring the booze next to the front.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, man.
MR. TEWES:	  But nothing was broken.
MR. MCDANIEL:  That's good.
MR. TEWES:	 And I saw some other people I knew at S.A.M.  We had really half of the barracks was either guys from S.A.M or younger fellows.
MR. MCDANIEL:	Sure.
MR. TEWES:	And we - the next morning, Larry woke me up when he left, and at 0900, I went to the office and reported to the commanding officer, Captain Barger and then they actually sort of had an assistant first sergeant there, Bill Bolen.  And Bill gave me a security lecture, and I was a little surprised when he told me that most of the SED had no idea what they were doing, that they didn't have a chance, the way we did, to find out and, you know, and that the not to say a word to them.  And the other thing was not to ever go to another plant.  I think a lot of the civilians nosed around.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And they didn't stand out the way we did.
MR. MCDANIEL:	Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  So we went to the - I went out to the plant and, for five weeks, I worked shift and did leak testing and then I moved into Development.  And I was very pleased that I was down here when they dropped the bomb, and on the 14th of August, we had one hell of a celebration.  It was all over town.  We - I don't know what happened to Larry, but Art and I were headed for the A1 apartment where we had a civilian friend and his wife.  But we hitched a ride, and we got about has far as the hospital, and whoever was driving had to park.  We went up to the tennis court.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And, my God, you could hardly - you - we didn't get in.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  But there must have been a couple of thousand in there.  They weren't dancing.  They were talking and moving around.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure. 
MR. TEWES:	  There wasn't room to dance.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  We went across.  We didn't go into the square, but we went in the parking lot above it.  There was enough room.  You could walk through, and there was a mob up there on Blankenship Field.  We came down to E1 apartments on Tennessee, and there's a party going on the first floor.  Nobody was in their room.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  Everybody was at there.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And, you know, everybody wanted to touch somebody.  They wanted to hug them.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  If - you know, if there are two women, they have their way of -
MR. MCDANIEL:	Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  Hugging and sort of hug and kiss.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Two men, you know, we sort of hug and -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Pat each other on the shoulder.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And everybody was saying, "We did it."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  "We helped end the war."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  I never heard anyone in Oak Ridge, at that time, say, "We won the war."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  I have a personal letter from the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  Obviously, it's machine made.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  But he used the expression that we did work necessary to produce the atomic bombs that brought the war in the Pacific to a successful conclusion, and that is what all of us were so proud of.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  But that night lasted until about four or 5:00 in the morning.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.  I'm sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And most of the SED made it home.  Essentially, I think most of us showed up at work the next morning, and I always remember, by then, I had moved from leak testing to development, and our division head (Dr. Clifford Beck) very wisely told everybody to do paperwork that day.  
MR. MCDANIEL:   That's right.  
[Crosstalk]
MR. TEWES:  So hangover pretty rough.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Mess up any chemicals or anything.  I would imagine that that day was probably one of the most memorable days of your life.
MR. TEWES:  It is.  The only one more memorable than that, the day I met my wife.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, right, right.
MR. TEWES:	  I celebrated VE Day in New York, and oh, that was a tremendous celebration.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  I was on night shift, and I got done working about one.  And I took the subway to Times Square.  We used to take the BMT 4th Avenue Local to get up there, and I took it down. I was going to get off at 42nd Street. Somebody came through and told everybody they weren't stopping at 42nd Street.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  You could get off at 50th or 34th.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  I got off at 50th, and you could hardly move.
MR. MCDANIEL:   I bet.
MR. TEWES:  I had wanted to go to the Aster Bar.  That's the place that all of the people in the Armed Forces meet.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  Both officers and men come to meet.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  I settled for the - it's a hotel at, I think, 47th Street, whose name doesn't want to come to me but when in there, celebrated in their bar.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	And eventually decided to go back to SAM and spend the night.  They had a room on the 7th floor -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Had a number of cots in it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And I don't know where I am on time.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Well, we've - we got about 15 minutes or so.
MR. TEWES:	  Okay.  
MR. MCDANIEL:   20 minutes.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, I will use those 15 minutes then telling you about after the war.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  Really, the government officially states that the Cold War started on September 3rd.  The formal Japanese surrender -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Was September 2nd.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  But nobody ever told us about that, and I think it's a decision that was made a lot later.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:  Essentially, General Groves said, "Keep making bombs," and we kept making bombs.  There was a lot of talk about civilian management but nothing was going on that score.  We worked until, I think, the end of October, six days a week.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And then we went to a five hour week.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Five day week.
MR. TEWES:	  Five day week.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  And on the Saturday or - no, on a Monday, I think it was the 19th, over the PA system in Lab D, Larry Allen, Kermit Larsen and I were asked to report to the division office.  Well, we'd thought we screwed up something.
MR. MCDANIEL:  What year was this?
MR. TEWES:  '45.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh,'45.  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  Yep, and but when we got up there, our division secretary, Betty Hays, she was maybe two to three years older than us, but a good looking woman.  She told us, "Hey, fellows, that isn't the boss that wants to talk to you.  It's me."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh.
MR. TEWES:	  She said, "I borrowed a flattop for Thanksgiving from a local businessman.  He lives in Knoxville.  Some evenings he has to work late."
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  "We'll use his flattop. A couple of my friends and I planned to roast a turkey.  Do you want to join us?"  Well, you know, there was a instant yes, and so -
MR. MCDANIEL:   Of course.
MR. TEWES:	  And I think it was Larry said, "Can we bring anything?"  And Betty said, "Well, you know, you might want to bring something to drink."  So we - Larry and I spent the night before Thanksgiving.  I'd gone to Town Site and to the EAT store and to the A&P, and I bought out their supply of lemons.  I found that they had bar sugar.  It is ground finer than granulated, but not fine enough to be fluffy.  I paid for the sugar like a civilian, using money and ration cards. The SED company office maintains a supply of ration cards that the SED’s could give to civilians who had fed us or gas coupons for a trip to the Smokies.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  So we converted the bought materials and the rum that we had into daiquiris.
MR. MCDANIEL: There you go.
MR. TEWES:	  We had a half gallon of jar.
MR. MCDANIEL:  There you go.
MR. TEWES:	  That was near full, and Kermit had gone down and got a case of Cokes and a case of beer and was late enough in the month.  Hey, Mabel, Black Label.
And that meant that we had to use that.  Nobody liked it very much, and so they used to give it away.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  Yeah because the amount of beer we're allowed to order the next month depended on how many empties -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, I see.
MR. TEWES:	  We returned.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I think the recycling, they didn't go back to the glass.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  They simply steamed the old labels off and -
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure and cleaned them.
MR. TEWES:	  Refilled them.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, exactly.  
MR. TEWES:	  But we - Kermit, to begin with, was built like a pro linesman.  You know, he must have been six four, six five, maybe 250.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  That was big back then.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And Larry and I figured he was the reason for us getting in.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  Because we'd plan on eating at K-25.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Well, we went up to the Lamb's Inn up at Lake City and had a big country breakfast.  Kermit was concerned maybe those girls didn't know how to roast a turkey.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  So he asked for six - and I think they gave him nine or ten chicken dinners.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And when we got down here, I had all those, and you know, each back would have a salad, and it have chicken - fried chicken, and it'd have some green beans.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Green beans.
MR. TEWES:	  And so I sort of consolidated it, and I didn't know there was anybody in the room.  And I started walking out, and I heard this voice say to me, "Solider, halt.  About face.  Three steps forward.  March.  Salute your commanding officer," which I did, and this cute little girl returned my salute sort of like that.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah.
MR. TEWES:	She said, "Solider, you're on KP."  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  And, you know, I figured, well, I should suspect she's on KP, but she's awful good looking.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah.
MR. TEWES:  I think I'll volunteer to be on KP.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And that's how I met Olive Littleton, and when we broke up that night,    I had a data for Saturday night.  And before we broke up, she made it clear that she was from Kentucky.  She said, "If you're from the Eastern Kentucky Hills, you let someone know you're from Kentucky within ten or 15 minutes."  She said, "We aren't bashful like those Texans." And she told me that, "If you're from Eastern Kentucky, you told the story.  The second time, you're expected to improve it, and if you're from Eastern Kentucky, you wore your honor like a chip on your shoulder."  And I got the Kentucky quiz, and I - part of it was who won that year's Kentucky Derby.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, is that right?
MR. TEWES:	  And I knew that, and I knew who won the Preakness and the Saratoga Stake, and she was amazed when I asked her who won the trots.  She said, "Well, we have them and but we don't pay much attention to them."
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh.
MR. TEWES:	  And we went to the dance at the Grove.
MR. MCDANIEL:	Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And that was the big thing every week, and she was dressed to the nines.  And what made me feel so good, she was wearing hose.  So I realized that maybe she was a little interested in me.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure, sure.
MR. TEWES:  And we had live music at the Grove.  The Rhythm Engineers.
MR. MCDANIEL:  The Rhythm Engineers.
MR. TEWES:	  And they were good.
MR. MCDANIEL:  They were good. 
MR. TEWES:  And they played mainly slow dances.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Hey, I want to ask you a question.  Now was there - there was another band.  Do you remember -
MR. TEWES:	  There was another band, and I don't know their name.  There was two other bands.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  But there was a band, and it's in some of the literature.  There's a band that played at the -
MR. MCDANIEL: Jefferson?
MR. TEWES:  No. It played at the Town Site Rec hall, the Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And the Ridge had two dances a week.  One was jitterbug.  One was no jitterbug.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I guess it was right after the end of the war.  There was always a dining hall at the Grove.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:  But after the war, they set up to where they sort of had a supper club, and they had a six piece outfit that was terrific.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Wow.
MR. TEWES:	  And they served the same three point two beer they served all over here.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And they served setups.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  BYOB.
MR. MCDANIEL:  BY - the reason I ask you about that other band is I interviewed a guy, about a month ago, who was a member of that other band.  He couldn't remember the name of it either.
MR. TEWES:	  Oh, Jake Horton.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Jake Horton.
MR. TEWES:	  Okay, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Yeah.
MR. TEWES:	  Jake Horton used to - I'm sure glad you interviewed Jake.  I don't know the name of it either.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  He couldn't remember, but he played trumpet and upright bass, he said.
MR. TEWES:	  And he also told me he sat in for Harry Robbins, who played the bass.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right, exactly.  Exactly.
MR. TEWES:	  So Jake and I are old golf buddies.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Oh, okay.  All right.  We're about to run out of time.  
MR. TEWES:	  Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Not yet but we've got about -
MR. TEWES:	  Oh, okay.
MR. MCDANIEL:  I'll give you about another five or six minutes.
MR. TEWES:	  Okay.  I'll concentrate on introducing you to the woman who became my wife.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. TEWES:  Olive Littleton hired in to Tennessee Eastman at almost the same time that I went to Columbia, and our badge numbers tell a big story.  My badge number with Carbide was 790.  I kept it when I came down here.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  Her badge number with Tennessee Eastman was 10409. 
MR. MCDANIEL:  Okay.
MR. TEWES:  They had been here much longer.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  They separated.  They did most of the separated work for Little Boy.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:    She worked in what is now the Tunnell Building in Tennessee Eastman Corporation's employment office except that she worked as an accountant. (She graduated from Eastern Kentucky in Dec. 1943 with a B.S. in Business).
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And her - in a section that was called Travel Allowance.  Everybody they hired in was promised a house or something, and they may get it three or four months later.  And so they had a group of accountants that tried to make their requests a little bit more legitimate.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And then she had on the job training at the Division Office in Beta Three.  She says a real sharp SED taught her, and she wanted to become a statistician.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And there, she was Ollie Littleton.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. TEWES:	  And the second - the first night - some fellow - and all I can remember of his name and SED, Tony came up and asked me if she could dance with him.  We were polite about things like that.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  And I told him, "Sure."  And I started to introduce her, and Tony said, "Yeah, I know her name."  He said, "Her name is Audrey.  Little Audrey."  Well, you know, there's a little bit of laughter. (There was a comic book called "Little Audrey")
MR. MCDANIEL:  Sure.
MR. TEWES:	  But they took off, and I thought he was never going to bring her back.  And she told me - she said, "Boy."  She said, "If ever I'm feeling low, if I could just get Tony for one dance," she said, "That would revive me."  She said, "I have never heard such a line before."  And so, a little bit later, I asked her to dance.
MR. MCDANIEL:	Yeah.
MR. TEWES:	  And I said, "Ollie - or, Audrey, would you like to dance?"  She was Audrey for the rest of her life.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.  Is that right?  Well, any final words for now?
MR. TEWES:	  For now?  Yes.  Oak Ridge - I have lived here since I was a GI.  I love it.  I wish that the generation that followed me and the generation that's following them would get it back to the shape it was in when I was having children - when my wife was having children.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  I - you know, the crime is just awful.  We didn't have that.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  There isn't the camaraderie we had, but it's still the best place to live.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I have worked a lot on oral histories.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Right.
MR. TEWES:	  And I never realized how fast the time goes.  
MR. MCDANIEL:  Well, thank you.  Thank you, Bill, for talking to us, and maybe we'll have a chance to - I know there's a whole lot you didn't get a chance to say, and maybe we'll have another opportunity to -
MR. TEWES:	  I hope so.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Pick up where we left off.
MR. TEWES:	  Right.
MR. MCDANIEL:  Thank you.  

[End of Interview]

[Editor’s Note: At Mr. Tewes request, several portions of this transcript have been edited.  The corresponding video interview has not been edited.]