Keyes, John

              ORAL HISTORY OF JOHN KEYES
Interviewed and filmed by Keith McDaniel
December 15, 2010 
Mr. McDaniel: This is Keith McDaniel. Today is December the 15th, 2010. I am at the home of John Keyes, here in Oak Ridge. Mr. Keyes, thank you for taking time to sit down with me and talk with me.
Dr. Keyes: Well, glad to be able to, hopefully, help you.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, good. Also, I will say, obviously, I’ve got a little bit of cold, and little cough, so those that are listening, please forgive me. [coughs] All right.
Dr. Keyes: Would you like some water?
Mr. McDaniel: I am good. If I need some water, we’ll stop –
Dr. Keyes: You holler.
Mr. McDaniel: I’ll get some. Mr. Keyes, tell me a little bit about where you were born, and where you grew up and something about your family.
Dr. Keyes: Well, my mother and dad lived in Pittsburgh, outside Pittsburgh, in what they call the Borough of Wilkinsburg, which is east of the main downtown part of Pittsburgh. I was actually born in a hospital, 1925. At that time, my parents were living in an apartment in Wilkinsburg, PA. I remember the apartment very well, a good many years back. Then they moved to another area of town which was about five or six miles away called Regions Square. It’s a suburb of Wilkinsburg. So I went to elementary school in Regions Square, the Regions Square School from kindergarten through grade six.
Mr. McDaniel: What did your father do for a living?
Dr. Keyes: My father was an engineer for Westinghouse Electric Corporation in East Pittsburgh. Yes. He was a developer of some of the very early types of electrical insulation for wires. In fact, some of the insulation that he developed went into the old, huge, big generators like Boulder Dam and Grand Coulee Dam out West. That’s what he did as an engineer. 
Mr. McDaniel: What about your mother? 
Dr. Keyes: My mother was a homemaker. She had taught school in Pittsburgh before she married my dad. After she married, she stayed as a homemaker and active in church activities and other civic organizations, but not working as you could call ‘gainfully employed,’ making a living wage or anything like that.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, sure.
Dr. Keyes: But she worked hard, because she was a fastidious housekeeper and loved playing bridge. She and my dad were great bridge players, too. Something I never got too involved in in my life.
Mr. McDaniel: So, you grew up there and you went to elementary school. You were about to say you finished – 
Dr. Keyes: Yeah. Then, my parents decided that they wanted me to go to a school outside of the Pittsburgh School System. The Pittsburgh School System, at that time, was trying out a lot of modern ideas. I went through sixth grade without having math or spelling or anything like that. I mean the teachers – it was art. We drew and we did dramatic things. This was in grade school. 
Mr. McDaniel: This was probably mid ’30s, right?
Dr. Keyes: Yes, right.
Mr. McDaniel: My goodness.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah. They had an idea that a rounded individual had to have the niceties and the three R’s would come anyway. So, my folks moved to another suburb called Edgewood, where the school was more traditional. I went into what they called junior high school. I had Latin. I had algebra, right off the bat, and here I came in, in the middle of a quarter, and I was just flabbergasted. I had to get some tutoring help. But I got along real well in algebra and math in junior high school. Went on into high school, and went to the Edgewood High School and graduated in 1942.
Mr. McDaniel: I imagine your parents were both – education was real important to them, a good education. 
Dr. Keyes: Yes, sir. My dad was a – I think – 1908 graduate of Auburn University in Alabama. He was from Alabama. My mother graduated from what they called a Normal School back then, Teachers College. 
Mr. McDaniel: Teachers College.
Dr. Keyes: Normal. She taught school, as I said. 
Mr. McDaniel: Now, did you have any brothers or sisters?
Dr. Keyes: No. I did not have any brothers or sisters. I am an only.
Mr. McDaniel: So, you graduated high school in what year?
Dr. Keyes: 1942. I went on to Carnegie, at that time, was Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1942, a Chemical Engineering major. I held out as long as – until ’44, June of ’44, when the Draft Board finally got their hooks on me. As my grades were super high and I had a letter from the Dean of Engineering, the draft board exempted me from service up to a certain point. Then with the quota, the draft board, our local – you know how it works. I was called in and got my famous greeting from President Franklin Roosevelt and reported, ended up in Camp Blanding, Florida, IRTC. 
Now, a little story might be of interest. We went to an indoctrination center in Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania, first. The rumor started there that we were going to go into the Air Force on our way down. We got on the troop train. We headed down, we didn’t know where, but finally, we decided we’re going to Florida. We must be going to the Air Force – a lot of disappointed guys. When we got off the train and saw a big sign, “Welcome to the IRTC.” One of the men that was with me said, “How do you get ‘Air Force’ out of that?” It stands for the Infantry Replacement Training Center.” 
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Dr. Keyes: We were going into the infantry, not the Air Force. But I had nine weeks of basic [training]. At that time, they were needing some people with – I should go back a little bit. I had two and a half years of chemical engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology which is now Carnegie Mellon University, when I was drafted. So, I was in school – maybe I didn’t make that clear – drafted out of the middle of my junior year, ended up there in IRTC. They came around interviewing people. When they found I had that much background, they decided they could do something with me other than hand me a rifle and send me over to Europe or wherever. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Dr. Keyes: So, they sent me to Virginia Polytechnic Institute for electrical engineering. V.T., it’s called now, Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. I was, as I said, taking electrical engineering, figuring we’d be going into the Signal Corps since it was electrical and we thought that’s where we’d end up. Well, some man, person came by interviewing, and he was looking for anybody with any chemical background. They needed chemists. So, they picked me and several other people that were in the class with me who had some background in chemistry or related science, engineering, and sent us down here.
Mr. McDaniel: To Oak Ridge.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah, to Oak Ridge.
Mr. McDaniel: What did they tell you about where they were sending you?
Dr. Keyes: Nothing much. No, we didn’t get much information, as I remember. Now, this is another kind of a sideline. My father in his work at Westinghouse Electric knew about Oak Ridge. I remember him talking to me about this huge, big project in – he just said, “Tennessee.” He called it the Stone and Webster Project. They were one of the early contractors here. That didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but then when I got down here and saw that name, Stone and Webster, and realized that that’s the company my dad was talking about. But I didn’t know what they were doing, and he didn’t mention anything about what they did; he just said, “a big project.” 
Mr. McDaniel: Right. 
Dr. Keyes: I was assigned to K-25. We sat in the bullpen for about, oh, a couple weeks while our clearance came through.
Mr. McDaniel: Now about when was that? When did you come to Oak Ridge?
Dr. Keyes: I came here, the best I can remember was May or June of ’45.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay.
Dr. Keyes: It was before the bomb was dropped. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Dr. Keyes: May or June of ’45. Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. That was about the time K-25 had been completed. 
Dr. Keyes: It was – part of it was in operation.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, part of it was in operation.
Dr. Keyes: My first assignment was in the leak testing of the large converters with the helium leak testing. I remember, didn’t know what I was working on at that time, but I saw a big sign said, “This is the most important project – you’re working on the most important work in the United States today.”
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Dr. Keyes: But we don’t know what it was.
Mr. McDaniel: So, what did you think, when you first saw K-25, that huge, huge building?
Dr. Keyes: When I first saw and was introduced to it and put inside the plant, working with uranium hexafluoride, which we didn’t know – I didn’t know it was uranium, code names for it. But I knew it was a gas. I said, “Well, they must be making a poisonous gas here.”
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly.
Dr. Keyes: It wasn’t long though that – and this is a true story – I ran into an old, not so old, but a physics professor from Carnegie Mellon Institute of Technology, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon. He talked to me about what was going on here. He was working at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, not in K-25, theoretical on the fission project, fission problem of making an explosive by nuclear fission. And he told me more than he should ever have told me.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Dr. Keyes: Yeah. He told me about uranium and fissioning and possibility of a bomb and all this stuff.
Mr. McDaniel: This was before the bomb was dropped.
Dr. Keyes: Oh, yeah. This was like in May or June – June maybe of ’45. He told me about that. I learned a little bit about uranium fission, uranium 235. He got me in trouble one time, because I had a meeting at K-25 – well, I jumped ahead. Let me mention something here. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Dr. Keyes: After about a month of working in leak testing, which meant crawling around inside these converter cells, which were pretty hot, my buddy and I, who was in my class at Virginia Tech, Richard Lowery, decided we need to get something a little bit more professional, a little bit more along the lines of our training and background. We didn’t know anything about Army red tape, but we went right straight, one evening, to the colonel – not the colonel, I guess he was a captain that had a superintendent rating and was working with us. We knew who he was. Went to his apartment one evening and told him that we had this kind of background. Both of us had engineering backgrounds. He said, “Well, I can do something about that.” The next – I think it was in two days, we were assigned to the Laboratory from the plant.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Dr. Keyes: I went into what’s called the Works Laboratory.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, let me ask you. So, you were an officer. Were you – 
Dr. Keyes: No, no. I was – 
Mr. McDaniel: Excuse me.
Dr. Keyes: No, I was talking about – the captain was one of the few officers that we had, other than those that worked in the, I guess in the office.
Mr. McDaniel: But you were in the military, so you were part of the Special Engineering Detachment? 
Dr. Keyes: I was a part of the Special – well, I should have mentioned that. Yeah. When I was sent here from Virginia Tech, I was already in the military. I had my basic training in Army camp. Well, I should have made that clear.
Mr. McDaniel: You did. I was just – 
Dr. Keyes: Just a private, of course.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Dr. Keyes: And I was a private when I came here. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. But you were still part of the SED, as a military person.
Dr. Keyes: I was a part of the SED that was assigned to Oak Ridge. Some went to Los Alamos. Some went to Hanford. This group, we were barracked there, roughly where I guess the mall is now, in that general area for a while. Then moved into some dorms, much nicer accommodations.
Mr. McDaniel: So, you got transferred over to the lab, you and your buddy.
Dr. Keyes: No. I meant – not then. I worked in the K-25 Laboratory.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay, K-25 Laboratory.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah, the Laboratory at K-25. They had separate lab divisions.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly.
Dr. Keyes: So, we got out of the plant environment, and I learned a good bit about the process that way, working in the plant for some time, a month or so. Then, based on our boldness to go ahead and go up the line, we were privates and went up the line and got to see a person who could get us transferred. We got into the Laboratory Division. I was in what’s called the Works Lab.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. You were living in Oak Ridge when you were working in K-25.
Dr. Keyes: Oh, yes. 
Mr. McDaniel: Did you have to ride a cattle car out there, a bus? 
Dr. Keyes: Yes, a rickety Army bus from the barracks area, which is – they call it Midtown now.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, Midtown area. 
Dr. Keyes: Yeah, back and forth in the old, whatever you call them, cattle car. Yeah. Of course, I was single. I had no transportation other than that and my two feet. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. You were, at this point, you were probably what, twenty, twenty-one?
Dr. Keyes: See, ’45 – ’25 to ’45 – twenty.
Mr. McDaniel: Twenty. You were twenty.
Dr. Keyes: I was twenty, yeah. I was nineteen when I was drafted, but I was going – I wasn’t even dry behind the ears sort of. Then to be into this was quite a thrill really.
Mr. McDaniel: So you worked in the Chemistry Laboratory, I guess, at K-25.
Dr. Keyes: It was called the Works Lab. What we were doing was developing processes for testing the barrier material with uranium hexafluoride. It was a combination of chemistry and physics. 
Mr. McDaniel: Were you working there when the bomb was dropped?
Dr. Keyes: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Tell what you remember about that.
Dr. Keyes: Well, I was not completely surprised because of what I’d heard from this physics professor that this was what they were working on here. I was glad to know that there’s – now, I think, I hope that the horrible war that was going on in the Pacific at that time was going to come to an end. I think we got a half a day off from work, as I remember. I remember going up into town, and there was a huge crowd, you know. You’ve seen the picture that Ed Westcott [took], called “War Ends.” I have a copy of that paper right here. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. 
Dr. Keyes: Excitement, and the idea – the thought of being a contributor to that at that time, I guess one of the most technically complicated and large scientific projects, at least in the U.S. history.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, absolutely.
Dr. Keyes: No question about it.
Mr. McDaniel: No question.
Dr. Keyes: In fact, that whole decade – it stands out. 
Mr. McDaniel: After the bomb was dropped and the war eventually ended – Japan surrendered, a lot of people just left. A lot of people – and of course, you couldn’t. You were in the Army.
Dr. Keyes: Well, I stayed until – yeah, I stayed for a while. My wife, Charlotte that you met, we were just talking about it. She came down to see me after the bomb dropped. I was here. She was one of those living at the Alexander Inn. Somebody asked me – I said, “I hope they preserve that.” And he said, “Why you want to preserve that old wreck of a building?” I said, “Well, I tell you, not just Fermi, and I guess it was some of the top leaders in the – but your mother!��� This was my son said that: “Why put money into the restoration of that dilapidated old building?” I said – you know. 
Mr. McDaniel: Tell me about, how did you meet your wife and where did you meet her?
Dr. Keyes: Oh, I met her when I was in Army specialized training. I don’t know whether I said that, but at Virginia Tech, we were what we were called part of the ASTP, Army Specialized Training. She was a student at Radford College in Radford, Virginia which is a neighboring town to Blacksburg. 
Mr. McDaniel: Now was that – was Radford College, was that a women’s college?
Dr. Keyes: It was a women’s college strictly at that time. It’s now, I guess, they call it University of Radford.
Mr. McDaniel: Radford University.
Dr. Keyes: Co-ed. But the girls wanted to have dances, and so they bused us GIs from – Virginia Tech was primarily a military school then. I think there were only half a dozen civilian cadets. It was mostly – it was Army pretty much. And they bused us over there for dances. I met Charlotte in one of those dances that the girls over at Radford University held. After I left, came to Oak Ridge, we kept in touch by mail, mainly. 
Mr. McDaniel: And she came to see you.
Dr. Keyes: She came down to see me in like October, November of ’45, after the drop. I was still here until that next summer, something like that. I had declined the opportunity to go to the Bikini test in the Pacific. I could have done that, because they were asking for volunteers to go to the atomic bomb test in the Bikini Atoll. I declined then. I wanted to finish up my schooling. I just had two-and-a-half years. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Okay. So you left Oak Ridge in ’46, I guess.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah, about sometime or somewhere around there, ’46.
Mr. McDaniel: What did you do? Did you go back to school?
Dr. Keyes: I went back to Carnegie. It was still Carnegie Institute of Technology and finished up and graduated [in] ’47.
Mr. McDaniel: Now when you left Oak Ridge, were you discharged from the military, or were you still in the military?
Dr. Keyes: I was discharged, honorably discharged, yes. 
Mr. McDaniel: Okay. So you’d served your two years.
Dr. Keyes: I served around two years, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Then went back and graduated.
Dr. Keyes: Went back to school and in the meantime, my folks had moved to 
another part of Pittsburgh. I commuted on a streetcar, as I remember.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Dr. Keyes: The old trolley cars that they have. They still have them in Pittsburgh. 
Mr. McDaniel: So you graduated from Carnegie in ’47.
Dr. Keyes: ’47. Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Then what happened?
Dr. Keyes: Well, I went to work at DuPont. Let’s see, DuPont, for one summer, yeah, DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware, for a summer. Then I went – decided to go – I went to work for – oh, I married in ’48. Don’t let me forget that. We married in ’48. After we married, I went to work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, BNL. It was one of the early – well, it was about the same generation as ORNL. It was formed by universities up in the Northeast.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, Brookhaven, was that in New York?
Dr. Keyes: Long Island, up in New York. Yeah, up in Long Island. Yeah, still strong. They had the world’s second nuclear reactor. The first one of course, is here, the Graphite Reactor. They had the second one. They called it the Brookhaven Pile. I was designated a Pile Engineer.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay. So, that’s what you did when you went to Brookhaven. You worked on their reactor. 
Dr. Keyes: Actually, I worked for the Hot Lab that took the isotopes from the cells of the reactor and processed them. That’s where I was involved with the chemistry of the processing of uranium. They call them “slugs,” uranium slugs that were removed out of the Pile. 
Mr. McDaniel: Now, was the Brookhaven Pile, was it like the Graphite Reactor?
Dr. Keyes: Yeah, it was. 
Mr. McDaniel: Same principle. You put uranium slugs in it.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah, right, same sort of thing. I think it was a higher powered �� larger all together, but it was number two, as far as the world was concerned.
Mr. McDaniel: You worked in the Hot Cell Lab. 
Dr. Keyes: They called it the Hot Lab, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, when the uranium slugs came out.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Then you processed them.
Dr. Keyes: One of my assignments was to develop a means for measuring the amount of xenon. When you dissolve the uranium in nitric acid, you get evolution of radioactive xenon. It has to be absorbed, and I got working on some of the equipment to take the xenon out, and also to measure the activity of the xenon as you removed it. It definitely had to be handled as a radioactive material. It had a fairly, long enough half-life to be a serious problem if you released it.
Mr. McDaniel: How long did you stay at Brookhaven?
Dr. Keyes: I just stayed a year at Brookhaven. I decided to go back to graduate school. I left a little bit out in the meantime. I guess I’d forgotten about this. 
Mr. McDaniel: That’s okay. We’ve got time. Go ahead.
Dr. Keyes: Just before I married, like in early ’48, I went to University of Michigan. My folks moved to – Dad was transferred from Pittsburgh, my dad who was an engineer, to Buffalo, New York. I stayed with them some time, a month or so. Then I entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan and got a Master’s in Chem E.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay.
Dr. Keyes: At University of Michigan just before we married. That would have been in ’48, early ’48, yeah. 
Mr. McDaniel: How long did it take you to get your Master’s?
Dr. Keyes: Well, I guess it was close to a year. So I guess, I started in – I got out in ’47. I guess I started working on it before – late in ’47. We were married in summer of ’48.
Mr. McDaniel: Then you went to Brookhaven.
Dr. Keyes: Then went to Brookhaven, worked there about a year and then went to University of Delaware with an Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship. There I worked from ’48 to ’52, and got a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. See, they were tied very closely with DuPont Corporation. They had a strong Chem E department because of their affiliation with DuPont.
Mr. McDaniel: I would imagine that this whole time, that whole timeframe that you were in the Army and the work that was going on in Oak Ridge, and then, after the war, the continuing work in that field of science was professionally very exciting. It was a fairly new field, and you were kind of on the ground floor of some of the work that was done. 
Dr. Keyes: Most of my career has had some connection with the atomic program. I did my thesis and my research on a process for separating uranium isotopes that’s different from gaseous diffusion. It’s called “sweep diffusion.” But anyway – that was related – but I was on the Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship.
Mr. McDaniel: So, you were on the – 
Dr. Keyes: So, I stayed that way, and because there was interest in Oak Ridge in this alternate process, it didn’t require the barrier material, which I won’t go into any details, because I understand that barrier material is still – barrier technology is still classified.
Mr. McDaniel: Barrier is still classified. We can kind of talk in general or we kind of know what it does, but as far as the specifics of it, it’s classified.
Dr. Keyes: But anyway, they were interested in my thesis work and that was a good reason why I ended up coming here. I started back at K-25 in ’52. Yeah. I was in the laboratory there, different laboratory, but working on the barrier, continuing what I did when I was a GI, but a number of years later. 
Mr. McDaniel: And a number of years later with a Ph.D. Is that right?
Dr. Keyes: Right. Do you know who – 
Mr. McDaniel: And that was in – you said that was ’52; you came back in ’52.
Dr. Keyes: Donald Trotter. You know who he is?
Mr. McDaniel: Mr. Trotter. Yes, I did.
Dr. Keyes: He was, I guess, kind of our group leader for a while. I kind of got interested in some of the things he was doing. He was – I don’t know whether it’s well known – he had a process for separating uranium isotopes by distillation, molecular distillation. I’m sorry. Let me back up. 
Mr. McDaniel: That’s okay.
Dr. Keyes: Lithium isotopes, not uranium. I don’t know why I said that. Lithium isotopes. They were related to the H-bomb. Lithium 6 to lithium 7, I didn’t mean uranium.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s okay.
Dr. Keyes: You don’t separate uranium that way. But lithium.
Mr. McDaniel: I was about to say, I’d never heard of that process.
Dr. Keyes: No. Molecular distillation. It worked at a pilot plant. Then he moved over to X-10, ORNL, X-10 at Y-12.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly. 
Dr. Keyes: I followed him over there, but I didn’t work in his group. I was assigned to another group, but we were both working on the same project and it was called the ANP Program, Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay.
Dr. Keyes: High temperature liquid metals and fused salt technology. That was like five years after I came here, about ’57 maybe that I got involved in that.
Mr. McDaniel: What was the purpose of that work?
Dr. Keyes: Well, it was to develop a reactor to put aboard an aircraft, so it would keep the aircraft flying indefinitely. At that time, the motivation, I guess, was to have a refueling capability, a continuous refueling capability, long range, not having to land and refuel and decided that the difficulty of the project and the cost, but that wasn’t what killed it. It was the safety aspects. They really didn’t have a shield design – now, I’m not sure. This is out of my area. I was developing equipment to study the effect of liquid metals and fused salts on metals, the containment metals, heat transfer surfaces, and so forth. But the shielding of the crew from the reactor – I never felt that they had solved that problem, the weight problem. In the meantime, air-to-air refueling developed. The Air Force developed that, as they do now from the tankers. So, they didn’t need a plane that could run around without having to stop and refuel. They had refueling capability.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s kind of – in some of my research that I’ve done, that’s kind of what I understood was to have enough shielding for the crew, it would make it – it was too heavy. It was just – 
Dr. Keyes: Well, of course now, I think you would find a problem would be the safety aspect for people on the ground if you had a crash.
Mr. McDaniel: Exactly.
Dr. Keyes: But they put them into space, they put reactors. The Russians have one.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. So you did that for five years. You worked on that for five years, wouldn’t you say, about? 
Dr. Keyes: Well, I guess – I guess, that was a little more than five years. I’m trying to think. That was in the ’70s. When did I – I moved over back to K-25, and this time it was the Gas Centrifuge Project came along. So, I’m not sure exactly how long I worked on the ANP Program, but it was stopped in the ’70s. 
Mr. McDaniel: In the ’70s. 
Dr. Keyes: The Gas Centrifuge Program went on into the mid ’80s.
Mr. McDaniel: Mid ’80s, right.
Dr. Keyes: I was working on it when it was cut the first time. But now, it’s reared its ugly head again. Well, I shouldn’t say that.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, it’s in Portsmouth, isn’t it?
Dr. Keyes: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: It’s in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Dr. Keyes: They’re doing work on it here, research development, development work, yeah. But the plant is, well, that’s where the Gas Centrifuge Plant originally was built. They were still – there are still many centrifuges up there, but the technology is improved now, over what it was back then.
Mr. McDaniel: On the Centrifuge Project, what did you do? Did you just work on a more efficient process? 
Dr. Keyes: We were in – my group ran smaller, shorter centrifuges studying the performance characteristics as a function of a variable like the speed and trying to improve the efficiency, the “swus,” they called them: separative work units produced per unit. I can’t go in – that’s classified, too.
Mr. McDaniel: You can’t talk about that. That’s fine. 
Dr. Keyes: The technology of the centrifuge is what they call now the American Centrifuge.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Dr. Keyes: Of course, it was a German – 
Mr. McDaniel: The first one was the Zippy, wasn’t it?
Dr. Keyes: The Zippy is a German guy who designed and developed the successful centrifuge technology. That’s what we were using, his basic idea, Zippy.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. 
Dr. Keyes: I think some said it’s pronounced “Zippa,” actually like, Zippa, “a” but it’s Zippy. I call it Zippy.
Mr. McDaniel: Everybody calls it Zippy.
Dr. Keyes: He came over here and showed us how to do it. Oh, no, first, I understood – have, you have talked to Ed Van Holly, yet?
Mr. McDaniel: No, but I’ve talked to several folks a little about it. 
Dr. Keyes: Well, the story I got from – that he went to Russia and gave Russia his ideas on how to make an improved gas centrifuge. I heard this story, don’t know how true it is. Well, his conscience bothered him a little bit, so he contacted Dr. Jesse Beams at the University of Virginia. They brought him over here. He wanted to tell us what he told the Russians. 
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? But he was a German, right?
Dr. Keyes: He was German, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: He was German. I knew that he came to Dr. Beams at the University 
of Virginia.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah, right.
Mr. McDaniel: Then that’s how the Zippy came to Oak Ridge – 
Dr. Keyes: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: It was kind of the fundamental basis of all the centrifuge work.
Dr. Keyes: You got that right. You have that absolutely right, yeah. But today they have, I don’t know. I can’t – I wasn’t involved in that. But that’s the – but I was working on some of the internal hardware, that’s all I can say, of gas centrifuge.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay. Then of course, they shut the program down in the mid 
’80s.
Dr. Keyes: ’85, I think, something like that.
Mr. McDaniel: ’85. What were you doing? You weren’t retired by then, were you?
Dr. Keyes: No, I retired in 1990. I did a number of different jobs. One of the jobs was for Y-12 and related to hardware for the weapons, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, classified work.
Dr. Keyes: Right.
Mr. McDaniel: I understand.
Dr. Keyes: Some special heat transfer work that related to nothing, really, just basic technology – 
Mr. McDaniel: Basic research. I understand.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah. I’m sure that it was intended to have some value.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, of course. 
Dr. Keyes: In the meantime, I had started doing some consulting work with the PAI Corporation, Professional Analysis. They’re a local company owned and operated by a Vietnamese family. So, after – well, even before I retired, I was doing some work with them. Then when I retired, I started working half-time maybe, for [them] and for another company which you may not know about, Delta M Corporation. I was always interested in instrumentation. Delta M Corporation makes instrumentation for the nuclear industry among other things. So up until about four years ago, I was doing some consulting work with them. But I did retire in 1990 from full-time work.
Mr. McDaniel: From the lab.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, you had a long career then, didn’t you, in Oak Ridge.
Dr. Keyes: Well, yeah. Actually, it started, like I said, in ’45. But then I left, and came back in ’52. So I’ve continuously been in this house since ’54.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah. Tell me about this house. Was this the first privately built house?
Dr. Keyes: First privately occupied. Now there were some – yeah, there were some houses – this house up here on the corner, brick house, started about just a little bit after ours. But we were the first to occupy a privately built house.
Mr. McDaniel: In Oak Ridge.
Dr. Keyes: On rented land, rented or leased land from the U.S. Government, ninety-nine-year lease. 
Mr. McDaniel: Now had a developer come in and built this house? Or did you all have it built?
Dr. Keyes: No, no. We had to do all our own. We had to find a contractor, yeah. We were lucky to get – we felt we got a good contractor. The Woody Company, actually from Kingston, I think.
Mr. McDaniel: You had a lease on the land.
Dr. Keyes: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: Do you still lease the land?
Dr. Keyes: Oh, no. The land was sold, not too long after. We moved in – I said in ’54, didn’t I. 
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah.
Dr. Keyes: About maybe ’60 we owned the land.
Mr. McDaniel: So, Don and Joe Woody from Kingston built this house, you think.
Dr. Keyes: What was his – it was a Woody.
Mr. McDaniel: There’s brothers, Don and Joe. 
Dr. Keyes: Raymond Woody. 
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, Ray Woody, okay.
Dr. Keyes: Ray Woody. Did you know who they are?
Mr. McDaniel: Now, I know Don and Joe. That might have been their father or another brother. I know Don and Joe from Kingston.
Dr. Keyes: Well, that’s who – it was Ray Woody. [referring to his wife] She remembers better than, I do.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay. You moved in here. Now, when you moved here in ’54, did you have children?
Dr. Keyes: We had one son. Yeah. He was our oldest son, John, whose picture’s sitting there on the front stoop, in ’55.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, ’55. 
Dr. Keyes: I guess he was actually born in January of ’54.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you have other kids?
Dr. Keyes: Richard, our younger son, was born in ’56, and that’s it. We just have the two sons. 
Mr. McDaniel: The two boys. 
Dr. Keyes: Both grew up here, went to school here, both born in the old hospital here in Oak Ridge, the Army hospital.
Mr. McDaniel: What did you and your wife – what kind of social activities or things that – when you started realizing that Oak Ridge was your home, or at least it started to feel like it was home?
Dr. Keyes: People thought we were kind of stupid, or not – foolish, I guess is a better word, to build a house here, you know. This place won’t be around very long. It’s an Army town and – [laughter] 
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Dr. Keyes: Here we are. 
Mr. McDaniel: Here we are. Yeah, but did you have – 
Dr. Keyes: Oh, social – 
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah. Did you have clubs – 
Dr. Keyes: Sure, church related. Yeah. Charlotte was in a special club of lady bridge players. Oh, I was interested in – I am still interested in amateur radio. I was a member of the Amateur Radio Club here back in the early ’50s. I got interested in flying. I got a pilot’s license, an instructor’s license and joined the Flying 64th over here at, we call it the – it was called the Atomic Airport in Oliver Springs. Oliver Springs, OSI, Oliver Springs International, anybody mention that to you?
Mr. McDaniel: Yes, the Oliver Springs International Airport.
Dr. Keyes: OSI, yeah. I had several planes over there, on and off, and flying club.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, do you still fly? 
Dr. Keyes: No, unfortunately, my medical is not renewable. You have to have a medical every two years. I was an instructor over here for a while. Even not worrying about that, you have to have a medical every couple of years. I have a little heart murmur – I don’t know why there’s such a thing as a little heart murmur – it’s not debilitating me, but it’s controlled. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, I understand.
Dr. Keyes: Medication. No, I wouldn’t be able to get licensed now. I mean, it’s not a matter of license. I have to have a medical to go with it. I have the license, it’s good forever, unless you mess up. But the medical is the big thing you have to have.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, what was life like for you all growing up in – I mean really, you were young when you finally settled in Oak Ridge in ’52. 
Dr. Keyes: Well, we were – it was a young town. There were a lot of things going on here. A lot of social life, dances, I guess you know about Bill Pollock’s tennis court dances. You’ve heard all about – 
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, yes.
Dr. Keyes: I guess a good many activities did focus or center around the church. We were members of First Presbyterian Church here at that time, the early days. I guess you’d say we had an eating club. We met to talk and eat.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right, there you go.
Dr. Keyes: I mentioned the Amateur Radio Club. Some of those guys are still around. I still operate amateur radio. My younger son’s a Ham radio operator.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? So, when y’all moved back in ’52, the Gates were already open. The Gates had opened in ’49. 
Dr. Keyes: Right.
Mr. McDaniel: So you didn’t have to worry too much about that. But Oak Ridge didn’t become a city until ’59. 
Dr. Keyes: That’s right.
Mr. McDaniel: What were your recollections or thoughts about that?
Dr. Keyes: Well, we weren’t concerned about it ever becoming a city. We didn’t want it to grow to be too much of a city, either. I don’t really have a good recollection of any concerns we had that it wasn’t a city. When it became a city, I was thankful and glad that it got its status established and people know about us now. For so long, nobody knew us. Still some people, when you say you’re from Tennessee, they’ll ask you, “Well, tell me about Dollywood.”
Mr. McDaniel: Of course. 
Dr. Keyes: Or Opryland.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly. 
Dr. Keyes: That’s what they think about, not – 
Mr. McDaniel: Well, as you look back on your career and your life in Oak Ridge, and your work in Oak Ridge, what are some of the things that kind of stand out as things that make an impact on you or other folks?
Dr. Keyes: Well, one thing, we think it’s a wonderful place to live. We raised two sons here. They both had good school experiences, went to Glenwood School, grade school, and then to Oak Ridge Junior High, and John was in the old junior high, and Richard was in the new junior high. We never thought about leaving here. There’s so much to do here. We don’t feel like we even need to go to Knoxville every often. We may be different from – I’ve never shopped in Turkey Creek. [Editor’s note: Turkey Creek is a shopping complex in the greater Knoxville area.]
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right.
Dr. Keyes: [pointing to his wife] She has, maybe, but she does that kind of shopping.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Dr. Keyes: Oh, an interesting thought that might be worth expressing. When Charlotte first came here, I had to take a bus into Knoxville to pick her up. She came from Virginia. She was living in Bedford, Virginia, teaching school there as a matter of fact. 
Got on the train, came down here to Knoxville and I got on the bus and brought her out here. It happened to be close to midnight, wee hours of the morning. Here we drive into Jackson Square, she couldn’t believe it. The place was wide open. 
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right.
Dr. Keyes: People were �� they had shopping there at Loveman’s or I don’t know what it was back then, the stores. She’d never seen anything like that in her life. 
Mr. McDaniel: Well, Oak Ridge back then, I mean it was kind of twenty-four hours a day.
Dr. Keyes: Oh, yes. It was. There were shift people working all shifts. They had to shop, you know, and stores were open, like I said, wee hours of the morning. But that impressed her, and I felt this town, unfortunately, I think – I’m not happy about the situation with our mall. We loved the mall. We used it a lot. We shopped in it. We ate in it and we walked in it.
Mr. McDaniel: Absolutely.
Dr. Keyes: That’s been a concern, but I got from Bill Wilcox this week – I missed the meeting that was held December 9th [2010], I think it was.
Mr. McDaniel: The SED.
Dr. Keyes: SED, yeah. So, he sent me the report that was issued there. What made me think about it was Bill was one of our directors in the Gas Centrifuge Program, as you know. I just sent him a letter thanking him for sending me the report and for his activities and wishing him all the best of luck in promoting the Oak Ridge Heritage & Preservation activities. Is that what it is?
Mr. McDaniel: Oak Ridge Heritage & Preservation Association.
Dr. Keyes: Association, yeah. I knew he was very active in that.
Mr. McDaniel: He’s very active.
Dr. Keyes: As I said, he was director of one of our divisions at the Gas Centrifuge.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, is there anything that you’d like to talk about or anything you would like to mention that I’ve not asked you?
Dr. Keyes: Let me see. Well, I think the cosmopolitan environment here is stimulating. As you know, what I mean really, nationalities and ethnic groups and religious groups, it’s really unusual to have this many different groups represented in a small town of less than thirty thousand people. 
Mr. McDaniel: And along with that comes a lot of cultural activities that you normally wouldn’t have, the Symphony and the Playhouse and – 
Dr. Keyes: All these activities, yeah. We – well, you asked about things. Yeah. We’ve been interested and active in the Symphony, the Playhouse, the Community Band and Orchestra, well, Band primarily. There’s plenty of things to do here for us. Now, we’re in the age group that doesn’t have to have entertainment all the time. 
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly.
Dr. Keyes: We don’t thrive just on going to places and partying and that sort of thing. But we have enough and as much as we can probably handle. 
Mr. McDaniel: But it’s probably, you think about when you were here when you were young people, and all the activities. So there were plenty of activities and you probably went a lot more then than you do now.
Dr. Keyes: Well, we were involved with a lot of things with the kids, the boys. 
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly.
Dr. Keyes: Yeah. Our grand and great-grandchildren live away from here. One’s in Virginia and South Florida and well, our older son and just his wife actually live in Frankfurt, Germany right now. His children live over here in Central Virginia. 
Mr. McDaniel: Okay.
Dr. Keyes: I mentioned the younger son, Richard. He’s a captain for American Airlines, flies out of Miami. He married a flight attendant, young lady, from Bogota, Columbia. They have one child living in Jupiter, Florida. 
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay.
Dr. Keyes: But we don’t see them as much as we’d like. Anyway, as our kids grew up I was active in – they call it PTA. I think it’s a little different name now, but you know what I mean. I was very active in that and taught Sunday School at our church. Charlotte was involved in the women’s organizations and the women’s clubs. We still do quite a bit.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you ever think about running for local political office?
Dr. Keyes: No, honestly no. I honor those that do. I’m very, very appreciative of those that do because it’s a commitment of time. It’s not some job you go into for the money.
Mr. McDaniel: Exactly. 
Dr. Keyes: But it’s wonderful to know that people have that commitment and that interest. I just don’t.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly.
Dr. Keyes: It’s part of my – right now, part of it’s my limitations due to my health problem. When I was younger, I said, I could have. I could have. I still deliver Meals on Wheels. I’ve been doing that for quite a long time. 
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Dr. Keyes: I’m active in what they – it’s called Contact Help Line here in Oak Ridge and done that for years, thirty-three years now, thirty-four years.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? My goodness. Well – 
Dr. Keyes: And associate with – well, that’s really enough. How long have we been going?
Mr. McDaniel: Almost an hour, little short of an hour. Well I certainly, Mr. Keyes – I certainly appreciate you sharing your recollections and your history with us. Thanks for allowing us to come into your home and talk with you.
Dr. Keyes: Well, I appreciate your wanting to talk to me. I’m sure I left out a lot of things. Some things I put in, I maybe should have left out.
Mr. McDaniel: No, it was – 
Dr. Keyes: But I really – 
Mr. McDaniel: It was just fine.
Dr. Keyes: But I’m really pleased and honored to have you interview me and let me tell you some of the things that have been important in my life.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, thank you very much. We appreciate it.
Dr. Keyes: I feel Oak Ridge has a great future with the type of people we have as leaders. We’re thankful that we’ve been able to be here, and have as much growth spiritually, socially, otherwise, that we have from this town, very appreciative and very thankful this many years.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. 
Dr. Keyes: Thank you for coming up.
[end of recording]