Ellingson, Robert

              
ORAL HISTORY OF ROBERT ELLINGSON
Interviewed by Barbara P. Campbell
September 18, 2002 
MR. ELLINGSON:  My name is Robert Donald Ellingson.  As of this date, September 18, 2002, I live at 185A Outer Drive in Oak Ridge.  I came to Oak Ridge in June of 1943, as a single man because of a job offer.  I have lived here continuously since that time.  I came from Caldwell, Idaho.  Now, I didn’t live in Caldwell, but my parents did.  I graduated from the University of Idaho in early June of 1943, and at the time my parents were living in Caldwell.  Actually, I graduated from high school in Rexburg, Idaho, and was born in St. Anthony, Idaho.  I received a job offer through Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, because of my uncle, who was President of Rochester Institute of Technology.  I came here with a friend who had received an offer through the mail as recruitment, though the reason we both came here is because the salary we were to receive was $180 a month with an increase to $200 a month because they were working six days. It was the highest offer we got. [break in tape]  Ask me a question.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Well, when you got to Oak Ridge you came down on the train?
MR. ELLINGSON:  Well, the first thing we did when we arrived in Knoxville was we got a hotel room at the St. James Hotel, which is no more.  And we took a bath to get the soot off of us, went to sleep, and slept until that afternoon.  Then got up and looked for the new Empire Building which was where we were suppose to report.  And no one knew where the new Empire Building was.  And finally a policeman said, “Well, now there’s a building called the Empire Building down the street and around the corner.” So, we went down there and that sure enough was the new Empire Building.  Never did find out where the old Empire Building was, but we checked in and were processed and put on the payroll and a driver whose name was Justice took us to the site and took us to the gate and got us to our dormitory.  
Now, this lady had lived in the area before the government bought it and so she knew all the back roads in the country and whenever we got to go to Knoxville with a car we’d always ask for Mrs. Justice to be our driver because she could get us there quickest.  Then at that day and time, the dormitories were in the Townsite area and were named M1 through M6. All of them were not finished, but the one we moved into, which I believe was M5, was finished and we could live in it.  At that time, we had dormitory house mothers and they watched out for us and delivered the mail and would keep our keys if we wanted them to and our house mother was a rotating house mother in that she worked all of the dormitories and she took us to supper at the café, which was the Townsite Cafeteria.  That’s about the only place to eat at that day and time.  
The next morning, we went to a class which was in the ceramic block buildings just south of where the Federal Office building is now, and we had an instructor who talked about everything except what we were going to do. When we’d ask him about what we were going to do he’d sort of pass it off as something he’d tell us later.  And that went on for about three weeks and then Mr. Hecker, John Hecker, who was Dr. Compton’s second in command at AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] in the area came to us one morning and said, “Look, we have over trained on hiring chemist and chemical engineers.  We just have too many of them and we would like this class to go into what we call Process.” He explained process was the operation of the calutrons.  Well, of course, we said that was fine and he said, “Well, we’ll be sending you to the University of California for training on these machines on the 19th of July.”  And so we said its fine with us. At that time they then took us to Y-12 and Y-12 looked like a forest of concrete slabs and concrete forms.  They were just all over the ground and what was going on was they were pouring concrete basements for all the major buildings. There was only one building above ground and that was 9734 I believe, which was the building that housed the pilot plant at Y-12.  So, we then found out that all during this instruction period where we’d play acting was while they were waiting for us to get Q cleared before they told us anything about anything.  So, with that under our belt, we then left for California.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You were there how long?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  We were there until September learning to operate the calutrons.  We did not live on campus.  We lived in the boarding house that was close enough to the campus that we could walk to a central location where they had transportation. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  How many people roughly went to California? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Gosh, I don’t remember, but it must have been somewhere like 15 - 20.  Now, we were not the only class that went out there, but we were the last class that went out.  We were very close to an electrified train station that ran on the bottom level of the Bay Bridge that ran between Berkeley and San Francisco.  So, when we were off we use to go down and get a train and that was about the time [inaudible] train was stuck. It was popular, so we enjoyed it.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Did you go on a train to California? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  We went on the train to California, traveled in style, had the full moon. All that sort of stuff.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Then you came back? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Then we came back, and when we arrived back on the site there were no dormitory spaces available for us so they moved five of us into a C house at 101 Turney Road [written correction: 101 N. Tampa Lane] and we spent up until I guess the next Spring in that.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Now, that’s a 3-bedroom house, right? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Three bedrooms. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  So, you didn’t each have your own bedroom? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, but that was alright with us.  We did fine. And we all could cook so we batched and we had ration books where we could.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You take turns cooking for everybody, or do your own thing? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, we took turns and one fellow even offered if we’d hire him to cook for all of us all the time, and he said we would wash the dishes and he’d cook. We laughed and told him, no, we’ll get together and do our cooking. We had Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas dinner where we invited babes and that sort of stuff.  I remember one of our big dinners, Evelyn came in a fur coat and slacks.  We almost sent her home to put on a dress, but we didn’t.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You lived how long in that house?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Oh, six or seven months I think, and then they moved us into a dormitory when one became available. Virgil Hanes and I lived in the dorm room that was in a dorm at Townsite. We didn’t like it very much after having lived in a house. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Yes, I can understand. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  And a fellow that we worked with Larry Parson’s wife, he lived in a D house and his wife just could not stand that humidity around here.  It gave her terrible headaches, and she had all sorts of allergies. So she went back to Utah where it was higher and dryer, and left him with the house. So he told Virgil Hanes, Ken Bernander, and I that he would like to rent us rooms, and so we immediately accepted.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Now, where was that?  What was the address?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  This was at 107 Turner Road, and this was about sometime in 1944, I would guess, it’s a little [inaudible], but we lived there until I was married in ‘45.  Now, out at work when we got back from California we immediately started teaching classes to the cubicle operators in the main. We had a terrible time for a while trying to teach them how these cubicles operated, electronics, and all that sort of stuff because most of them were non-high school graduates and had no idea. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Were they local people? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Local, yeah, as far away as Gatlinburg and Crossville. So we finally figured out that they did understand money. So we coached as many of the terms in [inaudible] and in framework of money as we could. If you can think of us teaching electronics in terms of money, you’ve got a vivid imagination, but we did it. 
About, I believe it was somewhere around March or April, Virgil Hanes and I were assigned to the Refining Division and they were about ready to start up one of the buildings. We were then assigned to that building 9204-1 as technical assistants and we were suppose to help the operating foreman and help the people that built the units with any difficult problems they had.  
Now, everything was named with a letter of the alphabet.  Like the source unit and these were big mass spectrometers basically.  Source unit was an M.  The receiver was an E and the liner or the connecting part between them was an L.  And the receiver had two sets of pockets.  One of them the Q pocket and the other one the R pocket.  Now, we have skipped the letter P because by the time they got around to this there was a Q pocket, well, the next one would have been the P pocket, but that they thought was too suggestive. So they forgot about P and called it the R pocket.  Then we spent about a year as technical assistants, and then technical supervisors assisting the foreman and watching over the units.  About that time they had a terrible time with the source unit, which was called M2.  It just wouldn’t work satisfactory.  And the radiation laboratory people had to redesign the M unit which they called M12, which was much more stable and did work, whereas the M2 didn’t work.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  And you had to keep up with all this, these changes?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah, and so that’s in the main, what we were doing.  And in about 1945, they decided they didn’t need us as technical help anymore and we were smart enough then to be foremen.  So, I inherited a group of 18 women and one man.  And soon learned as much as I could about how to handle women and keep things.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Did they give you any supervisory training courses or anything?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Well, they must have, but if they did, I don’t remember. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  But you got along with them? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  We got along fine and I did learn that if you pat one lady on the back, you’ve got to pat them all on the back.  You have to treat them, you know, the same, you can’t have any favorites or anything like that.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Now, you couldn’t pat anybody on the back. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  That’s right.  Now, it’s all okay.  That went on until 1946, in late December, when they announced they were going to shut down the plant and take the entire product from the gaseous diffusion plant out to K-25.   So they didn’t tell us that before Christmas because they didn’t want to spoil our Christmas.  They told us that between Christmas and New Year’s.  They kept up one track in one of the buildings as a viable track to run for experimental purposes. I think out of 18 girls I had, I had saved two of them to work in this building and that was about the number that they had, eight tracks, that would be 16 girls and that would be enough to run one race track.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Did you then both stay there and supervise?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, I was moved back into the technical end of the business.  What they were trying to do was see if the calutron process could be made competitive cost-wise with the gaseous diffusion plant because it was a batch process and the gaseous diffusion plant was continuous process it just never did pay out.  And at that time I decided that I didn’t like this R and D type work and would like production job so I talked to [inaudible] Whitman and they sent me then to the last place with any production going on which was 9012.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  That’s in Y-12 also? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah, still in Y-12 and I spent several years there.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Meanwhile you were living both as Evelyn told us, in Broadway Apartment and then…  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Right and Georgia Avenue, 138 Georgia Avenue where both our children were born and we lived there I think till the oldest one was 7.  Then we built our house at… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  And do you remember anything about your time after work?  Of course you went to work pretty early I suppose. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Well we were working rotating shifts most of the time and so everything went on in town around the clock so the only way to tell it was night was it did get dark but everything else… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You mean you worked on like daytime shift and then on nighttime and then daytime again?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Actually there were three shifts, from 7am to 3pm was one, from 3pm to 11 was the second one and then from 11 at night till 7 in the morning was third shift and on the third shift it seemed like I was eating breakfast three times a day. But… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  There was a cafeteria at Y-12 by that time? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah, there was a cafeteria at Y-12.  In fact, there had been two cafeterias at Y-12. One was a lunchroom and at one time there were 22,442 employed in Y-12 alone so… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  And your rode the bus? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Rode the bus.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You didn’t carpool at that early time? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Not early on.  We didn’t in fact just my immediate friends which maybe half a dozen only two of them had cars.  We didn’t need cars.  You could go to Knoxville on a free bus or go wherever we wanted on free buses.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  And gasoline was rationed well until 1946.  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Gasoline and [inaudible] yeah that time so but 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Do you remember what, like you went to Playhouse or different things like that?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Well, it seemed like they, they had recreation halls where they had parties and there were two of them in the downtown area and one of them in the Grove Center area were the ones that we were most familiar with. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Now, that was old Ridge Recreation Hall, was that one of them? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah.  And…
MRS. CAMPBELL:  And one in Grove Center. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  The one in Grove Center is still there.  It’s the… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Old nursery school?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, you know where the picture show is down there? 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Yeah… 
MR. ELLINGSON:  That building that sort of backs from the street… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Yes. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  That’s one story on this side and two stories on the backside 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Where the Oak Terrace was? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Where the Oak Terrace was, that’s it, and it’s still there but all the rest of them are gone.  Now the Central Rec Hall is still there.  It’s the one where the Epicurean place that’s in the basement. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  In Jackson Square? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah, and that use to be a bowling alley and then the recreation hall which was above it is entered from the Jackson Square side. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Were there any sports connected with the plants at that time?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Oh yeah, everything had their teams.  Baseball, softball… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You didn’t do any of that? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, but the competition got very keen between the [inaudible] plants on the sports teams because we had some people who could play college ball that hired on and they were very good. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Did you play cards like… 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Oh, yeah, we played Bridge, a lot of bridge. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  These are at the rec halls or in your homes and stuff? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah, then we’d have Christmas parties and birthday parties and all sorts of parties in our homes after the [inaudible].  Now when they opened the gates, was that in ’59? 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  ‘49 
MR. ELLINGSON:  ‘49, oh, then we had to start locking our doors because before then not too many folks locked their doors.  Then… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  But you had Jackson Square was the shopping area.  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Jackson Square was shopping area.  There originally where the Playhouse is was a motion picture theater.  Next to it was a Miller’s had their first store out here and next to them, I forget, but down on the corner was the drug store.  It wasn’t the McMahan’s it was somebody else in the beginning.  There was a bank in there in that line up somewhere and I believe that bank is where the Ferrell Shoppe is now. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Yes. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  A branch of Hamilton National Bank because they had safety deposit boxes in the basement and then around the other side they had the, an enormous barber shop with 10 or 12 chairs in it all busy all the time and then on the corner where the eating place is now that use to be a grocery store.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You mean where Big Ed’s is now?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, I haven’t even gotten down to Big Ed’s, I’m still going around the Square.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Oh, the Square, yeah. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  And then going down, I don’t remember if there was anything in that corner where the Music Box use to be or whether the Music Box started out there.  It and next to that was a big clothing store. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Miller’s wasn’t that along there? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah, Miller’s moved from the Square down to that and then somebody else took that over.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Well what grocery store when you said grocery store, was that when I came in ’54, the A& P was down there?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, this was a different grocery store in a different location because the A&P was east of the clothing store. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Right, right. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  And then there was another motion picture and then the Rexall Drug Store on the corner.  But this grocery store is where that sandwich shop is now.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Oh. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  And put in that, oh where they sell what-knots and beads and all that sort of stuff.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Oh, on the corner of Jackson Square and the Square? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  On the corner there at Jackson Square. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Okay. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  And don’t know what its name was. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Downtown Hardware was…  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Downtown Hardware came after the grocery store. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  After the grocery store? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Okay.
MR. ELLINGSON:  And if anybody can follow this. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Well, I suppose people have. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  People who listen to it will probably have some idea of what the town looks like. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  And across from Jackson Square and the little other stores? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Was the high school. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  What was Jefferson Junior High after the high school and then Jefferson? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, it was Jefferson High School and the junior high was right behind the high school and then… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Now, did your girls go to that? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Our girls went to junior high while it was there and then they went to high school down where it is presently located.  So, the high school on the hill was phased out about that time. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Around the end of the 40’s or sometime?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, this was….let see, Donna graduated in ’66 so 4 years before that is ‘62 so it must have been… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Early 60’s then. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Early ‘60.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Did you have any connection with the schools at all, I guess…?
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, not really.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  PTA or anything like that?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  I was involved with the Junior Chamber of Commerce and that lasted until I got to be 35 and was no longer eligible for it the Junior Chamber and since that time I’ve been on the Children’s Museum board and Clinch Valley Health Board.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  What kind of events did the Jaycee’s, did they put on? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  No, they weren’t putting on anything they just met and talked about the inept city government.  But I didn’t think it was too inept to fight.  Our long time Mayor Al Bissell was a friend of mine.  We worked in the same division at work and I liked him and I’ll tell you a story about him.  He told me one time he says, I’m scared to get in trouble with the law in Oak Ridge.  He says, don’t call me but call and he named this person and tell him about it.  Now don’t tell him to tell me but you just call him and tell him what’s going on and then forget about it.  So I said okay, then never did have to use it. Never did have to use that, but it was nice to know that Al had privileges.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Yes, you didn’t have any connection with the police or the or anything happen, fire, the fire Evelyn said your church burned…
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah, that was the church that she was member of.  I hadn’t joined yet, but it burned and the… 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You didn’t, did you have any blacks at work?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  Yeah.  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  You did?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  They were all janitorial types though.  It wasn’t until[inaudible] I believe it was the ‘60’s before we got any engineering types and I believe that was pretty much the case at all the divisions.
MRS. CAMPBELL:  There just weren’t people…?  
MR. ELLINGSON:  There just weren’t people graduating from technically trained schools [inaudible].
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Did you have any other notes that you…? 
MR. ELLINGSON:  That’s about all that I have. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Well that’s very good and thank you very much. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Did I talk long enough?  
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Well, I think, yeah. 
MR. ELLINGSON:  Okay. 
MRS. CAMPBELL:  Let’s see. 
[tape ends]
….this has been a very unusual experience for me and I noticed that on listening to the tape that I have to think quite a bit before I do anything or say anything because there are a lot of gaps in it.   Okay, now let’s see if that’s…..
[tape ends]

Transcribed: May 2006, by LB
Edited: April 2013, by JRH