Lotts, A.L. (Pete)

              
ORAL HISTORY OF A.L. (PETE) LOTTS
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
March 15, 2013
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is March 15, 2013, and I am at the home of Mr. Pete Lotts in Knoxville, Tennessee, or is this Farragut?
MR. LOTTS: Well, it's Concord --
MR. MCDANIEL: It's Concord --
MR. LOTTS: -- it's Farragut, and Knoxville.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and Knoxville.
MR. LOTTS: But yes, the post office allows any of those addresses.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. LOTTS: That's right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, why don't you tell me from the very beginning, tell me where you were born and raised, and something about your family.
MR. LOTTS: Okay.  I was born in Botetourt County, Virginia.  I guess the address was Buchanan, Virginia, and we lived mostly at Natural Bridge Station up until I was about in the fifth grade, and I went to Natural Bridge Elementary School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, where is that in the state of Virginia?
MR. LOTTS: That's in the Shenandoah Valley, north of Roanoke.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. LOTTS: My father was a barber, and he had taken a job at Blackstone, Virginia, which was in Southside, Virginia, down near Richmond, and so we moved to Blackstone when I was in the fifth grade, and I went up to senior year in high school at Blackstone High School, and I graduated from Blackstone High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, did you have brothers and sisters?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, I have three brothers and three sisters that are all younger.  I'm the oldest.
MR. MCDANIEL: You said your father was a barber.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, he was.
MR. MCDANIEL: What year were you born?
MR. LOTTS: I was born in 1934.
MR. MCDANIEL: In 1934, so that was still during the Depression.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, that's right.  In fact, I think that when I went to college, I found that we had one of the smallest classes at Virginia Tech that we'd had in years, and that's because we were the Depression class.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly, exactly.  So, what year did you graduate high school?
MR. LOTTS: I graduated in 1951 from high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what did you decide to study?  When you graduated high school, did you know what you wanted to study?
MR. LOTTS: Well, I wanted to either be a lawyer or an engineer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? Okay.
MR. LOTTS: So, I almost flipped a coin.  I guess I preferred to go to Virginia Tech rather than the University of Virginia, and of course, Virginia Tech did not then have a law school and does not have one now.  I could have gone to the University of Virginia and had a choice of engineering or being a lawyer.  But, anyway, I chose engineering, and I was probably --
MR. MCDANIEL: I take it you're a Virginia Tech fan; you were then.
MR. LOTTS: -- yes, I'm a Hokie all the way.  Exactly.  But I think I was probably more skilled at mathematics and science than probably history and things like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did your parents have any kind of influence?  Did they direct you a certain way?
MR. LOTTS: No, my parents were always very encouraging to the family to get an education, so I had that plus all the encouragement of aunts and uncles, and I was also the oldest grandson on my mother's side out of a whole gang of people.  My grandmother on my mother's side had ten children --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.  Sure.
MR. LOTTS: -- so I had well over 30 cousins, and I was the oldest.
MR. MCDANIEL: You were the oldest, you were the first.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, so I received a lot of encouragement.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, and attention, I'm sure.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, that's right, and attention.  Yes, my grandmother, in fact, taught me to read and write, and I was able to start school in the second grade.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, because --
MR. MCDANIEL: You were farther along.
MR. LOTTS: -- yes, she had taught me, and she said, "Now, when you go to school," it's not like today.  You just got on the bus and went, and so they made it up that I would be on the bus with Gene, who was my uncle, and Gene turned out was in the second grade.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, so I went to school with Gene, and Gene told the classroom teacher, "Well, he belongs in this class," so of course, they had it figured out, but they said, "Well, we'll let you stay if you can make it," so they did.  Of course, they couldn't do that this day and age, they wouldn't do that.  They'd put you back in the first grade.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly, exactly.  So, you --
MR. LOTTS: It was just an interesting little anecdote.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- so you went to Virginia Tech and you studied engineering.  Any specific type of engineering?
MR. LOTTS: I studied metallurgical engineering, and that's what I did pretty much in my working career to start out, but then I became more general in the types of engineering that were involved.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, '51 you said you graduated high school, is that correct?
MR. LOTTS: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: You were in college, I guess, when the Korean conflict came along.
MR. LOTTS: That is correct.  You've got it exactly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have to leave college and go in the service?
MR. LOTTS: No, I had a deferment as a military student.  I was in the Cadet Corps at Virginia Tech and I received a commission, but by the time I received the commission, thank goodness, President Eisenhower had ended the war.  So, basically, they had more lieutenants than they knew what to do with.  You know, second lieutenants are really very vulnerable in land warfare.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, they are, because they lead the basic combat unit that has all of the arms.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. LOTTS: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, so you were glad, weren't you --
MR. LOTTS: I was very glad.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- that it was over with.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, they had actually taken some of the students who were in the Cadet Corps early on in the Korean War, they took them out of college at the end of their junior year and gave them commissions.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, they took them very early because they needed --
MR. MCDANIEL: They needed them, didn't they?
MR. LOTTS: -- people very badly, yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you graduated from Virginia Tech.
MR. LOTTS: In '55, and I got a master's in '57.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you stay at Virginia Tech to get your master's?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, I stayed there and got my master's, and then I still had a military obligation, so it turned out that I served only six months on active duty, and I served nine and a half years in the reserves.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, and after I completed the basic military orientation program and all of that, a very difficult period of my life, I was assigned to a research and development lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, the Engineer Research and Development Lab at Fort Belvoir, and fortunately for me, I spent just about all of my summer camps, so to speak, serving as a research person and assisting them at the Engineer Research and Development Lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Fort Belvoir is where?
MR. LOTTS: Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, it's the headquarters for the Corps of Engineers, so I was in the Corps of Engineers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, and you had to do that for how long?
MR. LOTTS: I was in the reserves nine and a half years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, I see.
MR. LOTTS: -- so it was total served ten years.  My obligation was eight.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so how did you end up coming to Oak Ridge?
MR. LOTTS: Well, basically, I liked research and development, and I had a job working for a company doing primarily design assistance for nuclear reactors, Babcock and Wilcox in Lynchburg, Virginia.  It had a lot of travel connected with it, a lot of desk work and so forth, and although I thought I could do it pretty well, and did, I really wanted to be in the lab and have the research experience, and there was another thing that I wanted to do, and that was to get a doctorate by going part-time to the University of Tennessee; you could do that.  But I never had time to do it.  I got so involved in work that I was up to here with that, and I really never took on the business of getting a PhD.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, but you came to Oak Ridge in what year?
MR. LOTTS: In 1959.
MR. MCDANIEL: In '59.  Had you been to Oak Ridge before?
MR. LOTTS: Only for a job interview.  That's the only way I had been here.  Yes, it's kind of interesting the way I got to Oak Ridge.  The head of our department at Virginia Tech, Dr. John Eckel, had recommended Oak Ridge, and he had a good friend who was on the staff at Oak Ridge, Pete Patriarca.  Anyway, he said, "Look, I will call Pete and he will have you down there, and he'll probably offer you a job."  Well, that didn't work very fast, and so I got impatient with it, and so I applied at a few other places, and I applied at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and I accepted a job at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and arranged for all of our furniture and stuff to be transferred to Los Alamos, and we were ready to go.  Patriarca called one day and said, "Hey, the freeze has been lifted.  We can hire you."  He said, "You need to get down here, go through the interview, and we need to make you an offer right away," so I delayed the Los Alamos movers for about a week, came down and talked to Patriarca, I was offered a job, I accepted the job, and that's the way I ended up in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: What year was that?
MR. LOTTS: That was in 1959, early '59.
MR. MCDANIEL: Where did you go to work?  Did you work at the Lab?
MR. LOTTS: I worked at the Lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right.  Who did you work for?  Did you work for Pete?
MR. LOTTS: No, I didn't work for Patriarca to begin with.  I worked I believe for Dick Beaver, Richard Beaver.
MR. MCDANIEL: What division was that?
MR. LOTTS: That was in the Metallurgy Division.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right.  I see.
MR. LOTTS: We were housed in Building 2000.  It was those Quonset huts up on top of the hill.
MR. MCDANIEL: That I think are no longer there, are they?
MR. LOTTS: No, I think they wiped them out last year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, I think so.  Let's take a few minutes and kind of go through your work career, and I want to talk to you about your life and the community.
MR. LOTTS: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you went to work there, and tell me a little bit about your career at the Lab and what all the things you did.
MR. LOTTS: Well, initially, I helped do things in the rolling mill at the Lab making plates for research reactors and learning that technology and so forth, and then I moved on really quickly to an assignment in what's called powder metallurgy, which is where you take a powder of materials and combine those to make whatever structure you want to make, but of course, the structure we were interested in was nuclear reactor fuels.  So, we worked on the fuel, and the powder metallurgy operations involved in making the fuel for the High Flux Isotope Reactor and developing that fuel, so that was one of my first assignments at the Lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, when you say fuel, are you talking about fuel rods?
MR. LOTTS: In the case of the High Flux Isotope Reactor, it's a fuel container about the size of a garbage can, and it consists of a whole bunch of plates that are stacked all the way around it, several hundred plates as a matter of fact, and those plates are made up of a sandwich-like structure with the fuel inside, which is an uranium oxide and aluminum metal, and then clad with plain metal, and you roll that out and make something out of it.  That's how you do that with powder metallurgy.  But anyway, we developed those plates for the High Flux Isotope Reactor fuel, and, also, we developed the loadings for the target and the fabrication procedures for the target that goes inside the High Flux Isotope Reactor.  Then, I became involved also at the same time in the use of thorium as a fertile material in nuclear reactors.  We never worked on the homogeneous reactor because it was a slurry and not a solid material, or one of those what was called a homogeneous reactor, which was sort of the brainchild of Alvin Weinberg.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. LOTTS: I did some work on that later --
MR. MCDANIEL: Good, good --
MR. LOTTS: But anyway, at the time, what we were trying to do is promote the use of the thorium U-233 fuel cycle, and what you do is you take the fertile material, put it in the reactor, it captures the neutron and becomes uranium, so we made fuel.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. LOTTS: So, anyway, I worked for years on that fuel cycle, ending up primarily working on it for the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, and we developed the technology for making the basic fuels and for recycling the fuels, and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, let me make sure I understand.  You would take thorium and somehow you would convert it --
MR. LOTTS: Yes, convert it by --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- simply stated, kind of like the way they would take uranium slugs and put them into the --
MR. LOTTS: -- yes, you could take thorium slugs --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- reactor.
MR. LOTTS: -- and put it in with --
MR. MCDANIEL: It would turn it into plutonium, excuse me --
MR. LOTTS: -- it would turn it into uranium.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- right, exactly, that's what -- 
MR. LOTTS: In the case of putting a uranium slug in with U-238, it becomes plutonium.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, so it's a similar idea.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, that's what -- 
MR. LOTTS: Similar idea --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- right, right.
MR. LOTTS: -- and thorium, of course, is very plentiful, so that makes it a good idea.  I was awarded the E.O. Lawrence Award --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. LOTTS: -- for the work associated with the target materials and the recycling of the thorium and U-233 fuel and the target materials that I mentioned --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. LOTTS: -- for HFIR, and for the work that we did on the thorium fuel cycle for the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor.  That was in 1979. [Note: This work was actually that of a large group of excellent people, particularly John Sease of the Metals and Ceramics Division and Frank Davis of the Engineering Division.]
MR. MCDANIEL: So, that was kind of a big thing.  That was one of the highlights of your career, wasn't it?
MR. LOTTS: Oh, absolutely.  But the only thing I worked on that ever got real great application was the HFIR, the High Flux Isotope Reactor, and of course it's gone on to generate significant quantities of californium and the trans-plutonium isotopes, californium, einsteinium, and all the other things.  But that was made possible through these fundamental developments.  In the case of the High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor, see, it never made it commercially.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. LOTTS: It's still a body of information, which could be picked up.
MR. MCDANIEL: But it wasn't used in a practical --
MR. LOTTS: It was not, because of a number of things.  First of all, you have to have reprocessing to make that cycle work, and reprocessing was cancelled as an option in nuclear reactor civilian applications by Jimmy Carter, I think, in about the period 1978 to 1980, somewhere in that timeframe.  We also had programs working on the fast breeder reactor fuel at the time because we had advanced ideas for making that fuel and recycling it, and of course that was cancelled, also.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly, exactly.
MR. LOTTS: So, that kind of ended my fuel career.
MR. MCDANIEL: Your fuel career, exactly, but you made a lot of headway while you were there didn't you?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, well, I just went on to do other stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.  So, what did you do after that?
MR. LOTTS: Well, mostly by that time, I was an Associate Director of Gas-Cooled Reactor programs, the thorium utilization program is what we called it, and I was given a job to run the programs for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So, I did that for three or four years, and then I took an assignment -- I don't know how I got talked into this, [by President Clyde Hopkins and Bob Merriman] but I took an assignment to run the Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation Program, AVLIS.
MR. MCDANIEL: AVLIS, yes.
MR. LOTTS: -- at K-25.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, so I moved to K-25 for about three years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was this after -- I know they had a big competition between centrifuge and AVLIS.
MR. LOTTS: I was there before and after the competition.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, so most of the competition occurred during my tenure as the AVLIS Division Director.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, I remember that.
MR. LOTTS: Actually, the division and the program were the same thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, that was a very tense period of time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, what was that about?  I mean, tell me a little bit about that.
MR. LOTTS: Well, I think later I discovered it was probably about killing both programs, okay?
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, yes, exactly.
MR. LOTTS: All right, but it was really about commandeering the support to become the future program for enrichment commercially in the U.S., and we felt that we had the more efficient process in AVLIS.  Yes, on paper, it is the most efficient, there's no question about it, but it's extremely complicated.
MR. MCDANIEL: But it also became, I mean as we mentioned before, a big competition between --
MR. LOTTS: It did, between --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and whether AVLIS was going to be the most efficient, or whether centrifuge technology was going to be.
MR. LOTTS: -- that's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and a big brouhaha over all that, wasn't there?
MR. LOTTS: Both programs were operating on the very edge of technology, which made it very difficult for either one of them to deliver what was promised --
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly, exactly.
MR. LOTTS: -- and that's the truth of the matter.  So, even though someone might win the competition --
MR. MCDANIEL: It didn't guarantee anything.
MR. LOTTS: -- it didn't guarantee anything because, then, is it really commercially viable and is the program going to go anywhere, and it didn't really go anywhere.
MR. MCDANIEL: As you said, really they both got cancelled, didn't they?
MR. LOTTS: Well, they both went down to a level where you really can't sustain an advancement to commercialization, so that's what happened to it.  Now, I wasn't there during that phase.  I mean they're still conducting research on it, but only the very low level.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you did that you said for three or four years --
MR. LOTTS: Yes, I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and then, after the AVLIS --
MR. LOTTS: Well, they wanted me to move to California after the selection was over, and we won the contest with centrifuge, so the big demonstration was going to be, and we had vied for this in Oak Ridge, to have the AVLIS demonstration, and we didn't win that.  I mean, Livermore has tremendous political clout.  They wanted it, so they're going to have it, okay?  So, anyway, they were going to do the big demonstration at Livermore, so we sent a lot of people out there from the division.  My division became split between being in Livermore and being in Oak Ridge.  To make a long story short, my arm was twisted like this, you know, "You gotta go to Livermore," and I said, "No, I can't do that.  I'm on the school board," I liked doing that, "and I just don't want to do that."  So, I had to recruit a replacement as Division Director.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Nobody wanted to replace me.  That's right.  But I did, I recruited somebody to replace me, and then, after he replaced me, I went back over to the Lab and took a job as Defense Programs Director, and that job lasted about six weeks.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, and the reason for that was that they shut down all the reactors at the Laboratory because of safety problems, and so Herman Postma, who was the Lab Director, comes over to my office one day -- I never heard anything about all this -- he said, "Look, I've got a job for you, and it's to create a new division to re-start these reactors," so that's how I became Director of the Research Reactors Division --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. LOTTS: -- at the Lab.  Yes.  So, we had to assemble the pieces that were left over from the Operations Division, and it took about three years to --
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did he have funding for it, or was this a dream, something he wanted to pursue?
MR. LOTTS: No, we had funding for it.  The problem was this: the Laboratory has at that time about five research reactors, and it was a problem to keep a couple of them going from a standpoint of support, so the Laboratory just dropped those.  But it still had the Tower Shielding Reactor and the High Flux Isotope Reactor and the Oak Ridge Research Reactor that it still wanted to operate.  But all the reactors had been shut down because they had violated all kinds of safety rules, and so what they [DOE Safety Oversight Personnel] claimed was that it was questionable that these reactors were in sufficient shape to re-operate.  So, basically, what we had to do was to prove a new safety basis for the reactors, and prove to DOE [Department of Energy], and the world, that they were fit to be operated and had a fit crew to operate them, so that was a job.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was your job, you had to make sure that happened.
MR. LOTTS: That's right.  So, we didn't really get the Oak Ridge Research Reactor back in operation; the only reactors we got back were the Tower Shielding and the High Flux Isotope Reactor.  But what we had to do is create a new design basis and, in doing that, we had to do a lot of things to upgrade HFIR, and, when we did that, upgraded all the training and everything, then we could get it re-operating.
MR. MCDANIEL: Get it going, okay.
MR. LOTTS: So, that was kind of the end of it.  I was very tired by the end of that, and I decided to retire from Oak Ridge National Lab, and I was only 55 years old.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. LOTTS: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. LOTTS: But I was very tired and I didn't know the reason, but I found out a little over a year later, I had a heart attack, had to have a bypass operation, and what was wrong with me, probably, was I didn't have enough oxygen --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?  So --
MR. LOTTS: -- to cope with --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you were --
MR. LOTTS: -- not only was it really tough jobs, but I didn't have enough physical stamina to really do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- right, right.
MR. LOTTS: So, anyway, I retired, and then I consulted for a long time.  I ran a small company for a while, but mostly it was consulting since I retired a long time ago now, in 1989.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.  Now, when you moved to Oak Ridge -- well, let me ask you another question and then we'll move on to another topic.  Were there any specific folks at the Lab that you worked with that had a real impact on you, or made an impression that you still recall today?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, I worked a lot with diverse people, you know?  A lot of times, outside my home division, Metallurgy, I worked a lot with the Chemical Technology Division, and of all the Division Directors at the Laboratory that I admired and worked with most was Floyd Culler from the Chemical Technology Division, and that's because I was a coordinator or a manager of programs that were connected with the fuel cycle, and the lead division for fuel cycle work at the Lab was the Chemical Technology Division.  So, Floyd Culler was my mentor as much as anybody.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, he was, and then, later, I worked for years with Paul Kasten, and Paul was just a fabulous nuclear engineer.  He ran the Gas-Cooled Reactor Program for many years, and I was an Associate Director under him for a long time.  The other person I worked a lot with was Don Trauger when Don was Associate Director of the Laboratory.  Let's see, who else?  Within the division, going back sort of, I worked for George Adamson.  I don't know whether you've heard that name or not.
MR. MCDANIEL: I interviewed June Adamson years ago.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, I knew June.  She was a great person.  I loved her.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes.
MR. LOTTS: I worked for George primarily in the early days, particularly before I became with the program-wide responsibilities.  I reported to George most of the time.  I worked for Patriarca probably about three or four years during that period of time, but I always had an association with Pete Patriarca because he had hired me, but I hardly ever worked for him.
MR. MCDANIEL: I know you said you worked with Don Trauger when he was Associate Director of the Lab.  Did you ever have any direct dealings with Weinberg?  I know you said you did with Herman.
MR. LOTTS: Not so much with Alvin Weinberg; occasionally.  He was always marveling at the stuff we put together to do stuff remotely, and that was the main interaction I had with him.  He really loved all the stuff we had done for the High Flux Isotope Reactor.  See, those targets I talked about had to be disassembled, take all the goodies out and then make new ones, except you had to do it in a hot cell.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, so we'd put together all the manufacturing equipment that you'd do that with in the hot cell, so he really loved that stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, the reactors were his babies.  I mean, they really were, weren't they?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, they were.  We made a charge for the Molten Salt Reactor out of thorium and U-233.  They had never used uranium 233 in a reactor, and I guess they wanted to do that to check out the physics.  I think it was the last time that molten salt reactor experiment was operated, we made that charge for that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, when you first came to Oak Ridge, now, were you married?  Did you have children?  Where did you live, where did you move to, things such as that?
MR. LOTTS: Okay.  Yes, Grace and I had four children, four daughters.  Two of those came with us to Oak Ridge.  We lived in East Village for a year, and East Village, for some reason they advertised everyone to sell all their houses, and move everybody out, and we said, "The heck with that.  We're not buying a house in East Village."
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure, sure.
MR. LOTTS: Okay, so we bought a house in Knoxville, one that was in the Parade of Homes in Green Valley.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. LOTTS: Yes, so the next year we bought that house, and then we had two children born there.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you lived in Knoxville.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, I lived in Knoxville the whole time, just about, all except for one year.  That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.  You're -- go ahead.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, and we were very active in things, politics and improving the schools and all that in Knox County.  I was on the school board for 20 years in Knox County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes --
MR. MCDANIEL: My goodness.
MR. LOTTS: -- 15 as chair.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. LOTTS: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I'm surprised it's not named the Pete Lotts Elementary School.
MR. LOTTS: It's A.L. Lotts.
MR. MCDANIEL: It is A.L. Lotts.
MR. LOTTS: That's the same person.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. LOTTS: That's right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you are A.L. Lotts.
MR. LOTTS: That's right.  They called me up when they were going to do it.  This was shocking to me, okay?  But anyway, Faye Cox, who was secretary to the superintendent, by that time, I had declined to run for any fifth term, so she says, "They're gonna name this building for you," and I nearly fainted.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. LOTTS: "There's one problem.  They want you to decide what name you want on it.  Do you want Pete Lotts, do you want A.L. Lotts, or do you want Adolphus L. Lotts?"  So, now you know why it was A.L. Lotts.
MR. MCDANIEL: A.L. Lotts.  Yes, where does Pete --
MR. LOTTS: I didn't want to go by --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- come from?
MR. LOTTS: -- well, I took a nickname because of my first name when I was a kid, and the reason for that was that I was growing up in about the period of time in my life when kids are given all kinds of nicknames, but that was also the period of ascendency of Adolf Hitler, so I had all kinds of --
MR. MCDANIEL: Adolphus, I understand.
MR. LOTTS: -- you understand?  Okay, so I was glad to adopt --
MR. MCDANIEL: Pete.
MR. LOTTS: Well, I was actually called a “re-Pete” because my dad's name was Pete.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. LOTTS: It wasn't really Pete, but that was his nickname.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was his nickname.
MR. LOTTS: Look, this is Virginia.  Everybody has a nickname, okay?  So, it's a repeat, and then I dropped the "re" later.  That's how it became Pete.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.  So, I guess that was kind of a big deal when they named that school.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine it would be.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, and people ask, "Why is that?"
MR. MCDANIEL: They appreciate your service.
MR. LOTTS: Yes, "Why did they name a school for you?  Were you a famous teacher?"  No.  I usually tell them it's for the grief I suffered.  That's not true.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. LOTTS: In fact, serving on the school board was one of the best experiences of my life, really.  I loved it.  I think that together with the other people on the board, and particularly the staff we had to work with, like the Director of Instruction, Sarah Simpson, Beecher Clapp and others I just can't think of right now, we all together did a very good job in Knox County, and I think that bears out as still pretty well thought of as being, for a large system, a pretty good system.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MR. LOTTS: So, I think that particularly, Superintendent Hoffmeister and the board we had at the time, built a lot of schools.  We were in good shape.  That's the reason they're in good shape now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, exactly.  Well, that's good to know.  That's good to know.  But you were one of those folks that lived in Knoxville and drove into Oak Ridge, and it seems like there's just more and more of them all the time.  Did you ever get any flak from anybody for not living in Oak Ridge?
MR. LOTTS: Never.
MR. MCDANIEL: Never?
MR. LOTTS: Never did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. LOTTS: The only way that I knew that there might be some of that was early on, it was like maybe that might have been considered in some of the promotions within Carbide, or within Lockheed Martin, but I don't think that was really much of a factor.  It may have been way early on, but later, I don't think so.  I think it was just too many people lived in Knoxville.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly, exactly.  Well --
MR. LOTTS: I mean there's probably that, and socially, and all that, but --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. LOTTS: -- that just isn't part of my scheme of things to want to --
MR. MCDANIEL: To worry about.
MR. LOTTS: -- well, to worry about it, or to be schmoozing people in order to get advancement. It's just not my style.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, were you involved in any of the community or cultural life in Oak Ridge, or was it just work?
MR. LOTTS: Not much, no.  Of course, we belonged to technical societies and things like that and had those meetings, and then went to social things at Oak Ridge, and so on, from time to time.  But mostly, our involvement socially in Knoxville has been through the church.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, I understand.  I understand.  All right, is there anything else you want to talk about?
MR. LOTTS: I think that's about it.  All I can say is it was a great experience working at Oak Ridge National Lab and at K-25, and the reason that it's such a great experience is that there is such a wide spectrum of capable people.  Now, sure, equipment and facilities, but people, so that you could just about do anything, and that's the reason I was able to accomplish much because of all these people, and because they were so capable.
MR. MCDANIEL: They did a really good job of finding good people in lots of different fields, didn't they?
MR. LOTTS: Absolutely, and if you didn't know something about a particular area, which you're always in that shape, there's somebody that knows more than you do, and you can go call on them, and they're always willing to help.  That's what was so great about the Lab, a great place.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, do you still keep up with what's going on out there?
MR. LOTTS: I do try to keep up with it, yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: What's, I mean, what are your impressions of the Lab today compared to the way it was when you came here in '59?
MR. LOTTS: I think we developed a whole lot more hardware than the present people do.  On the other hand, they have a much more diverse program for national needs and so forth than we had.  We were kind of honed in on particular missions, and those missions required engineering hardware development, and so on, which is what I like.  I don't think the Lab is into that as much now.  Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.  Well, technology changes --
MR. LOTTS: It changes and --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- science changes --
MR. LOTTS: -- the need changes.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- the need changes --
MR. LOTTS: Yes, that's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and politics change, and different people.
MR. LOTTS: That's a fact.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course, of course.  All right.  Well, Mr. Lotts, I appreciate it.  Thank you so much for taking time to share a little bit about your life here with us.
MR. LOTTS: Okay.  Thank you for doing it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely.

[End of Interview]
[Editor’s Note: Portions of this transcript have been edited at Mr. Lotts request.  The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]