Gist, Clayton

              
ORAL HISTORY OF CLAYTON GIST
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
March 16, 2013
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is March the 16th, 2013, and I am at the home of Mr. Clayton Gist. Mr. Gist, thank you for taking time to talk with us.
MR. GIST: My pleasure.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me -- let's start at the beginning. Tell me where you're born and raised, something about your family.
MR. GIST: I was born in Colorado, in Denver. One of three, I have a younger brother and a younger sister. We moved to Southern California because of my father's work. He was a watchmaker. And we lived in the San Fernando Valley. I went to North Hollywood High School and graduated from there and went to Brigham Young [University]. And after Brigham Young, I spent about ten hours -- ten years at the Nevada Test Site.
MR. MCDANIEL: Hey, let's go back to the beginning. Let's go back to -- so you were -- when did you move to California? How old were you?
MR. GIST: I think close to junior high.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, were you? Close to junior high. So really, your formative years were there in California.
MR. GIST: Southern California, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: And your dad, you said your dad was a watchmaker.
MR. GIST: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did he work for himself? Or did he work for a company? 
MR. GIST: He did both.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did he?
MR. GIST: He worked for a company called Time Services, but he did a lot of his own work, too.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, sure. And you said you went to Hollywood High.
MR. GIST: North Hollywood.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, North Hollywood High. Okay. And graduated from there in what year?
MR. GIST: Oh, Lordy. About the time Moses built the ark. It was 1956.
MR. MCDANIEL: 1956, you graduated from there. When you were going to school, did you know what you wanted to study? I guess you planned on going to college, didn't you?
MR. GIST: Not really. Well, I played basketball in high school and the only reason I finished high school and went to college was to play basketball.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. GIST: I really didn't care about much else.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. GIST: And I went to the Y to play ball.
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh huh.
MR. GIST: I, unfortunately, was playing behind an All-American guard -- I was a guard. And I was playing behind an All-American and a little All-American guard.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. GIST: So, I made All-American left bench. And I knew I couldn't make a career out of playing left bench, so I studied zoology and got my degree in that with a chemistry physics minor.
MR. MCDANIEL: And that's at Brigham Young, right?  So, you were interested in zoology, obviously, if you got your degree in it. Were you an outdoorsman when you were growing up?
MR. GIST: Very much. I guess I really didn't have a chance. I had two great-uncles, an uncle, and a father that were fly fishermen. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. GIST: And I learned to fly fish at a very young age. I learned to tie flies when I was about eight years old, and shortly thereafter, it was my duty to tie flies for our fishing trips. And if I didn't get them tied, I didn't get to go.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. GIST: And like any kid, I waited till the last minute, so I learned to tie really fast. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, well that's good. Oh, well. So you finished, you graduated from Brigham Young. And then you said you got your master's.
MR. GIST: Well, from there I went to the Test Site.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you? Okay.
MR. GIST: And spent ten years there --
MR. MCDANIEL: What did you -- you said the Colorado Test Site?
MR. GIST: No, no, this was the Nevada Test Site.
MR. MCDANIEL: The Nevada Test Site.
MR. GIST: The nuclear weapons Test Site.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. So, and that would have been in the '60s.
MR. GIST: Well, yeah, actually it started -- I was there as a student intern first.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. Okay.
MR. GIST: And I was a student intern until I graduated in 1960. And then I spent some time in the laboratory in Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Biology at UCLA while they upgraded my security clearance to do the work I was supposed to be doing when I went to the Test Site.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what did you do at the Test Site?
MR. GIST: My specialty was close-end blast effects and long-range fall-out effects and modeling.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. And so this was environmental? Did it deal with the environment? Or did it deal with people, you know, beings?
MR. GIST: Kind of all of the above.
MR. MCDANIEL: Kind of all of it?
MR. GIST: Long-range fall-out, of course, was -- a real interest in that was movement in radionuclides through systems, ecosystems, but also the pathways to man. And we monitored milk, which is the easiest pathway to man for strontium, cesium, and iodine.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? Okay.
MR. GIST: Which are probably some of the major fission products with any kind of half-life at all.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. GIST: And then we also looked at the movement of radionuclides in, you know, the non-human pathways, like jackrabbits and mule deer and plants and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, sure. So you spent ten years at the Nevada Test Site.
MR. GIST: I was stationed at the Nevada Test Site for ten years. In that interim, I went to Puerto Rico for two years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you?
MR. GIST: I did some work at the sea level canal site on the Chucunaque River in Panama. And I spent some time at the Kotzebue site in Alaska. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. But you were based out of Nevada.
MR. GIST: Yeah, I was based out of the Test Site.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did you leave there and come to Oak Ridge?
MR. GIST: No, I left the Test Site and went to graduate school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you? Okay.
MR. GIST: I did my master's at Colorado State in radiation physics and radiation biology. Then I went from there directly to the University of Georgia.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so you went straight from your master's to get your PhD.
MR. GIST: Yeah, and I did my doctorate in mathematical modeling and systems analysis.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. GIST: And from there I went to Utah State University and taught statistics and worked in mathematical modeling for what was called the Desert Biome. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, and what was that?
MR. GIST: Well, they had a worldwide program called the International Biological Program, and they were looking at different biomes. A biome is, you know, a very large area of a given characteristic. Deserts are a biome, for instance. And I did -- I worked with two other fellows on the modeling of the desert biome.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. 
MR. GIST: Then I went to Colorado.
MR. MCDANIEL: Went to Colorado.
MR. GIST: -- and headed up the assessment, both -- total assessment for oil shell development on Track CA, which was one of two Colorado tracks on oil shell development. And it was up in the area of Rio Blanco, Colorado.
MR. MCDANIEL: What does that mean, "oil shell development?"
MR. GIST: Well, oil shell is a way of getting a type of petrochemical by mining the rock and heating the rock and getting this golden, honey-like material out of the rock. It's called kerogen. And oil shell is kind of a misnomer because it's neither oil nor is it a shell.
MR. MCDANIEL: Or a shell, right.
MR. GIST: It's a marl, and this stuff is very rich in the high side of the oils. It'd be very good for gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and all that. It's no good for making tars and that kind of thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MR. GIST: So, it's called a very sweet oil.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, alright. So, you finished your doctorate and went back to Utah, then went to Colorado.
MR. GIST: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: And then did you come to Oak Ridge?
MR. GIST: Yeah, then I came to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what year was that, do you remember, about?
MR. GIST: Oh, roughly '75, I think.
MR. MCDANIEL: '75, okay. Alright. And what did you come to Oak Ridge to do?
MR. GIST: I came here to work at Oak Ridge Associated Universities [ORAU].
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. GIST: And I taught in the Health Physics program there, and I taught accounting statistics and radiation biology, some radiation physics. And during that time, there was the big discovery, or admission, I don't know what you'd call it, of the mercury loss in the environment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. GIST: And we -- actually, DOE [Department of Energy] came and said, "What could you do to help us with that?" And we worked on assessing the mercury in East Fork Poplar Creek. And then we found out that they were using this nice creek bottom soil everywhere in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Everywhere in Oak Ridge. Let's talk -- let's go back to the beginning of that, just a little bit. Tell me -- give me a little background on the mercury loss.
MR. GIST: Okay, mercury was --
MR. MCDANIEL: And kind of how that whole thing came about.
MR. GIST: Yeah, mercury was used to separate two isotopes of lithium. Lithium is part of a fuel mix that goes into thermonuclear weapons. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Do I need to get you a drink of water? Would you like a drink?
MR. GIST: No.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Alright. 
MR. GIST: And the mercury was used in what was called the COLEX process, which separated the isotopes.
MR. MCDANIEL: They also had a PUREX process, didn't they? 
MR. GIST: Yeah, well, PUREX was a different process. That was associated with plutonium.
MR. MCDANIEL: And COLEX was being done at the Y-12 site, is that correct?
MR. GIST: Yeah, the COLEX process was being done at the Y-12 site. There was another process in the Project Manhattan days, which was the calutron.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. GIST: They were done in the same building, but at different times. And through the process of handling all this mercury, these numbers are a little foggy now, with time that passed, but there was something like a half a million tons of merc -- a half a million pounds of mercury was unaccounted for. And part of it, they think, was just bookkeeping. That they would get these, what they called mercury flasks that were 70 pounds apiece. And sometimes they weren't completely full. And the way they inventoried was by counting the flasks. And so a lot of it was lost due to bookkeeping. There's some that was lost through spillage. And some of it was lost though vaporization. That loss through spillage, it went down into a sump in Y-12 in the, as I remember, that was the Alpha 4 building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Alpha 4, I believe it was.
MR. GIST: Yeah. And then that went into a piping system that ended up spilling out into East Fork Poplar Creek. And that went -- that drained into what was called New Hope Pond in those days, which doesn't exist anymore. And then from New Hope Pond, it ran down in the creek and passed through town.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. And all this took place in the '60s, is that correct? That project was in the '60s?
MR. GIST: Um, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Mostly in the '60s?
MR. GIST: That's a good time frame. And then through the course of time as, you know, East Fork Poplar Creek would flood periodically and recede periodically. And in the process, it moved some of its sediments up into the floodplain.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. GIST: So, you had contamination in the floodplain.
MR. MCDANIEL: Had stories of fishermen sticking their foot down in the mud and coming up a little silver, didn't they?
MR. GIST: I've heard that story. It turned out that metallic -- or elemental mercury did not occur out there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh huh. Is that right?
MR. GIST: There's another part to that story, I'll get to it in just a minute. But anyway, while all this was going on, all this mercury was being released; Y-12 had a coal pile that they were using for their power plant. And all the finds in the coal pile would get washed out. And it was Eastern Tennessee coal, which was pretty high in sulfur.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. GIST: Well, the release from the coal, from the coal piles, would get out in the plains, too. And the mercury would bind to the coal because of the sulfur in the coal, and you'd get mercuric sulfide which is geologically stable. In fact, a lot of times we could take shortcuts in finding where the mercury was by cutting a face in the soil and look for that little black line.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Okay.
MR. GIST: In fact, the people that followed me in this thing called it the Gist Line. But anyway, we discovered that the mercury was binding there because the chemist I had working for me, his name was Jeff Gleeson, took some of the particles over to the Y-12 electron microscope. No, that was X-10 electron microscope, I'm sorry. And they're scanning the electron microscope and they could actually see the mercury in these areas that were bound up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. GIST: And they did microprobe analysis, where you can look at very tiny areas and they could analyze the chemistry of those little tiny areas. In fact, it could look at such small areas that a small insect's leg is a very large target. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. GIST: You can take multiple measurements on an insect leg.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. GIST: So it's very, very tight. And they determined that all these little holes in these coal particles were where the mercury was residing, and that helped us a lot. But that was only for high concentrations. Lower concentrations, we still had to do soil sampling and get a characterization. But also during the time of all this release, and nobody knew about it, they -- people in town and at one major construction project used this mercury-contaminated soil in their gardens, and they were building a new sewer line to feed everything to the west end.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. GIST: And they used a lot of that contaminated soil on the sewer line. So we had these blotches of contaminated soil clear across the city.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, let me ask you a question, because the two things that I've heard is that they -- you know, when they dredged East Fork Poplar Creek and got some of that stuff out, it went under the new Civic Center.
MR. GIST: Oh, yes!
MR. MCDANIEL: And under the new middle school on the east end of town. Those were the two big things that I had heard. Under Jefferson [Middle School].
MR. GIST: Jefferson -- no, it -- actually, the sewer line went along the face, or right there between the school property and the street. But there wasn't much up there. But there were a lot, probably some of our highest concentrations and largest contaminated areas, were on the Civic Center.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, right. Right.
MR. GIST: And part of the reason they used those nice dark soils was so that they could vegetate, re-grass the area quickly, because they had nice rich soil. Well, it didn't work out that way. We ended up digging it all back up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. GIST: But --
MR. MCDANIEL: So anyway, so this whole process, the way I understand it, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole process about how the whole mercury thing came out in the public was someone, some media outlet had requested a Freedom of Information Act.
MR. GIST: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, they made a big deal out of it, and then the government had to get involved and, you know, there was political pressure for them to find out what happened.
MR. GIST: That's exactly right. And I am not sure whether it was the Appalachian News or the Clinton Courier.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. GIST: It was one of those two.
MR. MCDANIEL: It was one of those, wasn't it?
MR. GIST: Yes. And I really don't remember all the dynamics there. There was just -- there was a lot of stuff going on.
MR. MCDANIEL: But that was in the mid-80s.
MR. GIST: Yeah. Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was in the mid-80s. 
MR. GIST: Early ‘80s.
MR. MCDANIEL: Early ‘80s. And I guess the Secretary of Energy came to town. This was when they held the hearings at the Museum?
MR. GIST: Yeah. And all that stuff. Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: All that stuff. Right, right. So were you -- was your group asked to do this work as a result of those hearings?
MR. GIST: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, as a result of that. Okay. So, what were your findings?
MR. GIST: Well, there was.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, in a nutshell, so to speak.
MR. GIST: Well, first of all the biological availability of the mercury. We did some of our own, you know, plant studies, plant uptake studies and so on, and there were some people that were doing some mercury uptake studies of animals. And the mercury was not that biologically available.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, what does that mean?
MR. GIST: It means that it wasn't available to be taken up by plants.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. GIST: Or if an animal consumed it, the vast majority of it passed on through.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, alright.
MR. GIST: It was probably a, I won't say biologically, because I think there was some uptake. Our data showed some very, for plants, very limited uptake and the data we had on animals showed very limited uptake. But the bottom line is that it was a contaminant that's and part of the reason CERCLA came to town and started all the other things involved.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. Right, exactly.
MR. GIST: And then we became one of the -- if you use the definition of a super-fund site under CERCLA, we're probably the biggest super-fund site in the world.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what's CERCLA?
MR. GIST: CERCLA. Oh, I can't even remember it now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is it a government agency?
MR. GIST: Yeah, it's a federal -- no, CERCLA is a regulation.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay, I see.
MR. GIST: It's Comprehensive Environmental Response, [Compensation, and] Liability Act.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. Well, it's close enough. Sounds right, doesn't it?
MR. GIST: Yeah, it's one of the Codes of Federal Regulations.
MR. MCDANIEL: And that really, as you said, that kind of started the ball rolling on lots of things, didn't it?
MR. GIST: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: But that was probably the biggest. The mercury was probably the biggest issue, wasn't it?
MR. GIST: Well, no. That was the first issue. 
MR. MCDANIEL: The first issue.
MR. GIST: I still don't know if it's the biggest issue.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. GIST: I think a lot of the stuff going on at X-10 National Lab, the -- or was going on, I should say. Not now. Like, you know, the underground storage tanks and all those disposal sites out in the National Lab. I think all of those were a bigger issue than the mercury in town, to be honest with you.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see, I see.
MR. GIST: Now, the issue with the mercury in town was the fact that it was publicly available.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. GIST: In that, it was off DOE property.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly, exactly.
MR. GIST: But, you know, I think Bear Creek was probably as bad, if not worse, than East Fork Poplar Creek, in terms of contaminants. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, is that going out from Oak Ridge out to Melton Hill Dam? You cross that area they built up on both -- there's a creek on both sides of the road.
MR. GIST: No, no, that's White Oak Creek bed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, okay. Alright.
MR. GIST: Actually, that's the outfall from White Oak Creek.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. GIST: Bear Creek -- Oak -- or, Y-12 is kind of two watersheds; one is Bear Creek, one is East Fork Poplar Creek. And they split not far from where Alpha 4 is, and Bear Creek drains west, East Fork Poplar Creek drained east. And Bear Creek had an area that was called the Blue Lagoon that was pretty heavily contaminated with materials, let's just say.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. GIST: And then they had the bio-denitrification ponds, the S-3 ponds.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, the ponds out there.
MR. GIST: And they were a problem.
MR. MCDANIEL: They were leaking, weren't they? Or leaching?
MR. GIST: Well, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Leaching, or something?
MR. GIST: They were leaking, yes. And then we had some problems with some contaminants, and I don't even remember what they were now, out at K-25. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Everybody had something.
MR. GIST: Yeah, everybody was having fun under super-funds.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly.
MR. GIST: And super-fund basically had, you know, Oak Ridge -- the Oak Ridge reservation and environs, and nobody defined what "environs" was. Wherever they found it that became part of the super-fund site.
MR. MCDANIEL: And they've spent multiples -- well, you know, in today's dollars, I guess, it's a little different, but you know, over the years they've spent multiples of billions of dollars to clean up. It is way more than the whole Manhattan Project was, you know, in those years. Of course, you know, the mercury didn't happen during the Manhattan Project. 
MR. GIST: No, it did not.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was after. 
MR. GIST: Yeah. Well, it's typical of any project. It costs more to clean it up than it does to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly. Exactly.
MR. GIST: And the, what they call the Nuclear Weapons Cleanup Program is, you know, orders of magnitude more than the actual Manhattan Project.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, absolutely. 
MR. GIST: And, you know, although ours we perceive as pretty bad, you know, it's not nearly as bad as inside the Hanford area in their Area 100 tanks, and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: How does it compare to Rocky Flats?
MR. GIST: Rocky Flats was a totally different thing. Much of their stuff was contained, because Rocky Flats was fairly dry. It was much easier to clean up; it's a much smaller facility. Now granted, their entire problem was plutonium-related, and plutonium metal. I mean, setting the radioactivity aside, plutonium metal is biologically toxic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is it?
MR. GIST: It's very toxic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. GIST: And so, you know, they did a pretty good job. And of course, they've completed their work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. GIST: And all that went down to WIP [Waste Isolation Plant].
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did -- so after this project, you were working at ORAU and was asked to lead this effort. And you came up, and I guess you published your results. So what did you do after that? Did you have another project?
MR. GIST: Well, I had one ongoing --
MR. MCDANIEL: Or did you go back to teaching?
MR. GIST: I had another one that was concurrent. It preceded a little bit, but it faded out concurrently with the start of the mercury project.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. GIST: Yeah, I had a project down in the Okefenokee Swamp looking at that movement of stable chemicals, namely potassium and calcium, in the swamp. And that was kind of a fun thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I bet it was. You being the outdoorsman you are, you probably liked that, didn't you?

MR. GIST: Yeah. And I would go down there for long periods of time in the swamp, then I'd come back and do my ORAU stuff, you know, the teaching and all that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. GIST: Just as that was fading out, the mercury project came up. Then after the mercury project, as that was winding down, at least the ORELA part, I was offered a position at DOE under Wayne Hibbits. And I loved working with Wayne, so I jumped at the chance to go.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what was Wayne's title? 
MR. GIST: He was the Director of Environmental Protection.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Alright.
MR. GIST: For DOE Oak Ridge Operations. And I worked with him. I became a branch chief and then went on over to -- from there went full-time into Nuclear Weapons Cleanup program under Bill Adams, in those days.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. GIST: And that was fun because we worked with all the different organizational substructures within DOE of Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was that a difficult task? I mean, you know, especially when they first started. I know in the mid-80s the environmental cleanup really kind of hit hard and heavy.
MR. GIST: Uh huh. It sure did.
MR. MCDANIEL: And I'm sure there was some -- I'm sure there was a certain amount of resistance to it.
MR. GIST: No, there wasn't -- I think that there was some resistance in the interpretations of the hazards.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, I see.
MR. GIST: Some people didn't believe the hazards were as great as what other people believed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. GIST: And, you know, there were some cases where I thought the hazard was greater than everybody thought, and some cases I thought, you know, we were milking mice. It was a waste of time. But that was my opinion. On the most part, I thought things were pretty professional. There were a lot of technical things that were very difficult, but even though the technical things were very difficult I don't think the technical issues of the program were quite as difficult as the political issues of the program.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. Exactly.
MR. GIST: And, you know, you'd have people saying "You're doing too much," "You're not doing enough," "You're doing just what you should do," "You're doing it wrong," you know --
MR. MCDANIEL: And you had a half a dozen different groups --
MR. GIST: Oh yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- that were supposed to be monitoring, yet all saying different things, weren't they?
MR. GIST: Oh yeah, yeah. The stuff that I was doing, we had a reasonable report with the people. You know, we had different goals. My goal was to get a job done, their goal was to meet certain regulations. And we had the state in our knickers a lot, but it wasn't necessarily bad. A lot of times they had good ideas, or they would say, "Hey, if you do that you're gonna violate these state laws." And you know, it's, "Oops, okay, what do we need to do to make it go right?" But that's just the way it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, was that the state -- was the lead person that you dealt -- that dealt the state issues, was that Mr. Leming?
MR. GIST: Yeah, Earl Leming. Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Earl Leming. Yeah.
MR. GIST: Fine man.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure.
MR. GIST: I thought the world of him. He retired just before I did --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did he?
MR. GIST: -- and I thought the world was going to fall apart. I really liked him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh huh. Sure, sure. I interviewed him for one of these.
MR. GIST: Oh yeah, yeah. And he had quite a knowledgeable staff. I liked working with his staff. The EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] -- I did Oak Ridge, and then I had certain programs at Paducah, [Kentucky] and Portsmouth [Ohio]. In Portsmouth, I had to deal with Region 5, and they were not quite as --
MR. MCDANIEL: What, the EPA?
MR. GIST: Yeah, Region 5 of EPA. And they were not quite as -- first of all, they weren't quite as technically competent, and second of all, I think there was a lot of posturing that went on there. But Region 4 EPA, I dealt with was both in Oak Ridge and at Paducah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Paducah.
MR. GIST: And it was good. It was a good relationship. And you know, we would have disagreements, and, you know, we'd always start the discussion by, "Let's first figure out what we agree on, and then we can work on what we disagree on."
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. GIST: So, their goals were the same as ours, but they had a different mandate than we did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did you work at DOE when Joe LaGrone was the director?
MR. GIST: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Oak Ridge Operations. I know he came in and that was -- he caught a lot of flack because of his environmental efforts that -- it kind of happened under his watch, I guess, most of it.
MR. GIST: Well no, it happened before his watch. It came to the surface during his watch.
MR. MCDANIEL: Came to the surface, that's what I mean. I mean, the cleanup and things.
MR. GIST: Well, you know, it's kind of a lot of the DOE way of shooting the messenger.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure. Of course, of course.
MR. GIST: I've seen many, many times that the modus operandi was bayoneting the wounded, strip the dead, and assign blame. Never figure out what the problem is. I've seen that happen more than once. But no, it came to the surface during his watch. It didn't happen during his watch.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, of course not. No, it happened way before. Now, also, what kind of public reaction was there to all of this? I mean, just the general public --
MR. GIST: It depended on where you were.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. GIST: Many -- most of the Oak Ridgers, you know, of course Oak Ridge has a weird population. It's not typical of any city, it's a very high education level. 
MR. MCDANIEL: And a lot of people work there or have relatives that work there.
MR. GIST: Well, yeah. And they were technically competent and they could read it. I think one of the best statements I heard was in a public meeting. It was getting rather vocal and somebody from Oak Ridge stood up and says, "I guess these people don't understand. In Oak Ridge, we know what our problems are. You in Knoxville do not." And at that time, you know, a Three-Mile Creek was running different colors.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. GIST: And then I remember this person turning to the State and say, "Have you made the same concerted effort in Knoxville as you have in Oak Ridge?" And there was no answer. Somebody was writing down something, that's all I noticed. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly.
MR. GIST: And I don't know what came of that, because that wasn't in my purview. But we had public meeting after public meeting. We had the, of course, the two different Oak Ridge oversight groups. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. And those were the SSAB -- 
MR. GIST: No, SSAB -- oh, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Site Specific Advisory Board. And then the other --
MR. GIST: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the Oak Ridge Council, Environmental Council.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. GIST: They both looked at us. And the SSAB, sometimes they were critical of what we were doing, but it was because very often they really didn't totally understand it and when we understood it, then their reaction was, "You're not doing it fast enough." Which I agreed with them; we weren't doing it fast enough, but we were constrained by other demands on the dollar, the fiscal dollars. You know, it's a zero sum game and you can get just so many dollars to do just something like this. But anyway, the bottom line was it worked out fine and the project was moving along. We had a bunch of do-overs because we were going into something unknown and it didn't work and we had to go back and try it again. We'd get criticized for wasting money for doing the same thing over and over again. And the biggest reason was we were still trying to figure out how to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Figuring out how -- what was really going to work.
MR. GIST: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. Sure.
MR. GIST: But it turned out to -- you know, the people that were working on the project were very conscientious, really wanted to do a good job. And --
MR. MCDANIEL: Was there anything -- and I'm not asking this question, you know, to assign blame or anything like that, but did you discover anything that was, what you felt like, was deliberately, not covered up, but deliberately not made known to the public?
MR. GIST: In terms of -- 
MR. MCDANIEL: Of environmental issues of any kind. You know, spills and things such as that.
MR. GIST: No. No, because we had the Annual Environmental Report, which, when I was working for Wayne Hibbits, I kind of put it together in two years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. GIST: And -- no, we were very, very candid about releases. Every single spill, by law, we reported to the reporting agencies.
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I didn't mean -- I meant like the contractors.
MR. GIST: No, because one of the most difficult things in the world is to conceal a screw-up in a contractor. There's going to be a whistle-blower. I mean, we had so many false positives.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you?
MR. GIST: Yeah, we had a lot of accusations of screw-ups that really didn't happen.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. Now, you said earlier that you submitted a report that's in the [Oak Ridge Public] Library.
MR. GIST: We submitted -- what I did, I submitted a report to Wayne Hibbits under my name and then he gave a copy to the Library.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. And this was under the mercury program.
MR. GIST: Mercury program. Yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: And you did that on a regular basis.
MR. GIST: On a weekly basis.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, on a weekly basis. Wow. For how long? Years?
MR. GIST: Well, about a couple years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Couple years?
MR. GIST: It seemed like forever. But yeah, it was about a couple years or so.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. That's alright, let me adjust this. Sit up a little bit. There we go. So, when did you retire? When did you decide it was time?
MR. GIST: Well, I got -- I had the opportunity to go to Carlsbad to work on the web project, the Remote-handle Transuranics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what is that?
MR. GIST: A waste isolation pilot plant, that's where all the transuranics, all the elements with radioactive contaminants, let's say, with an atomic number greater than uranium, which is 92. They take -- they require special handling.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. GIST: And they have this waste isolation pilot plant just outside Carlsbad that is in a large salt deposit.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. GIST: Its two thousand feet underground.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. GIST: And I went there to get the remote handle. There was a contact handle, which is a low-level radiation to go in. And then the remote handle was very radioactive. And I went there to get that program going.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that a storage facility or a processing facility?
MR. GIST: No, it's a storage.
MR. MCDANIEL: Storage, okay.
MR. GIST: It's actually a disposal.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is it?
MR. GIST: Yeah, yeah. Once it's in there for very long it's unavailable because the salt is very plastic and it tends to just kind of ooze around all the material and encapsulates it in salt.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. GIST: But anyway, I was there. I went there on a 90-day detail, and ended up staying there for three years. And I came back and we were very successful with that. And I looked around and there wasn't that much going on anymore and I figured I'd really spent my money down there in Carlsbad and I probably couldn't do any better. So I took the buyout of, I think it was $25,000, or something like that, and got out. And I went into true retirement, I didn't come back to consult for DOE.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's rare, isn't it?
MR. GIST: Yeah, I had fun stuff to do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. GIST: Locally, I'm a fishing guide and I go out West fishing all the time, go to Alaska. I have too much fun to work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, yeah, absolutely. That's what you need to do in retirement, isn't it?
MR. GIST: Yeah, that's right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly. Now, when you first came to Oak Ridge did you move to Oak Ridge or did you move to Knoxville?
MR. GIST: No, we moved to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. GIST: We lived in the Woodland area at first, then we moved up to Burnham Woods, we built a house in Burnham Woods. And then we built a second house in West Oak Ridge, West end, just not far from that Weigels.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, right. What was the street that you lived on?
MR. GIST: Maltese Lane.
MR. MCDANIEL: Maltese? Okay.
MR. GIST: And then when the girls were gone --
MR. MCDANIEL: How many did you say you had? Four girls?
MR. GIST: Yeah, I have two girls.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, two girls. Okay.
MR. GIST: Yeah, one -- they both graduated from Oak Ridge High School, one currently teaches in the inner city in Knoxville at Lonsdale, and the other one's an engineer in Greenville, North Carolina.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. GIST: And after they graduated and were out on their own, we were bouncing around that big house, and my wife decided that we needed to downsize. What she didn't tell me was when we downsized, the house got smaller, but the yard got bigger.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, yeah. That's true, that's more work.
MR. GIST: But anyway, we love it here, being on top of the ridge and everything. And --
MR. MCDANIEL: But now, when you were in -- when you lived in Oak Ridge, you know, your kids, like you said, they graduated from Oak Ridge High School. I'm sure they were involved in all the activities kids get involved in in the school, and things such as that. Now, were you and your wife involved in the community? I mean, did you join the clubs?
MR. GIST: Yeah, we were both in -- well, I didn't -- I wasn't all that involved because I was working day and night.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure.
MR. GIST: But yes, she was very involved in First United Methodist Church. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh huh.
MR. GIST: She taught at Robertsville Junior High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. GIST: And, yeah, Tom Hayes was the principal.
MR. MCDANIEL: He was the principal then, right.
MR. GIST: In fact, the first time I met Tom Hayes, dealt with the mercury project.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. GIST: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. GIST: And then when she retired and I was retired, that's when we left Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, so y'all -- but, so how long were you in Oak Ridge, living in Oak Ridge?
MR. GIST: Probably around about 30 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? And like you said, you were traveling a lot; you were working a lot, things such as that. Did you ever get involved in like, you know local politics? 
MR. GIST: No, I really couldn't. I wasn't allowed to, a federal employee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.
MR. GIST: But no, I knew a lot of the politicians. I did not campaign for anybody or do anything like that. All I did was vote, which was my constitutional right. But there were some of the, you know, back in those days when the Chairman of the School Board was John Slater, and he was a very good personal friend of the family. And there were, you know, there were some of the city managers I dealt with routinely and became friends with them, and stuff like that. But no, I was not involved in politics in any way.
MR. MCDANIEL: You just took them to the side, and said, as a friend --
MR. GIST: No, I would respond to the questions as truthfully as I knew. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly.
MR. GIST: Sometimes my response wasn't as accurate as it could have been, but that was what I knew at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: And really you couldn't be involved publicly because of your position and your responsibility.
MR. GIST: That's exactly right. Mm hm.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, what was it like, living in Oak Ridge, for you and your family?
MR. GIST: It was a positive experience. It was an island, Oak Ridge is an island. You know, you've got almost an urban culture in a rural area. Because you know these people are -- the Oak Ridgers, for the most part, are very interested in the stuff that they've come to love through their education.
MR. MCDANIEL: Culture? Lots of cultural activities.
MR. GIST: Yeah, I mean, how many towns the size of Oak Ridge have a Playhouse?
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure. Sure.
MR. GIST: And how many times can you go to a play, and some of the actors in the play are Nobel laureates?
MR. MCDANIEL: That is true. That is true. Absolutely.
MR. GIST: But it was a very positive experience. And there was a -- back before the Oak Ridge Mall, they had that big U, there was a little sandwich place called the Crockpot. And there were -- or was it called the Cheesepot? Anyway, it was something like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, it was something like that.
MR. GIST: And on Friday afternoons, there'd be, you know, all kinds of people gathered and they'd eat snacks and then solve all the problems of the world. And gosh, some of the biggest names in various fields would be in there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure. Sure. 
MR. GIST: And it was fun. It was a learning experience as much as anything else.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. I'm working on a documentary about Dr. Weinberg and --
MR. GIST: Yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- one of the things about him was, you know, they say he's probably entertained more Nobel Prize winners at his dinner table than probably anybody in the world.
MR. GIST: Well, think of the old hotel there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure. Sure.
MR. GIST: How many laureates have slept in there?
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely. Absolutely. 
MR. GIST: So yeah, I mean, the town was just -- it was reeking with history.
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh huh.
MR. GIST: And I would, in the course of sampling, doing my sampling all over the city, I'd run into stuff that just blew my mind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. GIST: And I finally ended up getting a complete set of aerial photos of Oak Ridge circa 1943. Something like that. And you know where the federal building is? 
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes.
MR. GIST: That car dealership right next to it?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes.
MR. GIST: That used to be a power plant.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. GIST: And there was a big tall stack.
MR. MCDANIEL: Huh.
MR. GIST: And the guy I worked with at -- or, worked for in ORELA, Roger Cloutier? 
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes.
MR. GIST: He remembers that stack coming down.
MR. MCDANIEL: Does he really?
MR. GIST: Yeah, it was down before I got there. But anyway...
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you worked for Roger Cloutier?
MR. GIST: Yeah, yeah, when I was at ORELA.
MR. MCDANIEL: When you were at ORELA.
MR. GIST: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. GIST: Interesting soul.
MR. MCDANIEL: I've interviewed him a couple of times, as a matter of fact.
MR. GIST: Yeah, he's an interesting soul.
MR. MCDANIEL: Interesting guy, isn't he? Well, thank you. Is there anything else you want to talk about?
MR. GIST: I guess that's it. It's -- it was a good time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah?
MR. GIST: I can't complain about my career. It was fun.
MR. MCDANIEL: It sounds like it. It sounds like you had a -- you liked Oak Ridge well enough to stay there thirty years or so.
MR. GIST: Oh, oh yeah. Oak Ridge was a fine place to live. And the school system was superb.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. GIST: And the -- you know, socially, it was really a lot of fun. And we really did enjoy it. We had a good life.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, one of the things about Oak Ridge is, almost -- you know, you can almost honestly say every time, no matter how big your ego is, you can go someplace in Oak Ridge and almost always say, "I am not the smartest one in the room." Isn't that -- and that would be literal, you know.
MR. GIST: Oh yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: So --
MR. GIST: There've been a lot of times when I've gone into a room full of people, and kept my mouth shut because I knew there were some very knowledgeable people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, sure. Absolutely. Alright, well thank you so much, sir. I appreciate it.
MR. GIST: Thank you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Good.

[END OF INTERVIEW]