Wilcox, William (Bill) J., Jr.

              
ORAL HISTORY OF WILLIAM (BILL) J. WILCOX JR.
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
April 30, 2013
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This Keith McDaniel, and today is April 30, 2013, and I am at the home of Bill and Jeanie Wilcox here is Oak Ridge. Bill, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. 
MR. WILCOX: Oh, you're very welcome. 
MR. MCDANIEL: I've interviewed you several times, but I don't know that I've ever asked you about where you were born and raised; and something about your family, and where you went to elementary school. Talk about that just a little bit. 
MR. WILCOX: Well, I was born in Harrisburg, capital of Pennsylvania, in 1923; in January, and we lived there until September of that year when I was not a year old. And moved to another city: Allentown. Allentown, Pennsylvania, east of Harrisburg and, it's north of Philadelphia. It's in the heart of an ethnic area people called Pennsylvania Germans. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. WILCOX: And wonderful people. My parents always respected them, although one of my parents was a Yankee and the other parent was, my mother was a Virginian.
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: (laugh) But I went to school with Pennsylvania boys--Dutch boys, and they're very wonderful people. Women would get out early in the morning. And sweep their porches and their sidewalks in front of their houses. They kept the whole community very, very clean.
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX:  I had a wonderful boyhood in Allentown. Because I had the most wonderful parents anyone could possibly have. My father was a prominent lawyer in town. One hundred thousand people in Allentown, and I grew up in the Twenties--the roaring Twenties, which I knew nothing about. I was in my teen years when the Great Depression hit. And I well remember that. But as a lawyer my father escaped most of the deprivation of the Great Depression. We managed through that quite well, but I very well remember friends of mine whose fathers lost their jobs. I well remember men in suits, with vests and white shirts and ties standing on the street corners in Allentown selling pencils.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. WILCOX: It was a tragic time. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: And banks had closed. Can you imagine as a boy? I still thought it was terrible. I had a savings account that I put in five pennies every week at school. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: And, to teach savings. And the idea that somebody would have their lifes' savings in a bank that just all of a sudden closed its doors.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: Even to a kid, I thought that was terrible. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: But my parents were wonderful. My father was a real scholar. My mother would brighten any room she walked into. And she was so good at small talk and I just grew up tongue tied. (laugh)
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: And I wouldn't say a thing. My sister inherited her gift of gab. 
MR. MCDANIEL: That's what I was going to ask you, if you had brothers and sisters?
MR. WILCOX: I did. I had two. A sister three years older than I am. She was also born in Harrisburg. And she had long blond hair which felt so good I always called her "Silky" as we were growing up. And she taught me to dance. We were close. We were pretty close all going through school. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Three years makes a huge difference in school. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: But we were good friends. My brother came along a five years after I did. And Elly, my sister, and I sort of ganged up at this new comer.
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: But he was a great guy. He grew up and went to Princeton Seminary, and was an ordained Presbyterian minister. He did a wonderful job in churches in three cities across the country--last in Denver, Colorado. He died about 10 years ago. The city where we lived was a great one to grow up in. I collected stamps from the very earliest of the days. I took things apart all the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, was stamp collecting, was that something that your father did? Was it common?
MR. WILCOX: My father did it and he started me off by giving me stamps. The stamps in those days were very different than they are today. There were Presidents. There were notable generals like General Grant, General Lee, Admiral Farragut. There were historical commemorations. So, I grew up understanding the Battle of Saratoga and Yorktown. And the National Parks.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: I still have several albums of stamps that I put together when I was ten to twelve years old. But it taught me the heroes of the country, and it taught me history without my ever knowing about it. But, I just absorbed this.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. And it was probably something that, a hobby that wasn't real expensive. And, it also was unique. I mean, those were unique things you could collect. 
MR. WILCOX: That is true. And I saved my pennies and I'd go to the stamp stores. They had several big stamp, specialty stores in town. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: I'd take my pennies and my nickles. And buy stamps that were missing from my albums. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: I had my mother's brother. My Uncle Jack was a locomotive engineer. I don't mean he drove one, he designed them. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow!
MR. WILCOX: Locomotives for Baldwin Locomotive. He got promoted to Baldwin's London office, and raised his children there. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? 
MR. WILCOX: And they were Americans, of course. He and his wife were Americans. But, they grow up very British, and talked with a handsome British accent--
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX:  As long as they lived. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! 
MR. WILCOX: But the thing about Uncle Jack was that he ended up selling locomotives in Russia, and Africa, and Egypt, and Italy--
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! 
MR. WILCOX: And India, and he went all over the world. And, he was always sending my mother postcards, and they all had stamps on them from all these far off wonderful romantic countries with beautiful pictures on them. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: So, my Uncle Jack, I thought he hung the moon. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I bet. 
MR. WILCOX: I remember the time that he came to our house in Allentown on a visit, he and his wife. And, they'd come across the ocean on the ocean liners. We just sat there with our eyes open, to hear what life was like on the Berengaria. Oh, gosh, it was wonderful.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And my mother served apples. A basket full of apples was something my Uncle Jack ate. He ate these apples around like everyone else did and just kept on eating, and he ate the core and the seeds, steams and all. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: (laugh) And I was sitting there, when he got to the middle, we just sat there. What in the world was the matter with you? He just ate the whole thing. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: She and I still laugh about that. We must have been very short kids, but the stamp collection was not just a hobby of mine, it was a hobby of three or four boys who were my good friends. And, so, we would spend evenings trading stamps. And we would carry our stuff over to somebody' house, and we would sit there, all ensuing trading.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: Do you have a three cent Albanian stamp with Josephine's picture on it?
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: (laugh) Yeah, I do. What will you give me for it? 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my. 
MR. WILCOX: We built model airplanes when we got to be about ten. My father sent me to camp when I was nine, which is one of the few things, maybe the only thing, I've never forgiven him for. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: (laugh) He thought, he thought I ought to have an outdoor experience. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Nine years old, and they didn't have Cub Scouts back then. So this was a private camp up in the Delaware Water Gap, and it was really a very nice camp, but I was so homesick that I just thought I was going to die. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: I just, I was just completely miserable for seven days. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: And the next year he sent me back.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my.
MR. WILCOX: And the next year he sent me back.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: But the next year was when I was twelve, and I went to Boy Scout camp. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. 
MR. WILCOX: But the difference was that my friends went with me.  And when I went to Camp Miller at nine years old, I didn't know anybody up there. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. WILCOX: And but I couldn't wait to get in the Scouts. I don't really know just why. I suspect because my father gave me a handbook of the Boy Scouts. And I read it like a Bible, and wanted very much to be a Boy Scout. But that was a life changing experience for me. I just bought their value system hook, line, and sinker. I can still recite the Scout Oath and the Scout Law. And I just loved it. I had great leaders in my troops. I went to camp every summer, and every summer stayed longer, and longer, and longer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: When I got to be fourteen, I got to be a counselor. A nature counselor and I was a troop astronomer. I was elected president of the Lehigh Valley Junior Astronomical Society (laugh).
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh) 
MR. WILCOX: Helped grind a mirror for a six inch telescope reflector.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: I did that during the winter. Scouts were wonderful for me, and I worked hard on it. And I got my Eagle Rank in ‘39. 1939 proved to be a landmark year for the world.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. WILCOX: Senior year in high school, freshman year in college. In the summer, I had my first two jobs. No, that was the next year. The summer--let's see. Oh, I was still Boy Scouting. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Were you?
MR. WILCOX: I was counselor of the camp. 
MR. MCDANIEL: The summer of your senior year?
MR. WILCOX: This was the summer of my senior year. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: And then I applied for a job as a member of the honor troop at the New York World's Fair of Tomorrow, 1939. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: The same year that Hitler invaded Poland and started World War II. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Of course, I didn't know anything about that in August. I was at the New York World’s Fair. We were go-fers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: We were all Eagle Scouts, and we were the only two or three from Allentown. 
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you went to the New York World's Fair as a Boy Scout? Wow!
MR. WILCOX: As part of the honor guard, honor troop, that they collected from all over the country. We ran messages and sat in people's offices.
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs)
MR. WILCOX: And took notes from here to there. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: No cell phones. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And (giggles), that was a wonderful experience. After I got back from the New York World’s Fair, I went to a cocktail party that mother took me to at one of her friend's houses, and got introduced to a young lady. It turned out it was the only girl in the world.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: My first “head over heels” in love. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Alright. 
MR. WILCOX: Her name was Jean, too. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs)
MR. WILCOX: Oh, gosh. That was a great summer. And, then I went to college. Unlike kids today that think about where to go to college for two years, I thought about it only that summer, and talked to my father about twice.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: About where I was going to school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX:  He voted for Lehigh University, which was in the town right next door to Allentown. I would stay at home and commute.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. WILCOX: By trolley car. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? (Laughs)
MR. WILCOX:  I asked him about whether there was some, someplace else, and he said, "Well, you could to Washington and Lee." And, I had never thought of that, but, ah, I could live with my grandmother, who was in Lexington, Virginia, and who we had gone on to see, every summer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: Every summer. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX:  I loved her dearly. But she was an ancient woman, eighty years old! 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs) Sure.
MR. WILCOX: I could live with her in her big house, and save money. So that was a decision we made in one week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: In September, I went down there to freshman camp.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: So, that's how I got to Washington and Lee. All the time I was growing up, my mother groomed me to be a lawyer. So I could take over my dad's practice. It was in a three member firm, Snyder, Wert, and Wilcox. In my senior year at high school, both of my parents groomed me for it, I think. My grandfather gave me a collection of very rare law books, a shelf of law books.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: They put in the basement, and I would go down and look at them every once in a while, but I never opened one up (laugh).
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh) Right. 
MR. WILCOX: He had me take Latin for five years. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: A good background.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: He was a classicist. He read Greek and Latin. And thought I should, too. And you know it didn't take too well.
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh)
MR. WILCOX: He took me everywhere. That's not true. He took me on a lot of trips when I was a little boy to see places and to go with him to trials. He was an interstate commerce lawyer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: With trucking firms and railroads. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Applying for licenses to do business here and there. Anyway, I spent a lot of time in courtrooms, and I just was in complete awe of his of his ability to stand up in a courtroom and explain how the company wasn't liable because of this, and that, and so on. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Anyway, I grew up with that. And so, in high school in the spring, I heard about a debating society. “Orotan” was the name of it. I don't know where that comes from, but one of my friends said maybe you'd like to try out for this. I said I just don't know if I can speak in front of a group. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: I just, you know. I don't think I'm any good at that. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I was petrified. But I knew that the dear father would really be pleased at this. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: So, I told him about it, and he said, well, he'd help me any way he could. The subject was a debate.  I was assigned to one side of this issue. And, of course I remember all the details (laugh).
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh) 
MR. WILCOX: What the issue was and what the arguments were for. It had to do with bicameral versus unicameral legislative groups. Nebraska has a unicameral house.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: Senate and a House. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: They just have one.  I was defending this. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. WILCOX: I learned all about it. I made my appearance, finally. I was just petrified. About two weeks later, I was informed that I did not make the grade. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs) Oh.
MR. WILCOX: And that I would not be admitted as one of the members.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: It took me about four or five minutes to decide, you are not going to be a lawyer. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh) 
MR. WILCOX: And I had been very much interested in nature at camp, and so on, and so on. I said, I think I'd like to be a doctor. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: So, I went to Washington Lee in Pre-Med.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. 
MR. WILCOX: And stayed there--stayed in Pre-Med. I took all the required courses. And I loved biology so much I took geology, and biology, and two or three levels of biology and physics, and chemistry. I took the works. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And in my junior year my dear grandmother came down lame and I, of course, had been nursing her and my aunt and anybody else who came to the house. Anybody who gets a cut, "Oh, Billy will fix it."
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course. 
MR. WILCOX: Free of charge. And she was such a Victorian lady that would not let me look at her foot. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. WILCOX: Absolutely not. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. WILCOX: She still wore high button-eye shoes and long skirts, and was very modest.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: “Oh, no, Billy, it's nothing. It will be alright.” And, I kept after her. One day, I had to help her home from church. She could hardly walk. I said, “Granny, you just got to let me look and see what is the matter with your foot.” And, she did, bless her heart. It was a terribly ingrown and infected toenail. Big, big toenail. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: And it was actually, it had gone from pink to yellow, you know. It was awful. So, I made the date with the doctor, and called the taxi, and we rolled her down to the taxi. Before we left the house she said, “Go into the pantry and get one of those little medicine bottles and fill it full of that Four Roses that's in there.” I did. She said, “I may need a stimulant.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs)
MR. WILCOX: And I said of course. And, off we went. Got her in the doctor's office and sat right by him and watched him sterilize and prepare, and so on. And, when he stuck the lancet in the infection, I just disappeared. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? 
MR. WILCOX: And I ended up on the floor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my.
MR. WILCOX: I was looking up at the doctor, and the nurse, and my grandmother. My grandmother was saying, "Nurse, go over there to my handbag and get that little bottle." And at that time, it took me five micro-seconds to decide, “You ain't going to be a doctor.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my (laugh).
MR. WILCOX: And, so I went into chemistry. And that was my third year in college. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And so that's how I ended up being a chemist. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. So, first you thought maybe a lawyer.
MR. WILCOX: Lawyer.
MR. MCDANIEL: A doctor.
MR. WILCOX: Doctor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Then a chemist.
MR. WILCOX: Then chemist. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my goodness. Well, (laugh) that's amazing. That is amazing. So, you graduated?
MR. WILCOX: I graduated in April of 1943. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. 
MR. WILCOX: The war was raging. It had been a couple of years from Pearl Harbor. So, the war was still raging in Europe and in the Pacific. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: And many of my friends from college had dropped out to join the Army or the Air Force. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: So, that all the time I was going to college at Washington and Lee, the war was going on and everybody wanted to do something for their country and to help win the war. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Me, too. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Our department head in chemistry sort of preached to us, that we could be doing more to help the war effort as chemists, than we could by just enlisting and going to the front. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: So, in April before we graduated, I guess it was the department head suggested we go; we, as in the three or four people graduating in chemistry. We went to the American Chemical Society National Meeting in Detroit, Michigan, because that's where the companies would be looking for their help. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And, so I went. I took a train up to Detroit with my lab partner from W and L.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And, he went with me, and we posted our transcripts on the employment “Clearing House” board. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: And then we went back every hour to see if anybody had asked to interview us. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs) Of course, of course. 
MR. WILCOX: And I had, I don't know, a dozen or more interviews. It was a pretty heady experience. There were lots of people looking for chemists. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: This was 1943 now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And remember now a lot of the boys are in the service. So they were looking at the class of 1943.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX:  My first interview was with Dr. Almy of H. J. Heinz and company. He was a distinguished looking old German. Of course, we liked German science at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX:  Germany was one of the most scientifically advanced countries. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And when we went to college we learned to read German so we could read German scientific magazines. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And this guy looked like a German. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs)
MR. WILCOX: I asked him what kind of work it would be for Heinz, and he said, “I need somebody in the laboratory to analyze for ascorbic acid in our tomato products, like tomato ketchup. We want to be sure that they're properly nutritious.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs)
MR. WILCOX: I said, “Well, Dr. Almy I was hoping to get into something a little closer involved with the country's war effort.”
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. WILCOX: Thank you very much. So, I scratched him off, but that's the way it went. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: But when I got to the man from Eastman Kodak, Earl Billings. Bald, very nice man all dressed up in a pretty black suit. I was very pleased because here was a company I knew something about. So he said, “I looked at your transcript, and I think you're the kind of person we're looking for. Would you be interested in coming to work for us?” And I said, “Well, I need to know what kind of work it would be. I know Kodak. I got a Brownie camera and I've been buying your film for years.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs) Right.
MR. WILCOX: Will I be working on film? He said, “No. It won’t have anything to do with film.” I said, “Well, what will it be? Well, is there anything you can tell me about it?” He said, “No. It’s all secret.” I said, “Will I be working in Rochester, New York?” And, he said, “No, I can't tell you. It's secret.” I said, “Well, I don't need to know exactly where it is, but will it be on the West coast or the East coast?”  “I'm sorry, it's all secret. I can't tell you.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: I said, “I need to be honest with you. I really am not interested in organic chemistry. I'm really a specialist in inorganic chemistry. Can you tell me which it will be?” “I'm sorry, I can't tell you. It's all secret.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs)
MR. WILCOX: (laughs) “Will it be vital war work?” “Yes. It will be vital war work.” Well, I didn't see anything to object to, so I'll just accept their offer (laughs). So, I did. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: That's how I ended up working for Eastman Kodak. Of course, I had no idea where or what it was going to be. But Eastman Kodak was the parent of Tennessee Eastman, who had been hired to operate Y-12 here in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: I reported to work up there May 26th, in 1943. I got my badge. I was the two hundredth and fifty-fourth person that Eastman Kodak had hired.
MR. MCDANIEL: For Oak Ridge? 
MR. WILCOX: And, then two fifty-four was my badge number.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: And before they were finished with Y-12, they had hired thirty thousand people. And, so I was always inordinately proud with my early joining the project. I was one of the first. Well, I wasn't the first, obviously, but I was among the first. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what date was it you said you came here? 
MR. WILCOX: May 26th. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. ‘43? 
MR. WILCOX: ‘43. What was going on in Oak Ridge at the time? Well, it was swarming with construction people. But, what they were doing was tearing down farm houses, and barns, and corn cribs, and privies, and putting in new roads and fences. There wasn't any place for anybody to stay in Oak Ridge. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: No place for anybody to work. So, all the chemists and physicists that Mr. Billings hired, and I'd say that was about fifty or sixty of us from colleges all over the country. He was really very busy. We all were sent to Rochester, New York. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: And in May. And I got up there in May, the next day or two by train. We reported for work at the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratory, which was a beautiful big five story building, I guess it was, in the research building, in a nice enclave called Kodak Park. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: We reported to work there. And that started my career. The first day we got there, we were sent up to the top floor, and Paul and I, my lab partner who was also accepted, Paul and I were told to go up and see the Director of Research. And, I said, “My gracious, what should I do?” He said, “You just go on up there. He just wants to welcome you.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh. 
MR. WILCOX: So, I went up there and found his office. And, it was very impressive, you know? It even looking back on it. But hell, I was only twenty years old. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: And wet behind the ears.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: He was sitting behind the desk in a black suit and a Dr. J. G. McNally on his desk sign board, he stood up when we walked in and shook hands. He sat down and said, “I want to welcome you gentlemen to Eastman Kodak. And actually, you will be working for Tennessee Eastman Corporation. And, it will be somewhere in Tennessee as chemists. Of course, you must know what you will be working on. Working with every day and it is uranium.” Of course, that didn't mean anything to me then. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: “But you're not to speak that word, or to write it, or to talk it, or to mention it to anyone, until the war is over. Is that clear?” “Yes, sir.” He said, “You will call it a tuballoy. That is our code name. And the hexavalent compounds will be like tubanyl hexafluoride, or tubanyl oxide. And the tetravalent the same way. Tubanous chloride, or tubanous tetrachloride. Yes. If you do mention it you will be discharged immediately, lose your job, and you will be prosecuted by the United States Government.” Well, by then my damn knuckles were completely white. And, I couldn't even turn and look at Paul. I was just looking straight the entire time. I wondered what he was going to come up with next. And what was next was simple. He said, “Mr. Wilcox, you will be working for Mr. Brigham, and Mr. Blakely, you will be working for Mr. Thornton. And, you will find Mr. Brigham in laboratory number two thirteen, and Thornton somewhere else.”  And that was the welcome we got into the Manhattan Project. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs)
MR. WILCOX: Of course, we, you know, I never heard the word Manhattan Project. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Until after the war. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: But I sure learned to say tuballoy. 
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. I bet you did. 
MR. WILCOX: And to write it. It was amazing. It only took the matter of a week or two, because we weren't real familiar with uranium, either. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly. 
MR. WILCOX: I knew just the least amount about uranium. I'd never seen any or heard any. 
MR. MCDANIEL: So, how long did you stay in Rochester before you came back to Oak Ridge?
MR. WILCOX: We spent a glorious summer there. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you. 
MR. WILCOX: We got there in the end of May. And spent June, and July, and August, and September, and most of October.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: About five months. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: And it was a big city. And with all the arts, and libraries, and advantages you could imagine. We quickly got to know enough of our peers who were in the same boat. They couldn't talk to anybody. We couldn't talk to them either. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I never found out what Paul was doing, my lab partner. I never found out exactly what he was doing for about five months. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? 
MR. WILCOX: He was working in the same building I was working in at Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine leaving that beautiful facility in Rochester and coming to Oak Ridge was kind of like going from the formal dining room to the privy, wasn't it?
MR. WILCOX: No, it wasn't. There were great advantages, of course, in a university town, Rochester. We loved the restaurants. We, of course, worked hard all day long in laboratories. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And, we couldn't visit other labs. And, they couldn't visit us. But, there were about three or four of us in this one, Brigham's laboratory, and he was just a fine first boss. I couldn't ask for anything more. He was very patient. He was a very experienced expert in thalocyanine dyes which were one of the precursors of one of the films that make up color film. And, he was an expert in it. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: But, that meant that he wasn't an expert in uranium. So, we spent the summer learning uranium chemistry the hard way. We learned how to purify it. We'd mix it up with these different metals, like iron, and nickel, and copper, and chromium. And we would make synthetic mixtures of dissolved stainless steel. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And put the tuballoy in there and figured out how we were going to get it out. Purify it, and so on. So, we all learned--three or four guys in my lab, with boss Brigham. We learned uranium chemistry together. And so the work was very challenging. At lunchtime, Kodak Park had softball leagues. So, we went out, grabbed a quick sandwich and went out and watched some baseball everyday all summer long. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. WILCOX: At night we ate. Almost all the guys who were hired were twenty-one or twenty-two. And, they could go to bars, and I would go with them. I was twenty. 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs) You were twenty. 
MR. WILCOX: And they would tease me to death, but I would rather be with them teased than sitting at home that summer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: This gets to your question about was it going from good to bad. Home that summer, five months, we lived at the downtown YMCA building. I think that it was constructed in 1900 or 1910. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And men of various occupations had been staying there. The furniture was originally, I suppose, walnut or mahogany, but I'm not sure what. But now, it was all black. There were cigarette burns along ever surface where you looked. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And, the bed, it felt like an Army mattress. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: After the Army has slept on it. So, when I got to Oak Ridge, the dormitory that we were assigned to, it didn't smell of paint, but it was just finished. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Brand new. Brand new furniture. 
MR. WILCOX: The furniture was all brand new oak or maple. The paint was very fresh. There weren’t any cigarette burns. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: The drapes were brand new drapes. The beds, nobody had ever slept in them before. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: So, from the stand point of the place we'd lived in and slept, it was like, “Boy, this is great.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: None of the camps I'd been to were anything as nice as this. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And there were double rooms and Paul and I were in there. After we'd been there three weeks they came to us and said, “We just can’t house the people we are trying to hire. Would you mind taking another person in your room?” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my. 
MR. WILCOX: So, they moved one of the twin beds out and they put in a bunk bed on one side of the room. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my. 
MR. WILCOX: And the guy who came in to sleep with us was working a midnight shift, so we never saw him. So, he'd come in or he'd go to work. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: But it was from the standpoint of the housing, it was very nice. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Paul came into the room while I was still unpacking, and he said, “You know, if everything is suppose to be a secret down here, I think I've just broken the first Army code.” I said, “Are you sure you want to tell me about it?” He said, “Yeah, I don't think, I don't think it's that secret.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. WILCOX: He said, “Okay, here we are in M-2 out on the porch. You see that dormitory there. It's just like ours and that one, and that one, and that one.” He said, “Can you read the numbers on that?” I said, “Well, W-1, W-2, W-3, W-4, W-5.” They were crawling with girls. He said, “I think the code is men and women.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: How many dormitories were there when you got here?
MR. WILCOX: Well, when we got here that October, we went out that weekend,
and did a survey there were thirteen when we got here. There must have been fifteen. It was like five men's dormitories and ten women's dormitories. About twice as many. 
MR. MCDANIEL: That's a good ratio, wasn't it? 
MR. WILCOX: We thought, well, this place is not too bad (laugh). All summer long we knew it was Tennessee, but we didn't have anywhere else. But the comic strip that year, and probably before and after, but the comic strip that sounded like Tennessee to us was Dog Patch. Daisy Mae was the girl that was in them. So, we talked about Daisy Mae all summer long and Dog Patch. And we came down here and we still called it Dog Patch. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: For a long time it was Dog Patch to us. But, there were plenty of Daisy Mae’s here. And we worked hard all day long. I got to Y-12 and it turns out I was down here for about three weeks before Brigham came down here with his family. He was an old man, about thirty-eight with two children. We all thought he was over the hill, at thirty-eight. But my job for the first two weeks when he wasn't here was ordering the equipment to set up the laboratory--chemical laboratories at Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Because we moved in and they had the fume hoods there, and the lab benches, but no reagents, no acids, no alkaloids, no chemicals. So, I sat there with a Fisher Scientific Company catalog and a blank tablet and I’d just write down that we need two of these and twelve of these. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Glassware, test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, filters, P.H. meters, and so on. I had a great time for the first two or three weeks. I'd never heard of such thing as a purchase requisition. I had to take these tablet sheets up to Sally in the front office. And, about a week later here come the big boxes on the back porch. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: Priorities. Blank checks. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And we really got things done.  Brigham called us all together after the war when he was leaving, and said, “Boys,” by then he'd been promoted. He must of had fifty of us in all working for him. “I just got to tell you, you are facing something that you won't believe, and that's called the real world, especially some of you who leave here and go to work in a regular research lab.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And then he'd spent an hour telling us about budgets, progress reports, purchase requisitions, invoices, stuff we'd never even heard of during the three years of the war. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: Just formalities and budgets. We'd never heard of a budget. 
MR. MCDANIEL: You were never worried about a budget. If you needed something, you got it. 
MR. WILCOX: If we needed it, if there was any chance it would make out work better, particularly faster. We did it. The mission was to beat Germany to the bomb. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And we did not know that for a long time because the bomb was the secret. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: But doing whatever we could to help our country win this terrible war we were in was the main driver for everybody. A single bond that we all had here at Oak Ridge. From the top boss, the top Army bosses, the top corporate bosses. All the way down to the guys in the trenches like me. Down to the guys who cut the grass. It was do whatever you could. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: To help this country win this terrible war, which we read about every morning in the newspapers. We read about it every afternoon in the newspapers. And we listened to the radio every night. Listened to Lowell Thomas, H.V. Kaltenborn, people these days just can't imagine what it's like. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: You know the tragedy of 9/11 with the planes destroying the World Trade Center? The twin towers. The papers in those days, it was like 9/11week after week, after week, after week, after week, after week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Europe, North Africa, France, Russia. Islands in the Pacific that had names we'd never heard of before. 
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And, now can never forget. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Alright, Bill. We got you to Oak Ridge. You're a single man. You are working on the project. And, we have gotten a lot of information from other interviews about the work that was done, things such as that. So, let's focus a little bit more time on you. Tell me about how you met Jeanie, and when you met her. After the war, where did you ended up living, and something about your family and community involvement. 
MR. WILCOX: Well, we worked hard all day long and played hard all night. That, of course, is a metaphor. I usually got home at six or seven. There was usually only one place for single to eat in Oak Ridge and that was the Army cafeteria. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And we had four of them. I always ate at the one up at Town Site. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And right across from the big cafeteria was a nice quadrangle, beautifully laid out. Quadrangle of women's dormitories. All the girls would come over there and eat. Then for recreation, the Army very wisely did a number of things that are just incredibly smart, that you wouldn’t ever think of when you think of the image of the Army. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: For example, they set up a very fine recreation program for singles because they knew if they got thirteen thousand singles there, with more girls than boys, and didn't have any thing for them to do there might be deep trouble. So, they did. They set up a Recreation Department. Each section of town, East Village, Town Site, with Jackson Square and West Village, each one of them had had a recreation hall, dance hall, big open space, tables around the outside. Big. One hundred people easily. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: We danced. We danced to records. Band music. Oh, loved it. [Tommy] Dorsey, [Benny] Goodman, and it was wonderful music. It was a closed community. It did not have a fence around the town. That's an erroneous statement that came from that wonderful book that Jackson and Johnson wrote called City Behind the Fence, but we never had any fence. We had signs. “No trespassing: Keep out”. But down on Melton Hill Lake, you know that nice run which was a river before it was a lake. I used to go fishing down there. And you'd just walk up to the bank and go fishing. And, we'd go hike up the back, over the back of Oak Ridge and go up to Outer Drive and walk down through the woods. And there's no fence there. Of course, there couldn't be a fence along the Clinch River. Anyway, I met Jeanie in November. I got here October the 25th. I met her about a month later. The occasion was that one of the boys came down from Rochester, one of my good friends. Bob McPherson had met a girl already that he was dating pretty steadily. This was his first month. And he had a date to, well, I had supper with her at the Andrew Johnson Hotel. Knoxville had two old-fashioned hotels: The Johnson and The Farragut. And, they had coffee shops and a dining room, but the coffee shops are more our style. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Oak Ridgers flooded to Knoxville every Monday night if they didn't have to work. They would get on a bus and go to Knoxville on a Monday night shopping. Why Monday night? Because everybody worked Saturday. And the stores were closed Sundays. Nobody went because everybody was working including the people in Knoxville. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: And Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio. Not just Knoxville. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: But everybody on the war effort and had to work six days.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: So, the stores stayed open Monday night. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And we all hopped on buses and rode on in there. I loved Downtown Gay Street, and going into Miller's. Five stories. They even had a stamp department in Miller's store then. 
MR. MCDANIEL: So, they stayed open especially on Monday night for that?
MR. WILCOX: That's what they did instead of Saturday. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. 
MR. WILCOX: That was everybody's shopping night. 
MR. MCDANIEL: I understand. 
MR. WILCOX: Yes. But, we took advantage of it. The stores would stay open late.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And we could go in there. It reminded us of where we'd come from, up north. S & W Cafeteria on Gay Street was a favorite place for us to eat. They didn't have the flies our Army cafeteria had. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. WILCOX:  We rarely had meat in the Army cafeteria, other than chicken. Fish. Chicken and fish. They always had that, and occasionally they'd have hamburgers, maybe once a week. But the S & W had a much more attractive menu.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX:  But, it was fun. So, one time in November, late, late November, Bob said, “You going to town tonight?” And I said, “Sure.” He said, “Come along with me. My girl and I are having--Claudia was her name--Claudia and I are having supper at the Andrew Johnson Coffee Shop and she's got a friend. Why don't you come along?” And that was it. We went in and Claudia introduced Jeanie to me. And that's where we met. Jeanie had flaming red hair.
MR. MCDANIEL: There's just something about a red headed girl. 
MR. WILCOX: She didn't have red headed skin, which really attracted to me. My father and I had the same bias against red heads.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. WILCOX: I don't know how to describe it, but it's very typical of some red heads. But, Jeanie didn't have it. She was just lovely.  So, we ate and came back to Oak Ridge. We got a ride home with one of the bosses who was there with his wife, and had an empty backseat. And, it's hard to believe, but, it's true, that Bob, and Claudia, and Jeanie, and Bill, and Paul, and Tinque all got in the backseat. The boys on the bottom and the girls on the top. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, but that was back when backseats were a lot bigger than they are now. 
MR. WILCOX: That is true. They were a lot bigger. 
MR. MCDANIEL: But, I'm sure that was a lovely ride back. 
MR. WILCOX: It was. We dated indiscriminately for a couple of years. We never got married until 1946. The year after the war. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: We picked a wedding date by when the apartment would be finished in the dormitory. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. WILCOX: They took some of these. There were eventually ninety of these huge dormitories like M-2 and W-1, where she lived. One hundred and fifty guys and gals. It took ninety of those to house the thirteen thousand singles in 1945. So, as soon as Y-12 shut down right after the war there was huge lay off. The twenty thousand four hundred people that worked there at the peak, in 1945. Enriching the uranium for the Little Boy, the atomic bomb. The whole plant was shut down at the end of ‘46. And, so we had a layoff of twenty thousand people. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: In two years, laid off twenty thousand people. Well, a lot of those were singles, so, we had dormitories running out the kazoo. They started tearing them down and selling them. It was tough. They converted some of them to married apartments. I remember standing in line waiting for one, and they told us it would be ready, why we decided to get married. 
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you didn't get laid off, did you?
MR. WILCOX: No. I was one of the two thousand that stayed on after the war, at Y-12. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Yes. Yes, we stayed on and kept wondering what in the world Y-12 would do. What would happen?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: I had been thinking all my technical days, as soon and I found out we were separating. K-25, August the 6th, 1945, was when they told us what we were doing. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I started thinking about how there must be a better way than the one that we were using at K-25.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: So, I started reading up, and the war time literature in the Y-12 library. And I got some ideas. So, I sold the plant manager and director on letting me spend a couple of years on research on this new isotope separation method. He agreed there was a possibility. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: I did that and I worked in the Analytical Department for a couple of years. And that brought us to 1949. Somebody came over from K-25. The boss of the laboratory over there, and said he needed me to be his technical assistant. And that their plant had a huge future.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And there wasn't any future here (laugh).
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs) Of course.
MR. WILCOX: And I was about to decide my method for enriching uranium wasn't going to work either. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And, so I left then and went to K-25. About that time, Jeanie stopped working at Y-12. She was a top notch secretary, an expert in typing and shorthand. And she'd risen right to the top, and she was the senior secretary to the maintenance superintendent, who became the first City Manager of Oak Ridge. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? 
MR. WILCOX: After she left Y-12. 
MR. WILCOX: But Jeanie quit. We had our first child in 1950. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: I got us started. We moved out of the apartments that married couples lived in, as soon as Kitty came along. And we moved into a Garden Apartment, and we stood in line until one of those was finished. We were the first people to move in the building. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: At the top of Villanova Avenue, Villanova Road. So we broke in that first dorm that first married couples apartment.  And then we broke in the Garden Apartment. And, oh, that was really beautiful. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I bet. 
MR. WILCOX: And, then we stood in line when Billy came along. Our apartment had gotten too small, and so we stood in line until they built the new houses in East Village. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: And since they got one of those finished, we moved into a three bedroom house. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: Then we lived there for a couple of years out in East Village. It was very nice. By then I'd gotten another promotion or two and qualified for a cemesto. Jeanie was pregnant with Martha.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. WILCOX: And I applied for a cemesto and I got to looking at a couple of them, but I looked at this one and said, “That's it.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: And so we moved into this house in 1956. 
MR. MCDANIEL: 1956.
MR. WILCOX: Martha was born. And we had a two girls, well we had a boy and a girl and a baby. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. WILCOX: But we've been here ever since. I started spending a lot of my time remodeling this place, and put a basement in under it, another floor, other bedrooms and baths. So, it's been a nice house. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. So you worked your career, and eventually you retired, and then you became involved, you became involved in making sure the story of Oak Ridge was told?
MR. WILCOX: No, no. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, tell me how that came to be. 
MR. WILCOX: No, my outside activities while I was working at the plant were quite restricted. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I joined the Rotary Club. And, then found that somebody was always coming through from Congress on Thursday noon. I just couldn't live with their attendance rules.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: So, I dropped out after three or four years. But most of our activity outside of the plant, for both of us was Saint Stephens Church. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I got elected to their board, the Vestry. We had a most rewarding and challenging career in all parts of our church life. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: That became the center of our social life as well, friends. We would picnic together, and party together, and so on. So, that was, that was my main outside activity. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: While I was working, my main career. When I retired, I sure didn't want to stop working, so I hung out a shingle as a managerial consultant. That was that for six years. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: I had a wonderful time doing consulting on strategic planning and executive development. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: I had two different schemes then. A little different angle than most people used. But then I took the best ideas from an every book I could read. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: But, that was very rewarding. The pinnacle of that was that DOE [Department of Energy] headquarters under Secretary of Energy Admiral Watkins, his top staff man hired me to develop a strategic planning tool for the Department of Energy, which I did. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: I went up and wrote a little pamphlet about it, that was published. And, as long as Watkins was the secretary, they used it. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. 
MR. WILCOX: The new secretary (laughs).
MR. MCDANIEL: (laughs) Sure. Of course.
MR. WILCOX: Also, another wonderful assignment I had, they asked me to facilitate a long range planning study, for what they should do with the entire nuclear defense, plants and laboratories. Three laboratories. Five or six different installations that are involved in the nuclear weapon business. And the assistant manager of each of the DOE sites was this committee. That was to do this study. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: Well, as you can imagine they were a wonderful bunch of people. I learned a great deal. And I think they did, too. We called it the 2010 Study and it was then 1988 or 7, 1987 or 8. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And, the question was what should the complex look like in 2010?
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Well, it turns out every ten years they do a study like this. Now, they are doing a 2030 Study. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course, of course. 
MR. WILCOX: Anyway, those were the highlights of that. I got kind of tired of being tied to a schedule. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. 
MR. WILCOX: The money was nice, but I thought the heck, I ought to start doing what I want to do. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: So, I eased out of that. That was about 1991 or 2. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And I got into something that I'd been working on and off and that is family history, genealogy, which my father had done a great deal on, and his father had done a great deal on. But I wanted to start from scratch. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And, I picked this up and decided that what I'd do is write a book about the Wilcox family, and the Holder family, and Redwine family, and the Jenkins family. And so on, and so on. Each of our grandparents, eight of them. So, I spent a decade doing that. It fit into our life plan because Jeanie's parents were still alive at the start. 
Her father died, but it was an ideal time to talk to her mother, who we had to go down to see in Newport. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: Family obligation, you know, we wanted to go down to see her. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: We wanted to go to see her, but when I got down there. It gave me a real agenda. And we tramped all over cemeteries all over Cocke County. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I heard stories that I followed up on. And I wound up publishing them. A number of them. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: One of them, the story of Jeanie's grandmother, who was an absolutely amazing woman. It was a great ten years. I had all the time the children were growing up, our visits to Newport, what I did was used our trips to collect butterflies. I was, for ten years deeply interested in Lepidoptera and the butterflies of East Tennessee. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: I made what I thought was a good collection, but I learned an awful lot. And I got in to people who were all over Knoxville. You remember that character I used to go to see. He was really in the business, so he was sort of a professor of entomology. Anyway, I did that butterfly collecting for, off and on, for another decade. But, it was while the kids were growing up. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: That was very rewarding, too. After I got the genealogy done and published, which I'm still not finished with it. I still have three or four books in the making, to be published. I publish them thesis style over at UTK [University of Tennessee, Knoxville]. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? 
MR. WILCOX: There's usually one or two sitting around here, but there's not today. But, I'm going to get them finished one of these days, too. But, in 1998, which is about the end of that decade I was telling you about with the family history in genealogy. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX:  While I'm doing all this other stuff, Mick Wiest calls me. “Hey, we just had a consultant from Nashville come in and look at the historic buildings of Y-12 and we got a great big report from them, and we wonder if you would be kind enough to look at this for me and tell me what you think of it?” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: Sure, Mick. So, I got it and I looked at it and there were some huge holes in the history that they didn't pick up. There were a number of things that were wrong with it. I told him I'd write it up for him. It was pro bono. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: I said, “I'll tell you what, Mick. I've been thinking about doing a report on the history or Y-12 before it slips away. If you could arrange the clearances and the conference room, I'll get a gang of people together and we can talk through some of these points that I'm not clear on because I was down at K-25 when this was going on.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. 
MR. WILCOX: He said, “Yeah.” The bottom-line was that I got this gang together of about twenty people. We had a series of wonderful meetings. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Everybody had war stories. It was really a good idea then because one guy remembers a little bit of this, but somebody else takes over. I really know what happened there, let me tell you. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: There's a lot of catalysis. Inspiration. One guy to another. And sure enough we got a pretty good story out of it back together in a book I published called The Chronology. I didn't want to take the time I could to write a book, and felt that I really couldn't. But, I could do a chronology and starting with June1943.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I covered all the years up to 1990. And put a good appendix in it. All the plants were closing down soon. Anyway, that still published, now it's published by the Secret City Store. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: But, it's available at Jefferson Drugstore. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: I somehow, I don't remember exactly how it happened, but somebody that ran across that book, who moved away from here, wrote me a letter and said he was bringing his church group of about thirty people up here on a tour. And would I meet with them and tell them the history about Oak Ridge. He was a plant superintendent from plant K-25, a good friend of mine, a wonderful guy. Bill Thomas, that's who it was. I told Bill, I said, “I really don't know what you're looking for, but whatever you want me to do I'll do.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: What year was this about?
MR. WILCOX: This was 2000, either 2000 or 2001. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: It's around the neighborhood. It's after the Y-12 book went out. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And I was really full of Y-12. Man, could I tell you stories about Y-12. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: But Oak Ridge. So, that's what started me off on Oak Ridge history, and it was about 2001, or 2000. Bill brought his group up here and I talked to them and I had gotten that story out--The Story of Oak Ridge. And, I read that thing before he came. I had to learn something about the history of Oak Ridge. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: So, I read that book before he came, made an outline. I don’t remember reading any other books, but I might have. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, that amazes me. 
MR. WILCOX: That was the story. 
MR. MCDANIEL: That was twelve, thirteen years ago?
MR. WILCOX: Yes. 
MR. MCDANIEL: And, it seems like today, you have been the expert on Oak Ridge history for decades and decades. 
MR. WILCOX: (laughs) Don't give me away, but that's exactly how it happened. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. That's amazing. 
MR. WILCOX: That's what got me started. That's what got me started on the talking part. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. 
MR. WILCOX:I had been interested, of course intensely interested after the war, in the story. I read Richard Rhodes' book when it came out, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is probably still, even with hundreds of books that have been written, that book is probably still the best single reference on the Manhattan Project. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: It's a high level thing. That he's talking at the Secretary of War Stimson, General Groves, and the top scientists. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: It's not down in the grass. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. Exactly. 
MR. WILCOX: I prefer other books for it. This is really one of those, “Oh, I had a sort of vague idea and I read some books about it. But, I hadn't done any talking about it.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And of course, I did some talking during my church year. But no lectures.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I remember one or two specific things that I did in 1979. I think one of my really best talks I've ever given was the Baccalaureate Sermon at the high school. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really? 
MR. WILCOX: Yeah, and Roger Hibb's daughter asked me to do that. She was graduating that year. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: He was a best man at our wedding. I loved him dearly. So I couldn't refuse her. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: I enjoyed that talk, and that's when I came home and told Jeanie, “Well, so much for the Rotarians. I'm through.” So I started talking in 2002. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: That was when the History Channel people came through here and the Modern Marvels series. And it's still on the History Channel. They did one on the Manhattan Project. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: They came here in 2002, or 2001, maybe. But somebody recommended that they interview me, or talk to me, and I wasn't as--quite as full of it as I am now (laugh), but I talked to them a long time, mostly about Y-12, K-25. We were interviewed and they took over the little guardhouse on Scarborough Road for interviewing. They set up all their cameras in there. You'd have loved it. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: This was a high powered television thing. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And they just, they wore me out. I mean, I talked for two hours, I'm sure. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: With all kinds of stuff they really didn't care a hoot about. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Of course. 
MR. WILCOX: And, when the tape finally aired. They sent me a copy. I don't think it was me. I think they sent a copy to Oak Ridge, a week before the airing. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: So, we could look at it.  And, darn, I just found some stuff in there that was just plain wrong. I called them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: Somebody urged me to call them right away. I told them six things that they would be real happy not to be, not to be criticized about. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly. 
MR. WILCOX: Two or three of them they did change. When the thing aired, it was a big occasion. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Everybody in Oak Ridge watched it, you know?
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah. 
MR. WILCOX: Ah, Jeanie yawned, right in the middle of it and missed my whole performance. Twenty seconds. (laugh) 
MR. MCDANIEL: (laugh) After all of that.
MR. WILCOX: Talk about a cameo performance. You blink and you don't see it. Then the Rotary Clubs got wind of it. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: And each of them asked me to come and talk with them about it. That's when I really put together the story that I've been telling ever since to the Rotary Clubs since 2002, which basically is the role of Oak Ridge. The paper that I now give to people called The Role of Oak Ridge in the Manhattan Project.  I try to make the point that the really exciting and suspenseful story. The filming, the drama is in the Los Alamos story. With the Trinity Explosion on the desert.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: And how hard the scientists worked to work out those theories, and you'd think from the History Channel presentation that the whole Manhattan Project was Los Alamos.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: So, I went to the money.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Follow the money. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And Oak Ridge spent sixty-three cents out of every dollar. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Of the Manhattan Project?
MR. WILCOX: Of the Manhattan Project. Sixty-three cents was spent right here. Twenty-one cents at Hanford, Washington. That’s huge. And, seven cents at Los Alamos. 
MR. MCDANIEL: So, that History Channel Show kind of lit a fire under you didn't it? I mean, sort of?
MR. WILCOX: I mean, yeah. It got me started. Maybe I'm making too much of it. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And, it ended up with me putting together what I think is really a balanced story about Oak Ridge, and the four plants that were here. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: It's really been the frame work I've been using ever since. 
MR. MCDANIEL: But, another fella came along in 2003, 2004 and gave you much more screen time, didn't he? 
MR. WILCOX: (laugh) Oh yeah. That's right. That's right. But you see I fit right in. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: You told the story in a way that I think is completely balanced. Well, well, balanced and good history. I'm very proud to have been a part of that. And, I think it's held up very well. But, and that probably is a tribute. A sign that, eh, you did that right. 

MR. MCDANIEL:  And it's at some point you were named City Historian, weren't you?
MR. WILCOX: Yeah, that was 2006. I did an awful lot of work for the Rotary Club. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: In 2003, 4, and 5, on the Secret City Commemorative Walk, David Bradshaw, our mayor, in 2003. I'm not sure about my year. 
MR. MCDANIEL: That's okay. 
MR. WILCOX: And he came to hear, and he said he was aware of what I had been doing for the Rotary Club and the Kiwanis and Lions, and so on, and so forth. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: He said, “We're doing a master plan in the city, and we think we want some kind of spot in the middle of the city. Where we can have an icon where people can say this is the center of the city?” Jackson Square. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And, I'm thinking of a sculpture garden. And it's going to be a beautiful Japanese-type, gorgeous, well-tended garden. And then I'm thinking of having busts on plinths, around on a circle. How about you give me your idea of what figures we would use for founders or most important parts of the people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: Like Los Alamos, they've got Oppenheimer. They've got Kistiakowsky. They've got Freeman. I said, “Yeah, sure. I'll be glad to think about that for a little bit.” I went back to him in one week and I said, “I decided you’re a sucker for a bruise.” I said, “There just isn't any way that we can put people up in there unless we put maybe fifty of them up there.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: That is going to make somebody just absolutely furious because they got left out. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: He said, “Well, what are we going to do?” 
MR. MCDANIEL: What's this “we” stuff, kemosabe, right (laugh)?
MR. WILCOX: (laugh) That's the way I felt. No I was glad to work. You know David's a perfect administrator. You always like to work with him. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 
MR. WILCOX: I said I'll think about it, and what I thought about was having some bronze tablets. Sort of around in a circle that would tell what some of Oak Ridge's founding institutions were. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And he thought about it. The idea, whatever happened to it, I don't know. But, the idea came off of his front burner. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And went right back somewhere. But then in 2003, I went to the Rotary meeting. I was back in there by then. Thanks to Dick Smyser. And at our Rotary Club, they said we got a bulletin from Chicago Rotary International Headquarters saying that in two years, 2005, we're going to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Rotary. The founding of the Rotary, in 1905. And we want every club internationally to do something to honor the centennial of our birth. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: So, if you've got any ideas let us know. I didn't think anything about it. The next week they repeated it. And somebody said, “I think we ought to do this.” And I said, “Hmm. I got an idea.” They had a deadline, so I put the suggestion before them that we do this Commemorative Walk, and put it in Bissell Park.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: And they did have the ten bronze tablets on waist high pillars.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: Go there and read.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: It would last for fifty years. But it would be a great place for somebody to come for self-guided, free, quiet, silent place that honors the founders. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: So, I wrote that up and submitted it. And they had an executive committee look at the four or five ideas and they chose this one. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: And, I was, telling my daughter, Martha, about it. She said, “Pops, you know what's wrong with your idea?” “No, tell me. Tell me.” “You don't have anything there that speaks to the heart. What you need to do is have another series of monuments that tells what it was like to live here each year. It ties it into the war. To say that the Y-12 plant was built, and they enriched the uranium for Little Boy, that doesn't tell me anything about what Oak Ridge is like.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: So, I thanked her and, that's exactly what we did do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX:  We got eight monuments that tell the story about what it was like to live here. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: As well as the tablet that tells what we did here. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Not just the three plants, but the school system, and the hospital, and construction workers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. WILCOX: One tablet on the Manhattan Project. And so on. So, we dedicated that in 2005. I made the dedication remarks. The mayor asked me to come to a meeting the next year because we were going to talk about the budget for K-25, and start preservation. And I might want to say a few remarks about how important it was that we save that history. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And so I studied for two or three days, got all my bullets together, and went to the meeting. The mayor came down and he said, “That was just a story that we invented. What we really want to do is announce that we have appointed to you City Historian. The first.” I never thought I'd be a Historian.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I really didn't look at myself as that. It was a nice gesture on their part. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: I think it was brought on by at least in part by the Secret City Commemorative Walk, which it turns out it was three hundred and fifty thousand dollar project. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And it was given to the city by the Rotary Club. We raised all the money and did the construction. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. 
MR. WILCOX: The city helped us with site preparations. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: They did some site-prep work on the concrete. Maybe the walkways or something. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: But I have an idea that was maybe one of the triggers. Also, I've been doing some talking around town about K-25. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Because, eh, 2003 there was another trigger. In 2003, when all this is going on with History Channel and so on, and the Secret City Commemorative Walk, Cindy Kelly came into town from Washington. And set up a three day workshop. And Gerald Boyd was in charge of Environmental Management at the time. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: And he made a keynote address and I went to it at the last minute. But he said we're very serious about tearing down K-25 and if anybody has any ideas about how to save the history, now's the time to get started. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: That was another trigger. They said this is something you can't put off. You've got to get involved in this. 
MR. MCDANIEL: What year was that?
MR. WILCOX: 2003. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, 2003. 
MR. WILCOX: I've been struggling with DOE on that question that he raised for ten years. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Last summer, we finally got everybody that sits around the table and worries about K-25 to agree on what we would save. And it’s something, and it's better than nothing. It's a far cry from the ideas that we've had. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: In 2006, 2007, I decided we needed an organization, so I founded the P.K.P. The Partnership for K-25 Preservation. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: I guess you blessed that when you were probably president of the ORHPA [Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association]. 
MR. MCDANIEL: I did. 
MR. WILCOX: So, that was another trigger. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Here's something you need to do. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly. 
MR. WILCOX: Anyway, it's all lead up. We now have a final MOA [Memorandum Of Agreement].  I am trying to help the excellent woman up at the DOE office who is the K-25 Historic Preservation coordinator, Karen Doughty. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. 
MR. WILCOX: And, I'm working with her. She's a gem. So, I'm still in their fight, trying to get the history observed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. WILCOX: It's so easy to let it devolve into saying, “Oh, we are going to save some of this equipment.” 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: We're going to save it from being molded and so on and so on. But it doesn't matter, doesn’t mean a thing to Jeanie.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: She wants to hear the story. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Maybe she'll look at it, but it's like somebody looking at a submarine, walking through a submarine. Yeah, you are impressed with it, the equipment and how much they packed in that tight space, but you really want to know what the submarine life was like, or what the submarine did that made a difference to the United States. 

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: And K-25 did make a huge difference, but it's not apparent in just the equipment that is being saved. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Right. 
MR. WILCOX: Guys like your friend have to join with others and try to tell that story. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. 
MR. WILCOX: Some are still at it. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you've been at it, and you will continue at it won't you. 
MR. WILCOX: I'll try. 
MR. MCDANIEL: And you just had your ninetieth birthday celebration, didn't you? 
MR. WILCOX: I did. I had two of them. One was six months ago.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's right. 
MR. WILCOX: And one last week. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, Bill, thank you, we've gone almost two hours talking this afternoon. We've got lots, and lots, and lots of interviews of you on tape, but I dare say very few of them, if any, have dealt with you personally and your personal efforts in life, and I certainly appreciate you taking the time to share that with us. 
MR. WILCOX: Well, you are every kind. I sure enjoyed it. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, thank you. 
[End of Interview]

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