Scott, Tom

              
ORAL HISTORY OF THOMAS (TOM) SCOTT
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
November 15, 2012
 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History.  The date is November 15, 2012.  I am Don Hunnicutt in the home Tom Scott, 134 Montana Avenue, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history of the Oak Ridge Fire Department and about Mr. Scott's life in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  Please state your full name, date of birth and place of birth. 
MR. SCOTT:	My name is Thomas Howard Scott.  I was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on October 8, 1932.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Please state your father’s name, place of birth and date. 
MR. SCOTT:	My father’s name is Coleman Cleveland Scott.  He was born in Center Star, Alabama, August 30, 1892. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Would you state your mother’s maiden name and place of birth and date.  
MR. SCOTT:	Her maiden name was Ruby Mae Ray.  She was born in Lowndes County, Mississippi, May 3, 1899. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tom, tell me how you got involved in the fire department history. 
MR. SCOTT:	Well, I was born on October 8, 1932.  October 8 is the anniversary of The Chicago Fire.  My mother said that's where it started.  Actually, I lived in Tuscumbia, Alabama, which is a town of about 5,000.  My dad ran a filling station on a corner and there was an intersection; there were four filling stations.  The fire department was a block away.  The fire chief lived in the fire station with his family; he was the only one paid man and then there were volunteers.  
	There was a volunteer in most of the filling stations, the fire chief would drive to the intersection where the filling stations were and all the volunteers would jump on.  I can remember at age 5 or 6 watching one of the volunteers who worked for my dad put his boots and helmet on and go out and jump on the fire truck.  I said, “I think I want to do that sometime.”
	They had a 1918 American La France fire truck at that time.  One of my fire trucks was a 1923 fire truck, which is very similar in design to that truck.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What type of awards have you received related to being involved with the fire department?
MR. SCOTT:	There is a group called the Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of Antique Motor Fire Apparatus in America.  I've been a member since 1967.  In 1992, I was given an award for being the member of the year.  The award is called the Robinson.  The organization has a quarterly journal.  I have written a column on books for the last 40 years.  The award in part was based on what I had done writing for that magazine.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So, tell me about the Oak Ridge Fire Department from its origin. 
MR. SCOTT:	Okay.  It was not a typical fire department.  I mentioned the small town fire department.  It had one paid man, most fire departments start in small towns and start with all volunteers.  Gradually, as the town becomes larger they will have one or two paid men.  Gradually, will have more and more paid men and do away with the volunteers.
	Oak Ridge started as a paid fire department full bore.  In 1943, the first fire station was a barn in the Elza Gate area with one 1943 fire truck, seven men, 1,000 feet of hose.  There was never a volunteer component as such in the Oak Ridge Fire Department. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall the type of training the men took at that particular first fire station?
MR. SCOTT:	Last summer Frank Manger published information in his column in the [Knoxville] News Sentinel about some 1943 color film that had been found in a desk somewhere.  I went through that and it has pictures of the original firemen drilling in a military style.  This had been a story. Yes, they got it out and actually drilled.  It has pictures of the first four fire trucks with a cadre of firemen going through drills at Elza Gate.  I had always seen the pictures, assuming in black and white, that they were red, the pictures of these fire trucks showed that they were actually olive drab, which was correct because all of the fire trucks built in that period went to war facilities. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So, the military supplied the fire trucks. 
MR. SCOTT:	The military supplied the fire trucks.  Now, later on they picked up three custom fire trucks, one American La France, which was about a 1941, one Pirsch, which was about a 1938, and one I haven't been able to identify, but it's the late 1930s. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall anything else about the first fire station related to how many—did they work shifts?
MR. SCOTT:	They worked 24 hour shifts.  They were on 24, off 24, which was the approach for most fire departments at that time.  Now, the problem they had at that time though, was many of the males in the late 20s and early 30s had already been drafted, so the primary source of firemen at that time were retired firemen from other places.  The Chief of the Oak Ridge Fire Department, the first Chief, was Harvey Maples, who was a retired fire captain in Knoxville.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall anything about the security related to the Fire Department?  
MR. SCOTT:	They all had to be inside the fence.  There was a chief at one time, Ed Dale, who related stories that he had been contacted by the FBI to report any kind of conversation that bordered on a security problem.  Of course, the firemen were all inside.  They were not certified as guards though, they were strictly firemen.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	While building the city as a new city, how was the Fire Department contacted to react to a fire at the first?
MR. SCOTT:	Okay, well, first of all, on the building concept you had the local neighborhood centers.  As I understand it, there was a grocery store, a barber shop, a drug store.  There was also a fire station.  Though let's look at the early city and the fire stations. 
	There was a fire station on Anna Road that was the East Fire Station.  Then there was one on Elm Grove.  One at Ogden Center.  One at Pine Valley.  One down at Kentucky and Tennessee at the main shopping center, which was Jackson Square.  Then there was one at Grove Center.  There was one at Jefferson.  Then there was one in the Valley, Gamble Valley. 
	There is some difference, there were two companies in the K-25 area, whether there were two fire stations or one fire station with two companies is not clear, but there was definitely a fire station at Wheat.  
	I've got a picture of a truck from the Wheat Fire Station and one of the firemen called and said there was one station and two companies.  He knew the name of the fire chief and the company numbers, so I'll probably go—we'll probably go with him; what he said. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, all of these locations where the fire stations were located, those were shopping centers?
MR. SCOTT:	Yes. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Scattered out through Oak Ridge in the early days? 
MR. SCOTT:	Yes, and at least three of them burned sooner or later.  East Village, Pine Valley, and Jefferson, the fire stations actually burned later on. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So, how did they set up the alarm system in the early days for fire detection?
MR. SCOTT:	Okay, now remember, we're building the town in the 40s and there are not a lot of telephones, so there had to be some situation, some mechanism for people notifying the Fire Department.  There was an essential—there was an alarm center at Grove Center in the building where the ambulance service operates now.  There was a fire alarm operator there.  Over the city, there were about 220 telephones on telephone poles and it said, “If you needed to call the fire, ambulance, or police use that,” because the people did not have telephones in their houses.  The dispatchers then could call the individual fire stations.  
	They also had, later on, a tele-writer, which was a system that he could write on a piece of paper and it would be a piece of paper running on a machine in the station that the firemen could read.  The firemen did not like the tele-writer because they couldn't read the writing; it was too jumpy.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, were these call boxes located within a certain foot of each other so people would have an easier access?
MR. SCOTT:	Generally, they tried to have them within 500 feet, which is a long block. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, describe the structure of the buildings in Oak Ridge in the early days that they would be fighting fires. 
MR. SCOTT:	Well, of course Oak Ridge had all the cemesto houses, but the primary fire problem was in the flattops and in the trailers.  There was a lot of the—well, there were trailers, there were flattops and there were also the hutments, which pictures were taken showing a lot of times they had a big coal stove in there and a pipe that just went out through the attic.  
	There was a very good inspection.  Now, you're living in the city where the city can set the ground rules and if you caused the fire because of poor housekeeping or something, you would probably get a ticket.  The Fire Department came around and made home fire inspections by the thousands and would tell people they had to keep their houses clean, they had to keep the kitchens up, that sort of thing.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, the first Fire Department located at Elza Gate, where did they relocate to the next fire house?
MR. SCOTT:	The next one was on Milan Road, which is right next to the telephone office there west of the post office.  It started in September of ‘43.  The second one was the one over on Kentucky, which is now a lawyer’s office.  The first one did not last long like three months and then they put two engines in the one on Kentucky, that's Kentucky and Tennessee.  That building is still there.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	That's Don Roe's law office. 
MR. SCOTT:	And that was the headquarters and they had two engines in there.  The Chief ran out of there.  They had a squad, a smaller truck out of there. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	How many men were stationed there?
MR. SCOTT:	Each engine company had seven men. Now typically in Oak Ridge it's three, but that was the federal government paying for that and they set their standards and they manned it heavily. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you know where they got the seven men for each station?
MR. SCOTT:	No.  They hired wherever they could, but like I say, a major source were the retirees because they were not eligible to be drafted.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, I presume these would be younger men than the original group that was first started. 
MR. SCOTT:	The later people, yes.  See there was a tremendous cutback.  They went from the nine or ten stations to four stations, so they cutback and released over half of the people they had.  Now, I'm talking about in the period from ‘46, ‘47, ‘48, ‘49. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tell me what would be a typical day for a fireman in a particular fire hall.
MR. SCOTT:	Well, first of all, every day at 8:00 [am], they're at the fire station because they're either getting off work or they're coming on.  The people would come on would have a roll call where they were dressed in their uniform A, which was a full formal uniform with hat.  Then they would go change to their clothes and do the work cleaning up, working on the trucks, training.  The training was not as rigorous as it is now because they didn't have all of the things like Scott Air Packs, all of that.  The ladder trucks, all the larger hoses, but they worked a lot. 
	Now, a lot of the information that I'm providing is out of a history by Don McGuire and he relates a lot of those stories.  He's got a picture of that station at Kentucky and Tennessee.  
	Fire prevention was a very big activity and the National Fire Prevention Association and FPA, has a contest each year to see who has the best fire prevention week.  In 1947, Oak Ridge won that that Fire Prevention Week contest.  Number two was Chicago Fire Department and number three was the New York City Fire Department.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	In the picture that you just showed, the gentleman in the white uniform is General Leslie Groves, do you know why he was in this photograph?
MR. SCOTT:	I don't know why he was in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, Harvey Maples was the chief and where was he located?
MR. SCOTT:	His office was at headquarters.  The deputy chief was out—and now, the chief did not go on all the fires.  There was a deputy chief who was essentially the platoon commander, who would go on all the fires.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So, during the daily life after they had roll-call and they changed back into their firefighting clothes that they would go out on a fire, you get an alarm in.  Tell me how they responded to that. 
MR. SCOTT:	Well, typically they would respond at least two engines to any fire.  They had a procedure of who laid hose, which caught the first hydrant, which went in first on the fire.  Generally, the first officer there would be the incident commander.  
	They actually laid hose lines on all calls whether there was any indication of a fire or not.  Now remember, they had all these dorms.  If it was a fire, alarm coming in for a dorm, if somebody had pulled one of the alarms, they laid hoses if there were a fire.  Certainly, they don't do that now.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tell me about their equipment they put on before they got on the fire truck. 
MR. SCOTT:	They had boots and long coats.  They did not have pants as we have now called Turn Out Pants.  They would have helmets.  They did not have the self-contained breathing apparatus we have now and they had Chem-Ox, which were a canister kind of mask which breathing in the oxygen and moisture in the air would go through a filter and it was not very effective. It was very heavy.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, what about the living quarters in the fire department?
MR. SCOTT:	The living quarters, of course they would have a kitchen in each fire station and they would cook.  Don McGuire has a story in there at the headquarters there was an enterprising fireman who had a grocery store in Lake City who converted the kitchen into essentially a deli, would bring in food, would make sandwiches and sell them to the people in the neighborhood.  He could get to the material that was being rationed because he had a store in Lake City and would barter food for the meat and things that he couldn't get elsewhere.  
	Now, they invited a lot of people to come in. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Describe their sleeping quarters. 
MR. SCOTT:	There would be lined up, single beds.  They would have very strict regulations about the beds were to be made up.  Firemen were not to be in the bed from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.  They would put their boots beside the bed.  They would have systems that turned on lights very brightly as soon as the alarm rang and there was a very fast rush to get their boots on and put their coats on.  
	There are lots of stories about the older firemen getting the rookie firemen and doing things like tying their boots down, putting water in their boots, putting holes in their boots to give the rookies a hard time.  That tradition continues today.  Things of that kind still happen in fire stations. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tennessee and Kentucky Avenue, was that considered the main fire hall?
MR. SCOTT:	That was headquarters.  It had two engines, the squad, it was the center of activity. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, if I remember right it had an upstairs with the firemen slept; is that correct?
MR. SCOTT:	It had an upstairs where the firemen slept and it had a pole that they came down.  The story is that when that building was sold it was auctioned off to Ron Horn, who had a men's store around the corner there.  They took the pole out, he came and found they took the pole out.  He called the city and said the deal is off unless I get the pole.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	I understand it's in the Don Roe’s lawyers office today.  So describe how they went down the pole with their fire equipment on. 
MR. SCOTT:	It would be obviously a hole in the floor and there would be two pieces of wood that came down and sealed the area around the pole.  There are a number of cases over the country where firemen have been killed falling through the pole asleep falling head first.  They would pull the boards up, put their arms around and their legs around the pole and slide.  They got to the point they could go very fast and then stop right at the end. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Are we talking about a 10 foot, 12 foot drop, what kind of drop?
MR. SCOTT:	It would depend on the floor, typically it would be 10-12 feet. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Was there a cushion pad at the bottom?
MR. SCOTT:	Yes, there was a cushion pad about so thick.
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall what the pole was made out of?
MR. SCOTT:	They were brass.  On occasion, when they couldn't get good metals they would make them out of galvanized, but that did not work very well.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So, I'm sure the friction from the galvanized wasn't very pleasant. 
MR. SCOTT:	It was not good at all.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So, they've got an alarm.  They've gotten woken up if it's in the night.  They've slid down the pole.  They know what each of their duties are.  They get on the fire truck and proceed towards the fire site.  Tell me about the firemen, where they rode on the fire truck?
MR. SCOTT:	Okay now, all of the trucks that they got from the military were Fords or Chevrolets.  They had a cab that could carry two men.  There would be a driver.  The officer always sat on the right in the front.  The remaining firemen stood on the back step and held onto a bar.  This is in rain, snow, whatever, they're getting it right in their face.  As they're approaching the fire, if it was necessary, one man would jump off with a hose and wrap it around the fire hydrant and then the truck would drive off. 
	Now, the hose is playing out in the back, which meant that the other men on the back step had to stand around on the side of the truck or these heavy couplings are going to hit them.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall what the hose was made out of?
MR. SCOTT:	It was cotton double jacketed.  It was 2.5 inches in diameter. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And what was the length of each section of hose?
MR. SCOTT:	Each section was 50 feet and that has been traditional from the beginning of firefighting.  Always been 50 feet. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you think the 50 foot length was a manageable length and that's the reason it was that long?
MR. SCOTT:	That was a reasonable length.  You don't have too many couplings, but when you get through you disconnect each section and roll it up to take it back to the fire station to clean up.  So it gets heavier and heavier, 100 feet would probably be too heavy to carry. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And what were the couplings made out of?
MR. SCOTT:	Brass. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now am I right in saying that the fire hose was laid stacked on each other in the back of the fire truck?  
MR. SCOTT:	Yes, it was flat layers back and forth, back and forth so it played out.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So they just—when the fire was over with, they just rolled everything up, put it on the truck and-
MR. SCOTT:	Bring it all to the truck and roll it up.  They would have enough spare hose at the station to load it before they cleaned up the other hose.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now I've seen pictures of dogs, Dalmatians, riding on the fire truck and also pictures of Oak Ridge early fires trucks with dogs on it.  Tell me about the Dalmatians.  
MR. SCOTT:	Well, the Dalmatian tradition started when the fire trucks were actually horse drawn carriages and the Dalmatian was a horse dog and they would run ahead of the horse and clear people out.  Now, Oak Ridge had one named Chief.  There is a monument down at Station II for Chief.  He got older, now he would jump on the truck.  One day he missed the truck.  The truck ran over him.  They were going to Box 334 and the monument down at Station II is to Chief saying his last alarm was Box 334.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And where is that station located?
MR. SCOTT:	That's on the east end of the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike past Georgia Avenue, between Georgia and Florida.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tell what the other duties of the firemen were at the fire, besides hooking up hose to the hydrant. 
MR. SCOTT:	Well, the first duty is always to rescue, get people out if there's any problem.  They're always concerned about getting people out.  The second thing is to put the fire out.  In the process of putting the fire out, you want to save as much of the property as you can, of course, the first concern is extension of the fire into nearby buildings.  That very rarely happened in Oak Ridge because of the spacing between the houses.  You go to other places there may be a 3 or 4 feet spacing between houses, in Oak Ridge they're not that close.  It's rare that a fire goes from one house to another house in Oak Ridge and that was the case at that time. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	If they had a fire alarm in the east part of Oak Ridge and the fire station at Kentucky Avenue and Tennessee responded and they needed help, how did they get help from the other fire stations?
MR. SCOTT:	They had radios early on, but they were very big and very heavy, but they did have two way radios.  There would usually be one per truck, now each fireman has his own, but they would call back and say they need help. 
	The first really big fire that we have records of was the shopping center at Gamble Valley, July 27, 1951, where it burned down and a man was killed.  The Oak Ridge Historical Society has put out a tape of the radio transmissions at that fire and in there they call for help very quickly.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tell me about the olive drab fire trucks again.  They were olive drab at first and then when did they change to the typical red that we're accustomed to seeing?
MR. SCOTT:	I don't know.  The first pictures I have which are in the late 50s, they're red.  I don't know when they changed, but I suspect it was almost as soon as they could after the war.  Firemen are very traditional and they like red.  In the late 60s and early 70s, there was a tenancy to go yellow, which Oak Ridge did, which very much upset the old traditionalists and the national trend that the present time was red.
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now did you mention that when the fire trucks went out on the alarm response, we're they open cab or closed cab?
MR. SCOTT:	The military vehicles were all closed cab.  The three trucks that they've got that were called custom trucks were open cab.  All of my trucks are open cab.  Most firemen want open cab so they can see what's going on.  There were actually situations where cities cut cabs off of trucks because the firemen wanted open cab, saying, “I want to be able to talk to the people on the back step.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So that can be a very hazardous situation trying to drive a fire truck in the pouring down rain or snowing. 
MR. SCOTT:	Completely. Contrary to all rules of safety. But firemen are very traditional.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you know some of the community activities the firemen did in the early days?
MR. SCOTT:	Yes.  First of all, they had extra time off at the station.  Remember they're working 24 hours in most fire departments and the Oak Ridge Fire Department did it to restore toys and paint toys at Christmas.
MR. HUNNICUTT:	I remember as a child giving my toys to the Fire Department.
MR. SCOTT:	You gave them and you started like in October and they worked on them for weeks and weeks and weeks and distributed the toys.  Now, they had lots of fire prevention activities at the schools they would come out and have demonstrations.  
	They would go to the hospitals and show the nurses and staff how to use fire extinguishers.  Lots of activity.  And then you're talking about thousands of home fire inspections.  The firemen did not particularly like going into some lady's house telling her, her closets needed to be cleaned up or the kitchen wasn't right, but they did it.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So the firemen had pretty much authority to do that in the early days. 
MR. SCOTT:	There was the management system here and if you needed your house painted you called them.  If you needed—well the flip side was that they had control and they could evict people who didn't meet the rules.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So as the Fire Department has progressed over the years, give me a little bit of overview of how things have improved compared to say, the 40s and early 50s. 
MR. SCOTT:	Okay now, in the ‘40s, it was a very good Fire Department.  Okay and it stayed that way while Troy Richardson was here.  He stayed about 20 years.  Then in the mid- 60s, now 20 years from the mid-40s, mid 60s, they-
MR. HUNNICUTT:	You mentioned Troy Richardson.  Tell me who he was.  Harvey Maples was the first chief and then- 
MR. SCOTT:	Troy Richardson succeeded him and the story was that Troy Richardson was in the Democratic party politics and supposedly was going to get the job to start with, but got it the second term.  He was going to let the shift people run the operation.  Well the story goes that it got to the point that there were two deputy chiefs, Lynn Brock and Chief Ed Dail who had different ideas about how to do things and then Chief Richardson did not say we're going to have one system.  
	So, if you worked one day under one deputy you had one way of doing it.  You came in at 8:00 the next morning and you would actually take equipment off and put more equipment on because the other chief did things differently.  One wound up being a group of Knox County firemen.  The other group was firemen for Anderson County.  They certainly would not do that now.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	How much water did the early fire trucks hold?
MR. SCOTT:	Now, the fire truck is really gauged on the amount of water it can pump, rather than the amount it carries.  The tanks on the early trucks were probably 100 gallons.  The current trucks may be 700 gallons.  The pumps were 500 gallons per minute on the government furnished trucks.  That's the minimum to qualify as a fire engine.  Current trucks may be 1,250 gallons a minute. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What type of training did the firemen have in the early days?  You mentioned training they had.  What type of training did they have?
MR. SCOTT:	They had regular hose evolutions.  They had the ladder evolutions.  They had evolutions where what did you do when the firemen go injured.  Now, the first fire station that we mentioned was actually back on Milan Road and it did have a tower and there are pictures of that tower.  They would put ladders on those towers.  They would carry a hose up and down those ladders.  They would have what they called a church raise, which is you put a ladder straight up with four ropes out to the side.  The church raise idea came up.  You're in a church and you've got to get up side the attic in the church because there's no place to lean the ladder on.  They would have to run up one side on the ladder, down one side.  
	They also had big life nets and maybe ten firemen would hold that and the firemen were required to jump out of the third floor into this life net.  There are very few instances where firemen ever had to jump into the net, but it had become a tradition and they all practiced it.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you know of any instance that a civilian had to jump into the net?
MR. SCOTT:	There have been more instance—now, I don't know of any in Oak Ridge and many times the person would miss the net and hit one of the holders.  And it was a very specific way to hold the net so it didn't break your wrist.  You did not hold it from this direction, you held it from the back side. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And what was the net made out of?
MR. SCOTT:	It was made out of a canvas-y kind of material.  It would have a big red dot in the center that was supposed to be the target.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What other—did they later on have devices that kept them from inhaling smoke, like scuba devices or what they finally do in the early days when they went into a building and there was a lot of smoke and they didn't have a scuba outfit?
MR. SCOTT:	They got a wet rag and put it across their mouth.  Now backing up, into the really early days, the word was, they had long beards and they would put the beard up over their nose.  I don't know how well that would work, but that's one of the stories.  Of course, now they have the self-contained breathing apparatus which has its own oxygen, actually it has compressed air, and they have a tank that starts out at 2,600 pounds per square inch. As it bleeds down they have a bell that goes off that warns them it's time to get out.  Many of the older firemen died of lung disease.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Describe the early fire extinguishers. 
MR. SCOTT:	Well, the very early fire extinguishers were called soda and acid and it was a canister that had two and half gallons of water.  The water contained sodium bicarbonate, baking soda, and there was a bottle sitting in a little container at the top that had acid in it.  The acid bottle had a lead plug.  When you needed to use the extinguisher you turned it upside down the lead plug came out of the acid bottle, the acid mixed with the sodium bicarbonate solution, carbon dioxide gas built up.  Now, we're talking about pressures could be two or three hundred pound and ejected the water out of the little hose on the side.  There were lots of these in buildings, lots of these around and they're still around. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Well how long did it take for that chemicals to mix to get the pressure?
MR. SCOTT:	It was instantaneous.  There are examples where dirt dabbers got into the little nozzle and when the firemen turned it upside down nothing came out, the fireman. thought the acid bottle hadn't come out, so he hit it and that only made it worse because it made the reaction go faster.  They were—firemen have been killed with exploding extinguishers.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	I remember seeing fire hose in like movie theaters, in dormitories and places of that nature; describe the process with that. 
MR. SCOTT:	Now that was single jacketed and it did not have a rubber lining because it was folded up very closely and it would just have a valve off of a standpipe, as it was called, just a water line.  It would practically always have a straight nozzle on.  It was very simple, very basic, but very functional. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	If I remember right, the nozzles were made out of brass, what was the reason for that?
MR. SCOTT:	Well, I guess it wouldn't rust.  The nozzles on the trucks were brass.  When I was a volunteer fireman in Auburn University we had to polish them every Saturday because any fingerprint shows up.  It shows up very quickly. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	I recall growing up that I think I do, remember seeing red kind of containers probably 2 feet tall maybe or 3 feet, with water in it and it had a hand pump and a hose. 
MR. SCOTT:	Hand pump, I have two of those.  Those were around and that was just basically a cylindrical tank that had water in it and it was a little positive displacement pump.  These were very effective in England during the Blitz.  They put—the Germans put down a lot of fire bombs and that's one of the ways they put them out.  They are not very good on grass fires because the tank is hard to manipulate, but it's a very simple, very cheap operation.  Good thing to have.  I can see why they would have them around the plants. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What other type of fire protection did they city have besides fire alarms and fire extinguishers at various places?  Was there any other type of detection?
MR. SCOTT:	That was basically it.  The basic approach was let's have fire stations around.  Let's get in there fast with a lot of manpower. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	If I remember correctly in the Jackson Square area, there was a red pole that had a box with lights on it, in that box, and explain to me how that worked?
MR. SCOTT:	Okay.  Now, we had mentioned that they, early on, had the telephones on the pole.  In 1949, they came in with a Gamewell System.  Now the Gamewell System has the box.  There is a lever that's pulled.  There is a spring operated mechanism that starts breaking and opening an electrical circuit.  At the other end there is another opener and breaker, and this is basically a telegraph and that's what these boxes were.  They would break open a certain series of time, like four times open, and a pause, six times open and a pause, five times open and a pause.  That would punch in a tape and ring a bell and it would be four punches, six punches, and five punches.  
	They would have a piece of paper that would tell them where the boxes were numbered.  I have a box from Oak Ridge and its 465.  It was behind the hospital on 122 East Tennessee.  Now, when they got to the box, the box has a telegraph type key and they can start punching numbers back to the dispatcher and the dispatcher would know what they wanted.  
	They could have something to—a number saying “send me police”.  A number saying “the fire's out”.  In the larger cities if they needed more help, they would hit the key twice and pull the box that says I want a second alarm on this box that says “send more help”.  That terminology is still used in New York on 911 they pulled the first box, which was 8088.  The second box was 8089.  They pulled a third box and they went on five alarms on each box.  They had 15 alarms.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Describe the difference in the grade of fires in there like not knowing-
MR. SCOTT:	A fire, class A is basic stuff.  Class B is, I believe, petroleum and Class C is electrical.  They have B and C.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, back to the box I was referring to in Jackson Square that had some light bulbs seems like in it, did that indicate to the firemen which area in the shopping center the fire was in?
MR. SCOTT:	No, that was decorative.  Now, in Oak Ridge on some of the boxes like at Robertsville Middle School, there was a second box on the back of the regular box and there were little peep holes.  And when a box was pulled inside, which is called an auxiliary box.  It would say the box that's been pulled inside is the gym, it's the principal’s office.  They would tell you where it was.  Oak Ridge did have that system. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall the Y-12 alarm, fire alarm that they used with the horn system and can you explain that?
MR. SCOTT:	It was hooked to the Gamewell System and what it was a big air horn and rather than tapping a bell, you're flipping the switch that turns the air horn on.  And they would honk like three times, four times, five times, which would be box 345.  That could be heard out on Montana Avenue.  When they used that system I could hear it. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Did Oak Ridge Fire Department assist Y-12, X-10, or K-25? 
MR. SCOTT:	Okay now, they started cutting back on fire stations and they built a new fire station on South Illinois about where the Subway is in 1950.  Now, we see records that in 1950, ‘51, ‘52, and ‘53, the Oak Ridge Fire Department took over the fire protection for Y-12.  I have talked to people, why did they go back on their own?  They said the program was beginning—had contracted out there and was beginning to expand.  I don't know that station, the old station three on South Illinois was very convenient to Y-12.  Oak Ridge Fire Department had K-25 from the beginning.  It never as far as we can find, had anything to do with X-10 as far as taking over the fire department though. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So where would be the fire station location that would respond to the K-25 situation?
MR. SCOTT:	It was always fire stations at K-25.  Now, the ones at Oak Ridge had—we think were at Blair Road.  I have seen one mention of something at the steam plant.  I've talked to old-timers there, most of them don't remember it. 
	Now one of the other things that went on out there, going out the Turnpike, you get to Blair Road, K-25 is on the right.  To the left there was a big housing project for the construction workers called Happy Valley and you can go out in the woods out there and there are still hydrants, fire hydrants out there.  Evidently that was the first housing development.  Now the man that had called me about working at Wheat said, “When you came out of the Wheat Station going to Happy Valley, they didn't have to tell you where the fire was, you practically always could see it.”  These were very crude hutments. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	I think I read where there was a fire station at the pump station.  Do you recall anything out there?
MR. SCOTT:	This is the sort of thing we haven't been able to verify.  We know there were two companies.  Two engines with crews out there, whether they would have had them in one station or two, but we haven't found a picture of that second station. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now when they built the new fire hall on Illinois, did they cut back on the manpower of the fire stations?
MR. SCOTT:	Well, it was being cut back.  They had gone from ten companies to four companies.  Okay now, this was all going on a phase down proposition.  In 1966 or 67, Richardson is retiring, Chief Richardson.  They decided they would go nationally and hire a fire chief.  This was not met with happiness in the fire department because tradition had been you were promoted from within.  
	The fire chief they picked was from Florida.  He was named Jack Lee.  First of all, he came in and there was the East Village Station.  There was the Station 2 at Kentucky.  There was Jefferson Avenue and there was the new station on South Illinois.  
	Okay, first thing he did was consolidate those stations.  He built a station on the East end, which is Station 2 now, Georgia to Florida.  Stations on the West end, which is at the Turnpike at Salem.  He got rid of the old fire trucks.  He bought four new fire trucks, three for those stations and started the process of getting a ladder truck, which Oak Ridge had never had. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What was the reason for a ladder truck?
MR. SCOTT:	The reason should be that we needed it.  The real reason was the state people who rate you said if you don't get a ladder truck we're going to increase your ratings.  Their ratings start at Class I and go to Class 10.  Class I is the very best, Class 10 is a rural fire department with no hydrant. Okay.  Oak Ridge, I'm not sure, I guess they were a four and in order to keep the four they had to get a ladder truck.  That bought a ladder truck in 1974, it lasted about 15 years.  It went to the state training facility in Bell Buckle and they bought the current tower ladder that they have. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What generally happens to the old fire trucks?
MR. SCOTT:	In the past, they basically were sold at auction and would quite often go to rural volunteer fire departments.  There are also people that are interested in those who follow the auctions and buy a fire truck. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Sort of like you.
MR. SCOTT:	Yes. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, it seem to me if they cut back on manpower, the city really hasn't change that much.  The type structures are still here.  The housings still here, what was the purpose of that?
MR. SCOTT:	Cost.  It went from a level of about 200 to a level of about 50.  When I came here it was about 50.  Now, the city also started a new program which was called a Specialist Program in about 1979 or 1980.  By then they had gone to three shifts.  You worked 24 hours, you were off 48.  Okay, most of the studies showed that a city the Oak Ridge size could not have the manpower on full time required for a major fire.  So they said, “We need to have some supplemental manpower.”  So they came up with a program that four off-duty firemen would have city furnished pickups and radios.  And would be required to stay in the city but would paid a retainer and then be paid hourly while they were on fires.  This was called a Specialist.  This is sort of a step back toward the volunteer, non-full-time men.  And that program is still in effect.
	Okay, but then when the city picked up K-25 they got about the equivalent of 30 people.  They're up at about a 75-74 level now.
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Did they have a training facility at the Illinois Avenue fire department? 
MR. SCOTT:	Yes, there was a tower back then.  And that station was torn down when the mall was built. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What type training did they do at that tower. 
MR. SCOTT:	Basically, the same training that they'd done at the towers before.  Ladder evolutions; taking hose up the ladder; taking hose up an inside stairwell; hooking up to an inside standpipe system, which is just an inside hydrant.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall the firemen ever have to pass any kind of physicals or conditioning that they did to stay in shape?
MR. SCOTT:	Yes, they had timed evolutions and like once or twice a year you had to go through the timed evolution.  It might be dragging a dummy from the second floor down to the first floor and out.  It might be running so far with a section of house; pulling a hose so fast getting a ladder up.  There were definitely timed evolutions. 
	Tom Hill was the director of head of training at that time.  He pushed the men to do that. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall how the fire department interacted with the civil defense programs that went on in the city?
MR. SCOTT:	I don't have any back information then on that.  I don't recall that.  I'm sure at the time was now—when I came in ‘73 there wasn't a lot of that kind of civilian defense.  In the mid ‘50s there are lots of pictures of fire trucks I have that have a CD symbol on them and they were fire apparatus furnished by the federal government because at that time we had concern about the Cold War building up.  New York City in particular, got a lot of fire engines out of that program.
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Was the manpower volunteers for that particular CD fire truck and so forth?
MR. SCOTT:	They had axillary groups in big cities that were going to fight the fires.  As far as I know Oak Ridge never had volunteers.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	How do you see the Fire Department today?  Is it efficient or what's your opinion of the Fire Department today?
MR. SCOTT:	It's top notch.  It's very well organized.  The typical Oak Ridge advertisement for an open position may get 200 people.  Right now they had just, of the last group, they picked three to come in.  It is a very high level training.  The medical portion of the firefighting has increased exponentially.  
	Typically, in the ‘50s, they might have 3 or 400 calls a years, now they're running 4,500.  The majority of which, not the majority, probably 80-90 percent are emergency medical.  There are paramedics on each shift.  Now, there's EMT, which is the first step.  The paramedic is like a year of very difficult training.  They have a paramedic on most engines.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you know what the normal response time for an alarm might be?
MR. SCOTT:	No I don't know what the normal is.  I'm sure they keep that record as public, four minutes, five minutes, it's something like that.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So when you call 911, you're going to get not only the Fire Department and maybe the Police Department, but you'll get a little bit of everyone don't you?
MR. SCOTT:	All right, the dispatcher has to make a basic decision are they going to send an ambulance.  If an ambulance goes a fire engine goes.  Now, there are two ambulance stations and three fire stations, but the ambulance is run a lot more, not on emergency, but just a lot more including all of the transports.  If you're listening to radio, every morning you hear all the people that are going to the hospital for training of the different kinds of services.  Not emergency, but just being transported.  The firemen are always there though. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Can you relate any stories that you've heard about things that happen odd, funny or … back in the early days?
MR. SCOTT:	Oh goodness.  Well, I was going to go down there this afternoon.  When you have a fire that comes back you call that a rekindle and that's very embarrassing.  
	This morning they were in a lift assist.  Now lift assist is there just going to get somebody that's fallen back up or in bed.  They were in the same address twice and I was going to ask them, “Didn't you put the man back in bed right the first time?”  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tom, tell me some stories that happened way back in the early days that you recall about the fire department.
MR. SCOTT:	One of the fire engines was going on a mutual aid call to Oliver Springs and was going down the hill past Hilltop.  Somehow, the hose started coming off.  Fire truck went on down to Oliver's and the dispatcher called and said we got a report that your hose is out here on the road going down to Oliver's and the Captain called back and said that can't be true cause it's still back in the back of the truck, but it's not.  Okay. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So, in those days there were no firemen that rode on the back of the truck. 
MR. SCOTT:	Because all the firemen must be inside the fire engine and have seat-belts on before it goes out of the station. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Which brings up another point.  It seemed to be pretty dangerous to ride on the back of that fire truck just to hold onto a round rod back there and if the truck stopped suddenly or swerved they could be injured pretty bad. 
MR. SCOTT:	Firefighting is considered to be dangerous.  Always the maximum number of death of fire fighters is heart attacks.  The number two killer of fire fighters is accidents.  The actual death on fire ground is much lower than you would expect. 
	Now, the first one says you got to drive safer and they are very strict about that, but there can be people that want to go a little faster.  The second one is the good food at the fire stations.  They cook and when they have time.  And most stations have people that like to cook.  
	Now one of the stories at one of the fire stations in Oak Ridge was the rule was if anybody complains about the meal they have to cook the next one.  So, the fireman sits down, he doesn't like the meal.  He says, “I really like this you burned it just like my mom did.”  Okay, was that a compliment, okay.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Something comes to mind about the early training at the first fire hall at Elza Gate, do you recall what that was about a stump, tree stump?
MR. SCOTT:	Yes.  Typically as the fire truck is going and is approaching the fire, a fireman on the back hooks, jumps off and hooks the fire hose to the fire hydrant.  If they didn't have a fire hydrant, they just said play like this stump is the fire hydrant.  And there are pictures in those color pictures of the 43 of them laying a line that way. 
	One of the pictures shows the stone house that's on the Turnpike right by OSTI [Office of Scientific and Technical Information] that's very easy to identify.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you recall any other funny stories about the Fire Department?
MR. SCOTT:	Well, not right off, let's say it that way. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tom, tell me a little bit about yourself.  Where did you go to school?
MR. SCOTT:	Okay, I went to Auburn.  I lived in a fraternity house a block from the fire station.  I would go to the fires and after a while the firemen said, “We have some extra space in the fire station, why don't you just come up here and live?”  They had three firemen for the whole town of Auburn and no volunteers and this is including the university and they had two trucks.  So, two firemen are in the front seat of the front truck.  One fireman's driving the second truck, which meant I had the back step by myself, which meant I had the first nozzle in.  You couldn't get any better than that.  
	I ate at the fraternity house and if there was a fire the fire trucks went out.  The pledges in the fraternity were required to start yelling, which meant I ran out to the corner and the second fire truck stopped and picked me up.  I doubled the firefighting capability by a third.  
	One night, I was taking my future wife over to the fraternity to eat and we were walking, we didn't have cars at that time of course, we were walking in front of the fire station and the bell rings.  I said, “I'll see you.”  I'm going on the fire truck, she says, “Forget that, I'm going over there, they owe me a meal.”  So, she went over there and made them feed her.  So, she understood what was going to happen. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What year was this?  What was the date?
MR. SCOTT:	1953 or 1954. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, it comes to mind after you talking about that; tell me about a firemen's ax.  It's shaped in a particular way, what's different about it than a normal cutting wood ax?  
MR. SCOTT:	The back of most regular wood cutting ax is a hammer head.  The fireman is a pick and the pick is so that it can pick into a roof, pull the shingles off.  It's sort of a pry bar.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So, is there first reaction, I guess, to a house fire is to try to get the shingles off the roof?
MR. SCOTT:	Yes, what you're doing is the hot gases build up and go up, okay, and they start stratifying so the people down here are in heavy smoke, you open it up to get those hot gases out so the people can have a clearer atmosphere underneath.  That's a very typical approach. 
	Now, in Oak Ridge it's complicated because one of the things they will start doing immediately is saying, “Is this an old flattop?”  Because the flattops had a roof, tar, gravel built up.  When they put the hip roof on them they did not take that off.  They just go ahead and put the rafters across, so if you're trying to come down you got to cut down first and then go through another roof.  The guy coming up from the bottom tries to punch a hole in a ceiling of sheet rock, which you can usually do very easy.  He hits that roof and that pole that he's hitting with vibrates.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, there's a fireman on the ground beside the fire truck that looks at the pressure gauges for the pumps I presume.  
MR. SCOTT:	There is an operator that is solely—that's his sole job is taking care of that pump because you can get people hurt if something happens to the water.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Is that generally the driver of the truck?
MR. SCOTT:	Driver, he's called an Operator, but he's usually the driver and it's not somebody that's just been there a month.  This is a progression.  Now, the fire services in Oak Ridge as other places, is different in the sense that the rookie policeman goes through his hundred and 60 hours or whatever, of training and then he's out in a car by himself and he's the basic unit.  In the fire service the basic unit is the company, three people.  The rookie is always protected.  He has always got somebody telling him where to go.  Whereas the policeman has to have a lot of responsibility in stopping a car which may have somebody on it that is not in very good shape. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	How many hours does a rookie fireman generally go through training before he's considered not a rookie anymore?
MR. SCOTT:	It depends on how often they're getting rookies.  There is not a definition in the manual, personnel manuals, of rookie, but the youngest guy is quote, 'the rookie'.  But after a year or so and generally they'll be hiring somebody every six months or so and so when new rookies come in the older rookies move off.  
	Oak Ridge right now has a median age that is much lower than it was in the old days because many of the firemen who came in in ‘43 were already older.  Some of those people went through four management systems.  I can' remember the name, but they changed management groups and they had different retirement requirements.  
	Ross Roberts retired with 40 something years and he had to stay that long because to be eligible for decent retirement.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, if I was a rookie and I'd been on the job, say a week or so, and we had a fire alarm, would I go out with the rest of the men?
MR. SCOTT:	You would go out, but you would not be on the nozzle.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Be on the one that directs the water. 
MR. SCOTT:	You may be pulling the hose behind you, but you're not going to be up there at the fire. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So the rookie pretty much knows his basic abilities and what he's supposed to do.  
MR. SCOTT:	Well first of all, a rookie—these people that just came in, they're working on days not even assigned to a company for the first two weeks.  You're going to protect him.  You're not going to put him in something that he doesn't—it's an experience to walk in a building that's completely on fire.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now how does the promotion progress from the time you're a rookie till you maybe be a chief?  How does that work?
MR. SCOTT:	Okay, you're a fire fighter, then you get the operator designation, then you have to go through testing.  They have what they call assessment boards, three or four people sit down and question you and you become a captain. Oak Ridge does not have lieutenants, some places do, they don't.  
	Then after captain the next job is Assistant Chief, right now that's Josh Waldo, who is also the chief in Marlow.  The Deputy Chief is David Herrington and then the Fire Chief is Darrel Kerley. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So this progression is whenever they have an opening. 
MR. SCOTT:	Whenever they have an opening you can apply.  There are some people who don't want to be officers and they're senior fire fighters and they run the show in the sense that they're the guys that really make something doing.  The officers are directing, but these are the guys that are only fighting the fires. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Is there a physical training program now for Oak Ridge fire fighters?
MR. SCOTT:	Oh yes, there's definitely.  They are required in the last couple of weeks they have to go through a burn situation where they go in a building that's basically closed up, full of smoke and have to find their way out.  And there are tricks to finding your way out.  For instance, the hose has a male coupling and a female coupling and the male coupling is always closest to the engine.  So if you've got the hose you can feel the way the couplings are going.  These are tricks, but the overall training now is so much higher. 
	Now, Oak Ridge benefits from their relationship with the fire fighters.  There are a number of Oak Ridge fire fighters who are volunteers other places and they get to see a lot more real firefighting because in Marlow and Oliver Springs and in the Cove and places like this, by the time everybody gets there you got a real fire going.  
	Two weeks ago there was a fire up in the Cove.  You know what I'm talking about on the Cove?
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Yes.
MR. SCOTT:	It's the first time we've really saved a house up there because generally they're gone by the time you can get there.  They got to page the people.  They got to come to the station.  They got to get the truck. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Maybe you need to describe where the Cove is.  I know, but ….
MR. SCOTT:	This is an area north of Oliver Springs that literally goes up to a very nice cove, but its curvy road up there.  The people are very independent.  The last time I went to a fire up there—now wait a minute, you come to a bridge and there is a sign on that bridge says, “No state or county trucks allowed.  This bridge was built by the community.”  I'm not putting those people down, I'm just saying they built that bridge and they don't want those county people out there.  And the fire trucks went right across it and nobody complained.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Back to your personal life. Where did you go after you left Auburn?
MR. SCOTT:	I went to the Navy.  I was on a ROTC scholarship.  Okay and I went in before the Korean War started and they said, “You may have to go in 15 months.”  After the Korean War they changed that to three years and said, “If you complain we'll get you drafted.”  Well, I was happy to give them three years or four years. 
	While I was in the Navy the ship was in Newport, Rhode Island, and I signed on as a sub volunteer fireman in Newport, Rhode Island.  I got to go to some very interesting fires there because they had these very old, big wooden buildings.  While I was in the Navy I went to Hong Kong, Tokyo, went to all the fire stations.  I went to Hiroshima, okay, and saw—now this is in ‘54, that place hadn't been cleaned up yet.  I was in Tokyo, and I hear the fire trucks going so I come up to a rickshaw driver and say, “Take me to the fire,” and he says, he can't understand and I start going like a siren and he thinks I'm crazy.  
	Then I went back to Auburn, and was a volunteer there while I got my masters.  Went to Idaho, was a volunteer out there on these big farm fires.  The Snake River Valley, Idaho Falls was a nuclear facility just like Oak Ridge and a lot of people had come up there.  And there was a fire insurance company that put a truck in every station to go out to the farm fires and I volunteered and would go out on these farm fires where they'd be a haystack with 200 tons of hay in it.  You didn't ever put them out, but you did try. 
	Then I went back to the University of Florida, got my PhD, and couldn’t be a fireman there.  Then went to Aiken, South Carolina.  They had paid volunteers.  So, I was a paid volunteer there.  I'm an honorary life member of the Aiken Fire Department.  Then came up here in ‘73, went to the fires, helped pull hose, whatever.  
	In 1990, they asked me to be the photographer. Oak Ridge has a program and the police, they have chaplains and you have a written understanding, I had a written understanding with the Fire Department that says they furnish pagers, turn outs, all that sort of stuff and I'm at the call of the senior man at the fire, the incident commander, he can tell me what to do. 
	I get paged on all 4,500 calls.  My wife hears every ambulance run in the city of Oak Ridge every night and if I don't move she kicks me.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Tell me what your degrees are in.
MR. SCOTT:	I have a bachelors in Chemical Engineering from Auburn.  Masters in Nuclear Science, they just started a program there.  Now, that degree came in 1957 and ‘58 when Auburn was national champions in 1957.  And Ph.D. at the University of Florida.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	I've noticed the sirens have changed over the years on fire trucks, what's the reason for that?
MR. SCOTT:	Well first of all, you got all these electronic wind up sirens that sort of squeal and they don't really get out of the way.  Oak Ridge firemen have fire trucks, they're called Federal “Q”.  Federal is the company and the “Q” is the model and when you hear it you know it.  I mean, if I'm walking down the street in the mall or something, I know when they're going if I hadn't gotten the page.  
	It is bad that people don't get out of your way now.  There are some guys that sit on them a little too much, but you don't want to have an accident. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Am I right in saying in the old days the sirens for the Fire Department and the ambulance are alike?
MR. SCOTT:	Yes.  They went through—the early sirens were mechanical.  Electrical mechanical.  Then they went through a series of electronic sirens that everybody went to and they don't quite cut it.  They don't quite make enough noise.  	The ambulances and the police still have electronic, but the Fire Department has electromechanical, huge type sirens.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Well, I know from a personal experience, it's hard to hear an emergency vehicle come up behind you because you've got your radio on, your windows are rolled up, it's very difficult to hear that, especially if you're sitting in the intersection and I do realize they have to get through, but you see a lot of people that do not pull over and respect the emergency vehicles.  Is there a state law that requires you to do that?
MR. SCOTT:	You're supposed to give way.  Okay, but a fire truck does not have a legal right, as I understand it, to go through the intersection without checking.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	You mean checking the—slowing down and-
MR. SCOTT:	Slowing down and prudently looking both ways.  Now, last week an engine and a ladder truck had a bad accident in New York.  One of the problems sometimes with those Federal “Q”’s, if you get them exactly on the same cycle your hearing yours and his is doing the same thing. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Are you referring to the siren noise?  When you came to Oak Ridge why did you come to Oak Ridge?  
MR. SCOTT:	Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And when was it that you came to Oak Ridge?
MR. SCOTT:	It was in 1973.  I was at Savannah River.  Now, Savannah River, Oak Ridge and Hanford, Washington, were all in the production division and if they were making weapons material.  
	Now, other things were going on at Oak Ridge, but K-25 was primarily in weapons material production.  Okay, so they were starting the centrifuge program up here.  I came up here twice a year because there was a production division meeting where the three sites got together and I would represent Savannah River.  I got to know the town.  The school system, our children were younger.  We came up and looked at the schools.  We wanted to come up here.  So, a job came open in the development of the centrifuge.  
	Now, I worked for AEC [Atomic Energy Commission].  I did not work for Carbide.  At that time it was basically AEC and Carbide, there' weren't all a multitude of contractors that you have now.  
	Okay, so my wife wanted our children to go to Linden School.  So, I went and looked at all the houses that were available there and there weren't any houses that we really wanted so there is a path that comes from Linden School, north to Montclair Road.  It was a lot next to that walkway and I found the man that owned it, bought the lot and built a house there so that our house back property line touched Linden School and I said, “I can't do any more than this.”
	So then I bought the fire truck.  I already had one fire truck.  I brought it and it went in one side of the garage.  Later on, I picked up a truck up at Kingsport.  I found out it was going to be for sale and bid on it, so I now had a second fire truck that was outside.  That's very bad.  Those are open cab and if you put a tarp or something over, the moisture gets up under there, its bad news.  
	So, our kids were getting out of college now.  Our daughter was in the sixth grade at Linden.  Our son was in the third grade at Linden.  Then they both went to Robertsville.  Our son played basketball at Robertsville, Oak Ridge, Hiwassee, and Tennessee Wesleyan and coached at Robertsville, the high school and was girls coach year before last.  
	Our daughter-in-law teaches at Robertsville too.  They got married there and they were allowed to stay there because the general rule is can't be married to somebody and teach in the same school. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, what is your wife's name?  
MR. SCOTT:	Janet. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And where did you meet her?  
MR. SCOTT:	At Auburn.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And where did you get married?
MR. SCOTT:	We got married at her house in Wilsonville, Alabama, after I had been in the Navy. 
	I went in the Navy and got on a ship and was sent to Korea, so it was—we made around the world cruise at that time went from Newport through the Canal, Hawaii, Japan, four months deployed up in the China Sea and the Korean deal.  Although it had calmed down and there wasn't any real fighting.  And then around the world cruise. 
	Then later on we were over in the Mediterranean, in the East end of the Mediterranean.  The Israelis and British moved in; sealed the Suez Canal so we were sent from one end of the Suez Canal around Africa to the other end.  Africa's a very big continent.  It took us 30 days at 25 knots to get around.  And then we spent six weeks in the Persian Gulf, where we had problems. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Where you in the firefighting business while you were in the Navy?
MR. SCOTT:	No, I was a gunnery officer on a destroyer.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So what was the year you married your wife?
MR. SCOTT:	1955. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And what are your children’s names and when were they born?
MR. SCOTT:	Our daughter Jan was born September 12, 1961, our son David was born May 3, 1964. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Were they born in—where were they born?
MR. SCOTT:	Our daughter was born in Idaho, our son was born in Florida when I was at the university. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Now, when you brought your children to Oak Ridge and attended Oak Ridge schools, what did you notice different about Oak Ridge school system and the prior schools that they attended?
MR. SCOTT:	Oh, the overall quality was much higher, and we had been up here enough to talk to people that had lived in Aiken and had moved up so that we got—we had a good feeling of what was going on.  
	Now, the only thing we didn't—weren't happy about was at that time Linden was the open concept.  Everything was really open.  They came in and put some walls in there later on.  That was not a big deal. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	And you feel that you're children really gained a lot in their Oak Ridge education to promote their careers. 
MR. SCOTT:	Definitely.  They were very well prepared.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What did your wife think about Oak Ridge when she first saw the city?
MR. SCOTT:	She was interested in coming.  We wanted to get settled before they got into high school, or junior high, so that there was not a move in mid high school.  I had that happen to me, my wife had that happen to her.  It's not fun to go into a new group.  Fortunately, mine was the in the 9th grade, I could have a little more time.  She spent her senior year in a new school. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	What involvement in the city activities did you and your wife have?
MR. SCOTT:	Okay, well were first very active church members at the First Methodist Church, United Methodist Church.  I have been Chairman of the Trustees.  I've been Head Usher.  I'm on the Administrative Board.  She has been an officer in every organization she's ever been in and spends as much time a the church as she spends anywhere else.  
	Then I was a football official for 40 years.  Now, I had done that in South Carolina and Idaho and Florida before, so I did not come in here new.  I worked two state championship football games.  Refereed two state championship games.  I was the local supervisor, well, there were two of us for about five years after I got off the field.  Worked Anderson County area, Morgan County, Rowan County, Scott County and Campbell County.  Very much enjoyed it. 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Are you still active in that today?
MR. SCOTT:	No, I retired three years ago.  The last two years I worked the clock a couple of times when they were short.  I did not work this year, they've got enough people.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Is there anything that we hadn't talked about that you'd like to talk about?
MR. SCOTT:	No, I am interested in the work of the Oak Ridge Historical and Preservation Society.  They're doing a lot of good.  I am concerned about retail in Oak Ridge and I think everybody else is.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	How do you see the city?  Has it progressed or has it stayed the same since you arrived up to present day?
MR. SCOTT:	I think the population is gone up maybe a 1,000, but it's been at the 27, 28, 29 range.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	Do you feel the city is a safe place to live?
MR. SCOTT:	Yes.  There's no place in the city that I'm reluctant to go.  I have never been paged to a fire saying, “I don't think I should go there.”  I have been in New York City with people saying, “That fire, we're not going to it.” 
MR. HUNNICUTT:	So you're saying that the citizens of Oak Ridge accept the Fire Department, the Police Department and the ambulance service that the city provides. 
MR. SCOTT:	Well and the firemen get the side of the deal in the sense people are always glad to see them coming.  They may not be happy about the event, whereas police get involved in domestic disputes where they can't win.  I mean, that's just the nature of the job.  Or they're stopping people who feel like, “Gee, I wasn't speeding.”  
	There's a major problem right now going east on the Turnpike at Illinois.  Do you turn right on red or not?  I was stopping because I think you're supposed to stop, although I think the state law says you can turn and a person came to my left and came around in front of him.  
MR. HUNNICUTT:	It's been my pleasure to interview you Tom, especially the information about the Oak Ridge Fire Department.  I think that information and your whole oral history will be a contribution to the Oak Ridge history and thank you again for letting us come into your home and interview you.  
MR. SCOTT:	Okay, thank you.  
[End of Interview]

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