DOROTHY COKER
HOW DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT THE JOB AT Y-12?
Unemployment. I went to the unemployment office. I just got out of high school, and I put my application in at the unemployment office, and I put my application in at Fulton and Oak Ridge, and Oak Ridge called me first. And that’s when I come to work out here, and I also had to live out here.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT YOUR JOB AT Y-12?
Well, the best I remember I think we had to change badges to go in then we had to change into uniforms when we got there and re-dress when we come out.
WHAT DID YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR JOB?
We went to school and took test, and believe it or not my test was in mechanics the best. I scored a 100 in what I even worked in, reading meters and stuff. That’s what I was doing, working the cubicle.
HOW DID YOU GET TO WORK?
With a big bus. We called it a chicken coup bus. It was just like a chicken coup. We was all in there just like a bunch of chickens trying to go to work through mud. And it was an experience.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE LIVING IN THE DORMITORIES?
Well, I lived in a dormitory and had to live out here because it’s too far for me to come back and forth to work. Well, it was noisy. All the shifts changed you know. We changed, every week we changed shifts. And when you was trying to sleep the others was in and out and that was hard sleeping and hard to get used to that, and the night shift was the worst. Oh, we had plenty of friends. I had plenty of friends, but you didn’t hardly have time for anything because you was changing shift, you was off schedule so much. Every time you saw a line you automatically got into it because you knew there was something good at the end of the line. You didn’t know what you was going to get, but you got in it.
HOW DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT THE ED WESCOTT PICTURE OF THE LADIES LEAVING Y-12?
A lady called me and said that she had been told that that was Dorothy Coker in that pictures. And she said, “I’m going to mail you a picture and let you mail be back the original and see if that’s you.” And I mailed her back the picture and I said, “It was me.” But I hardly recognized it was me because it had been so long, and so that’s how we got acquainted. I thought it was a scam, and I didn’t want to tell her who I was. I didn’t know why she was calling me. It had been so long. It had been 60 years. And she said a Keith somebody had told her that he had recognized my picture, and that’s how I got to know that it was me. I’m located on the left, the shortest person in the picture.
