Rosenthal, Murray

              
THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF OAK RIDGE
Provided by Murray Rosenthal
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
June 27, 2013
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is June 27, 2013 and I'm at the home of Murray Rosenthal here in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Murray, thank you for taking time to talk with us.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Delighted to have you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, we have done your personal oral history previously, but today we're going to talk a little bit about your knowledge of the origins of the City of Oak Ridge. So, why don't you, kind of start us off and we'll see where we go with that.
MR. ROSENTHAL: For the people who haven't been here 60 or 70 years, I want to back up a little bit to the time even before I came here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Most people know that the Army ran Oak Ridge during the war, and they stayed on here for a couple of years running everything in the place; they operated the housing and they ran the town. And then, a couple of years after the end of the war, the Congress passed a new bill creating the Atomic Energy Commission. It was a civilian agency and everything was turned over to them. And soon, they began to want to get out of operating the town. The war had ended in 1945 and the 75,000 people who had been here in a very short time dropped to around 35,000. Then it eased on down to 28,000 which is about what we've had since.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: In that period, they created an Advisory Town Council, seven elected people, to suggest what the Army might do.
MR. MCDANIEL: And this was in the late ‘40s, correct?
MR. ROSENTHAL: This was between '46 and '49.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Though the gates here were kept locked until 1949. When the AEC took over, they began to look at the community, and one of the things they decided was that they were spending more money here than the AEC wanted to spend and they'd really like to get out of operating the City.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: They began to work with the Advisory Town Council and in 1952 the Town Council passed a resolution suggesting to them they look into disposal of the property and work on some way to incorporate the City.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, in 1952, I mean, the government still owned everything, basically.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Right, they still owned it in '52, but that's the point where the Town Council said, let's work together and see about turning it over to the people - selling it, getting out of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Do you know who the members of that Town Council were? Do you remember?
MR. ROSENTHAL: You know, I have forgotten. Waldo Cohn was the chairman...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: And, I don't remember who else.
MR. MCDANIEL: He was a biologist.
MR. ROSENTHAL: He was a biologist...
MR. MCDANIEL: And he was also head of the orchestra... the symphony...
MR. ROSENTHAL: He created the orchestra!
MR. MCDANIEL: Created the orchestra...
MR. ROSENTHAL: He also did a lot of very innovative work at the Laboratory.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure...
MR. ROSENTHAL: But Waldo was chairman. When they began to work on it, they decided, we're going to need a Charter. And they appointed a Charter Commission of sorts to create one. It had five members. I'm sure the leading one was Gene Joyce. Anything good that's ever happened to Oak Ridge, Gene was involved.
MR. MCDANIEL: He was an attorney.
MR. ROSENTHAL: He was an attorney...
MR. MCDANIEL: But he was really a community leader. I mean, he was...
MR. ROSENTHAL: He was. In fact, he was the junior partner of a lawyer named Frank Wilson who's very famous in Oak Ridge history because he left here to become a federal judge and in his judgeship, he convicted Jimmy Hoffa.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: So he became very well known! I'll talk about him some more later. And then there was Ellen Menis, a community activist, Sam Miller who was involved with the men's store at the time, Al Stewart, who was a chemist at the Laboratory, and Jack Morris, the librarian at the Laboratory.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, Sam Miller... Was that Miller's Department Store?
MR. ROSENTHAL: No, I believe it was the men’s store that later became Samuel's.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right...
MR. ROSENTHAL: So, there were five people representative of the community.
MR. MCDANIEL: And this was the Charter Commission?
MR. ROSENTHAL: This was the Charter Commission. The Municipal Technical Advisory Service, MTAS, at UT - which still exists - sent people over to help them draft the Charter. They created a very modern city manager type of government. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: The idea was that when this was done they would take it down to the Legislature, which would pass it by what's called a Private Act to incorporate the City.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. ROSENTHAL: These and several other questions were brought forward for the people of the City to vote on in an advisory referendum. And the voters turned it down -- turned it down flat.
MR. MCDANIEL: And that was what year? 1958?
MR. ROSENTHAL: That was 1953.
MR. MCDANIEL: 1953.
MR. ROSENTHAL: People didn't know what was going to happen to housing. They didn't know what costs would be. The services in the City were marvelous -- they didn't know if they would continue... and they turned it down flat.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Right after that is when Mimi and I came to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok...
MR. ROSENTHAL: So that was before me. Well, things sat around a while and then the Atomic Energy Commission started having lots of committees and commissions and began to talk about how they'd do things if the people took over. A year later, the Town Council got together with the League of Women Voters, which was already very active and powerful here, and they created an organization called Oak Ridge Facts Advisory Council, ORFAC. A lot of people joined and began to review all the operations for the City. I was on the committee that looked into the Fire Department and the Police Department. And in this way we got ourselves acquainted with the operation of the City. As that was going along, the Town Council decided they needed a Charter Review Committee because, looking positive, they might need it again. A friend, Marion Alexander, was in the League, and I said to her, "What should I do next?" She said, "Go and get on the Charter Review Committee." So I did, and we met down in the old wooden building on the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike that housed the AEC administration offices for the city.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok...
MR. ROSENTHAL: We had a pretty big meeting and I soon realized something: most of the people in the meeting were officials from the school and they were there because they wanted to make sure that the Charter provided for an independent School Board.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see...
MR. ROSENTHAL: And so, they named the chairman and the vice chairman, took it over, and got that done. They got what they wanted and passed it and then all of the school people disappeared from the committee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: They really did. And they didn't come back. There were four of us left. Ellen Menis, who had been on the other committee -- the only person who had -- Dave Thomas, who later became a City Councilman, me, and a woman whose name I just can't remember.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok...
MR. ROSENTHAL: And we worked several months on the rest of the Charter, with a lot of help from MTAS at UT.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right... MTAS, that's Municipal...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Municipal Technical Advisory Service...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's right...
MR. ROSENTHAL: I think it still goes under that name.
MR. MCDANIEL: It does... I think it does.
MR. ROSENTHAL: It's a very valuable service. And so there were some issues we addressed. We looked at the School Board again, and we accepted it, but there was an issue because an independent School Board would have no way of raising money. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: We looked at the Council. We did a lot of reading and decided it needed to be five or seven. Because the Advisory Town Council was seven, the people would be used to that, so we picked seven to be elected at large. And I'll come back to that, that's a major issue. Another issue, the Atomic Energy Commission wanted us to incorporate 30 square miles which they called the Minimum Geographic Area or something like that. We looked at that and talked to people and said, "We're going to take in the whole 100 square miles that they have. We don't know what's going to be there in the future and we want it to be in the City."
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, so you wanted to take the reservation...
MR. ROSENTHAL: The whole reservation -- we put in the whole reservation!
MR. MCDANIEL: You took everything.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Everything. 100 square miles.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: And there were other issues that stirred up some attention. The AEC had hired an outfit to review the city and they were being very modern. They came in and said, "What you ought to do is combine the Police and the Fire Department into one organization."
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh-huh...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well, there arguments made sense, but we realized that was going to be a contentious issue and we said, "No, no," and pushed that aside. Then something else turned up -- I don't remember how it fit into this, but some people around here wanted to cut the timber on the greenbelt and log them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok...
MR. ROSENTHAL: And the AEC seemed to take it seriously. A committee was formed. I was a member and Bob McNees was chairman. And he really did it and he got that disposed of -- the trees are still here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, Bob McNees, he later became the ...
MR. ROSENTHAL: He became the mayor. I'll speak more of that later, but was a close friend, and a very able man. And another issue: the AEC built the Administration Building we have now and built the hospital, and who should operate the hospital was a question.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: It ended up to being a real issue in the community. The Methodist Foundation, which runs hospitals was a contender. A community organization that had been managing the hospital was another contender. And the city itself was a threat. A vote was held and the Methodists won. That was a big issue.
MR. MCDANIEL: It was a big issue.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Anyway, we worked our way through all of that and we created a Charter. The Town Council called a town meeting and nobody objected to anything that we had suggested. But there was the question of whether people in the community were going to accept it. In the meantime, in 1955, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and the Congress passed a measure called the Atomic Energy Community Act and it provided for sale of the houses, turning over the government, and providing some support. And all and that was reassuring.
MR. MCDANIEL: And that was in '55.
MR. ROSENTHAL: That was in '55. I think it applied to Los Alamos and Hanford as well. But anyway, it permitted all of that. And so, when the town meeting was held on the Charter, people were much more accepting than they were before. We proceeded then to try and get the Charter adopted by the State Legislature. Now, at the time, there were two ways you could get incorporated. There was a mayor form of government or there was a commission-manager form, but we didn't like either one of them. So, we decided to ask the Legislature to create a third. John Purdy, who was our representative, and Anne Nance, who had been a major force in the League of Women Voters, went down there and discovered the Legislature was ready to pass it. And they did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh!
MR. ROSENTHAL: But when it appeared, we discovered instead of the seven person Council elected at large, it had been changed to 12 by district.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh!
MR. ROSENTHAL: We were very unhappy. John Purdy said to me and others, "Well, the Legislature wanted it that way; they didn't want it the other way." But it turned out that under the Advisory Town Council, some districts of the town weren't represented. Those were the ones that the labor union people mainly lived in and they went to John and said, "We want something that gets us assured representation.” And he changed it. That was a big issue and a big disappointment to us. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But anyway, the League of Women Voters formed a big committee -- like 150 people, I think -- to try to get this accepted by the city. They called it Citizens for Incorporation and they got information out and persuaded people. So when another referendum was called in, I think, early 1958, it passed -- Incorporation passed 14 to one [May 1959]. So our Charter, except for the change to 12 council members, was adopted. Quickly, the new City Council and the School Board were elected. They hired a City Manager and a Superintendent and the transfer of all the responsibilities of the government to the City began. And, of course, the AEC provided money to keep it going for a while.
MR. MCDANIEL: There was a vote in '59?
MR. ROSENTHAL: No, my notes say '58, and I'm inclined to think that's right.
	[The election was in 1959.]
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, that's fine. I could be wrong. (laughs)
MR. ROSENTHAL: (laughs) I think that's... I'm not sure of the exact year but it's about then.  Anyway, the City now existed. Now, the 1955 bill had provided for the disposal of the property and the housing. A federal agency called HHFA [Housing and Home Finance Agency] was given the responsibility for selling the housing and they did that very efficiently. And they made it easy for residents to buy their houses. They gave them a bargain, and financing was easy. And, of course, the AEC gave all of the existing city facilities and property to the new city.
MR. MCDANIEL: And they also opened, not long after that, property ... where people could buy property.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Immediately. In fact, Anne Nance and her husband bought the first lot.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: It is. And Lefty Brannon, who lived in an old stone house down in the east end of town, bought that. Those were the first two pieces of property sold as I remember. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well, the City was formed with twelve members of the City Council, and they had a lot of things to do and it was very inefficient thing. They met every night; all 12 members seemed to want to say something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course.
MR. ROSENTHAL: And it was a contentious time. One time, Bob McNees, who was mayor and Al Bissell, who had been mayor earlier, were seeking electors. They got 6 votes each and they couldn't resolve it for a long time. I don't remember how it ended, but anyway it was a contentious.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But the City got formed and the people were happy living here. The School Board members had some sharp debates, but the 12 member council was more of a problem. Well, the Legislature provided a way of cities adopting something called Home Rule, under it the City could amend its own Charter and the Legislature was not allowed to get in and interfere, which they had done in earlier years. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right...
MR. ROSENTHAL: So, Oak Ridge adopted Home Rule in 1962 and under it then some people got together and petitioned for a new Charter Commission -- an elected Charter Commission. I ran for it. It was a marvelous committee. I became chairman. Riley Anderson, a lawyer, who later became chairman of the state. Supreme Court was on it as a lawyer. Also, Lily Rose Claiborne, a lawyer; John Swartout, who was the deputy director of the Laboratory; Roy Colby, who was one of the ministers of the United Church and very popular in the community; Cliff Brill, an insurance man; and B.B. Hopkins, who'd been a star football player in high school and everybody knew him.
MR. MCDANIEL: This was the new Charter Commission...
MR. ROSENTHAL: The new Charter Commission, 1963.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was elected by the citizens?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Elected by the citizens.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: We had public meetings to solicit opinions. We got advice again from the Municipal Technical Advisory Service. And we realized quickly that almost all of us wanted to go back to what we'd had before -- 7 members elected at large. But the Town Council -- City Council it was called then -- were mostly opposed. With 12, half of them were going to lose their jobs.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. ROSENTHAL: There was a lot of stir, and we realized we probably couldn't get that passed. So we compromised and proposed a Council that would have four elected by districts and three at large. We put that forth and the community voted it down.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. ROSENTHAL: We were really disappointed. We made some other changes that we called housekeeping changes, but that was the big issue. Voted it down. So, the 12 member council continued. But about 1974, another Charter Commission headed by Ernie Silver was e;ected. They broughtforth 12 City Council members from districts like before, but they were voted on at large.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. ROSENTHAL: You had to live in the district but everybody got to vote on all who were on the ballot.
MR. MCDANIEL: But still with twelve?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Twelve. And they had staggered terms -- before it hadn't had staggered terms, they all got elected at once. And that passed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: It stayed that way for some years until another try was made to cut it down to seven. A new Charter Commission was again elected in 1985, I think it was. Louise Dunlap -- a very able person -- headed it. They were very skillful, and when they put forth seven at large, by gosh, it passed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: So that's what we have today.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now, was the Charter Commission to do its job and then it disband?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Yes... Mine was the first electedCharter Commission, so a lot of things had to be resolved. We had to work with the Attorney General of the State and others to determine that, yes, we would go out of existence as soon as we brought forth a charter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But new commissioners could be elected, well... every five or ...10 years...
MR. MCDANIEL: Ten years, I think... was it every five or ten?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Maybe ten...
MR. MCDANIEL: I think it's every 10, I could be wrong...
MR. ROSENTHAL: It may be 10. Now, there have been other Charter Commissions, but they dealt with immediate issues and didn't deal with this, so I haven’t mentioned them. So that's how Oak Ridge came about and except for the 12-member council it has worked remarkably well. One of the things that strikes me is that, you go out and gather a bunch a people together to form a committee or commission in Oak Ridge, and they're going to be very good at it.
MR. MCDANIEL: You're right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: So that brings us up to the way the City operates now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: I think I’ve covered that enough, and want to turn to another issue.
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely.
MR. ROSENTHAL: I'd like to go back all the way to 1952.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Before I got here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's do that.
MR. ROSENTHAL: That year, a former governor of Illinois named Adlai Stevenson, ran for president against Dwight Eisenhower.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Stevenson was a very articulate, witty charming man and he appealed to a lot of people including me and when I was at MIT. I went out and campaigned for him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: In 1952. When he was defeated, he made a speech and said to all his supporters, you ought to go out and get involved in local politics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: And people picked that up all around the country, including some in Oak Ridge. So in 1952, people here -- this was before I got here -- got together and decided they would try to do something about the county government. Now, it may be hard for people today to realize, but the county government and most of Tennessee and almost all of the South was solidly Democratic and to get elected to something, you had to get the Democratic nomination. The election didn't matter much and the Republicans hardly contested it. That was true of Anderson County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Amazing, isn't it, looking at it now. And the way that the nominee was selected was by what was called a convention or a caucus. Now people believed -- and I'll be careful about libeling anybody -- believed that the county government was completely corrupt. Sale of liquor was illegal, the county was “dry”, and the sheriff and his deputies were thought to run the bootlegging. I could believe that because when I grew up in Mississippi that was exactly true in my hometown. The sheriff ran the bootlegging and each of the deputies got to open up one bootlegging joint in the back of a grocery store or a restaurant. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I believe there was something like that here and, of course, all the money involved corrupted the government. It was also believed you could get a lower assessment on your property if you paid. And if you went to the road Superintendent, you could get him to put a road on your farm with the county equipment. And later, there were lots of examples and people were convinced  county officials were corrupt.
MR. MCDANIEL: Typical, Southern, good-old-boy, you know...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Completely typical of what I knew of good old Southern boys.
MR. MCDANIEL: The... I'll tell you a funny story...I won't tell you where this was, but back when I worked in the newspaper business, we were doing a little investigative reporting and late one night, I saw the sheriff pull up to the back door of a illegal nightclub and saw the manager of the nightclub handing the sheriff a big old fat envelope. He got back in his car and pulled off. Someone watching took a photograph! Now, who knows what was in the envelope? I certainly don't, but I can imagine. So, anyway... that was typical of the South... 
MR. ROSENTHAL: Getting it recorded on tape would have been easier than photographs.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But anyway, a family of people had dominated the county government and they called a convention in 1953 to select the nominees for county offices. And this year a group of Oak Ridgers went over there. The place was filled with supporters of the sheriff and others and they quickly -- what I'm telling you is second hand and is as I remember it -- they quickly nominated all the people they wanted to nominate and the supporters got up and left. The Oak Ridgers stayed there and they suddenly realized the meeting hadn't been adjourned and they were a majority.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? So they could change things.
MR. ROSENTHAL: So what they did is, and I don't exactly how this worked, is pass a resolution saying that we would have a county primary and not a convention.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Now, I think the Legislature had adopted something to make that possible, but anyway that was legal and from then on, we have had primaries.
MR. MCDANIEL: And I'm sure they didn't like... I'm sure that didn't endear those folk... the Oak Ridgers to those folks, did it?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Oh, things were contentious between us. Mimi, my wife, and I came here in 1953 when this thing had happened. Again paying attention to what Adlai Stevenson had told us, we began to get into local politics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: And some way -- I don't remember how it happened -- we had a meeting at Jane Nelson's. Jane was a community activist and her husband ran the Reactor School out at the Lab. The people there were Lloyd Alexander, who taught and became our leader at the Reactor School; Mary McNees, the mother of the present City judge, Bob McNees.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Mary was a prodder -- she's the one who pushed us. I always think of Mary as one who both lights candles and curses the darkness. (laughter) And Esther Kitzes, who published and wrote for the newspaper, and was useful later in helping us get things published. We met with Gene Joyce, who was invited to come. Gene told us that a guy named Glad Woodward, an Oak Ridge policeman, wanted to run for sheriff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what was his name? 
MR. ROSENTHAL: Glad: G-L-A-D Woodward.
MR. MCDANIEL: Woodward, Ok...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Glad was an old country boy -- not very articulate, Gene said, but he’s honest, he's been through all the FBI training schools, he knows what it's about, and he wants to run. So we decided that we would support him. We formed an outfit called Democrats for a Better Ballot -- DBB -- and a lot of people joined with us. We talked to Glad, of course, and said we're going to support you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Gene also did something else. He introduced me to somebody who was in the midst of county government and said, here's somebody you can trust to tell you what's going on. The arrangement with the man was that he would call me, I shouldn't call him and I was never to tell anybody. Well -- you remember “Deep Throat”?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: He was my Deep Throat.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was your Deep Throat!
MR. ROSENTHAL: He kept us informed...
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I've never told anybody who he was...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right...
MR. ROSENTHAL: He kept us informed about what was going on in the county. Now, let me back up and tell you about Gene. Gene joined Frank Wilson's law firm and Frank ran for Congress in a very contentious election. In the process of doing that, Gene in campaigning for him, got to know everybody in the county, which he continued to do. So Gene always knew what was going on. He was always on the right side of everything. Looking back to the most valuable people in the history of Oak Ridge, Gene's got to be right there at the top of the list. Well, Gene went on to run for County Attorney -- he felt a lawyer ought to serve some time as a public official. He was very helpful in all of this.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But what the Democrats for a Better Ballot did is to start using what we called the endorsement ads. And we put big ads in the paper endorsing Glad.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now this was the... what was the name of it? Democrats...?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Democrats for a Better Ballot.
MR. MCDANIEL: For a Better Ballot.
MR. ROSENTHAL: For a Better Ballot...
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, I see...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Because the Democratic primary was all that mattered.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly...
MR. ROSENTHAL: I don't know who picked that name, Democrats for a Better Ballot -- DBB as it was better known. And we raised a little bit of money -- didn't take much money then to place ads in the paper. And we got prominent people -- Alvin Weinberg let me put his name on it and other people did -- and we ran these ads. Now, the people over in Clinton thought this was a joke.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: I went with Glad to a meeting at the old hotel once, and when he stood up to talk, people at the table all were joking about it, saying, "He won't get 10 votes."
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. ROSENTHAL: But when the election was held, he almost got elected.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did he really?
MR. ROSENTHAL: It was very close. Now, that was '54.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: People were suggesting to Glad that he run as an Independent, but I and others talked to him and said that's not the thing to do, just wait. So in 1956, Glad ran again and this time, we helped him again and he won easily.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, so when was that? 1956?
MR. ROSENTHAL: 1956.
MR. MCDANIEL: Do you remember what month that was? Was it in the fall? Was it in November?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I'll tell you what was connected with it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh-huh...
MR. ROSENTHAL: When Glad took office, it was at midnight of the night of the riot in Clinton.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's what I was about to say.
MR. ROSENTHAL: He took office that night.
MR. MCDANIEL: He took office that night and that was... well that would have been Labor Day weekend of... So the election was probably in August and he probably took over like September.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, that was the night of the riots.
MR. ROSENTHAL: He took over that night.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But, in addition, other people who wanted to run for office saw that it was possible to overturn the old group there and lots of good people ran. I'll give you an example. A fellow named Carl Irwin, who I think was a property appraiser or something -- ran for... What do you call the person who appraises the property?
MR. MCDANIEL: A property assessor.
MR. ROSENTHAL: The property assessor. He ran for property assessor. His wife taught at the high school where she knew Marion Alexander, Lloyd's wife, and Toni Meghreblian, who also taught there, and told them that he was afraid he was going to lose.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: So, they came to us and said, hey, we're going to help him. Carl told me afterward that they elected him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Doing these same sort of endorsements.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But it changed almost the complete courthouse. And people and their descendants and successors have mostly continued. Except for a few things that have made the headlines, we've had good, clean county government ever since. Glad was funny about it. After the election, he came over to my house to talk to Lloyd and Mary McNees and me, and he said he wanted to thank us again for getting him elected. Was there anything we particularly wanted him to do? So, Lloyd tried to explain to him that we didn't want him to do anything but be a good sheriff. But one thing we wanted to say to him, Sheriffs in the past had run the bootlegging. We wanted him to stay clear of that, but we didn't want him to stop the bootlegging!
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well, everybody drank!
MR. MCDANIEL: Everybody drank! (laughter)
MR. ROSENTHAL: And so that was very complicated because we didn't know exactly what we wanted to tell him. You stay out of it, but if somebody bootlegs, unless they're very obvious, you don't chase them down.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Now, I don't know what Glad really did. I don't remember. All I remember is that one time he invited me to come over and wanted to show me around the jail.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Then afterwards, he took me in his office and opened the safe and brought out a bottle of moonshine he'd confiscated, and he gave me taste out of it. I'd never tasted moonshine in my life. He said, that's supposed to be the best moonshine they make around here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Have you tasted moonshine?
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, no. 
MR. ROSENTHAL: Anyway, you know that two years after Glad took office, the school...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, the bomb...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Was bombed...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, '58...
MR. ROSENTHAL: In the political business, they all say reform groups come in and then they die out very quickly and we were conscious of that so we tried to stay active. We reformed the committee that ran the Democratic Party and I actually re-wrote the by-laws myself.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: To make it somewhat more democratic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Some of our members ran for office. Lloyd Alexander actually ran and was elected to the county court as it was called then.
MR. MCDANIEL: County court instead of county commission.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Yeah. And Clyde Claiborne also ran and got on there. And they led some change in the county commission. But DBB did die out. I think I'm the only one of the original group still alive. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, absolutely.
MR. ROSENTHAL: It's really an important thing in the county history about which people know very little.
MR. MCDANIEL: And now we've got an Oak Ridger that's the County Executive -- County Mayor now, so, you know... It's... very interesting. Talk a little bit about the... There's always been this butting of heads between the county and Oak Ridge. Was this a result of this political in-fighting, this political fight, do you think? Or does it go back way farther than that?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Butting of heads was maybe a mild way to put it. The county people feared Oak Ridgers coming in and beginning to dominate. In those days, we outvoted the county. And there were some tricks they pulled. One time, so people tell me, they closed a bridge on election day to cut down the Oak Ridgers vote...
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Oak Ridgers had to go to Clinton to vote.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, had to go to Clinton to vote...
MR. ROSENTHAL: And liquor was a big issue. When I was a graduate student and came down to look Oak Ridge over, there was a liquor store down at Grove Center.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, all right...
MR. ROSENTHAL: So, when I came down, I gave away to my friends all my liquor I had and got here and it was dry.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Other issues arose. When Incorporation was planned for the City, the City was going to get some of the county school money. They were used to AEC paying for it. Some debates appeared over that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But, I think the key thing was when more Oak Ridgers were added to the County Court. They were good people and began to know and interact with the county people. And I think the issues today are not so much county versus City; it's the factions within each that are contentious and not the division by geography.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, talk a little bit about the  -- and this may kind of go back to the original Charter Commission with the school issue, the issue of the School Board -- an independent School Board, you know, being independent from the town.
MR. ROSENTHAL: That was a difficult issue.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, and it stays a difficult issue, doesn't it? Because of the funding issues.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Yeah, in fact those of us who were putting the Charter together after the school members left, realized it would depend on the City Council giving money to the School Board.
MR. MCDANIEL: But the City Council couldn't tell them how to spend it.
MR. ROSENTHAL: They couldn't tell them how to spend it. So we weren't quite sure how that was going to work out. Well, until recently it worked out pretty well. It's only the last few years it's been much of an issue. But we were concerned about that. In spite of the fact that the initial vote was to have that, we spent a lot of time talking about it. One probably was to have the City Council appoint the School Board. If they picked good people it'd be fairly independent. We talked about that but kept the way it is now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was that the, I mean, really, kind of, the only option...? The only two options is that the School Board be independent or it be appointed by the City Council. Do you recall?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I suppose. I don't know. I suppose you could not have a School Board.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. ROSENTHAL: And have the City Council just name a Superintendent. Let me just back up and say the City Charter prepared by that first committee with Gene Joyce as helmsman was really a very good Charter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was it?
MR. ROSENTHAL: But people kept saying to us, "Oh, they're going to object to it down in the Legislature. They're not going to want it." Turns out, it wouldn't affect them at all. None of their people were going to go try and incorporate...
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...
MR. ROSENTHAL: And so, we had a fair amount of freedom to do what we wanted and so we didn't look much farther. Me and those other three people read books and talked to people about these issues but we ended up mainly going back to what had been done.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's what I wanted to ask you. I mean, you know, probably none of you had done this before, I would imagine.
MR. ROSENTHAL: No. Ellen Menis, who had been on that previous committee, was the only one who had anything to do with it.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you had to kind of learn and read and study what other, I guess, what other municipalities had done.
MR. ROSENTHAL: We did. The MTAS representative, Gene Puitt, I think, brought over some books at major colleges and we read those carefully, studied them and thought about them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Said, this is how to start your own town, basically what it was.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Worked out remarkably well.
MR. MCDANIEL: Today it would be called "Town Starting for Dummies", wouldn't it?
MR. ROSENTHAL: MTAS was good. Fred Peitzsch, who was the City Manager under the AEC, was also very helpful to us. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Now what was his last name?
MR. ROSENTHAL: P-E-I-T-Z-S-C-H
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, Peitzsch...
MR. ROSENTHAL: He was very good. When talking about this, I went looking for Fred Peitzsch. I thought I'd seen him in the last few years, but it turns out he's dead. He'd have been a marvelous one to talk about this because he ran the City under the AEC.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: The City Manager.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure...
MR. ROSENTHAL: He didn't run the property and those things but he ran essentially the same things the City runs now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: I spent a lot of time with him and he gave us very good advice. So we were getting good advice from good people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Has the City kind of stayed on the path, structurally and organizationally, that you all began with or has it veered off dramatically?
MR. ROSENTHAL: No, almost exactly the way it began. The relations between the Council and the City Manager -- or the way we had they it ought to worked well. The first City Manager had actually been hired by the Advisory Town Council -- I suppose the AEC paid for it -- to advise them. His name was Louis Shallcross and he was very good, and they hired him, then, to be the first City Manager and he, I think, set the pattern in lots of things.
MR. MCDANIEL: So Oak Ridge always had a City Manager form of government.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Oh, yes...
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, the chief executive was the City Manager, basically.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Yes. The only thing that has changed is the City Council.
MR. MCDANIEL: City Council, right... and the mayor... the mayor has always been elected by City Council.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Elected by City Council. People would call him a weak mayor. He's just the chairman of the Council. But we've mostly had good mayors.
MR. MCDANIEL: He's a figurehead. He's a representative for the people.
MR. ROSENTHAL: I would say more than a figurehead. He exerts some influence, but basically he just chairs the Council.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But he speaks for the city, just like our present one is speaking for us in dealing with the issue of the museum and other things. All of them have been effective in doing that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right... What about Mayor Bissell? Mayor Bissell was mayor for a long time. 
MR. ROSENTHAL: A long time. Al was a very outgoing chairman, but I think he exercised less influence over the Council than some others did.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But he had more influence in the community. People liked him.
MR. MCDANIEL: He was popular.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Very affable.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah...
MR. ROSENTHAL: Popular, yes. Bob McNees, who was mayor for a while, was a stronger mayor in trying to push things. He was very good, worked very hard at it, but he offended people some.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. ROSENTHAL: And Al took back the mayorship afterwards. After, as I said, for a long time the two of them were tied up following the election.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see, I see... What about the... what about law enforcement in the City? At the very beginning, when AEC was running the City, before Oak Ridge actually became its own municipality, what kind of security or law enforcement was in place?
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well, when the AEC was running it, Oak Ridge had the best of everything. Very professional police force very professional Fire Department; the City generally picked them up. So we started out with quality City employees. One of the reasons people were uneasy because they felt uneasy about giving that up. They didn't know what they'd have after AEC pulled out.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. I guess Oak Ridgers, some of them, may not realize just how lucky they were because they had everything that they could hope for and then they were able to start the City rather than start the City then try to build it to something.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well the AEC built the municipal building for us and built the hospital for us.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Again, we started out way ahead.
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely.
MR. ROSENTHAL: That's an issue of some contention because AEC provided support for a while annually, and then a kind of deal gave the City a fixed amount of money and ended the support.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. And then there's the whole issue of payment in lieu of taxes and all that kind of stuff.
MR. ROSENTHAL: We don't talk about that much. For a while we did. It seemed extremely unfair to me that the AEC which owned most of the property in the City didn't pay any taxes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. But now we don't talk about it because they could just say, we don't... we're not going to do that anymore.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well, you know, Gene Joyce and someone recognized that the Japanese were storing uranium in K-25. Do you know that story?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, I knew that the... K-25 was, you know, enriching uranium for the Japanese.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well, but we couldn't tax the AEC.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, that's right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: It turned out, that some of the enriched uranium was Japanese.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's right. I remember.
MR. ROSENTHAL: I don't know if they had to go to court or if they just settled, but the City got about $4 or $5 million in payment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right...exactly, I remember that. 
MR. ROSENTHAL: The AEC later gave us the waterworks. In the early days, the AEC ran the waterworks that sits up on top of the hill back here. But they gave us that and then we get to sell water to them, so that was one way we picked up some income.
MR. MCDANIEL: Picked up a little bit.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. ROSENTHAL: But I think today they should be paying taxes like everyone else.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly, exactly. Well, that's great. Anything else you want to talk about? 
MR. ROSENTHAL: No. Glad to have the opportunity to talk about all this.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, it's good. It's good for us to have this on record because, you know, you were there at least from '53, you know, and you were right in the middle of all that, so it's good to hear it from somebody who was there.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well, I hope some other people turn up who were involved in it and give another view of those things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...exactly. 
MR. ROSENTHAL: I felt very fortunate at times to be involved in all of it. And I think we've all been fortunate to have lived in Oak Ridge and live here now.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you kind of stayed... you kind of stayed active in local politics.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Well, when I was busy at work, I was on a couple of boards for the City but I didn't have much time. But in the early days I was very interested.
MR. MCDANIEL: And you were, just so people -- maybe people that don't know, you were the Deputy Director of the Laboratory.
MR. ROSENTHAL: That was an all-encompassing job, let me tell you.
MR. MCDANIEL: And was that under Alvin? Under Alvin Weinberg?
MR. ROSENTHAL: No. Right after Alvin left, I became Associate Director. Then Deputy Director. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...
MR. ROSENTHAL: I may have said to you that when I came down here from MIT, I'd taught some at MIT and I loved teaching and I thought, I'm going to go out and work four or five years and then back to MIT or somewhere and teach.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. ROSENTHAL: Other of my friends felt the same way. After Mimi and I'd been here six months, we knew we'd never leave. I loved the Laboratory. We and our children loved living in Oak Ridge. I'm very fortunate to have been here.
MR. MCDANIEL: And since you've been retired, there are a lot of things, a lot, you know... You're involved in ORICL, well, we've talked about ORICL. You started ORICL for all intents and purposes, you know. So, it's a... And I can't tell you how many people that I have interviewed that are involved in ORICL that just say that's what keeps them in Oak Ridge. There are people that have moved to Oak Ridge because of ORICL.
MR. ROSENTHAL: I thought that ORICL would last but was sure of it after we begin to hear those stories. At one time, when I was still president, our public relations person came to me, and said, “How about writing a letter to the Oak Ridger and thank the people that are active and doing things for ORICL?” That was a fine idea, so I started collecting names and got up to 150. So, it takes lots of active people to run it -- teachers and assistants and staff members and boards and all. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure... absolutely. All right, well, thank you so much. I appreciate it and we may be back again. Yet again.
MR. ROSENTHAL: I don't think there's anything else I know...
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure you do.

[End of Interview]

[Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited at Mr. Rosenthal’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]