Roane State Community College, Tape 2

              
Roane State Community College: “Early Oak Ridge”
 Audio Cassette Tape 2 of 3
Tapes Donated by Mick Weist 
Speakers include: Garrett Asher, Fred Peitzsch, Jim Ramsey, Ted Rogers, and Dick Smyser
Facilitated by Joan-Ellen Zucker
July 18, 2001
Place: Unknown
Transcribed by Jordan Reed


 
Mr. Ramsey: … and Korean War and 1957 Lebanon invasion by the Marines, all these things which my son was studying as history. I remember those as headlines. (Laughter) I sat there looking at that and I remembered them all as news on the front page of the paper that I delivered. So that’s my role here. 
Mrs. Zucker: Let’s see. What I meant by my opening remark was that Jim was born in 1944, and I came to Oak Ridge in 1944. So we arrived at the same time under different circumstances. 
Mr. Ramsey:  She was my babysitter. (Laughter)
Mrs. Zucker: No, I wasn’t. I never was. (Laughter) But Orange Lane is where, in many ways, we both grew up and it is still a fine street. You may visit it anytime. We have a few weeds here and there that I would like to make a fuss with the city about and get cleaned up. Let me return to Fred Peitzsch now, and let him continue his story about the early structure of Oak Ridge of which he was such a part. So, if you would like to continue.
Mr. Peitzsch: Now is the time? 
Mrs. Zucker: Now is the time and he’s got this wonderful notebook here. I just have to hold this up. This is a well-used notebook I don’t know what’s in it, but it’s good. 
Mr. Peitzsch: That is my son’s Teddy Bear. I brought it along. I thought it would give me comfort.  (Laughter)
Mrs. Zucker: Wonderful! I am impressed with that notebook. (Laughter)
[break in audio]
Mr. Peitzsch: Maybe I don’t need to stand up. We’ll see. What I’m going to do is take you down the 10 years to 1959. I am not going to give you much explanation for these items, but I will tick off a calendar of things, sort of a reminder to you of the main events of the town. Now, the aims of the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] Commissioners was to please separate us of the job of being City Council and landlords. We don’t want to be either. Consequently, we had to move toward local government and private ownership. Then we had the Oak Ridge Master Plan of December ’48, and that was our guidelines for what we should do. It moved Oak Ridge toward a permanent town. When I arrived here in 1950, it sure looked permanent to me. There was just one, except for one space that was open Downtown was empty. Eventually, Garrett Asher would get a shopping center there. The broad outline of the Master Plan was very simple. Keep all the good housing on the south side of Black Oak Ridge, and get rid of the housing you didn’t want to keep for the permanent community. That was largely the TDU flattops. We put those up for sale for removal. Under the Plan, the valley floor was essentially swept clean to the extent that we could do so. So, we could put new improvements on the valley floor. That meant the Garden Apartments, the Brick Apartments, the Woodland School, the Willow Brook School, the Oak Ridge High School, the new mall down on the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike, it was new then. It gave us a start toward the town. I think the AEC spent about $60 million in moving the town from a war time construction camp to a permanent city. 
The ORO, Oak Ridge Operation, had a community organization for running this town. At the top, was the Office of Community Affairs headed up by Fred Ford. There were four major contractors: Roane-Anderson, the Anderson County Board of Education, the Oak Ridge Hospital, and the AIT Bus System. On the sides, helping us sometimes and not so helpful other times was the Oak Ridge Town Council. 
In 1951, we had our first change in organization that was when Roane-Anderson pulled out of, the Turner Construction Company was the parent company for Roane-Anderson, pulled out of Oak Ridge. The reason being Congress passed a law saying we couldn’t pay more than $90,000 to a community contractor. We were then paying $180,000 to Roane-Anderson. So, Turner decided to pull out and we were very fortunate that the principal people within Roane-Anderson lived in Oak Ridge and people like Lyle Worrel, Carl Martin, and Robert Hammer and others formed a new business here. I’m sorry, a new corporation known as Management Services Incorporation. We all call them MSI . That enabled us to move easily and comfortably from Roane-Anderson to MSI without any interruption in community services. 
Now, during the first half of 1955, and the main event of 1955 happened right in the middle of it, and that was the adoption of the Atomic Energy Community Act. But in the first half of 1955, we brought in private housing. That came in simply because the Korean War was going on at that time and soon we were to have rent control. The AEC went to the BOB , the money agency in Washington, to get money to build housing to house the people who were, who came into Oak Ridge, or were needed in Oak Ridge for the expansion program out at K-25. BOB said, “Don’t come to us for money anymore, you go to HHFA , you get your housing through private resources.” So, that’s how it was. We got 900 houses under Title VIII. Under Titles VIII and IX, 500 under VIII and 400 under Title IX. And we got 500 houses in the east end of town, privately built to which AEC only exercised occupancy control. The same in Title IX, toward the western part of town, we got 400 houses, all three bedrooms, and they were privately owned, rented, and we exercised occupancy control over those so that the people in them would meet the needs of the expansion program. 
Also, during that first half, we had a premature attempt at incorporation and it was defeated by a vote of 4 to 1. We got a good Charter out of it, which was an innocent victim of that affair. We kept controlling municipal costs, all community costs, so that there wouldn’t be too big a bomb to drop at the time going from AEC operation to community operation so we wouldn’t drop off a cliff. We kept squeezing out those costs, without adversely affecting the service levels of services that were propertied. Preparation for future sale was being carried on. Also, Michael Baker was here surveying the land; breaking up the land into lots, and MSI was carrying out a lot of preparatory work documenting each individual property and what was needed for sale documents. 
Now, also important, I’m sure it wasn’t to you though. We had a rent increase. We were able to get a rent increase in 1954. Nobody likes a rent increase, but it was important for our program. That rent increase converted Oak Ridge from a deficit operation to a plus. The squeezing dollar costs and raising of income meant that by the time that we were about to start the Seal Program, Oak Ridge was a positive financially. Now, the key thing as I mentioned before was the Atomic Energy Community Act of ’55, without going into a lot of detail about that Act, I’ll just say it authorized the AEC to sell the property under a priority system. Very important. It authorized the transfer of municipal facilities to the local entities at no cost provided you accomplished the transfer within a five year period. It also authorized financial assistance of just and reasonable sum for ten years. Now, it did specify what we call a minimum geographic area. That was the area, the upper quadrant of the town, roughly 3 by 7, 21 square miles. The whole Oak Ridge area is about 92 square miles. The Atomic Energy Community Act addressed itself solely to the MGA . The sale program began very quickly after the adoption of the Community Act. HHFA housing and home financing was the sales agent. FHA set the market values for the structures. 
The first offering was in September 1956, and that was just a year after the Act was passed. The first sale was to, I have, is L.L. Brennan at 151 [Oak Ridge]Turnpike. He was the first person to receive the deed from the government for that piece of property. Under the priority system, the first priority went to the occupants and virtually all the sales were of homes, of single family and duplexes were made to the occupants. Only about 60 of the single family and duplexes went into the second priority. About 88% of the houses and duplexes were sold in 10 months’ time. I don’t think many probably ever knew that. We were selling houses that first year at the rate of 5 to 600 a month. 
Now, in the winter of 1957, there was a key move toward incorporation when the Tennessee General Assembly amended and adopted what we call the Oak Ridge Charter. Then the most controversial event of all was probably the hospital. That came up during 1957, when the AEC asked the Town Council to conduct all the referendums that were required under the Community Act. It was the intent of Congress under the Act that the community, people in the community would select the, to whom the entities would go. So the first entity up for discussion was the hospital. We had asked the Oak Ridge Town Council to take the task of holding that referenda. A few days later, the Oak Ridge Hospital, they accepted that responsibility. Then shortly after that the Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated asked the Town Council to hold a referendum to select the hospital entity so that we would know who the new hospital was going to. The referendum is about the new hospital, not about the old one. 
Soon after the Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated came in, Town Council held another meeting and in walked three ministers of various churches and they asked the Town Council to postpone a quick action on setting a deed because they wanted to go to their regional and national offices to find out if the churches would like to apply for the hospital and come under, contest it under the referendum. Pretty soon there was a group in town that wanted to have the name of the future city on the ballot. So, the Town Council agreed that they would be the three applicants. The Oak Ridge Hospital, ultimately, excuse me, out of the churches only the Methodist group wanted to be an applicant. So the Methodists and the Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated and the name of the future city were put on the ballot. 
There was a great deal of hassling, discussing, going on trying to stir up favor for your particular applicant. It was an unfortunate, very divisive period of time, and I don’t think particularly benefited the community, but there was really no other way to select the successful applicant. The problem, one of the problems was that Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporation was an AEC contractor and we couldn’t accept them because it would appear we were favoring our contractor. So, a referendum was finally held in August of 1958, 7,853 people went to the polls. The Methodists got 35%, Oak Ridge Hospital got 33%, and the name of the future city got 32%. Very close. 35, 33, 32. That meant there had to be a run off because the policy decision had been made that the successful person, applicant had to have a majority vote. Consequently, the run off was held in November ’58, and the name of the future city was dropped. So, the contest became between the Methodists and the Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated.  The Methodists got 58% of the run off and thereby won the majority that was required. 
Mrs. Zucker: We’re going to have to share some of these ideas with other people on the panel because we are going to run out of time if we don’t. Could you go over just some highlights on the rest of your talk? 
Mr. Peitzsch: The rest of my talk? Sure, be glad to.
Mrs. Zucker: Can you just kind of skip over a couple of things and hit the hot spots?
Mr. Peitzsch: Sure.
Mrs. Zucker: Ok, because other people have things to say. 
Mr. Peitzsch: She wants me to shorten it that’s what she’s telling me. Very diplomatic of her. (Laughter)
Mrs. Zucker: He doesn’t want the other people to be able to speak, too. (Laughter)
Mr. Peitzsch: Ok, I will…
Mrs. Zucker: It’s so good I don’t really want to ask you to do it, because it’s just what I want to hear. 
Mr. Peitzsch: I think that after the hospital referendum the town quieted down and so in the winter of ’58 - ’59, the School Board, the AEC, and the Town Council, the Advisory Town Council, the Advisory School Board and the AEC got together and discussed financial assistance to the future town. It wasn’t coming to a contractor, just coming to an understanding to what the basis would be. Out of that grew enough confidence on the part of the community leaders that they told the people to go out and vote for incorporation. Now, the real serious contract was settled on in November ’59. A year later awarded the new Town Council; the new City Council had been elected in early ’59. I’m through. (Laughter)
Mrs. Zucker: (Laughter) I wish you were not. One of the frustrating things about these talks each person up here could easily fill the entire time and that isn’t how this is arranged so we have to continue. It’s a pleasure to ask Garrett Asher to talk a little bit about this housing disposal. The numbers astonish me. The number of houses that were sold and how rapidly that all went. Tell me how that all worked. 
Mr. Asher: I thought Fred was going to steal my thunder. (Laughter)
Mrs. Zucker: I’m not going to let him. (Laughter) Okay. I want your thunder here.
Mr. Asher: Prior to the sale of properties to the existing tenants, commercial, industrial, and what have you, there was other private properties allowed in Oak Ridge and that was under lease hold arrangements. Where they would buy their lots and build their houses, some of you know some of the people that did that. There may be 50 or 60 such in single family’s. But with respect to the commercial establishments, the businesses in Oak Ridge, most of them went on long term leases. Not ownership, but leases. Downtown Shopping Center happened to been one of those that was on a lease hold which was tough going to sell a deal to say A&P, Kroger’s, or Loveman’s and what have you on their terrific investment in their business under a lease hold, because whatever improvements they put in there went with the property and not with them. So, it was a tough game to do that under a lease hold arrangement, but none the less that’s the way it happened. 
Then the Disposal Bill that we refer to as the sale of properties and what have you, came about. There was several of the key people that went to Washington during the hearings on the Disposal Bill. Frank Wilson, and all of you’ll remember, Don McKay, Ross Charles. Don was head of the Oak Ridger, Ross Charles was head of WATO, and Al Bissell and myself. And an interesting thing happened when we came back, Richland, Washington, and the other communities in the AEC program were there for these hearings and we had an interesting thing happen. There was one man from Washington State delegation that wanted to put a provision in that Disposal Bill that would not only the tenants be given a break on the value of the property for their sale, for their purchase, but that, the interest rate on those that wanted to finance that DOE or AEC would allow them a 3% interest. Well, some of us had to object to that because we were fixing to kill that bill because there is no way that Congress was going to pass a bill and give us a 3% interest rate on these properties for loans with the Veterans Administration and all the veterans that were coming in from World War II having to paying 6 or 7% and 5 to 7 %. The amazing thing is that this particular man that is, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I’m going to get in trouble for telling you. But anyway… (Laughter)
Mrs. Zucker: (Laughter) Good. We could use a little trouble. 
Mr. Asher: This one gentleman that was doing this from Richland, Washington, would come down as part; he was a head of one of our local unions in Richland, Washington operations, and he was representing the Chamber of Commerce. We had a representative of the Chamber of Commerce, too, either Frank Wilson or one of the ones I mentioned a while ago. We had our little in fighting with that one individual and the amazing thing to me is how the head of the Union can also represent a Chamber of Commerce. But none the less, I’m not going to say no more about that. Then the Disposal Bill, HHFA as Fred has mentioned did the selling. Roane-Anderson, and later on MSI, did all the paper work for getting it ready for sale. AEC really wanted to get rid of the real estate business. They felt like the war was over, they had done their job, and it was wrong to be in that business. They wanted out. 
So, when the Disposal Bill comes through then they put some prices on and FHA and HHFA put the prices on that the tenants, the people couldn’t resist. They were such good sales, good deal for the people. So I, back then, I guesstimated that the sale would really run at about 85% of value. That doesn’t mean much to you, but what is the value? Well, the value come about, the market value come about by capitalizing the rent, and if you recall, or you were here at the time, rent was unusually low. Consequently, when you figure your value from that, you come out with a very low value and then you take 15% of that off and you got a real lucrative deal for the tenants and most of them bought. The ones that didn’t buy usually themselves went ahead and bought and sold immediately to their neighbor or a friend. That’s how lucrative this thing was. I think this was done purposely by AEC because they wanted out of the business and they would be complimented for it and not criticized for it. Thought Fred would like that. (Laughter) 
	As an example of the value of the prices on those houses, my house was a C house on Tilden Road and kind of on the eastern end of town, and I paid for that house $2,700, a three bedroom, one bath, C cemesto house. Within a year from that town, I sold it for $10,000. This is not to criticize the AEC. That is not my inference. It was just a lucrative deal for the tenants. And DOE, AEC felt like that they had it coming so they did it that way. 
	Now, if there are any questions, I would be happy to answer. 
Mrs. Zucker: I hope we’ll have some time for questions at the end. I have two comments to make about housing. One is you may notice that the Brennan house is still there. If you head towards the east end, it is the little brick house with the swimming pool at the end. I remember it because when I went to high school that was one of the places we all went to party. It was the only real house in Oak Ridge for quite a while. That is how we viewed it as teenagers. Let’s go to the real house. And then it got a swimming pool which was just too much. 
I just can’t resist that I also need to tell you that I was one of the second purchasers of a house and purchased the house for $12,000. I’m still in it. It is still a wonderful house. 
Dick Smyser, the politics of incorporation were not simple. 
Mr. Smyser: Well, I can’t resist adding a little bit, a couple notes to what Garrett had to say about housing. There was only one house that wasn’t bought during that first round of sales. Those in the first priority purchase. That house was located up at the apex where California, Outer Drive, and East Drive come together. It is still there, was a D house, a very choice D house. I don’t know exactly why the person who had the first option to buy that house, but they didn’t. We held a lottery, not we, the authorities held a lottery and the person who got the right to buy that house was Captain John Livingston, the late Captain John Livingston of the Oak Ridge Police Force. A very efficient and popular policeman and I think we all felt very good about him getting the opportunity to buy that house. 
	Another footnote I would add is that one of the inducements to buy your house was that there was a clause that was called the indemnity clause which said if the employment here in Oak Ridge fell below a certain rate that the Fed would buy back the house from you, right?
Mr. Asher: No, they would give you some financial help if you had trouble with your mortgage. 
Mr. Smyser: Oh, I thought it was that they would buy it back. Well anyways not a single person invoked that indemnity clause.
Mr. Asher: Well, they took the 10% discount. 
Mr. Smyser: Yes, but there was…
Mr. Asher: Bless their hearts, they preferred the bird in the hand. They wouldn’t [say no to a] bird the hand. 
Mr. Smyser: Yes, but there was also this provision relative to the employment if the employment in the town fell below a certain level. 
Mr. Asher: Right, the indemnity provision.
Mr. Smyser: Yeah. Well what would happen if you took advantage of the indemnity? Suppose the employment had fallen below, what would have, you have done?
Mr. Asher: I hate to think of it. (Laughter)
Mrs. Zucker: (Laughter) Moving right along.
Mr. Smyser: Ok, well…
Mrs. Zucker: But we can continue this minor war when we get to the end of the program. Let’s continue with the description. We have questions.
Audience: [inaudible]
Mr. Asher: Well the East Village houses weren’t open until about 1955, ’56.
Audience: [inaudible]
Mr. Asher: Well, it wasn’t up for sale at the time.
Mrs. Zucker: I think it would be good idea to save the questions for the end because there is so much information we need to get out and so many people to offer it. Dick can you talk about the incorporation and we can all get together and tussle after.
Mr. Smyser: If I had to pick a date for when we first made the first move toward self-government in Oak Ridge I would pick November 20, 1943, when the first town meeting was held here. In the early years of Oak Ridge and I didn’t come here until 1949. All this I know just from studying records. The first town meeting was held and as a result of those town meetings the decision was made to organize an Advisory Town Council. 
The first Advisory Town Council met in September 1945, to hear a talk by District Attorney General Howard Baker. That would have been Howard Baker, Sr., the father of our current or later senator and now the ambassador to Japan. Interesting enough, his topic at that meeting was suffrage eligibility of Oak Ridgers. We were, early Oak Ridgers had to really fight to get the right to vote because the county authorities did many things to obstruct their voting. In October 1946, 12 members were elected to Town Council for one year terms. 
Another crurial date would be November 11, 1948. The Town Council Incorporation Committee, by this time they had appointed a committee, met with J.L. Jacobs, a Chicago consulting firm retained by the AEC, one of the first of hundreds of outside consulting groups that we have had come in here and ttell us what to do. (Exclamation) The Jacobs Group on the scale of value and the need for consulting groups, probably the Jacobs study was near the top of those of value. The members of that Town Council Incorporation Committee were Carl A. Cooper, the chairman; F.C. Lowery, vice-chairman; Mrs. A.H. Snail, Evelyn Snail; Frank Wilson, whose already been mentioned; Don Brown; and a man by the man of W.A. Swanson; who later was elected chairman of the Town Council, and who with a group of others, and this was my first confrontation with Oak Ridge politics, was just almost weeks after we started publication, January 1949. I remember particular Anna Nats and Edde Thompkins, they were the leaders of the League of Woman Voters here, and they came into our office in high deign to alert us to this move to incorporate the town rather hastily, primarily so that Oak Ridge could have liquor stores. In those days, that particular year, Anderson County had voted for legal liquor. I won’t go into the details because we could spend an hour talking about that issue, but the state law at that time was that liquor stores could only been located in the county that had voted for legal liquor as Anderson County had. They had to be in incorporated cities. They want to incorporate Oak Ridge so they could set up liquor stores. Well that was, I won’t say because of the newspaper but we aroused a little interest and antagonism to that and that move to incorporate sort of died of warning. 
Then there were continued meetings of the incorporation committees and the charter committees all under the aegis of our Town Council which by that time would be very active and very respected, I think, not only by the citizens, but also by the commission. They felt that it had no legal powers, that was the sounding board and people like Lily Rose Claiborne, Mary McNees, Mary Ann Gibbons, those are some whom I think of were very prominent in the moves toward incorporation. 
There was this furtive attempt at an incorporation vote held on, you can attribute the significance to the date, was April 1, 1953, was that election. And as Fred already stated was defeated by a margin of about 4 to 1. The cry was then, “Don’t buy a  pig in a poke”. We felt, most people felt that at that time the commission had not committed itself on the selling of homes, it had not made any provisions for payments in lieu of taxes, and that it would be a mistake to incorporate without those assurances. 
Frankly, we at the newspaper felt it would be wise to incorporate. Our argument was, and it was an argument of other people too, that if we incorporated we could seize the initiative as far as moving towards these other important steps, particularly the selling of these homes. The majority of the citizens decided otherwise and we were not, we did not incorporate. We did then on May 5, 1959, vote and I remember it so well the vote was 15 point something or other, somebody figured it on a slide rule, 15.12678 or 9 to 1, in favor of incorporation. 
I just would conclude by mentioning the three, what really were the three big issues leading up to incorporation that we argued about as citizens. One I think is largely forgotten. There was a sizeable group of sentiment in the town for an independent school district. This would have been a school district that would have been, the school would have been entirely separate from the City Council as far as the school budget was concerned. A major move, there were other independent school districts in other places. Fred just corrected me on something; I thought I remembered that independent school district would levy a separate school tax. Fred says no that would not have been allowed under a state law, but what it would have done, the City Council would have nothing to say about the budget. The School Board would have set the budget and that would have been it. 
The compromise was, under our charter, the City Council can set the budget, the total amount of the budget, but the School Board has no authority over how that money shall be spent. Once the money is in the hands of the School Board, the City Council has no jurisdiction as to how it can be spent. Of course, and in fact, that happens because during the debate of the amount of the budget we talk about how the money is going to be spent. The other issue was how our Council should be constituted. Should it be 12 members elected at large, or should it be 12 members elected by district, 7 members elected at large, or should it be a combination, maybe 4 members elected by districts throughout the city and three elected by large. We have been schizophrenic about that ever since the last, how long is it since 1959, almost 40 years; we have gone one way and the other. The irony is the way the Official Charter Commission wanted it was 7 members at large. That was rejected by our state legislators who insisted on 12 members elected by districts, but ultimately we have ended up and we’re now the way the original Charter Commission would have liked us to be represented and that is 7 members elected from the city at large. That’s the incorporation story in a nutshell. 
Mrs. Zucker: I wish we had more space than a nutshell. Two things come to my mind; one is that one of the women that worked really hard on the incorporation and many of you knew her as a completely unique woman, Mary McNees, and she coined the phrases that we all use which was called “in-co-operation”, which is how we all referred to incorporation for those of us that worked for it. 
The other story that comes to my mind is about the liquor referendum. Again, we won’t get into that. My husband was petitioning for legal liquor in the Garden Apartments, where you could hit a lot of people fast because they lived on top of each other.  Went up to a lady, explained what he wanted, and she said, “I don’t like that at all.” He said, “Well, that’s what makes horse races.” She said, “And I don’t like them either.” (Laughter) That is my favorite story about the liquor referendum. 
	Education was a problem in Oak Ridge. How to do it, how to work with the state, how to work with the county, and Ted Rogers was very much involved with that. So I would like him to take over. 
Mr. Rogers: There was several important periods there that the School Board was elected officially. We had five members: Bob Bigelow, Frank Wilson, Bob Sharpie, myself and Herb Dees. We managed to keep the schools operating, and the teachers were a little unhappy earlier for whatever reason, but we were consistent in our directions and applications to work and eventually the morale of the teachers picked up. When the morale of the teachers picked up then the morale of the whole school picked up. About that same time that the morale began to really pick up, the AEC decided that they were going to turn the schools over to the county so we need to depress the level of education, money spent and time to get kids educated. We decided to depress that level to the county level, which at that particular time the county level was quite low. Mitch Gushman had a conniption and went over to AEC and he talked to AEC and he went back and he talked again, and he went back and he talked again, over a period time. Eventually, he convinced them that we had a good school system and it would be better to keep a good school system than it would be to depress the level of education in Oak Ridge for the children of Oak Ridge. That was a very important point that not very many people know about.
	Another point was integration. We weren’t integrated at the time that we got on the School Board, but along came the integration elsewhere, and we figured that eventually we would have to be integrated. So we made whatever moves we could. We worked with the principals of the schools, we worked with the PTAs, we worked with any manner we could to get people ready for integration, because it was going to happen, it was just a matter of time. It’s funny that Dick Smyser mentioned a house in Oak Ridge at the corner of California, East Drive and Outer Drive. That was the house that was rumored was going to be rented by a Afro-American family and they had a school age kids. I was working with the Glenwood principal and PTA at that particular time and so we were trying to, through the government, PTA, to alert the people that probably Glenwood would be the first integrated school in the town. It didn’t happen, but we sure worked hard and maybe that paid off. Integration of the schools did happen and there were lots of unhappy people in town. 
There was one group of people that organized themselves and they, now I don’t know what they did, the other board members, but they decided that they would just ring our telephone. So we got about anywhere from about 40 to 60 hang-ups every day for months. It just went on and on and you didn’t think it would ever quit. So, that’s two points that I felt were very important.
Mrs. Zucker: Thank you very much. Jim Ramsey was the recipient of this education, right? (Laughter) So, we have to find out what he thinks about it. Jim grew up in Oak Ridge as we’ve said, and I also asked him to talk about something that I think is important and that is the relation between the county and the city of Oak Ridge. What his perception of that has been and how it’s evolved. Could we start there and then end up with talking about growing up?
Mr. Ramsey: Ok, if I stand up, I’ll be shorter. (Laughter)
Mrs. Zucker: If you stand up, I’ll be shorter. (Laughter) 
Mr. Ramsey: Well, with regard to town-gown relations, county and the city of Oak Ridge that is not an unusual phenomenon. It is pretty, in my opinion, it’s pretty pronounced here. But where I went to college it was the same way. The professors had children who shared their genes and were smart. The local school was particularly good and well-funded because of the activism of their parents who were these professors of everything from art history to physics and medicine. Where as immediately outside the town you had the northeastern equivalent of rednecks, they called them emits. And there was this condescending view which that phrase that I just used shows, illustrates between the gown and the town entities. It was exacerbated in Oak Ridge because we had a fence around us for as, my early memory was up until, was it ‘47, ‘49 when the gates came down and the movie stars came in their Packards and had their pictures taken by my father among many others, Ed Westcott and others. But even after the gates went down, my grandmother use to have a pass to get in and my uncle, who was a captain in the Coast Guard living in D.C. in the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s, use to come down in his Oldsmobile and it was way low in the back because he was bringing bootleg down to Oak Ridge and getting it through the MPs, etc. and many others were doing that as well. And the dry county resented that. We had no law. Not only were we disenfranchised, but we were not disciplined, governed, there was no law enforcement except for the Military Police, who cared only about national security and didn’t care about peccadillos and local behavior. So, the people in the county, rightfully and understandable, resented the 90 square miles of Oak Ridge, which was behind a fence, and even when the fence was down was nevertheless still the same in reality defacto. 
I have learned that this still persists over the last 25 years that I have been in elected public office, because there is nothing like an election to get you around. It’s very repugnant to run for office, but in doing so you get to each and every of the 29 precincts the time I first ran, and each and every corner of the county and the city and each city and you learn who the key people are and what their interests are. So, I had that experience in running for office 12 times to find out both the county and city interests and you know there are five municipalities in this county. So, it slowly dawned on me as the education of electioneering politics comes upon the candidate that the people that I grew up looking down my nose at had in fact a pretty good intelligence, culture, and education of their own that we were not recognizing in Oak Ridge. My wife when she first came to town was immediately recruited for literacy, and sent immediately out to Clinton to teach literacy. Well there are people that illiterate and need to be taught to read, but the attitude was we’re going to carry enlightenment to these savages, you know, (Laughter) and that simply doesn’t stack up and I can go on forever about that, but that attitude persists to this day, and that is the reason why my opinion the tourism council and the County Chamber of Commerce are not going to merge because there is too much Wildcat-Dragon animosity to this day. I’ll stop there, but I could go on forever on that basis. I would like to comment, make an editorial comment, which is purely personal and purely anecdotal; I have no research to back it up except the fact that I taught school for two years in rural Vermont, 15 miles south of the Canadian border, which I considered to be pretty much the same as Oakdale or Sunbright. It’s at the other end of the same chain of mountains, the Appalachians and the people up there are the same derivative, from Scotch-Irish except that there are more French up there. Here you have a French enclave; Helen Jernigan is one of them. If you remember Helen Jernigan her maiden name is Chastain and she grow up in a French enclave over near Crossville; there is a German enclave over there in Wartburg, Shuberts and all that. We have the same thing here that they have in northern Vermont. I taught a French 3 class to eight kids in Vermont in Barton Academy, which was a local high school and four of them were Fournier, Boutain, Leclair, and Pelletier, and the other four were Elliot, Harper, Mackenzie, and Lowe, or something like that. Same folk we got down here, they just talk with their own hillbilly accent, which is different from the one down here. They do more “a-yeah” up there and that sort of thing. 
I think it’s exacerbated because we’re a military base with MP’s. I remember we had a flat tire once and we just waited 10 minutes and a MP came along and fixed it for us, out on G-road. So that leads me into something else I wanted to say. As for town-gown, you caught me a little bit cold on that and I’m not prepared about it, but I do not find it unusual, just exacerbated. I do think that we are very much at fault because we have a condescending attitude towards the surrounding territory and that is natural too. It’s not like we’re guilty for that. I remember the story of, was it Senator Mc…, Mc-somebody when Roosevelt brought him in to say were going to build a Manhattan Project and he said, “What part of Tennessee is that going to be in?”
Mrs. Zucker: McKeller.
Mr. Ramsey: McKeller. Senator McKeller. He said ok what part of Tennessee are we going to build that in, and he said we’re going to build it in the most remote little region where there is power. And so they put it right here. They ran Lawrence Tunnell out and George Anderson and a lot of people I know since I ran for public office. J.D. Darrnell and others, and Sheriffson whose family who exists are all disenfranchised and kicked out of this 90 square miles. 
There is a nurse over at the hospital. I went out the back door at the loading gate one time with a take home from the cafeteria. It was raining and so I didn’t run right out to my car. There was a nurse there smoking a cigarette. I got to chatting with her. Turns out she owned the orchard, which is now Orchard Circle, before they kicked her out in 1942. That’s where I lived after 1942. So the resentment, it cuts both ways. It’s a very real and earned resentment. It still exists to this day. The people who are on one end of the resentment stick don’t understand why the others resent and won’t learn. I could go on. I’m making this up. This is all ad libbed. I had no plans for that. Let me get to the other part of my presentation if I may.
Mrs. Zucker: Yes, please.
Mr. Ramsey: And then I’ll quit. I said I’d be short by standing up.
Mrs. Zucker: We’re all enjoying it. 
Mr. Ramsey: In 1949, we lived in a flattop on Orchard Circle. My two twin brothers, Bill and Jack, were 4 years old and they were playing underneath the prefab in the dirt where those little moles made those inverse volcanos. Playing in the mud, playing in the dirt was a lot of fun. Playing in the coal bins was a lot of fun. My mother heard them to say, because you could hear through the floor, “This is my turf, this is my place. Don’t you mess with my pile.” And he said, “No, this is mine.” And they argued back and forth. And then one of them was heard to say to the other, and this is the story my mother repeated for many years, “No, it isn’t yours it belongs to God and Roane-Anderson.” (Laughter) There is a lot to say about that. I didn’t know the word “mortgage” until I was in college because everything whenever you had, everything was owned, we paid rent. I still have a copy of the lease we had on the house at Ditman Lane and that’s reason why I know it’s 105 and I couldn’t find it to bring, but I have seen it recently and I know I will find it. It shows as a lease to the government for John Ramsey and infant son, and I can’t remember, it was $26 or something like that a month. So, whenever we needed something fixed, a faucet, the roof painted or something, we called Roane-Anderson and they’d come and do it. So I didn’t know you had to take care of stuff. (Laughter) I think my whole generation grew up not knowing what a mortgage was and not knowing what a fix-it was. Other people I met when I got to college knew what mortgages were. And they knew to maintain, to paint and fix, do plumbing and stuff like that. We didn’t know we just called MSI or whoever it happened to be. 
Now, I have a lot of things to say about being a kid in town and I will talk about this…
 [Break in Audio] 
…time. Hunting for turtles, we didn’t have activities like t-ball, so I did a lot of things on my own, such as ordering out of the back of a comic book…
[Break in Audio] 
… utility belt, government surplus utility belt, filling it up with stuff and running around like a superhero, playing those games with my friends, Mac Laugherty, Johnny Bruser, Jeff Talickson, and many names whose parents you will remember probably. But besides just being a kid during the late ‘40’s and the ‘50’s in Oak Ridge, the other part of my experience, the other significant part of my experience was the desegregation factor. I’ll show this to Dick Smyser here. He probably wrote that headline and you probably wrote the editorial which is in here too. But I remember very well when this happened and so do some of you I’m sure. Very interesting that it’s…
Audience: [inaudible]
Mr. Ramsey: This is, the date of this newspaper, it’s the Oak Ridger for December 5, 1956, this was before the bombing of Clinton High School, but it was during the desegregation efforts that were mentioned by Dr. Rogers, who signed my high school diploma. (Laughter) I remember full well when the bombing took place and the kids from Clinton were bused over to Linden School to do their two years of high school. People that you know, like Jerry Shattuck were in that crowd, were bused regularly everyday back and forth to Linden School to do high school. Well, what did we do? We saw the Clinton kids going by to Linden School and we were getting in our buses at Oak Ridge High School and the buses were going to take us to the old bus station, which was segregated. As they let the kids off at the end of the day, the black house maids would be getting on and going to the back of the bus and being harassed by us white kids. 
Let’s see, I lost my train of thought. We used to lean out the window of the bus from Oak Ridge High School and pound on it and hoot at the Clinton bus. And they were leaning out and pounding on it and hooting at us. Those are the people who are now my colleagues over in Clinton in the courthouse. And Jerry Shattuck was one I know was there because he is on the Edward R. Murrow video, which still exists. You can get it from the Clinton Public Library. It shows the young Horace Wells, the young Sidney Davis’ wife, and many other people. June Adamson, I think, is on that video. Edward R. Murrow, See It Now. You can check it out. It still exists. This was a large part of my upbringing. I was there when he was doing his thing with the School Board. 
As a matter of fact, I urge you to look around right now and tell me how many black faces are in this audience, you know. Why not? And then if you answer that why not. Whatever you come up with is going to be the same kind of dialogue that was happening 50 years ago too. “Well, they didn’t sign up for the course. They’re not interested. Well, should there be outreach?” I don’t know, but that debate hasn’t died, it’s still here right now. Look around, how many, tell me how many black faces are in this crowd. Go to the American Museum of Science and Energy, that’s the politically correct way to say Museum of Atomic Energy, go through the tour and then look at the big picture of victory, all the newspapers being held up at the very end, big mural. How many black faces are in that? Were there no black people here during the war? That’s the kind of other upbringing I had. There are reasons why I’m very glad to say I did participate in some of that. I was a little kid but I did stand in at the Davis Brother’s Cafeteria and some other things because of the influence of Bob Ace, Sr. and some others that are in this room and so I had a childhood that involved hunting turtles in the woods, going down and putting pennies on the railroad tracks down there at highway 61 and watch the plant train smash them flat, shooting sling shots at telephone lights, which Roane Anderson would come and fix immediately and then shoot them out again. (Laughter) On the one hand, I swung on grape vines down in the woods; we went and smashed the old barn at Orange Lane because that was the first location of the Playhouse was at the barn down behind your house. It still stood when we arrived in 1950, but not for long. (Laughter) And so I did all that Huckleberry Finn stuff and that was because we didn’t have t-ball or soccer or any of those things, the main thing I did was Boy Scouts and I learned to hike and I delivered papers for seven years and remember very well the picture of Eisenhower standing there like this when he heard that McArthur had been fired by Truman. 
We had no television so I remember listening to the radio. This was the activities of a child my age at that time. Listening late at night to WOWO Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Stillwater, Oklahoma, and tuning and tuning and listening in for far way radio stations. I heard a scary story; it was a scary story. It scared me to death. I listened to this story and then I disappeared. I didn’t know where it came from or what it was about. And the next year I heard it again. It played late at night. It was Christmas night. The story was Christmas Carole. (Laughter) It scared me to death, there were ghosts and chains and (ghost sounds), and stuff like that. I had no idea, to this day when I see Christmas Carole, I have my radio imagination. I’m getting too long. I wanted to quickly point out, here is a 1947 copy of the Oak Ridge Journal and it’s remarkable for two things. One the Town Council are all announced here. Several of them are checked so I guess those were who my parents were going to vote for. One of them that is checked is John Clark. He ran the last… 
[Break in Audio] 
…The other thing I wanted to show in here. You might have noticed me talking to Bill Pollock a little earlier before this all commenced. There is an ad in here for “Planning a party? We can supply you with the finest recorded music at very reasonable rates regardless of where you plan a party. Pollock Wired Music Systems. Studio in Ridge Hall. Phone 4577 for details”, autographed today by Bill Pollock. (Laughter) So that’s why I have that. The reason I have the show and tell is because when I got this call I would try to find my Wildcat Den card, which I still do have. So, diving through my old box of stuff, I found my high school wallet. I know my time is out now, but I was going to make my talk, until she made me talk about town-gown relations, about the contents of my high school wallet, which includes all my little girlfriends.
Mrs. Zucker: Do tell. Yeah. Go ahead we’re all fascinated. (Laughter)
Mr. Ramsey: Including a prom picture of Mitzy Glenn. You know her big sister was Miss Oak Ridge and Miss Tennessee and she still walks around town, Nancy Glenn. I took her little sister to prom.
Mrs. Zucker: He is bragging, definitely.
Mr. Ramsey: Yeah, well I was going to get to the other stuff. Here is Karen (?), the Norwegian ice princess we all loved. She’s still around too and this is our fortieth anniversary next month, reunion. Fortieth class reunion of ’61 and all these people will be here. I wanted to show you also, my picture inscribed by Frances Scott, Buddy Scotts’ sister. We go back a long way. I was looking for my Wildcat Den card, that’s why I found this old wallet. No, there is not a condom in here. (Hysterics) 
Mrs. Zucker: Those were hard to get in those days. (Laughter)
Mr. Ramsey: I checked to make sure.  (Laughter) 
Mrs. Zucker: They weren’t even in gas stations.
Mr. Ramsey: Also, in diving into my pile for the Wildcat Den card which I want to call to your attention. The Wildcat Den is cranking up again and is still viable. I found many things from school. We didn’t have t-ball, we didn’t have soccer. Sports were confined to football, basketball and track and field. As I looked, I have not thrown away, I was into the theater. I’ve still got all my old scripts. I was into the Masqures, the Junior Playhouse, and the Playhouse, which is where I met my friend Harry Lillard, who got me into being a lawyer. We were both in “Inherit the Wind”. He was a journalist and I was the photographer. I have all these little scripts and some of them take care of my little girl. I had to pin somebody on that thing in front of my whole high school audience. I failed that up terribly. But I have my show and tell. There are many anecdotes to tell about being a kid in Oak Ridge. 
I’ll finish with telling you about my paper route which was very significant. I had two paper routes. That meant the Knoxville Journal, which was delivered in the morning. They would drop my bundle off at the top of New York, another bundle off at the top of Georgia, and a bundle at my house at Orange Lane. I would pick up early in the morning and deliver it all the way down to Georgia, and then I would go down Florida and Albany and up Delaware to Paul Elza’s house and then I would be done with that. I would pick up my next bundle and get on the bus with the men going to work and I would sell papers on the bus and then I would get off at New York and pick up the bundle and deliver it back to Orange Lane. I remember very well riding on the bus with the men going to work. In that neighborhood lived Fred Culler, Fred Ford, John, well Marshall Bruser, all these people that were the pioneers of the Manhattan Project, Waldo Cohn and all these people, the Adamsons, Kurtez, we called them mister. And I collected from them. I made sure to collect on Halloween night. (Laughter) Whenever the bill was due and I had my bag with me. I was too big to be Trick or Treating but I sure got a big load of stuff anyway. I made sure I collected as close to Christmas Eve as I could and got a big ole tip there. 
So those were my experience. But I never heard the word, as I told you I didn’t hear the word “mortgage” until I got to college. I didn’t hear the word “doctor” as Dr. Smallridge. I had never heard the word “doctor” applied to anybody, but a physician until I got into politics and became the lawyer for the Board of Education and there everyone was doctor somebody, doctor somebody. We called Alvin Weinberg, mister. We called everybody; I recall that the etiquette was very democratic. And to this day I can’t get myself to say Dr. Alvin Weinberg. Of course, it’s Alvin to most of us. But all the people were mister. And we didn’t really know who the big shots were and who were not. I know now that everybody on my paper route was a big shot, but I didn’t know it. When I was swinging down in the woods, I didn’t, I was with the children of pipefitters and the children of physicists. We didn’t know, we just knew we built the bomb. 
Mrs. Zucker: You didn’t know that either.
(Applause)
Mrs. Zucker: You have no idea how hard it has been for me to keep my mouth shut during the past hour because I too have grown up in Oak Ridge, the things that have raced through my mind as I listen to all these people that all remind me of my own life here and what a wonderful life it has been. I just want to share a couple of things. The bus station for me growing up was the pivotal position in Oak Ridge; you went through it for everything. All my memories come from that bus station have to do with the realities of Oak Ridge; I remember the integration through the bus station, because I remember those buses going back and forth and how I felt about them. The boardwalks, of course, were up still in the ‘50’s, but went down soon afterwards, weren’t they? I don’t know when they were taken down. They were essential to every growing child in Oak Ridge. We rambled on them; we smooched on them, we collected our turtles on them. (Laughter) 
There was a great feeling of freedom about growing up in Oak Ridge because the fences protected us from all evil. So we got to create our own minor evils and it was a very freeing experience. I remember stuffing envelopes for all of the things mentioned for incorporation. All of the elections, these were very much a part of my young adulthood. It has been terrific listening to all these people bringing back all these memories for me. I hope you have received some education and some information and some structure and some history. Thank you very much. If you have any questions, I think these people will hang around for them. And if you want to come see Jim’s Show and Tell things, I’m sure he would like to share them. Bill Pollock will have the tapes available if you’ll sign up with him. So thank you so much.
[Applause]  My stepfather was on the early Town Council. Anybody remember a man named Bill Jennings. Well, he was my stepfather and he was on the original… 

[End of Audio]