Raridon, Richard (Dick)

              
ORAL HISTORY OF DR. RICHARD (DICK) RARIDON
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
August 30, 2013
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is August 30, 2013, and I am at the home of Mona and Dick Raridon here in Oak Ridge. And we just... I just spoke with your wife, Mona, and now it's your turn to tell us about yourself, so thanks for taking a Saturday afternoon where I could talk to you.
MR. RARIDON: Happy to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk... Start at the beginning. Tell me where you were born and raised, something about your family.
MR. RARIDON: Well, I was born near Newton, Iowa. Newton is the home of the Maytag Company, or used to be, years ago. And so, my... I have a sister a year and a half younger and shortly after she was born, my parents got divorced. And so my mother was basically a single mom for a while. And so, we moved in with her parents, my grandparents. They lived on a little farm about two miles south of Kellogg, which is a town of about 600 people. And... and so, starting in, well, I was born in '31, so starting about '35, '34-'35 we moved over to Grinnell, which is a college town, so my mother could do housework for some of the college faculty.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. RARIDON: And so, we went to a pre-school there and then started school there. Since my birthday was in October, I couldn't start kindergarten in the fall, and we had an apartment with a couple and the other boy was also named Richard, but he was able to start school that fall.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: And so he teased me that whole fall that he was going to get to college before I was, you know, college town. But it turned out that I started then in January with another good friend and they realized how precocious we were and so after one semester, they sent us on to first grade along with the other Richard. And so we went all the way through high school together and he never went to college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: He became a mail carrier in the town and never went to college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Never went to college. So you grew up in Grinnell?
MR. RARIDON: Mainly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Mainly grew up...
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, we spent three years living out in the farm with my grandparents. I went to a one-room country school out there two years, fourth grade and seventh grade.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: So seventh grade was... there were just three of us. There was another boy named Richard and a girl named Shirley and me. 
MR. MCDANIEL: And that was the seventh grade.
MR. RARIDON: That was the whole seventh grade. And the teacher was only about 21 or 22. She was... Her husband was gone to the war and she was just filling in as a teacher so she didn't really know what to do with us. We'd get our lessons over by the first recess -- you know, you had recess morning and recess afternoon -- so she just let us do whatever we wanted to. And so we drew little mazes and we'd do multiplication tables 12x12 and stuff like that. And it turned out he went on and got a Ph.D. from MIT in physical chemistry.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: I got a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Vanderbilt. That's two-thirds of that little seventh grade.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: And I kept up with him all the years -- he just died a couple of years ago. He actually moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, where my daughter lives now, to be near his son and then he got Alzheimer's and just...he died.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: But anyway, we'd known each other... He was a chemist, too. Taught at the University of Cincinnati all those years.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, when you graduated high school... Where did you graduate from?
MR. RARIDON: Grinnell High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Grinnell, okay.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah... And I was always interested in plants. I had a little spot in my grandfather's garden where I could play and so on and so I was going to go to Iowa State and study horticulture. And, at the last minute, they had a convocation our senior year... And, of course, back then, you didn't have to apply to college two or three years ahead like you do now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...
MR. RARIDON: And so, they announced at the convocation that I was going to be given a half-tuition scholarship to stay at home and go to Grinnell College.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. RARIDON: Which I hadn't really planned on it. Private school, it was more expensive even back then.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: My physics teacher had arranged that, unbeknownst to me. So I said, “Well, I'll just do it.” So I just stayed at home, commuted three years from home to go to college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And then I thought, well, I'd become a teacher but then I found out how many teaching courses you had to take, and I said, forget that. (laughter) So I basically just majored in math and physics and had a year and a half of chemistry and so, I got... I had basically a double major in math and physics.
MR. MCDANIEL: So what year did you graduate from Grinnell?
MR. RARIDON: So I was... oops, excuse me, messed up my glasses...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's okay. That's all right.
MR. RARIDON: I graduated in '53, but in '52, of course the Korean War was going on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: So I went for my physical in April, '52 and was classified 1-A. I thought, well, I'm still in college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: But between my junior, senior year, I got a call for induction.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. RARIDON: Fortunately, this best friend that I'd started kindergarten with, his father was an MD, and he went with me to the State Iowa Appeal Board and pleaded my case, that I was just an innocent little farm boy and didn't realize the significance, but I wanted to finish college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And so they gave me a deferment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: Which irritated my draft board.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course.
MR. RARIDON: And so, I figured surely I'd get drafted as soon as I got out, so another friend and I went out to Omaha and applied for Air Force meteological commission. But one of the students that was a year behind me knew about this AEC fellowship program that was, then, for three different schools. So I applied for it and, lo and behold, I got it.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you got... It was the AEC Fellowship program.
MR. RARIDON: The Radiological Physics Fellowship Program.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: The same one, you know, Mona was on...
MR. MCDANIEL: ...Mona was on.
MR. RARIDON: And so, it was administered through Oak Ridge, through Oak Ridge, ORINS it used to be, before ORAU.
MR. MCDANIEL: Which was the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies.
MR. RARIDON: Right. And so I called down here and said, "You know, I'd like to accept this, but they'd like to draft me." And they said, "Well, if we get you a deferment, will you take it?" And I said, "Oh, yes!" (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah. So I was one of the 20 guys that showed up that fall of '53 at Vanderbilt. Plus Mona.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: So we spent, you know, as she mentioned, we spent nine months there taking physics courses. Several of us had to go back and take a remedial biology course because we'd never had any biology. And, of course, radiological physics involves, you know, biological systems and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: We just had to audit that, we didn't have to take it for credit, but...
MR. MCDANIEL: But you had to have it.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, we had to have it. And then, once a week, either K.Z. Morgan, who was head of health physics at the time, or Myron Fair or Elda Anderson, who was in health physics then, would come over to Vanderbilt for an afternoon and give us lectures on radiological physics.
MR. MCDANIEL: So they were at Oak Ridge.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, right. They were at the Lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And so, they came over once a week. So then, that summer of '54, we all, all 21 of us came over here and I lived in Cambridge Hall down there and Mona lived in Bayone Hall then we rode the bus out to the lab every day and, like she said, went around with the health physicists learning what they did, you know. 
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, I'm sure that was an interesting ... I'm sure that was an exciting time.
MR. RARIDON: It was.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, you're young, you're, you know, in a new field, you know, so... in a unique place.
MR. RARIDON: Right. Well, you know, they were starting to build nuclear reactors and they were also, of course, using radioisotopes in hospitals and industry, they needed health physicists to regulate them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. RARIDON: There was no guarantee. We didn't have to promise anything, just went through the program. I had a B average and so I got an extension to go back to Vanderbilt and work on a Master's degree and did some X-ray studies and got my Master's degree then in '55 and then, instead of going... even though I was a math and physics major, I looked at those other physics majors going on in graduate school and they were taking theoretical physics and quantum mechanics and I realized my math background was just not that good. And so I switched over to physical chemistry which is somewhat physics and so I just switched at Vanderbilt and studied for a degree in physical chemistry. I had to audit... I had to go back and audit organic 'cause I never had it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And the guy who taught it, called him Iron Man Ingersoll. The class meet two mornings a week for one hour and then two afternoons for three-hour labs twice a week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: Well, he took up the whole lab period lecturing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really.
MR. RARIDON: So he lectured for, like, eight hours a week, just filled the board after board with all this stuff. The poor... And I didn't have to take the lab, but the poor students who had to take it for credit had to go in extra time to do the lab work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: But, anyway, managed to pass the pre-lims then the fellow I was going to work for, Merlin Peterson, who was actually here at the Lab back shortly after the war, was leaving to go to Princeton and so I came over here and, ORINS had just started this program for graduate fellowships. If you had all your course work and everything done except the thesis.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And so I came over here and interviewed around the Chemistry Division and there were several different projects, but they had this equipment that they had just built in the Chemistry Division. Kurt Kraus, who I ended up working for, his group was big into ion exchange. They were able to separate a lot of different elements by using ion exchange. And so they had built this equipment to go above room temperature. All their measurements before had just been, you know, 25 degrees, basically.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: So, they had this equipment just looking for some ways to use it. So I really kind of lucked out, in a way, because I just started in right away and started taking some research and then they also built a column to measure the solubility of silver chloride which, at room temperature, is very insoluble.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: But there was another student who was interested in doing some pH measurements at 200 degrees Celsius, which is way above the boiling point.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And he wondered how soluble silver chloride would be at that temperature and so they built another column to try to study that, which used silver isotopes because you can't, you can't collect any samples once it drops down, you know, they crystalize. So they basically measured it while it was at high temperature. So he just sent a stream of liquid down this column, past a counter and on out. And that worked pretty well, too. And so the combination of the two, I did a thesis and got through and the lab secretaries wrote it up and, at that time, universities usually required, like, six carbon copies, you know, of your thesis.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. Right, right.
MR. RARIDON: But, the Lab got permission, because they said they needed some for extra reports, to do multi-lith, which was just new thing coming in. A way to copying... of making multiple copies of stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. RARIDON: And so they got permission for me to do that, which I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. RARIDON: But I got through in 17 months here and it would have taken me, probably twice which if I'd of had to stay at Vanderbilt and teach courses and other things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. So you got your Ph.D. in chemical...?
MR. RARIDON: Physical chemistry.
MR. MCDANIEL: Physical chemistry.
MR. RARIDON: Uh-huh.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, and what year was that?
MR. RARIDON: Well, I finished up here in the fall of... the summer of '58. And it turned out that one of the fellows that we knew in this program at Vanderbilt had gone to Memphis State undergraduate and he was getting ready to go back and teach there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: And he convinced me that I ought to go with him and set up the upper class physics classes because at that time all they taught was pre-med physics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: That was it. One professor, pre-med physics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And so I went there, the fall of ‘58, along with him, and so we set up the junior-senior level physics courses.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: Taught there four years. And then he was getting ready to go back to graduate school in medical physics at UCLA and this other guy, who taught the pre-med physics, he was an ex-Navy guy and he tried to rule a very tight ship, you know.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly.
MR. RARIDON: He would breeze in the morning, teach his two or three classes, then go home. Never repaired any lab equipment or anything.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And so the three of us in four years never really had an intelligent conversation about physics. (laughter) At that time, it was the Physical Science Department, and so... But they were getting ready to split it up and name him Chairman of Physics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: And I knew that when I couldn't work with him, there was no way I could work under him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And so, in the summer of '62, I just decided, you know, my buddy was leaving, I just had to, you know, I just had to get out. Fortunately, there was a guy here at Oak Ridge who was interested in teaching so we just basically swapped.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: I came back to the Lab and he went to Memphis State. And, at that time, Kurt Kraus along with some others, had started this water research program to try to find new ways of cleaning up water.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: You know, you can distill water,
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: ... but that's expensive and if you just have a little bit of salt, if it's not like seawater,
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: ...there's easier ways of getting the salt out.  
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: So we were looking at various ways, including reverse osmosis, which they use now, commercially, for cleaning up water. Basically, you force water through a, like a filter, plastic filter. The water goes through and the salt stays behind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: And we were trying to figure out, how does that work? You know, why does it reject the salt? And so we were doing basic research on desalination.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: There was another group looking at scale, because, obviously, if you heat water, you get scale.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And so they had... There were about 10 of us, I guess, doing different projects.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, were you working for the Lab, or were you working for...?
MR. RARIDON: Yes, I was a Lab ... I was a Lab employee. I came back fall of '62 in the Chemistry Division.
MR. MCDANIEL: In the Chemistry Division. Okay.
MR. RARIDON: And there were people in Chemistry and Reactor Chemistry and Chem. Tech and so on. And they also had a nuclear desalinization program going over at Y-12. They were hoping to build a agro-industrial complex, say, in Israel or somewhere, that would produce fresh water... produce electricity and also they could use the spent steam to get fresh water.
MR. MCDANIEL: To get fresh water... Sure.
MR. RARIDON: Combination thing. And so both programs went on for a number of years. But then, like 1970, I guess it was, they just cut off the funding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: The government cut off the funding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: I actually spent a year in town working with the Science Education Center in one of the old dormitories down there on the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike next to Linda Brown's Real Estate Office down there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. RARIDON: And working with Pete Cohen. Have you met, do you know Pete?
MR. MCDANIEL: I've heard the name, but I don't know Pete.
MR. RARIDON: He was assistant superintendent at the high school for a number of years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: They set up this program to bring kids in to learn more about environmental issues and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: And so I spent a year there and then, when I went back to the Lab, chemistry still didn't have any money, but they were starting this program, mostly Environmental Sciences, studying trace contaminants in the environment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: Sponsored by NSF.
MR. MCDANIEL: What's NSF?
MR. RARIDON: National Science Foundation.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: And so they... They had a... Well, they still have. They have an experimental watershed out there, Walker Branch Watershed out there east of the Lab, 240 acres that they've instrumented, they've been studying it now ever since then.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And so, they were trying to... They had a fellow come down from University of Wisconsin with a watershed model, a computer model, and he was going to try to apply it to that watershed, which also involved exchanging chemicals in there, and so since I had done my thesis on ion exchange, they thought, well I could be helpful in that but found out very quickly that ion exchange in a lab and ion exchange in the field are quite different.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And they really didn't have enough parameters. They needed, like, 40 different values to plug into this computer program, which they'd been... they just had to guess at, mainly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Right.
MR. RARIDON: But I got started with that and went back and took the FORTRAN course because -- I'd taken it once before, but I didn't use it, so I went back and took it before and it just gradually evolved into running the program, looking at the output and then after that ended, got into air quality modeling and different projects. And then, in '84, I went over to work for Fusion Energy. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: Still in the Computer Division but assigned over there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And so I worked there until I retired in '92. Again, they ran out of money. The project I was working on ran out of money.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And, by then, so many people were doing programming on PCs that they didn't need programmers any more.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: We were kind of obsolete.
MR. MCDANIEL: So that's what you basically ended up doing was becoming a computer programmer.
MR. RARIDON: Right. I did that from '72 until, basically, almost 2000. I kept on consulting after I retired for a little while.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And only learned FORTRAN, which they're still using out there. It's amazing. (laughter) It's still a very useful language.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MR. RARIDON: Of course, when I started, we had punch cards and all that. In fact, they got in one little -- got involved in one little interesting project about 1980. I got a call from Paul Selby in Biology Division and he was working with the Russells on some of the mouse data and he said they had these ... this data they'd collected back in the '60s when they were doing radiation experiments, you know, they'd take a thousand... 10,000 mice and give them a certain dose and then a 10,000 control and then they'd look at the offspring to see what happened.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And he said they had a bunch of computer cards they'd like to get read back in because with the new statistical packages, they could get much more information out of there that they couldn't get originally.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And so I asked him, "Well, how many... how many cards?" He said, "Oh, I think there are 23 boxes." It turned out there were 23 transfiles full of boxes. Turned out to be almost a quarter of a million computer cards.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: But they'd been stored over there at 9207 in a very dry area, and so... Got a technician, it took him about a month to read all those cards back in.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right..
MR. RARIDON: And so then, I think there were 19 or 20 different experiments and so, just turned all that over to Paul and he worked on it for several years after that, getting additional data out of it. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: And it was interesting working in Fusion because I ended up working for John Whealton who was in the Theory Department. Basically, we were running computer programs to design an ion beam to shoot into a fusion device.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: And so, it's sort of like the SNS, you're shooting a beam of particles down a tube and so on. And he would, he would just tell us, you know, change the program this way or that way and run it and see what happens. Back in the late '80s, there were four or five of us working for him running different aspects. He kept us all busy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Wow.
MR. RARIDON: And then gradually the money started drying up and, so by, '90... I guess '91, I was down to just part time so I actually worked for Y-12 down at the west end there in a very protected area where, if somebody opened the door wrong, they'd set off an alarm and shut everything down.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: But anyway, they were building an environmental program because... They collected a lot of samples there at Y-12, air, water, everywhere. And they have to ... they have to meet certain standards.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: So they were trying to build up this computer program to where they could put all data in and then run it overnight and it would tell them whether or not they were in compliance or something. So they had to put in all the data collection points, all the standards, whether it was liquid, gas, whatever, so it was a massive computer program and there were four of us that were on loan from X-10 working on that and then, in June, '92, they said, "Well, we need our money for our people. Go away, don't bother us anymore."
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my goodness.
MR. RARIDON: And (laughs) And so, you know, I looked around a little bit, but there wasn't anything else and I had enough company service, I could retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Right, right.
MR. RARIDON: And so, I just got out. But I kept on consulting a few hours a day for a while.
MR. MCDANIEL: For the Lab, did you?
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, for the Lab. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you? Right.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah. And then, at that time, just after I retired, I got a call from Linda Cain over at ORAU and they had just gotten the responsibility for preparing the questions for the DOE Science Bowl competition.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: That runs here every spring.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, tell me a about that. Tell me what that is.
MR. RARIDON: It's basically a Gong Show type thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: You get two teams of four students and you give them a question and the first one that hits the buzzer gets a chance to answer it. And they had, at that time they had, like, eight different categories: physics, chemistry, math, computer science, biology, earth science...
MR. MCDANIEL: Kind of like the College Bowl.
MR. RARIDON: Right, exactly. Same thing. This was national competition.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. RARIDON: It was administered through all the labs, national labs around the country. And so, there were, like, I don't know, 50 or so different sites around the country.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: So Oak Ridge, the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, basically, was responsible for administering it to the teams in this area.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. I see.
MR. RARIDON: And so, there were question sets... There were 25 sets of a toss-up and then a bonus. So they'd read the toss-up question, whoever got to answer it, if they answered it correctly, they got a bonus question.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. RARIDON: And they got so many points for each one. And then do that for two eight-minute halves and at the end, whoever had the most points went on to the next round.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. I see.
MR. RARIDON: And so, it took ... And they had two different regional sets of questions because they didn't want one team to go listen at one region and then go participate in another region so they had to coordinate, try to coordinate all that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And so it took close to 3,000 questions for both the regional and the national sets.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...
MR. RARIDON: And, fortunately, for a long time, I was able to pull in question sets from different places. I basically just put it together.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: Each set had to have so many physics, so many chemistry, so many math, and I just did that on the computer and then sent it over to ORAU to be formatted into the direct thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And I did that for six years, just part time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow. Sure.
MR. RARIDON: It took three or four months each year to get all that put together.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And so, after six years it got harder and harder. And, of course, DOE always wanted new questions. And I pulled a few out of reading science magazines or whatever, but it just got to where it wasn't any fun anymore. So I gave it up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. It was work, too much work.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, it got to be work. But I got to go to the national competition several times in DC which was fun to watch. Amazing how those students could react to ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Were these high school students?
MR. RARIDON: Yeah. They had to be high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: Now, they're doing middle school, same thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really.
MR. RARIDON: They just started last year so they had competition here, administered by the Museum, of the middle school, and then Pellissippi has been administering the senior level.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. RARIDON: And they do it over in the new campus now at Maryville.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah.
MR. RARIDON: So the last few years, they've had 50 teams over there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: All running simultaneously.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: To do it takes all day to get... end up with one winner. And Oak Ridge High School has won it a number of times.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure. I'm sure it has.
MR. RARIDON: And Farragut and different ones. McCallie School in Chattanooga. I've continued to help run the competition, basically by just keeping the overall score, then decide, you know, 50, afternoon you have 16 advance to round robin, I mean, not a... Double elimination, I'm sorry, single elimination. We used to do double elimination when we only had about 20 teams.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, but it took... But now, there's so many teams...
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, so many teams you can't do it. But anyway, it's been fun to kind of continue doing that every spring.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. I bet it has.
MR. RARIDON: And then I also got involved in volunteering at the science museum. I've been doing that for 14 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. RARIDON: Every Thursday morning, I sit there.
MR. MCDANIEL: You sit there. Okay.
MR. RARIDON: And, the one that follows me there at one o'clock is Margaret Gottshall, who I know. I don't know whether you interviewed her or somebody did.
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I didn't.
MR. RARIDON: She came here during the war as a phys. ed. teacher.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. RARIDON: And she's 92 and still coming in there to volunteer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: Course, Fred Vaslow volunteers there at 93. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And Alice Noggle was there Friday; I stopped by a few minutes. She's over 90, I don't know exactly how far, but.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. RARIDON: And still coming in there and volunteering.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. RARIDON: And Margaret still remembers those students she had, you know, 40-50 years ago, that come in...
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. My goodness.
MR. RARIDON: Anyway, as a ... Since I already had a history spiel, I started about, maybe, 10 years ago going out to the excursion train at K-25 to volunteer as a car host. Because they have to have somebody in each car just for safety purposes, plus also tell you a little about what you're seeing out there at K-25 and the history of Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, tell me about the train. Tell me about how... how it started and when it started.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, it started, probably, about 20 years ago. Bunch of guys in Knoxville, they decided they wanted to play with trains on a one-to-one scale.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: So they started buying up some of these old cars and restoring them. And that took them about five or six years. The first car... First coach they got, which we're still using, it'd been just completely gutted. There was nothing inside. So they had to get the seats, get them upholstered, get the lighting, heating working. And so this is, I think, to be the 13th, 14th year that they've been running excursions out there.
MR. MCDANIEL: And so people... the public can go up and take a train ride through K-25, around it?
MR. RARIDON: We go right by the K-25 building. Course, there's not much left of it now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Not much left of it now.
MR. RARIDON: It's going to be... It's going to be ... You know, in a year or two, we'll have to say, "Well, just imagine this four-story building that's half a mile long that used to be there."
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. RARIDON: (laughs) Right now there's about 600 feet left and, you know, it won't last very long.
MR. MCDANIEL: No.
MR. RARIDON: But anyway, that's been kind of fun. You know, I went out mainly to be car host and then I got involved in ticketing and, since we don't have an office, somebody has to carry a reservations phone around, cell phone, so I've been doing that for about two years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how often do they run the train?
MR. RARIDON: Mostly, twice a month. First and third Saturdays.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. RARIDON: Now, in October, we'll run Saturday and Sunday several weekends for the fall colors.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And then we do a Christmas train first two weekends in December.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how long is the ride?
MR. RARIDON: It is 14 mile, round trip.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. RARIDON: Seven miles out, we go out to, basically, we go up to Hwy. 61 there that runs between Oliver Springs and Harriman. That's the main line up there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see. Yeah.
MR. RARIDON: And that was a spur line that was built back in '43 to bring material in to build K-25.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. RARIDON: And they just maintained it all those years.
MR. MCDANIEL: And that track runs right along the side of the road there, doesn't it?
MR. RARIDON: Right, 327 Blair Road. Yeah, we cross the road several times and... And so, that's been kind of fun. Sometimes it gets... Well, in fact, October, running every weekend, every Saturday and Sunday, gets to be kind of a drag.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure it does. But how long does it for that 14 mile trip?
MR. RARIDON: It takes an hour.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: We go out and stop at the other end and they check out the brakes and so on so we generally sit there five or 10 minutes and then we came on back. There's an engine on each end so basically one pulls us out and one brings us back.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: And so ... Fortunately, we have some members who are pretty good mechanics and so they can keep the engines running and the air conditioners running and all that stuff. And we have, we have some others that help stock the commissary to sell drinks and popcorn stuff like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Wow. So it's pretty popular, then, huh?
MR. RARIDON: Yes, it has been. We haven't had too many lately. Well, a couple of years ago, well, you know about Groupon, the half price things?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure...
MR. RARIDON: They did a promotion for us. They sold over a thousand rides.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: And so, we were kind of overwhelmed there for a while.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. RARIDON: And then they also sold some memberships for us and so we've gotten some people come in who are now helping as a result of memberships.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. RARIDON: And we were hoping to build a depot out there, but... And we had a grant from the state but the cost just went up too high and so we just had to back off.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly. Had to let that go.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah. We still own five acres out there on the main road that we hope to put up something shortly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right...
MR. RARIDON: At least a... have a little better ticket booth than we have now.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's a non-profit group, I guess, isn't it?
MR. RARIDON: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: What's it called? It's a...
MR. RARIDON: Well, it's Southern Appalachian Railway Museum.
MR. MCDANIEL: SARM, right, right.
MR. RARIDON: But right now, the train is the museum.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly, exactly. Sure. So what other things have you been involved with? You stay pretty busy, don't you?
MR. RARIDON: Well, somewhat... She thinks I'm over-committed, but anyway... You know, I'm volunteering there at the science museum and I didn't realize that if you contributed a certain amount that made you a member of the AMSE Foundation. And so, couple of years ago, Joe Lenhard asked me if I'd like to be on the Foundation board. And so, I've been doing... I've been on there then for the last couple of years along with Gerald Boyd and other distinguished people. I kind of feel out of place, you know. (laughter) I just got on mainly... I just backed into it just being a contributor to the museum. It's been kind of interesting with that.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. RARIDON: And then I also got elected to the Clinch River Home Health Board and I've been doing that. I'm going off this year, I've been on it six years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. RARIDON: It's a very worthwhile organization. They help people stay at home, get the help they need.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: They get some United Way money, so they do some for indigent families, too.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. 
MR. RARIDON: And, so it's a good organization.
MR. MCDANIEL: What have you liked most about your time in Oak Ridge?
MR. RARIDON: I don't know, partly just the friends here. In fact, I still play poker with some of the guys from the Chemistry Division and we started 50-60 years ago.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: I don't know whether you know it, they used to have information meetings at the lab back in the '60s, '70s, maybe '80s, I don't know exactly when they quit. Once a year, advisory committee would come in and, of course, for chemistry, that was often Glenn Seaborg would come in.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. RARIDON: And they would come in, there would be a day or day and a half of presentations of what's going on in the division now. And every division did that. And then, they'd have a dinner that night at the country club or somewhere and so we just got in the habit back then of, after the dinner, go to one of the guy's house and play poker. And we just did that once a year, usually.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: Now that we're retired, we get together more often. (laughter) But two or three of those guys, Bob Holmberg, who I know was interviewed at the Lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And Art Dworkin and several others, Arvin Quist, we get together and play poker now, every month or two.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. RARIDON: And so that started back in the '50s.
MR. MCDANIEL: I know all those fellows, so...
MR. RARIDON: Yeah. 
MR. MCDANIEL: So that started in the '50, huh?
MR. RARIDON: Yep, yep.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. That's probably the longest-running poker game in East Tennessee.
MR. RARIDON: It probably is! (laughter) You know, we had to replace a few members. Ernie Silver used to be a member of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Absolutely.
MR. RARIDON: And some others have moved away. And we also have a group, those guys plus a few others that go to lunch once a month somewhere around town.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: An old chemist group.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And Bill Marshall was one of those and he just died last week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did he? Oh.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, my goodness.
MR. RARIDON: So anyway...
MR. MCDANIEL: So you like ...?
MR. RARIDON: It's partly the friends and, of course, as Mona mentioned, we've been going to the United Church ... I grew up kind of wishy-washy. My mother would take us to some nearby church for Sunday school or something. We didn't have a car and couldn't go far. And then, I joined... I joined the church, I guess I joined the Methodist church when I was 12 or 13.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: But mainly I went to the Congregational Church in Iowa. And we went to Congregational Church when we lived in Memphis and also we spent a summer in Ft. Worth when I was in graduate school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And we came back here and, of course, the only Congregational Church was in Knoxville. There wasn't one in Oak Ridge and so we just started going to the United Church and just kept it up all these years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Its close enough, wasn't it?
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, it is. It is. It's non-denominational and your, you know, it's your own group, I mean; you set the rules and everything. Actually, I'm on the church board right now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: Mona has been in the past and it's a good bunch.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, good. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about? Any other stories you want to tell?
MR. RARIDON: Well, I don't know, like I say I grew up playing in my grandfather's garden and so I still play with plants. I've got about a hundred plants sitting in pots down on the lower patio including an orange tree and I bought a guava when we were down in Florida last Thanksgiving and it's producing a little fruit on it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: And I grew a mango from a seed and it's got a couple of little mangoes out there now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: It's only six feet tall and so, I just, you know, I manage to kill a few plants along the way, but ...
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MR. RARIDON: But if you keep trying enough you... And the other, well the other thing is the Arboretum. I've been involved in the Arboretum for 25 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Have you?
MR. RARIDON: I was plant sale chairman out there for 17 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Were you? Oh, wow.
MR. RARIDON: And, finally, got somebody else to be willing to take it over. I still help with the plant sale, 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right...
MR. RARIDON: ... but I don't have to worry about getting the plants and all that stuff. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MR. RARIDON: And so, that's been a long-time commitment.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you think you're going to stay in Oak Ridge?
MR. RARIDON: Well, we'd like to stay in this house as long as we can, you know, health wise.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: I'm getting to where I have trouble getting down and weeding and getting back up. My legs are beginning to bother me. Mona has trouble walking, course she has trouble going up and down stairs now and, of course, our washing machine is down there. Fortunately, we have somebody who comes in once a week who does the laundry and other things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: But we'd, you know, like to stay here as long as we can. Well, you know, everybody would like to stay in their home as long as they can.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, of course, of course.
MR. RARIDON: We realize that eventually we may have to move into assisted living or something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And, of course, right now, there are plenty of opportunities (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: There are plenty of opportunities.
MR. RARIDON: Including, I understand some people have already signed up for the Alexander.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MR. RARIDON: We had the guy who is heading it come to Historic Preservation couple months ago.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And talking about... He's very enthusiastic. I think they're going to do a nice job. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, good.
MR. RARIDON: But he mentioned they'd already had a few people inquire about it.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet they have. I bet they have.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah. Such a historic place.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: And then, of course, that new one the Methodist's built, I mean the hospital built, that's an enormous thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. RARIDON: And he mentioned, at the time, that right now, Oak Ridge is over built.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. RARIDON: But we're all getting older and so there's going to be a continuing need for it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. RARIDON: At least that gives you a choice of different places.
MR. MCDANIEL: And there's a new one, I interviewed a lady last week at The Courtyard out on Briarcliff. I didn't even know that was there.
MR. RARIDON: Oh, yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's a small one.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Fairly small.
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, right, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: One level, you know, couple of buildings, I believe.
MR. RARIDON: Sure, sure, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: But I had no idea it even existed. So...
MR. RARIDON: Yeah, it just opened about a year or so ago. Well, when they built this one just down here on Emory Valley Road, my neighbor said, "We ought to go down and sign up because by the time we get to the top of the list we'll be ready for it!" (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. RARIDON: You know, they usually have a waiting list. Or they used to, but I guess now it won't be quite such a problem for them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, Dick, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. I really appreciate it.
MR. RARIDON: Well, I appreciate you doing it. It's... It's good that you're doing this while most of us are still around. 
MR. MCDANIEL: That's true.
MR. RARIDON: I mean, unfortunately it didn't start a few years back when you could have caught a few more of the others.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly, exactly. Well...
MR. RARIDON: It was real interesting going through the... I read all the transcripts from the 35 or so that you did at the Lab and corrected the spelling and so on, but it was fascinating, particularly Ellison Taylor, because I had worked for him, you know, in the Chemistry Division.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. RARIDON: And, in fact, I got involved out there partly because after he died, his son gave a couple of boxes of his materials ... He tried to give them to the library and they wouldn't take them, they took them out there. But he used to write little skits for retirement parties or so on. He'd take a popular song and put new words to it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. RARIDON: And then he'd get three or four of us to sing a little quartet. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. RARIDON: But he also wrote fairly elaborate little skits and Art Dworkin was one of the actors that were in it. And they would perform it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. RARIDON: And a lot of those were in those boxes that he had...
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: ... left behind. So...
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. RARIDON: ...it was fun going through and looking at those. Be nice to organize it and somehow make it available but it's a little more than I want to take on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. I understand. Well, very good. Thank you.
MR. RARIDON: You're welcome.

[End of Interview]

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