Galloway, James Michael

              ORAL HISTORY OF JAMES MICHAEL GALLOWAY
with wife, Marilyn Galloway
Interviewed and filmed by Keith McDaniel
June 21, 2011
 
Mr. McDaniel: This is Keith McDaniel and today is June 21st, 2011. I’m at the home of Mike and Marilyn Galloway and I just spoke with Marilyn and now we’re going to talk to Mike about his experience in Oak Ridge. Tell me a little bit about you and about where you were born and raised and your family.
Mr. Galloway: Okay, I was born in Idaho Springs – well, excuse me, I was born in Denver. I lived in Idaho Springs, Colorado which was up above Timberline and this was back in 1934 and it was quite a place. It was a little mining town. Generally you mined for gold, silver, tin, your metals, and you were flushing off the ores like uranium because although that’s a metal, it didn’t maintain the metal quality. It was corrosive; it was short lived. Anyway, this is where dad did most of his work at the time. Then we moved to Denver during the war, when the war started in ’41.
Mr. McDaniel: So what did your dad do?
Mr. Galloway: He was working in the mills or working in the mine there for silver, gold. And when the war started, he started working with Remington Ammunition, Remington Arms in Denver. And at that time, they were also recruiting for a project down in East Tennessee, and he didn’t know what it was about, but they were using some – anyway, they recruited him to come down to East Tennessee to start working down at a place called Manhattan Project. So he came down to East Tennessee and we stayed back in Idaho Springs, that little mining town, because I had no idea what Tennessee was going to be like. In fact, I was rather afraid. At that time, I guess I was probably seven, maybe eight years old when dad moved to Tennessee and then he called us and told us that, well, that we’d probably like it down here and we would be moving down to the Manhattan – or to Oak Ridge, Tennessee and I had no idea what to expect. When we moved into Oak Ridge, we came in Elza Gate.
Mr. McDaniel: Now how many were in your family?
Mr. Galloway: Oh, I’m sorry. I have a brother that was four years older than me. He’s deceased now, and my mother and my stepmother and my dad and myself. We stopped at Elza Gate and they checked us out and Dad got a badge or had a badge, and they checked all of us out with cards, at that time, and we would get badges later. My mother and my older brother would get badges. I wouldn’t. I was too young.
Mr. McDaniel: You were too young, yeah.
Mr. Galloway: And anyway, they checked us off whether our address was to be 144 Revere Circle. Revere Circle wasn’t built yet. That runs off Robertsville Road. That isn’t finished yet and our house hasn’t come in yet, and that was a third of a house, which was a flat top, a third of a house on a trailer. So until it came in, we were to be put to rest there just in the Guest House at then Townsite. So we stayed at Townsite and we had the cafeteria down on Central Avenue, we ate there and stayed at Townsite at the Guest House.
Mr. McDaniel: Now what year was that?
Mr. Galloway: 1943. ’44, I’m sorry. 
Mr. McDaniel: So your dad came in ’43 and the rest of you moved in ’44?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, we moved in ’44, right, and then when we moved to Revere Circle, we had a gravel road and we had our little flattop, a two-bedroom flattop, with a coal bin in the front, out next to the street, and a coal stove in the middle of the living room to heat the house, and it was quite a little place.
Mr. McDaniel: How long did you stay at the Guest House?
Mr. Galloway: We stayed at the Guest House three days.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay, you were just there three days.
Mr. Galloway: Right.
Mr. McDaniel: They moved pretty quick, didn’t they?
Mr. Galloway: They were moving houses in on trailers just continuous. There was just trailer after trailer of that stuff being moved and it was interesting to see them because you’d have water heaters. You’d have your kitchen stoves and refrigerators already in the unit as they were bringing them in. And then you’d put them together with weather stripping and put the steps up to them and give you the keys. [laughter] There was your house.
Mr. McDaniel: So I guess that was pretty rustic looking compared to what you came from?
Mr. Galloway: Well, to give you an idea, my mother, coming from an old mining town in Colorado, she says, “We moved into what looks like a guest town or a resort town.” She says, “Now, it’s missing some of the commodities, but all in all, it’s pretty good.” [laughter] But she liked it down here, and see, we were up above timberline, which is pretty high in altitude, and to come down into a low altitude or a lower altitude here in Oak Ridge, it was quite a difference, especially with the humidity. We had no humidity in Colorado. Down here you have that humidity problem, but once you adjust to it, it’s fine, and she loved it here.
Mr. McDaniel: So was it hard to get used to the elevation difference between where you were and here?
Mr. Galloway: To a point, yes, but actually the temperature changes, because in Colorado when it gets very low in temperature, you don’t feel it because it’s very low in humidity. Down here when it gets low in temperature, you know it because that humidity is – 
Mr. McDaniel: It is very humid.
Mr. Galloway: Yeah. Other than that, we enjoyed it down here. My brother and I – they were doing some building of a – not sewer, but some of the sewer lines on out toward K-25 and we were just playing around. I was ten and my brother was fourteen, and we’d be out there watching where they were working and, by golly, we found a box by the side of where some construction was going on, and we looked at that box – it was firecrackers. Had no idea what it was, but we each got a firecracker. And then we came back – at that time, my brother came home and I went to a movie down in Midtown, and then when I came home, my dad said, “Boy, the FBI’s got your brother and they’re looking for you now, so don’t take your coat off.” He said, “Where did you get that firecracker?” I said, “Was it a firecracker?” It wasn’t a firecracker; it was a dynamite cap.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Galloway: And so then when they picked me up they took us down to the headquarters and just said, well, now you see – they showed us some pictures of some construction workers that had brushed by a stove with a – yeah, one in his pocket there, had a dynamite cap in his pocket, and it went off and blew him up over the top.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Galloway: He said that could have happened to us.
Mr. McDaniel: My goodness.
Mr. Galloway: So we were just careful after that.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Now, did your dad go with you?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, well he did. He went with us.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, now, that scared you. I bet it did. Didn’t it? [laughter]
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, it did. We did a lot of site seeing ourselves. My brother and myself, we’d go across the river and go up into the hills there south of the Turnpike there in West Oak Ridge and we did a lot of blackberry hunting, and the only problem we had there would be either chiggers or poison ivy. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly. Did you have bicycles or did you walk?
Mr. Galloway: Well, my brother had a bicycle and we’d either take turns or we would walk. Because when you’re up in the woods there, you can’t – no, there isn’t a place for bikes.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, not a good place for a bike.
Mr. Galloway: As far as grapevines, oh, yes, we’d cut grapevines and swing with those, and I think Marilyn told you about G Road [Key Spring Road] or going on out on the north road – we’d go there too.
Mr. McDaniel: So you lived on Revere.
Mr. Galloway: Revere Circle.
Mr. McDaniel: Revere Circle over off of Robertsville.
Mr. Galloway: Right. My first grade here in Oak Ridge was in Robertsville School, Robertsville Elementary School, and then my sixth grade – that would be the fifth grade. My sixth grade was at Linden School and then seventh grade was Jefferson Junior High School and eighth and ninth, and then tenth and eleventh I spent at the high school down at Townsite or at Jackson Square. And then I graduated from the new high school that was down there where the new high school is now.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right? That’s when they built it?
Mr. Galloway: That’s when the original high school was there, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly. So what did your dad do? Or did you know?
Mr. Galloway: Well, he was a Foreman, a Machinist Foreman at Y-12, and he worked down at Alpha-3 in one of the buildings there, and when he came, he wasn’t sure how long and he had some offers to go back to Colorado and there was some temptations to go back to Colorado, but then I think that he was glad that he didn’t because we had security here. We didn’t lock the door. In fact, we didn’t have a car when we first came down here, and besides, you either had an A or a B type, whatever type of stamp you had for your car for gas.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly.
Mr. Galloway: And so we didn’t have – they had the buses, you know, the shuttle buses or the cattle buses which would be an old tractor trailer and they would use that for buses for all over the place. And A.I.T. did quite a job. We had quite a time – and the boardwalks – and it was quite a place.
Mr. McDaniel: So it was an interesting place for a kid to grow up. I guess your parents felt fine with you all just running around because it was a pretty safe.
Mr. Galloway: They did. They felt secure, really. Then I was in the Scouts when the gates opened and when that happened, why, of course, we had to march down to Elza Gate and we were there when they opened Elza Gate and then we marched back up to Jackson Square or Townsite, and when they had the speaker and everything up there at Blankenship Field, why, we were there. So that was quite the thing.
Mr. McDaniel: So you saw Vice President Barkley, Alben Barkley.
Mr. Galloway: Oh, yes. We saw the whole kit and caboodle of them.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you march in the parade as Scouts?
Mr. Galloway: We marched in the parade as a Scout, yeah, because we remember that and there was quite a few kids, quite a few of us. Of course, when you’re young, you don’t feel the distance.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly.
Mr. Galloway: It was quite a place.
Mr. McDaniel: So you were involved in Scouts.
Mr. Galloway: I was involved in Scouts. As a Scout, when I became twelve, I had my badge. Oh, yes, I had my badge!
Mr. McDaniel: That’s right.
Mr. Galloway: And when I had my badge, I was an usher over UT – the ballgames, football games. And I lost my badge and I was twelve years old and I couldn’t get back in the gate without my badge. That was rather embarrassing. The guards there at Solway tried to get my dad to come down and get me.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: So how did you end up being an usher at the ball game at UT?
Mr. Galloway: Well, because some of the troops here in Oak Ridge – 
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, Scouts. Scouts did that.
Mr. Galloway: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: I see. Do you remember your Scout leader? Do you remember who that was?
Mr. Galloway: I can remember Chester B. Spees who worked at AEC. He was a guy that probably was the one that was most impressive to me as far as the Christian Church was concerned. He really lead me toward wanting to feel a need or wanting to follow.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Mr. Galloway: And David Hobson’s dad, I don’t remember his father’s name, Mr. Hobson was our Scout Master when I got my Eagle. I did get my Eagle and then when the Korean War started, was on, and I graduated from high school, Tennessee being the volunteer state, they were volunteering National Guard for Korea and I was with a naval reserve and I was told then that we might get the naval reserve volunteered also by the state. So I got discharged from the reserves and joined the regulars for four and with that I got sonar school and was able to go there.
Mr. McDaniel: So right out of high school, basically?
Mr. Galloway: Yes, right out of high school.
Mr. McDaniel: What year did you graduate high school?
Mr. Galloway: 1952.
Mr. McDaniel: 1952, and that was from – the new school, the new location moved from Blankenship Field down to where the current school is.
Mr. Galloway: Where the current school is, right, but that was before the multi-million building.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, right, of course.
Mr. Galloway: But it was pretty nice then too. We were the first class to graduate from that school.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? Tell me something about your schooling here in Oak Ridge when you were a child growing up. You mentioned where you went. You went to Robertsville and then Jefferson.
Mr. Galloway: I went to Robertsville and then to Linden.
Mr. McDaniel: So Robertsville was an elementary school at the time?
Mr. Galloway: Robertsville was an elementary school at that time and I don’t remember everything about it but then I’ve got an excuse for that because I have epilepsy because while I was in the Navy I got a blow in the head and with that I did end up with epilepsy and I also had brain surgery with which they pulled out part of the temporal lobe which was part of my memory.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right? Okay.
Mr. Galloway: Okay. But as far as I can remember, things went fairly well with me in school and things went quite well with me with marriage. I married my bride here in Oak Ridge. I didn’t meet her until UT.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right. Oh, so you graduated high school and then you went into the service.
Mr. Galloway: Went into the service, four year duty.
Mr. McDaniel: During Korea?
Mr. Galloway: During Korea and at the end of the Korean War then I was on the Destroyer in the Atlantic and then when I came back, the Commander wanted to know if I was going to ship over and I said, no, I’m going to get out and go to school because I had the GI Bill. So I got out and started at UT and that’s when I met Marilyn.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay. So what did you study at UT?
Mr. Galloway: Engineering.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay, so when you came back, you went to UT and where were you living?
Mr. Galloway: I was living here in Oak Ridge with my mom and dad and I was commuting to UT. That was until my dad came in one morning to get me to go and he found blood all over the mattress and all and they had found out I had a seizure during the night and I woke up in the hospital there with an oxygen tent over me, and they found then that I had epilepsy. They told me, “Well, thank God, you don’t have cancer. You have epilepsy.” And I had no idea what epilepsy – I was ignorant of the situation and you think, well, if you have epilepsy they put you in a funny farm and that’s about it. So I had no idea what it was going to be like and it took me a long, long time to – I wouldn’t accept it and in fact, after we were married, luckily Marilyn did accept it more than I did. She knew what she had to put up with more than I did.
Mr. McDaniel: So you graduated college in Engineering at UT?
Mr. Galloway: Well, I got an Associate’s degree. I did not get my English – I got my economics and I didn’t finish all the courses, rather just got my Associates.
Mr. McDaniel: Your Associates degree.
Mr. Galloway: In Electrical Engineering, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay, so what did you do? Did you get a job here?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, I got a job out here at Oak Ridge at Y-12.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, was your dad still working at that time?
Mr. Galloway: Yes, he was. And that’s possibly the reason why I got that job.
[laughter] When I started in engineering – then they put me in engineering, which would have been the engineering with the air conditioning and although my Associate was in electronics, in my working at Y-12 here was in air conditioning and ventilation and environmental control, so that’s what I was really working in there and that ended up my lifetime.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s what you did out there?
Mr. Galloway: Afterwards.
Mr. McDaniel: And you worked there until you retired?
Mr. Galloway: I worked there about ten years. I worked there ten years and then when we were not able to have children of our own, we thought we would try to adopt or begin adoptions and then I got a project going in New York – sorry, in Washington, D.C., so we moved to Maryland, just outside Washington and we adopted our son there. Got him when he was nine days old. Then we finished the project there and then I found another project in St. Louis and I moved there and started that project and was working on the University of Missouri, one of their buildings and building it. So we got that one finished and I think we moved then to Charlotte with another engineering company and then they called me back into St. Louis, so I came back to St. Louis. So we just went back and forth. 
Mr. McDaniel: You went back and forth.
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, and then we ended up staying back at this engineering company and they wanted me to do an analysis for a government agency here in town which would be the mapping agency. So I went downtown and showed all the minimum – all of the lacking in their air conditioning that they had and so many hundred tons short on air conditioning. Told them what it was. Then they wrote up a project for them. Then my engineering company was going to send me to Omaha, which I don’t know that I wanted to do, but then, anyway, the government called and wanted to know if wanted to come down there and work and Mrs. Galloway said, “Yes, I think he does.” [laughter] So that’s where I went for my last twenty-five years of work. Then when we retired I was staying there in St. Louis, but like Marilyn said, our son is Iowa and our daughter’s in Florida and here we are in the middle.
Mr. McDaniel: There you go.
Mr. Galloway: Back home in Tennessee.
Mr. McDaniel: Back home in Tennessee, that’s exactly right.
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, we love it here. Both mother and father passed away here in Oak Ridge and they both willed their bodies to science and to the University of Tennessee.
Mr. McDaniel: So they were happy with their decision to move here?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, they were. Remember, back in those days, as parts of the [Manhattan] Project would be through, they would say, well, we’re going to be closing down parts of the flattop area. I remember they closed down Revere Circle, for example, and took the flat tops out and replaced them with other houses. So before that happened, we moved into a TDU, or a temporary dwelling unit, which had a three-bedroom unit on one side and a one bedroom on the other side and we moved on Latimer Road, so then we lived there. I guess we lived there about four years and then they were told that they were going to take down all the TDUs in Oak Ridge. They’re still up. [laughter] But anyway, so dad applied for a “C”, which was a cemesto house, so we were waiting for a “C” to be open. And, then finally a “C” up on Outer Drive was opened and so that’s where we moved to, 175 Outer Drive.
Mr. McDaniel: 175 Outer Drive. Now, where would that be?
Mr. Galloway: That would be – you know where Cedar Hill School is?
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Mr. Galloway: Okay, that’s just west of that between New York Avenue and Michigan or Kentucky or Michigan.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, in that area, sure.
Mr. Galloway: That’s where we lived.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, good. Well, anything else you want to tell me about? Anything you want to – 
Mr. Galloway: My graduating class, there were almost three hundred in the graduating class, and we had a class reunion just this past year and there were two hundred and some that are still left.
Mr. McDaniel: Wow.
Mr. Galloway: And we had – in fact, we even got the book on it and that’s it.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, that’s Jay Searcy.
Mr. Galloway: Jay Searcy. Jay was in my class.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, was he?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, and he and I were classmates.
Mr. McDaniel: So looking back on – now later in life, you look back on your childhood in Oak Ridge, what are some profound thoughts you’ve had about that?
Mr. Galloway: Profound thoughts? One thing nice about that time in my life I think was my scouting. Scouting was very good for me because it did a lot for me and it gave me the enthusiasm to proceed forward with my first class, tenderfoot and then first class, and then on up into my star and then life and then Eagle and get my Eagle and it even got dad and I to do a lot of things together.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s good.
Mr. Galloway: We did a lot of bird study and things like that, a lot of things together.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, and scouting, when you stick with it like that, it really prepares you for later in life.
Mr. Galloway: It does. It was quite odd that with me I was up at the Camp Pellissippi one night and a guy just came back from the Order of the Arrow ordeal and he came in, he was quite tired, and he came in and I was shining a flashlight in his eye and he told me, “Now, Mick, if you don’t quit that,” – I was just teasing, you know – “If you don’t quit that, I’ll throw a hatchet at you.” And I thought he was just teasing. And he threw that hatchet at me and it caught me right here.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Galloway: You see that scar right there?
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Galloway: So I was known as “Hatchet Face.”
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Galloway: So I went down to the nurse and got stitched back together and they put chlorophyll on there [laughter].
Mr. McDaniel: I bet they weren’t happy with him, were they?
Mr. Galloway: Well, he wasn’t happy with himself. As I went out of the tent there, it was so bloody I couldn’t see anything. As I went out there, he was, “Here I am, here I am, hit me, hit me!” And I felt so sorry about doing that.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Mr. Galloway: Because I egged him on to that.
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, sure.
Mrs. Galloway: Didn’t it hit your arm first and then it ricocheted up there?
Mr. Galloway: Well, it hit my flashlight first.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, did it?
Mr. Galloway: Yeah.
Mrs. Galloway: So he wasn’t really aiming for you?
Mr. Galloway: No.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Mr. Galloway: But, anyway, it caught me there. And just imagine what it did to his scouting maybe, maybe totally.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, sure.
Mr. Galloway: Because when I came back to the tent after getting the stitches and all, I stayed up there. I didn’t go home. I just stayed up in camp after they finished the doctor’s office and when I got back there, the boy was gone. He was in Knoxville.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Mr. Galloway: And doggone it, his name was Bill Burgrave and I’m sorry that I haven’t looked him up, you know, since.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. My goodness.
Mr. Galloway: It really is too bad. But see how it can go wrong the other way.
Mr. McDaniel: Exactly. Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Galloway: But everything else has been pretty good. I ended up with the epilepsy from an extent of my own. We were in Majorca, Spain, an island off of Spain in the Mediterranean, and that was our last port of call before coming back to the states and that would be my last port of foreign call because I was going to get out of the Navy when we got back. So I went over on the beach there and I got inebriated and I was plastered and I was in the cab with a Spanish naval officer and we were going back to the ship and I think I might have gotten a little bit over or rather inebriated and sick to my stomach. I tried to get the door open and the window down, and the door just came back like this [claps] and it pulled me out, and I landed on my head. And with that I ended up with a brain injury on this side. So I’ve been able to help some people with epilepsy and some people – because I wouldn’t accept it, but now I do.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Mr. Galloway: And Marilyn has had to put up with so much with me because for so long, I was bent on driving. I was going to drive that car. I would not let her say anything to me, because I told her if you say anything about it, you will bring on a seizure, so don’t say anything, and I had two kids in the back seat of that car and there I was taking their lives in my hand. And I look at it now and I just think, how the Lord protected us, you know, and got us through it.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, exactly. Well, my goodness. Well, that’s great. Anything else you want to say or any more comments? Now is the time. This is going in the archive.
Mr. Galloway: [laughter] Well, I just say – 
Mrs. Galloway: I would say the fact that all of our friends and neighbors were from other states.
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, true. This is it.
Mrs. Galloway: You know, that was an interesting thing.
Mr. Galloway: There was no such thing as a foreigner.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, everybody was foreigners.
Mr. Galloway: Everybody was foreigners, that’s right. And you didn’t lock – there wasn’t a locked door. Gee whiz, if you had to go to the hospital, well, your chance was as good a chance with the next door neighbor as it would be an ambulance. Because the gravel roads we had – we didn’t have a phone when we first got here for a long time.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, exactly.
Mrs. Galloway: And we never had any planes flying over the city.
Mr. Galloway: No, we sure didn’t.
Mrs. Galloway: Till the opening ceremony.
Mr. Galloway: Yeah, that’s true.
Mrs. Galloway: Sarah said how scary it was when she first heard those planes flying over.
Mr. McDaniel: To hear those planes, right.
Mr. Galloway: Yup. It was quite – and to think there was so many of us here in Oak Ridge and we were well paid and taken care of and so many people didn’t know what was going on.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure, oh, of course.
Mr. Galloway: There were so many people that were here with the construction of the area, the residents, and the other shopping centers and schools and things like this, not knowing what was going on out there at the plants.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Mr. Galloway: It was quite an event. And then when the bomb went off and they did the tests out there in the desert, they went off there, they had so many people [say], “Oh, well, I knew we were doing that all the time.”
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, sure, of course. 
Mr. Galloway: But then we consider, we took so many lives over in Japan, but we saved so many lives.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Exactly. All right, well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate you talking. That sounds great.
Mr. Galloway: Okay.
[end of recording]