Batchelor, Elizabeth

              
ORAL HISTORY OF ELIZABETH (LIZ) BATCHELOR
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
November 28, 2016
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel. Today is November 28, 2016. I am at my studio here in Oak Ridge. Today I'm talking with Liz Batchelor. Liz, thank you for coming over this afternoon and having a chance to talk with you. MRS. BATCHELOR: You're welcome. MR. MCDANIEL: I always like to start with everybody at the very beginning, because I think, more often than not, people's family and growing up and background at least contributes to who they are today. Let's start at the beginning. Tell me where you were born and raised, something about your family growing up. MRS. BATCHELOR: I was born in Phoenix, Arizona, a product of World War II, where my dad was the naval inspector for the Southwest District. MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? MRS. BATCHELOR: But I spent my early years in Chattanooga. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, you did? When did you move from Phoenix to Chattanooga? MRS. BATCHELOR: When the war was over. MR. MCDANIEL: When the war was over? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah. MR. MCDANIEL: You were just a toddler when you- MRS. BATCHELOR: A toddler. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, when you moved to Chattanooga. MRS. BATCHELOR: Chattanooga, right. MR. MCDANIEL: You grew up in Chattanooga? MRS. BATCHELOR: I grew up in Chattanooga through high school. I went to University of Tennessee, Knoxville. MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have brothers or sisters? MRS. BATCHELOR: I have two brothers. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. What did your dad do in Chattanooga? MRS. BATCHELOR: He was a mechanical engineer with Ross-Meehan Steel Foundries. MR. MCDANIEL: What was the name of that again? MRS. BATCHELOR: Ross-Meehan. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, Ross-Meehan Steel. MRS. BATCHELOR: Made Meehanite. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. What did your mother do? MRS. BATCHELOR: My mother was an art teacher. She taught at the Bright School in Chattanooga. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. All right. I guess you grew up in the '50s, sort of teenage years. MRS. BATCHELOR: '50s, yeah. MR. MCDANIEL: '50s and '60s. MRS. BATCHELOR: '50s, '60s. MR. MCDANIEL: What was Chattanooga like then? What was it like growing up there? MRS. BATCHELOR: It was industrial probably, I would say, overall. We had a lot of smokestacks, but private schools more than public schools. Certainly not the city it is today. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure. Sure. MRS. BATCHELOR: But lots of things to do. MR. MCDANIEL: Were your parents involved in the community? MRS. BATCHELOR: Very involved in the community. My dad was a teaching elder in my church and he was a minister at a black church. My parents were both very involved with mission work. My mother taught crafts to people who were handicapped and needed a trade. They both did lots of things for the community. MR. MCDANIEL: Were they strict on you? Did you- MRS. BATCHELOR: They were conservative people, but I wouldn't say strict. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. You probably thought so back then, though, didn't you? MRS. BATCHELOR: I wore Oxfords until I graduated from high school. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Okay, there you go. Where did you go to high school? MRS. BATCHELOR: Girls' Preparatory School. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right. As you mentioned, Chattanooga has a lot of private schools, don't they? MRS. BATCHELOR: They do. MR. MCDANIEL: When you graduated high school, did you know what you wanted to do with your life? MRS. BATCHELOR: I wanted to be an engineer, but at that time that wasn't really an option for women. MR. MCDANIEL: So? MRS. BATCHELOR: I went to mathematics, which is pretty close. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Engineering wasn't really an option for women back then. MRS. BATCHELOR: They discouraged it quite a bit. Yeah, they discouraged it. MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. MRS. BATCHELOR: It was okay. MR. MCDANIEL: I guess there were certain things that women were expected to do at that time. That wasn't that long ago. MRS. BATCHELOR: No, there were probably maybe 15 women in the engineering department at the time. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. You went to UT? MRS. BATCHELOR: Right. MR. MCDANIEL: UT-Knoxville. MRS. BATCHELOR: Knoxville. MR. MCDANIEL: You majored in mathematics. MRS. BATCHELOR: My parents went to UT-Knoxville. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, they did? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yes, they did. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. MRS. BATCHELOR: I had family there. It was not a bad choice for me. It was strange having been with all girls to go to a big university, when I'd been in a small school, and then to go where I had not only men in my class. My father said that the world was not like a private school where everybody's like you. It's more like the University of Tennessee. There's where I was going. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly, exactly. Obviously, you excelled in math. Is this something you were interested in? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah. MR. MCDANIEL: You did well in it? MRS. BATCHELOR: All my children and grandchildren and my husband are all very good in math. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? MRS. BATCHELOR: Oh, yeah. It's a family thing. MR. MCDANIEL: Do you think that's genetic? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yes. MR. MCDANIEL: Do you really? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yes. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. That's good. That's good. I may have gotten a little bit of the gene, but I didn't get the whole gene, that's for sure. What was UT like? You were at UT in the, what, late '60s? MRS. BATCHELOR: '60s, middle '60s. MR. MCDANIEL: Middle '60s, okay. What was UT like and Knoxville like then? MRS. BATCHELOR: It was like going to high school, only tougher maybe. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. MRS. BATCHELOR: I didn't think it was any different, but you had more choice of courses than what I was used to. I thought I got a fairly good education. People that graduated seem to be able to find jobs, but there were other activities as well. Football was not like it is now. We were always happy when the band came out. Our band was always the best under Mr. Julian. It was a pleasant experience. MR. MCDANIEL: I guess there were a lot of social opportunities for you. MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah. I studied pretty much. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you? Okay. All right. You finished at UT. Then what did you do? MRS. BATCHELOR: I got married and moved to Massachusetts. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. You met your husband at UT? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yes. MR. MCDANIEL: What was his field? MRS. BATCHELOR: I don't want to say what it was at UT, but parties maybe. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. There you go. MRS. BATCHELOR: He had been at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] a year and had come back home to be with his friends, because MIT is harder, but he went back and majored in math at MIT. Then he got a graduate degree in physics. All his graduate degrees were in physics. MR. MCDANIEL: That's what you did, when you went back? When you graduated, you moved to Massachusetts- MRS. BATCHELOR: Massachusetts. MR. MCDANIEL: For him to go to MIT? MRS. BATCHELOR: Right. MR. MCDANIEL: Then what did you do once you were there? MRS. BATCHELOR: I worked for New England Mutual Life Insurance Company in their systems and procedures as a computer programmer. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right. I guess that was the early development of computer. MRS. BATCHELOR: It was. I worked on the UNIVAC [UNIVersal Automatic Computer] machine and ICDL [International Computer Driving Licence]. Our machine was huge. You could walk amongst the pieces. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly. MRS. BATCHELOR: The great big tape machines that run the master files every day. It was all punch cards. MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! It's different than it is now. MRS. BATCHELOR: Much different. Much different. MR. MCDANIEL: Probably much more power in my phone that I'm holding than there was in that computer, for sure. MRS. BATCHELOR: Oh, yes. That's all right. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, your husband, he got his master's degree. MRS. BATCHELOR: He got a master's degree on his way to get a PhD. That was at the University of Maryland. We moved in the middle of all of it. After he got his undergraduate degree, we moved to New Hampshire. We went to work for ... This was Vietnam War time. We worked for a military company, Sanders Associates. I did computer work there on the F-111. He did math and physics work there. We were transferred then to Reston, Virginia, where they had a facility, and he started back to school at the University of Maryland and got his PhD there. MR. MCDANIEL: In Physics. Okay. All right. You were in Virginia now at this point and he got his PhD. Then what happened? MRS. BATCHELOR: We moved to Oak Ridge. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. How did that come about? MRS. BATCHELOR: Don was born here. He was in Fusion Energy, and they were not that many places in the country that had fusion energy. We had spent part of a year ... Don's thesis advisor took a sabbatical to Los Alamos. Rather than having to take another year to get his degree, we went to Los Alamos with him. We knew we didn't want to go there. We didn't want to go to Princeton. MR. MCDANIEL: If you've been to Los Alamos, you knew you didn't want to go back there. MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. MRS. BATCHELOR: We didn't want to go to Princeton or Livermore. Since our families were in East Tennessee, Oak Ridge was the logical choice, so he got a job here. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. At the Lab? MRS. BATCHELOR: At the Lab. That's how we ended up here. We didn't have that many choices of places where they do fusion. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. They were doing significant fusion work here in Oak Ridge, weren't they? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yes, they were. There was a huge division. Correct. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. When you moved to Oak Ridge, about what year was that? MRS. BATCHELOR: 1976. MR. MCDANIEL: You moved here in '76. Did you have children at that time? MRS. BATCHELOR: Oh, yes. We had our daughter. Betsy was starting kindergarten that year. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. All right. Did you get a job when you came here? MRS. BATCHELOR: Not at first. I worked then for the Lab for a year. Then I got involved with city stuff. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right. We're going to talk about that. I want you to talk pretty much at length about that, or at least in some detail about it. MRS. BATCHELOR: When I was in college, my studies, my primary, my senior thesis was in housing. It was on Chattanooga and the demographic study there. That was a big topic at the League of Women Voters and in here about housing. We haven't made much progress, I guess. I had been doing that in some of the realtors here. There was no multiple list service here. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, there wasn't? MRS. BATCHELOR: We had a board of realtors. No, you had to ask ... If you want to see a house, you had to ask the realtor who had that listed. MR. MCDANIEL: I see. MRS. BATCHELOR: Garrett Bruce Asher asked me if I would help him and a couple of other realtors start a multiple list. At that time you could just walk ... Lou Dunlap was head of the chamber, and I would go there. I went around to the five realtors that wanted to participate, and they would give me some listings. I would take those, go to the chamber and xerox them off, and then collate them into a book. Then I would walk into ... The lab had its office just down on the Turnpike. You could just walk in the door- MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really? MRS. BATCHELOR: And give them to the employment offices of several of the companies that were here. They would use those when they had people coming in to town. That eventually turned into our multiple list. Although there had been a board of realtors, they didn't have an official executive director, so I became the executive director and built that up until we had about 24 real estate companies as members of our board and met regularly. We had it at Homes Magazine and all like that. I did that for about 13 or 14 years. MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! MRS. BATCHELOR: During that time we were just really booming. That was my job. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Sure. MRS. BATCHELOR: It was great. MR. MCDANIEL: Was it? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah, the realtors were very much a part of town and participated. We'd have seminars on measuring and all kinds of stuff. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. All right. Was that a time that Oak Ridge was growing? MRS. BATCHELOR: It was. We were really booming at that time. Houses were being built. MR. MCDANIEL: That would be the '80s maybe? MRS. BATCHELOR: The early '80s. MR. MCDANIEL: Early '80s, yeah. MRS. BATCHELOR: The Breeder was coming then. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, right, right, right, the Breeder Reactor. Did you have any background in real estate before you got involved? MRS. BATCHELOR: No, I didn't need really to have any background. I learned a lot. I knew some from my thesis. I had studied urban development from Dr. Cole at UT. He was one of the first people to write a lot about the move to suburbia and about urban ... He wrote a book. That was early on in the studies. Because that movement was new, everybody used to live downtown. Then we had this big explosion of suburbia. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. MRS. BATCHELOR: I studied it from that point of view, but not necessarily ... But I would go to the meetings of the realtors. They couldn't leave town because somebody might call them and want to see a house. I would go to Nashville or wherever. Then I would come back and present the information to them locally at one of their meetings. I learned a lot. I would have the multiple list book and the Homes Magazine and stuff to learn. MR. MCDANIEL: They were very supportive of this? MRS. BATCHELOR: Oh, yeah. MR. MCDANIEL: How did that help them? MRS. BATCHELOR: Because then if you had a client come into town, you could show them any house in town, even if it wasn't your listing. You had to split the commission, but still half of a commission is better than none. MR. MCDANIEL: True. That's true. MRS. BATCHELOR: It was much better for the people coming into town. It was much more welcoming, especially since they had multiple lists everywhere else. MR. MCDANIEL: Also, a lot of these people that came into town, they didn't have very long to find a place to live. MRS. BATCHELOR: That's exactly right, and housing was very limited. When we came, there were just four houses we could choose from because the breeder people had come and they were just sucking up the housing as quick as whatever. We bought a house that wasn't even complete. MR. MCDANIEL: My mother-in-law and her family, they moved from Michigan to Jacksonville, Florida, years ago, but she told the story about she had one day to find a house. You've got to make hay while you can. MRS. BATCHELOR: That's right. It's easier to get one realtor and have them show you everything. It's quicker, it's quicker. MR. MCDANIEL: Everything, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. MRS. BATCHELOR: It was quicker. MR. MCDANIEL: It was good for business, obviously, starting from five to 24. MRS. BATCHELOR: Some of them were really reluctant about doing it at first. We had all the people from Clinton. It was the whole county. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, the whole county. MRS. BATCHELOR: It was really, really good. MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine, through that, you got to know a lot of people in the town. MRS. BATCHELOR: Oh, yes. We put on a fair, a home show. There was one business in town, I guess I won't tell who it is, and I had to just beg him to come. He did enough business that day, signed up in the business to last him for a long time. He's been successful in business ever since then. MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Wow! MRS. BATCHELOR: I mean we did a whole bunch of them. We had realtor relays. We just had all kinds of stuff. They were great. MR. MCDANIEL: Now did you work out of ... Was this its own entity, or what ... MRS. BATCHELOR: It was its own entity. We had an office here. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you? MRS. BATCHELOR: Uh-huh. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right. It wasn't part of the chamber or anything like that? MRS. BATCHELOR: No, but we worked closely with the chamber. On special events, we did. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. Exactly, exactly. You did this for a dozen or more years. You got to know a lot of people, a lot of people in the town got to know you. I'm sure you became very invested in this community. You probably found some other things that you wanted to participate or get involved in, didn't you? MRS. BATCHELOR: I worked some at the schools. I was health chairman for a year or two and things because of the kids. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. By this time, you had how many children? MRS. BATCHELOR: I just had two. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, you had two? Okay. That's all right. MRS. BATCHELOR: Believe me, they were enough. MR. MCDANIEL: They were ... I understand. I have two. I understand. Were they boys and girls, or boy and girl? MRS. BATCHELOR: The oldest one is a girl, the other one is a boy. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right. Okay, I have two boys. They say girls are harder. MRS. BATCHELOR: No. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, no? Okay. All right, I guess I've been misled, but that's okay. All right, after you did the real estate thing, what did you do? MRS. BATCHELOR: I've worked at several jobs, but I've had gaps in between. I've done a lot of temp work and whatever. I haven't really had a steady ... I worked for Talbots for 13 years, too. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. What did you do for them? MRS. BATCHELOR: Answer the phone. MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? MRS. BATCHELOR: I did that after I was on council because I felt like I'm an idea person, but not much of a leader. I needed to learn how to sell. It was a perfect opportunity for me because I could choose my own hours and times and be where I needed to be and all like that. I learned a lot from them. It was when they first opened their center in Knoxville, which was a good time to be there. That was really my motivation for going. I learned a lot about selling and about what you have to do in order to be able to sell, about believing in your product and stuff like that. I really enjoyed it. I worked nights. MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! You said before that, you ran for Oak Ridge City Council. MRS. BATCHELOR: I did. MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk about that. What made you decide and what year was that about? MRS. BATCHELOR: I don't know whether it was '79 or '80. I'm not very good at that. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. All right, that's okay. MRS. BATCHELOR: Jo Roe had won a seat. She was doing a great job, but she needed to leave after two years. I had no intention of running for any government job. I'm not a very good leader. I'm a worker bee, not that. I was in the League of Women Voters, and those people started calling me on the phone, saying, "Why don't you run for Jo's seat?" MR. MCDANIEL: Was it going to be a special election, or just a…? MRS. BATCHELOR: I don't remember. No, it was in the regular election. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. MRS. BATCHELOR: It was in the time when she was not ... Other people were running. My husband was in Europe. When I talked to him on the phone, he was not happy about that. MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? MRS. BATCHELOR: No. He'll keep saying I'm not me, I'm not going to do that, but I'm weak. I'm not very good in making decisions because my parents had always said, "You're going to school here." I ended up saying, "Okay." I figured I wasn't going to win anyway. Then, lo and behold, there I was. I was really a surprise. Fortunately, the rest of the council ... I shouldn't say, the staff, the five people that were the main core of the staff, were absolutely excellent for a newcomer. Here, again, it was a real opportunity for me to learn. I mean they were very good about teaching somebody that didn't know diddly-squat a lot. I really learned a lot. I accomplished some things, which I'm really glad of, but I live day-by-day with what I didn't accomplish, and I can't seem to get over that even though that's been that many years. Some people couldn't just walk away. It's very difficult. That's why these people continue to stay in office. They can't stop because they can't finish. MR. MCDANIEL: First of all, what were some of the things that you were able ... Before we start, I want to ask you what you're able to accomplish and what you weren't able to accomplish that still bothers you today? Was this when they still had 12 members on the council? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yes. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. That's what I thought. MRS. BATCHELOR: That's one of the things that I've changed my mind about over the time, too. It was very difficult for the staff to have so many councilmen because the city mayor used to call everybody in one-by-one, because some of us were more bright than others. That's putting it nicely. MR. MCDANIEL: I understand. MRS. BATCHELOR: Some people actually couldn't read and there were people who did not read, and he would make everything perfectly clear because he had done an excellent job preparing, much better than I've seen since. Every detail was prepared, but he went over it with us each. MR. MCDANIEL: Individually. MRS. BATCHELOR: Individually, so that things didn't come before the council and it'd have to go back. He was there, he got all your questions. Twelve people was just a lot. MR. MCDANIEL: Was this before every council meeting? MRS. BATCHELOR: Uh-huh. MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! MRS. BATCHELOR: Some he didn't have to because they were already in on maybe that particular project or whatever, but for people he thought might not understand. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. MRS. BATCHELOR: It just took a lot of time. MR. MCDANIEL: Who was the city manager at that time? MRS. BATCHELOR: Lyle Lacy. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right. MRS. BATCHELOR: But, that being said, I don't think we have good representation with fewer people. Certain parts of town now are just really unrepresented. People don't have anybody they know that they feel like they can ... I think maybe I'd go back the other way. Anyway, the big issue at first was HUD [Health and Urban Development] was going to give us another one of these low-income housing projects. Since my family had worked with low-income housing, low-income people for a long time, and my children were in school, all you had to do was go for a job and you have an address of Van Hicks Street and you're labeled. I was very opposed to having it all in one site. Oak Ridge is small. Another one of those big sites was over ... It'd be like having 20 assisted livings in Oak Ridge. That's too many. People have misunderstood. They think you're against low-income housing because you don't want it that, whatever. I had been to one of the realtor meetings in Nashville and, in fact, worked with Bob Corker, who was also opposed to those. He was from Chattanooga, also very opposed to that. We had had at that meeting people from different cities, like Lawrence, Kansas, has one low-income family on each street in Lawrence, Kansas, and different ideas. There were people from up in the northeast where they were tearing those big towers down. Anyway, I guess the next thing I did was we had a National League of Cities meeting in Atlanta. While we had a break, I walked over to the HUD office downtown. It was the middle of the day, a beautiful, sunny day. I walked right through these big projects that they had in Downtown Atlanta over to the HUD office. When I got to the HUD office, the guy said, "How did you get here?" I said, "I walked." He nearly had a fit. MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? MRS. BATCHELOR: He said, "You walked through those housing projects by yourself?" I said, "Yes." He said, "You shouldn't have done that." I said, "I rest my case." We got separate housing. MR. MCDANIEL: Really? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah, it's much better. That was a success. I consider that a success. I took a lot of grief. My children took a lot of grief. People called me up and called me names on the phone, but that was okay because, in the end, we got what we wanted. We passed the sales tax. Lyle gave me, the realtors actually did it, a list of all the people in town and we figured out an algorithm that said, "If the property tax goes up and your house is assessed for this amount then your tax will be this. Based on the value of your house, you probably will spend this much money and the sales tax that it will cost you will be this." You could see those two numbers, and so the sales tax passed. I mean all those from the board of realtors, from my house. It passed. I think it was the seventh time we tried. MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! MRS. BATCHELOR: That was a success. My biggest failure was the airport. Don's family is from Cleveland, and we own a property there. Keyes Fillauer is from Cleveland. There were a lot of people here. They were going at about the same time we were. They had a lot of textile companies and furniture companies that also went out of business, but they didn't lose their workforce because they had an in-town airport. It brings in companies, places to work, the manufacturing part, but not the corporate office. The corporate office can be wherever, and they fly their corporate people in once a month or once a quarter, whatever. They're right there in town. They just get in the car. Somebody picks them up, they go to the office and come back. Their workforce never had to leave town. Of course they are booming now. We had a workforce here. When they closed K-25 and cut back at the Lab, that workforce was here. Had we had that airport, we could have done that same thing. I don't think people ever understood that. We voted it down and that workforce left. Since that time, we've been struggling. I feel like I couldn't sell it. I think DOE [Department of Energy] should have stepped in and said, "We'll give you the land somewhere else," because it mainly was the place. MR. MCDANIEL: Where was it? Where was it? MRS. BATCHELOR: Up on top of the ridge, behind the Arboretum. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah. Sure, sure, sure. MRS. BATCHELOR: Where it's ... MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. MRS. BATCHELOR: The one in Cleveland was right next to a gated community and a school. MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? MRS. BATCHELOR: My daughter lived two blocks from that, and I'd be out in the yard, I never even noticed it because these corporate jets are really quiet. They just come in. They only come during the day, because a guy is going to come in the morning and leave in the afternoon- MR. MCDANIEL: And leave in the afternoon. MRS. BATCHELOR: Everybody's in school. You don't even notice. I just couldn't sell it. The downturn that came here from losing all those good workers has just bothered me from then on because I couldn't sell. That's why I went to work for Talbots. If I'd been able to sell better, the whole place might have been better. I just feel personally responsible. It's not my fault, but I still feel that way. Every time I go to Cleveland and see this town that is just booming, just absolutely booming, I go ... I just feel so bad. MR. MCDANIEL: This was when? This was '80? MRS. BATCHELOR: Mm-hmm (affirmative), in the '80s. MR. MCDANIEL: In the '80s. Yeah, sure. How long did you serve on council? MRS. BATCHELOR: Two years. MR. MCDANIEL: Two years, okay. What else? What else when you're on council that you either felt good or not so good about? That's the main thing? MRS. BATCHELOR: I mean it was just not really very, very long at all. It was a learning experience, I guess. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, hold on just a second. Let me just say this now we're recording again, is I had an issue with the video. However, the audio was fine for about the last 15 minutes or so. If they saw you, just a photo of you during that, then that's what happened, but the audio was fine. You didn't want to go back and redo that section, and I don't blame you at all, but we heard you, we heard you, so that's fine. We're going to continue on now, pick back up with good video, and hopefully, hopefully good video and good audio. We just finished your ... I was going to be a smart aleck, but I won't. MRS. BATCHELOR: You just go right ahead. MR. MCDANIEL: No, your airport saga- MRS. BATCHELOR: Saga, that is. MR. MCDANIEL: Your saga of the Cleveland versus Oak Ridge airport and how that really affected- MRS. BATCHELOR: Affected. MR. MCDANIEL: It affected you, but you really feel like it affected the future of Oak Ridge. MRS. BATCHELOR: I do. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right. Were there any other issues on city council particularly that you got involved in? MRS. BATCHELOR: Every week it seemed like there were some ... But those were the major ones that stood out, the housing and the sales tax. We were pretty organized and things went fairly smoothly. We had not much controversy during that two years. It was a very short period of time I was on there. MR. MCDANIEL: You did make mention earlier, though, that because of the 12, you felt like areas of town were best represented. I mean it was better represented. MRS. BATCHELOR: We had more speakers come in and talk and ask for things and point out things, I thought, than we do now. They were really treated with respect, because somebody that they elected to represent was sitting there, up there- MR. MCDANIEL: Somebody that they elected. That they elected, yeah. MRS. BATCHELOR: That they elected specifically was sitting ... I mean everybody voted for all of them, even though ... But if you had somebody that was your representative and they're sitting up there, then the mayor is more likely to be more respectful of that individual because their representative is sitting there. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, sure. MRS. BATCHELOR: When there are just a few people sitting up there and everybody votes on them and they're from ...  They could all be from the East End, which mostly they are, then somebody comes from way out on the West End and says, "I don't like it that kudzus are growing now along the Turnpike." We'll turn to the city manager and say, "Can we do something about kudzu on the Turnpike?" and the answer will be, "We don't have the staff," and then it goes just right on. That would never happen. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, I see. Everybody's concerns were at least taken seriously- MRS. BATCHELOR: Yes. MR. MCDANIEL: And considered? MRS. BATCHELOR: Right. Even though we had the three-minute rule, Al was ... MR. MCDANIEL: Flexible? Is that a good term? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah, he would, because we had our regulars. We had George Phipps who had served on the council before. I guess we could say we appreciated comic relief from time-to-time. MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. I understand. MRS. BATCHELOR: We met more often. You'd think that we maybe could of had less and then we could get out quick. It didn't matter. MR. MCDANIEL: How often did you meet? Twice a month? MRS. BATCHELOR: Uh-huh. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay, versus the once a month now, I guess. You made reference earlier that not everybody on city council, at least at that point, were, how shall I put it? Intellectual powerhouses. MRS. BATCHELOR: That's correct, but everybody was represented. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly. Exactly. How did that ... MRS. BATCHELOR: It worked well. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, that was what I was about to say. MRS. BATCHELOR: It worked well. It was a good balance. I'd say that most of the people on council had their own special thing they could do. We had people who always spoke out, who were logical and had figured things out. Some people were good ... People who could summarize and bring parties together. It was a good mix, I thought. I have to laugh, every time we'd go to these conferences and stuff, I'd end up sitting by John Bryant, who's much larger than I am. He would get the teeny portion and I'd get the great big one, and we'd have to swap. MR. MCDANIEL: There you go. There you go. How funny. MRS. BATCHELOR: It was really a good mix. People worked for different types of things and had different experiences that they brought. Because there were more, you had more different types of experience that you're on. MR. MCDANIEL: Was that also a time when the plants encouraged ... I know previously they encouraged their employees to get involved in the city. MRS. BATCHELOR: Of course everything the Lab did ... The Lab was all homegrown. I had dinner up until this last ... I knew all of the Lab directors. They came to things. You saw them everywhere. I certainly see some of Mr. Mason because his son and my son are friends, but they were much more- MR. MCDANIEL: Involved in the community. MRS. BATCHELOR: Involved in the community- MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. Exactly, exactly. MRS. BATCHELOR: Than they are today, but we didn't have any powerhouses from the Lab- MR. MCDANIEL: From the Lab. MRS. BATCHELOR: But early on, in the city's history, we've certainly did, Mr. Trauger. Yes, we did, but we don't have any people living in the houses that we're talking about, tearing down- MR. MCDANIEL: Many of them don't live here now. Some of them do, but not many of them. MRS. BATCHELOR: It's just a much different complexion. MR. MCDANIEL: I've talked with several people about this, especially people who've been around Oak Ridge a long time, Oak Ridge is not the same place it was even 20 years ago. There's been such a change in the demographic, socio-economic status. What do you attribute that to? Not having an airport?  MRS. BATCHELOR: No jobs and no leadership. MR. MCDANIEL: Really? Okay. MRS. BATCHELOR: No. MR. MCDANIEL: All right. Did you just decide you weren't going to run after one term, run again? MRS. BATCHELOR: I didn't want to, but everybody's, "No, you should do that." I ran, but I didn't get elected. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, you didn't get elected? MRS. BATCHELOR: Right. I was so happy. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, were you? Do you think people were mad at you- MRS. BATCHELOR: No. MR. MCDANIEL: About some things? MRS. BATCHELOR: No. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, because you said earlier that you had people call you up and call you names. MRS. BATCHELOR: That just comes with the territory, I think, if you make yourself available. I don't think today's council members are as available as those council members were before. It's a hard thing to sit down to your dinner table and have the phone ring. MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Of course it is. Of course it is. MRS. BATCHELOR: It's a lot different. People talk about term limits, and I think, "That sounds like a good thing," but then after two or three different terms, who's going to- MR. MCDANIEL: Who's going to do it? MRS. BATCHELOR: Who's going to do it? MR. MCDANIEL: After a couple of terms, you just, getting to know everything. It takes a while to get up to speed. MRS. BATCHELOR: Only certain people. It does take a long time. It really does. It's very interesting, Lyle called me and he said, "I'm going to give you City Council 101. The first thing people are going to say to you, because it's something that they are going to be awkward around you, and you're going to be awkward around them, they're going to tell you ... The first thing they can think of is sidewalks. They're going to say to you, 'We need sidewalks.'" We don't need sidewalks. They're very expensive in this part of the country. The weather changes. First, they're expensive to make and then they're very expensive to maintain, unless you live in Buckhead or Brentwood, where you have somebody out trimming them and making them neat. Otherwise, they look horrible. They don't get much use unless they're in neighborhoods where you make the builder build them and pay for keeping them up. The people that use the ones that you make drop cigarettes and like that. They're just doubly messy. That's not a good investment. MR. MCDANIEL: We've got sidewalks going from one end of the town to the other now, don't we? MRS. BATCHELOR: Some of them are paid for by the person who built them, but the ones that we've built, because somebody said that, instead of being told, "We'll put that on the list," and when we get down to it after we've done this and this and this and this and- MR. MCDANIEL: After we've replaced our water pipes. MRS. BATCHELOR: Exactly, then we'll do them. Instead they went and did them. He told me, he said, "That's a just an awkward response." I thought, "I've learned something," but other people haven't been to City Manager School 101. MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about him as a city manager. MRS. BATCHELOR: There was a team of five, the finance manager ... There were five really young men. The thing that was good about them is that they all sat down and just tore everything apart. My family took a trip. We took the kids on a trip, always the first two weeks of school, because our children could not tolerate review, until they caught on to the fact that other children did not have to do all the problems in the book and do all those little exercises at the bottom. They usually probably did one or every other one, and we sent them ... Anyway, we did it as long as we could until they figured that out. MR. MCDANIEL: Until they figured that out, right. MRS. BATCHELOR: We would go into a town. We'd pick different themes, but we ... One, how do you do your garbage? Do you get it at the backdoor, put it out? Your big garbage things, does a truck come to your neighborhood or you go and dump it? MR. MCDANIEL: Do you take it to a convenience center? MRS. BATCHELOR: To a convenience center, whatever. We did how does your school communicate with you? Do they send something home once a week? MR. MCDANIEL: Who did this? You and your family? MRS. BATCHELOR: Yeah. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh. MRS. BATCHELOR: Sometimes we would learn stuff and I'd come back and tell Lyle. He knew all about the new things. Anything you brought back- MR. MCDANIEL: He already knew. MRS. BATCHELOR: He already knew, he already looked at it. Everything that he presented, he presented, "This is thing one, this is thing two, this is thing three. This is thing one today, this is thing one in five years, this is thing one in 10 years. If you choose this, you can also have this option or you could have that option. What can you say?" Then, "This is what we recommend and this is why we recommend it." Piece of cake. You try to come up with a question. MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly, he was just well-prepared. He was- MRS. BATCHELOR: Because they sat there and- MR. MCDANIEL: Figured it out. MRS. BATCHELOR: And asked ... This was before the computer, where you could ... No Google. They didn't make those mistakes. They actually talked to somebody. They said it takes two or three people. You look at it and you catch the mistakes.  "What if we do this? What if we add this? What if we do this? What if we do that?" It was just solid. MR. MCDANIEL: Wow! MRS. BATCHELOR: You wouldn't catch the financial problems, where people are moving money from this to that. We didn't know that, but it was an ... We could learn what you're supposed to see. Everything was bid out. There was not ever any question about, "Did you bid this out?" It was bid out. He knew it. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. After your term on city council, you were here, I'm sure you were watching things and watching the way things were going. As you roll your eyes, that leads me to my question: why didn't you step back in and say, "Maybe I want to be a part of the solution again"? MRS. BATCHELOR: I had to take a break. I also had two cancers. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you? MRS. BATCHELOR: I just stepped back and whatever, but, in recent years, I have interviewed about 40 people and asked them, "What changed to you and your family between 1985 and 2015?" It's not been pretty. I think Oak Ridge always comes to the table with a position of weakness. I don't ever think we do the work that we should and say, "No, this is what we want." The museum, we'll just take that. We go there and they'll say, "We'll give you this," or "We'll do it this way," or "We'll put it here." We don't say, "No, that's fine. That's your opinion, but we want this, and we're not going to settle for that. We want this, and this is how we're going to have it. This is the way Los Alamos is, and so we're going to have ours. We're going to be even better than that, so this is what we're doing. You'd get used to it." We just need to get back on our- MR. MCDANIEL: Step it back up. MRS. BATCHELOR: Step it back up. MR. MCDANIEL: Grow a backbone. MRS. BATCHELOR: The parade, I just took a picture by to Ben Adams. The people that we used to have, the Roane Anderson guys, but I just took a picture to Ben Adams of our fortieth anniversary parade and the whole town there, or the day that Senator Baker was here, when we were fighting to keep the Breeder Reactor, the whole town turning out. We were really strong. We said, "No, this is what we want. We're telling you this is it." Now we just, "Whatever you say. We'll just ... Okay." I think we should not be that way. MR. MCDANIEL: Right. What do you plan to do about it? MRS. BATCHELOR: I'm going to have to scare some people into moving. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right. MRS. BATCHELOR: I feel like our chamber's not strong. If you look at your computer at the list of city employees, of the staff, you'll find an amazing thing right in the middle. Things are just not the way they should be. We need to get ourselves cleaned up. MR. MCDANIEL: Whose responsibility is that, do you think? I know it's the people's, but the people have to have a voice. Who- MRS. BATCHELOR: There is no person right now that is doing it. That's- MR. MCDANIEL: We need somebody to step up- MRS. BATCHELOR: We're going to have to step up. MR. MCDANIEL: And become the voice. MRS. BATCHELOR: One person's not going to be able to do it because we don't have that person, but we're just going to have to keep talking until enough people- MR. MCDANIEL: Shouldn't that be city council's responsibility? MRS. BATCHELOR: Maybe our new city council will do that. MR. MCDANIEL: Shouldn't that be their responsibility, if they feel like the town is not going in the direction it's supposed to? MRS. BATCHELOR: Mm-hmm (affirmative), you would think. We have two new guys. I'm hoping that ... MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Okay. All right, very good. MRS. BATCHELOR: I'm hoping they will. We will see. MR. MCDANIEL: What have we not talked about that you'd like to discuss? What have I not asked you that you'd like to talk about? MRS. BATCHELOR: I don't know. I just keep hoping things will get better. It's a really nice town. It really is. It's just like, I guess, your house or anything else, or your personage. It's the same thing I feel about the kids who are underachievers, not because they want to be, but because they live in a culture that we don't. You have to feel good about yourself. You have to look good. You don't have to be fancy, but you have to look good. We don't. You have to follow the rules, but the rules have to be written down somewhere and they have to apply to everybody. We don't. Just the simple things. It's not a big deal. Your kids have been in the schools here. MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure. Of course. Of course. Of course. Right, right. Okay. Anything else? MRS. BATCHELOR: Oh, I don't know. MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. That's okay. That's all right, Liz. I want you to tell whatever you feel comfortable telling and hold back what you don't feel comfortable putting down on tape for the rest of the time. MRS. BATCHELOR: So that my great grandchildren. MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly. All right, Liz, thank you so much for coming over. MRS. BATCHELOR: You're welcome. Thank you. MR. MCDANIEL: I appreciate it.
[End of Interview]