Women

Dorotha “Dot” Hogan Crisp, from Midway in Greene County, TN, began working for Tennessee Eastman Corporation as a cubicle operator, better known as a “Calutron Girl,” at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge in 1944, before transferring to the Y-12 personnel office as a clerical assistant in 1945. First living in an Oak Ridge dormitory, […]

Sylvia Brown Feinberg completed her RN at Mercy College in Detroit and later worked as a nurse in the Hospital in Oak Ridge. She married George Feinberg in 1943.

Madonna Elaine Thennes was in born 1925. When she had just graduated from high school in Pocahontas, Arkansas, in 1943, her father told her the military had good-paying jobs for civilians in a new place in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She applied, was hired, and worked in the “typing pool” of women who typed up documents for […]

Tesesa Logidice Geffel Worked at at Oak Ridge as the Chief Nurse-in-Charge during the Manhattan Project. Her Husband, John Geffel, also worked at Oak Ridge as the Prime Building Contractor for Construction of the Oak Ridge facilities. 

Jean Rowe was born in Wise County, Virginia on June 17th, 1925. She worked at Oak Ridge at the age of 18 [or 19] from 1943-1944. Her duties were to lower a “rod/stick” into a water/liquid and perform measurements. She passed away April 17th, 2008.

Carolyn Beatrice Parker was born in Gainesville in 1917, during the Jim Crow era. Her father, Dr. Julius A. Parker was a physician who graduated from Meharry Medical College, the first medical school in the South for African Americans. Carolyn Parker’s maternal first cousin, Joan Murrell Owens was a marine biologist and was also one […]

Esther Branson was a secretary in Los Alamos, New Mexico during WWII. She was 24 when she entered the army in 1944 along with her brothers after being denied by the Navy (denied for having a heart murmur). Esther was sent to work on the Manhattan Project as a secretary. She had known nothing about […]

Lynn McCardell grew up in Idaho Falls, and began working as a secretary at the Special Nuclear Reactor Test area (SPERT). Her job entailed typing up reports and preparing memos, first on typewriters and decades later on computers. McCardell’s husband, Richard McCardell, also worked at the plant, however, it was not preferable for husband and […]