Edna Shea

“I came to Oak Ridge in January 1944 when I was twenty-nine, from the Rochester “Ordnance” District NY in response to a newspaper ad from the University of Rochester for secretaries “in another part of the country.”  I was interviewed by Cpt. John Ferry (US Engineers M.P.), warned of the “mud and primitive conditions” and decided to move to Tennessee where I was Col. Stafford Warren’s confidential secretary in the Castle until the end of the project in 1945.  I found Dr. Warren an excellent officer and boss and he and his wife Vi Warren took me under their wing.  “Oppy” was a regular visitor to the office.

At work, I correctly prepared correspondence according to strict secrecy and government standards, maintained telephone contact for Col. Warren and all other installations, and made travel arrangements for 5 officers.

There were several amusing stories while I worked with Dr. Warren.  I was always reminding Col. Warren not to wear his Eagles upside down.  I also thought it strange, given the secrecy, that there was a diagram of the atom on the wall of the office.  Sobering too, that protective gear from the Alamogordo bomb test was stored in a safe on the other side of the wall by my desk.  And in retrospect the most unusual thing that I experienced was being taken to dinner by a British General I met right before D-Day.

Finally, I met and married Robert M. Geffel, a former Army Infantry lieutenant, newly returned from Italy and employed by Union Carbide.  Vi Warren gave us an engagement party.  We were married on 18 August 1945 at the Chapel on the Hill and our daughter Mimi was born in June 1946.  My recovery was spent in General Leslie Grove’s reserved room at the Oak Ridge Hospital.  Our second daughter Robyn was the first baby baptized in the new St. Mary’s church. My husband worked in Personnel Security at the newly established Atomic Energy Commission for 28 years.  We are truly an Atomic family.”