Theresa Strottman: We are speaking with Ed Doty and we thank you so much for coming today.
Ed Doty: You’re welcome; delighted to be here.
Strottman: To start off the interview could you briefly could you tell me when and where you were born and something about your early education and training.
Doty: Born in Lakewood, Ohio. Proceeded through the Depression into Dartmouth College. Managed to get out in five years, which was pretty good for a Depression kid. Went immediately into the Army and the Army immediately sent me to Rutgers where I could study electrical engineering. I think they were dissolving the program at the time I left but in any event I was lucky enough to be sent to Los Alamos with eight other people.
We were sent on the consolidated troop Pullman section of the California limited. Which arrived in Lamy about a day late, just about a day late. We got off the train, we looked around. I don’t remember whether you’ve seen the Lamy station lately or not, but it hasn’t changed much. We didn’t see much in the town of Lamy on the north side of the train so we waited for the train to pull out to see what was on the other side. And Phildebean said it best, ‘Look what’s on the other side, nothing.’ Then we waited for four hours till finally a WAC driver showed up. But in the mean time, the Santa Fe Chief had pulled in and thrown our barracks bags off. So now we were complete solders. We each had two barracks bags instead of one. The barracks bags had come in style along with Winston Dabney who it turned out was going to be our Mother Superior for the next two years.
Strottman: What year was this?
Doty: This was March of 1944. The ride up to the Hill was pretty interesting. Fortunately it was at night so we didn’t see too much of it. I think if I had seen it, I would have been dead on arrival. But nevertheless, I think it was Corp. Krimbey was the driver and she drove very rapidly and obviously with a lot of skill. Because we arrived safely and got to Los Alamos. The next morning I went into a security lecture where they tried to scare the devil out of us by saying, ‘Don’t get any wild ideas about overseas duty because you are here for the duration plus 6. While two of my friends moaned a little bit, I was pretty delighted. I just couldn’t think of a better place to be than right here for the duration plus 6. From then on, things progressed. We were taken to meet our new boss, Bob Dunlap, who was a patent engineer from Carbide and Carbon Bob said to me and the rest of us, all 9 of us, ‘I’ll never get over the power of the Manhattan Engineer District.’ I asked for 9 men, preferably high school graduates, you are here, you are 9 men, you are all college graduates and you’re going to hate these jobs.
He was right. That afternoon I was washing chemical glassware out in case dock. Muriel Hiller who was a WAC Pfc. was teaching me how to do it. I think I learned almost everything there was to learn about washing chemical glassware in about 25-30 minutes. Nevertheless, I continued with that onerous job for maybe three days and then things improved.
Strottman: They had to improve.
Doty: There was just so much work to be done and so few people to do it, there was just an infinite opportunity for anybody who was here. I wound up at the end of the war, I had 8 or 9 men working for me, all military of course. All enlisted men. I provided a delivery and warehousing service for the chemistry division as it was called then. Subsequently some chemistry metallurgy and then CMR and then I don’t know what all the various designations have been as it as proliferated to since then.
I provided this service partly because D Building where the chemistry division was the only air-conditioned building on site and that’s where everybody in Chemistry Division worked. It had an air lock to try to keep out the mesa dust which presumably had, I was told, had a high boron content and they didn’t want that in the building. So we provided this delivery service. We provided the glass washing service. We provided warehousing for chemistry material which the physicists didn’t want mixed with the stuff they warehoused because of the possible alpha contamination that the chemistry material might have.
It was an interesting operation. There was a question of getting the logistics right and making the deliveries fast. Of course, nothing came to Los Alamos directly. It all came indirectly through either the Chicago or the Los Angeles warehouses and then would be transshipped to Lamy and then shipped up here by truck. It all worked. I really never in my life worked in an organization since and of course I hadn’t had much experience before. But I’ve never worked in an organization that made such effective use with the man-hour. I didn’t realize what a marvel it was at the time. I just enjoyed being in it. It really was a marvel of effective utilization of people. Certainly the bureaucracies that have been developed since have worked against that. I of course, all the organizations that I have been in since were bureaucratic of one sort in one way or another. None of them has measured up to the level of the Los Alamos efficiency back then.
Strottman: Many people have commented on this. They have hypothesized various reasons for this. What would you say was the reason for this? Do you think it was due to simply lack of paperwork or military discipline or simply General Groves was just an excellent organizer? How among the various explanations do you explain it?
Doty: Nobody in Los Alamos during the war or immediately after for that matter gave General Groves credit for much of anything. But in retrospect he must have been a very, very effective man. I would give a great deal of credit to the urgency of the project. The urgent desire to do it before the Germans did. And secondly just the fact that most of the people who were here were doing things that were very interesting and very challenging. There wasn’t much red tape, but most important of all was that certainly everybody that I knew in the tech area knew what the objective of the laboratory was. When you have a whole organization with everyone knowing what the objective is and focused on that with the urgency or whip if you will behind it, it makes for pretty good progress.
What amazes me though is that so many of the critical technical decisions were made so rapidly. When there apparently were many alternative decisions that could have been made. Of course, many of them were made in parallel and the technical people would go down 2 or 3 paths simultaneously to see which was working the best. Well, I think that’s it, the singleness of purpose known by everybody in spite of the security and the urgency.
Strottman: If we can backtrack a little bit, when you were assigned to work for the Manhattan Project, what were you told about the Manhattan Project before you left the east?
Doty: I was told nothing before I left the east, as a matter of fact, all I knew was that our orders were that we were to report to 8 Bishop Building in Santa Fe, New Mexico which I have never seen, I don’t know where that is. We got whisked right up to the Hill. The orders were typed Manhattan Engineer District. So being the very bright person that I was, I assumed that I was going right back to Manhattan and coming from Rutgers where I had spent every weekend in Manhattan, I thought this was just a great deal. I knew it was a secret project but I certainly had no idea either where it was or what it was all about.
But I would say that within 2 days after I got to Los Alamos, I knew what it was all about. My boss, Bob Bedlap, suggested that, after saying that he couldn’t tell us what was going on, he suggested that we all go and take out White’s Classical and Modern Physics out of the library and might get some idea.
I tell this story which is of course not completely true, but going over to the Tech Area library, I walked down the aisle containing the P’s and Pardon and Davidson’s Nuclear Physics fell out of the stacks and into my hand and opened up to a page that was heavily marked in pencil about the fusion possibilities the explosive possibilities of uranium. Of course White’s Classical and Modern Physics I learned to enjoy a little more later because it was just studded with names of people I heard over the public address system. Nobel Prize winners all over the place. Not that I knew when I arrived who was a Nobel Prize winner. But I would say that that’s how I learned about the project. Everybody else knew.
Again I think that’s what one of the very important points to be made as to the reason for the quick and spectacular success of the project. Everybody knew that, there was very working cross-purposes because of lack of understanding of the objective. There probably was plenty of working cross-purposes to try to get things done. It was very effective.
Strottman: What were you able to tell your family and friends?
Doty: Oh, I was able to tell them about a Little Theater group which I got active in after awhile. I was able to tell them about sunshine, taking sunbathes on pine needles. I was able to tell them about, that’s about it. Parties, every Saturday night it seemed to me there was some kind of party. This bunch worked very hard for 6 days a week and then there was a party on Saturday night and then Sunday we sort of rested up a little bit and some of us would go back to work Sunday afternoon. Certainly Monday through Saturday was very tough, or not tough but hard work.
I told them about parties and told them about the sunbathing and
that was it. And that I was well. I did get that in that I was well. I did write just about every week. Did a very creative job I think over the 2 years I was here during the war. Well, less than 2 years, year and a half. Creative job of spinning whole letters every week out of virtually nothing.
Strottman: Can you give us an idea of how the authority for your job, what the line of command was. Was it all completely within the military or did you have a mixture of civilian and military people who you worked for or with?
Doty: Well outside the Technical Area, we were military. Inside the Technical Area we were civilian. Inside the Tech Area where the work was my boss, as I said, was Bob Dunlap who was a civilian patent attorney from Carbide and Carbine. His boss was Joe Kennedy who was a physical chemist from the University of California. His boss was Robert Oppenheimer. I don’t need to explain him to anybody. That was the chain of authority. Oppenheimer of course reported to Groves. Outside the technical area, we were supposedly subject to military discipline and regulations and so forth. I guess perhaps in dress we did. There were practically no officers around. There was a Capt. and then a Major, maybe 2 Majors over a period of a year or so who were commandants of the special engineering detachment. But we never saw them.
As far as we were concerned Winston Dabney who was the Master Sergeant in charge of the Special Engineering Detachment was the person I went to if I had any complaints. I suppose the person would have told me what to do if military ever told any of the SED’s what to do. But as long as we didn’t break any laws or have other problems like military discipline, we didn’t have any encounters, any interchange with officers. So there really wasn’t much. Now the MP’s of course, they were under military command. You ask them and they’ll have a different story.
The Special Engineering Detachment would be a story somewhat in between. They had jobs, they were civilian jobs of maintaining and running the town. Also maintenance inside the Tech Area to some degree I think. I remember Russ Pooler was a special engineer or a provisional engineer and he was the captain of the fire department. He wasn’t the actual captain of the fire department, he just ran it. He was a Corporal. I think Eddy Brooks was the fire chief and he was a civilian. Military presence was here only that there were lot of khaki uniforms around. Other than that, this was a bunch of civilians in uniform who weren’ t bothered too much by military discipline or military requirements.
Strottman: Would you say then that, for instance, Winston Dabney and the officers who you interacted with through the SED unit, that they were there more as a service to you rather than making demands upon your time?
Doty: Yes, they made no demands on our time. I think we had maybe 2 parades during all the time I was here. Two parades in a year and a half or whatever it was, is not very much. Both of them were terrible. The WACs out- performed the SED’s very, very much in these parades as did of course the military police. They knew how to parade. But the SED’s were probably deplorable would be a good a term as any.
Strottman: Did you notice any difference among the officers in the say they handled military/civilian relationships? This could be the Majors and higher officers.
Doty: Didn’t see enough of them. The only officer I knew well was a fellow named Lloyd Roth, he was a Captain and he was a chemist. And he worked in the tech area as I did. We knew each other pretty well and we knew each other by first name. There was really no military rank within the technical area. That’s where I spent most of my time. If there was much military oppression or regimentation, not in the tech area since we have to go to work and we’d disappear. This frustrated the few officers who tried to make soldiers out of the special engineers. I don’t think any of the officers ever succeeded. I think all of them wanted to get out of here as fast as they could. Some of them did. I don’t know where they went.’
They too are no longer fit for overseas duty because they had here. It was not an enviable position for a military officer to be told that he was in command of a group that paid no attention to him whom he couldn’t really exercise any control over. What we had was the food, the barracks. The barracks were very comfortable. The food was certainly passable. I don’t think any of us had any legitimate complaints at all, I really don’t. Didn’t think so then and certainly don’ think so now.
Strottman: How and with whom did you spend your free time?
Doty: There wasn’t a lot of it to start out with. I mentioned the parties on Saturday night and those were with civilians, military too. Usually the civilians were the ones who had the where with all to have a party. The house or apartment.
There were other activities, but to a large degree the soldiers who were in the tech area during the daytime, interacted with the civilians and other soldiers who were in the tech area whenever they had time for liberty. That’s a naval time, any event, time off.
We did get to go to Santa Fe once every month. As I recall, the bus went down in the late morning of a Saturday and came back around 8:00 at night. It was an hour trip or even more than an hour because it went by way of Espanola. We’d go down once a month on Saturday afternoon and get into the La Fonda bar and have a couple of drinks. I suppose we were watched carefully by FBI or somebody, but I never noticed that. Didn’t bother me anyway or wouldn’t have. We’d come back and go back to work.
We did do horseback riding on Sunday. The military police were mounted and apparently exercising the horses was a good idea on Sunday. So we were able to go there and get horses free and take rides. But those McQuellen saddles were not exactly the most comfortable in the world. They are the split saddle. They are supposed to be more comfortable for the horse, but they are certainly not more comfortable for the rider. But nevertheless, it was a nice perk if you will. Few enough took advantage of it so there was almost always a horse available if you wanted to go over there and have a ride or walk around. That was a pleasant thing to do. As you know from having lived here, almost anytime of the year is a good time for horseback riding so that was a good one.
Strottman: Did you ever feel isolated here?
Doty: I didn’t, people did. But I didn’t because the work was so interesting. I had some sense of what the alternatives were. One of them was being shot at. I had been at Rutgers in the ASTP unit and while some of us went to Oak Ridge and some went to Hanford, some went to Los Alamos, most of that unit went into the 104th Infantry Division which had been in training at Camp Carson, Colorado for I think a year. Not able to pass the Adjutant General’s exam for overseas duty.
Within 3 months after that infusion of ASTP students, they did leave for overseas and they fought. They landed in Normandy on D+3 and fought at night. Their causality rate was over 170% I believe at the end of the war. Because they had been at Camp Carson for so long, The Denver Post was very fond of them and followed them. So there would be a little squib on the front page of The Denver Post everyday what the 104th Infantry Division had been doing the previous 24 or 48 hours or something like that.
Strottman: Did you ever have any contact with the people who went to Oak Ridge or Hanford out of your ASTP unit? Do you have any sense of how their experiences might have been different than the experience here at Los Alamos?
Doty: They were more compartmentalized as far as security was concerned. But the more direct answer to your question, the ones I knew who had been at Oak Ridge were those who came to Los Alamos afterwards. I can’t remember now anyway, 50 years later, anybody at Rutgers who went to Oak Ridge whom I had kept in touch with or whom I kept in touch with then. So I really don’t. I just know that it was not nearly the scope that we had at Los Alamos as far as access to information. Access to what was going on. I’m sure most people even knew the approximate day the device was going to be used in Japan. We didn’t have access to reporters so it was pretty safe information I guess.
Strottman: This was common knowledge within the tech area?
Doty: I think so, yes. If I had the information, a lot of other people had the information. Because I certainly didn’t get much directly from any of the chief scientific people.
Strottman: You mentioned the barracks were quite comfortable. Could you specify which barracks you were in? Were yours closer to Canyon Road or were you in the ones along Trinity?
Doty: They were all along Trinity. Canyon Road didn’t exist then. They were either on the south side or north side of Trinity. The original ones were just on the south side. They built west for a while and went across the road. At least I think that was it. The mess hall was on the north side. That was there when I arrived.
But I was in about 3 different barracks partly because it was sort of nice to move into a new one, because it was clean. Not that they were dirty, but it was brand new. I had a bunkmate whom I liked very much. Fellow named Russ Chadwick who sort of liked to move. So I went along with him.
He was a very accommodating fellow. A very nice man. He maintained Geiger counters. He use to complain about the young electrical engineers that would be offered to him to help him. He swore none of them ever learned how to use a soldering iron and that’s all he really needed them to know. He was a good man.
They were comfortable. One of the things, we had an infinite supply of hot water which was a very nice thing for a solider even though I had only experienced 3 months of basic training. It was still a very nice thing to have a barracks that had an infinite supply of hot water. So you could take showers for as long as you wanted.
During the famous water shortage of the winter of ’45-’46, there were a number of SED’s who were down there taking showers when the civilians at a higher level on the mesa had no water at all which was sort of a dastardly thing to do. But the idea was to see if we could get a furlough out of it and we did. We got sent home for about a month.
Strottman: Until the water situation could be rectified.
Doty: That’s right.
Strottman: Did you go to Trinity Site?
Doty: No, I did not go there. I was in Taos. Several of us got a long weekend, can’t remember if it was a weekend. But we had 3 days during the Trinity Test, at the time of the Trinity Test. We went up to Taos and spent the time up there.
Strottman: I gather you didn’ t hear about it in Taos then.
Doty: No, we didn’t.
Strottman: When did you find out about the results of the test?
Doty: As soon as we got back and again that was common knowledge all over the Tech Area that it had been successful.
Strottman: Could you characterize the atmosphere in the Tech Area after the Trinity Test?
Doty: I can’t, I don’t remember that it was any…It probably was different, but I don’t have any recollection right now.
Strottman: Do you remember where you were when you heard about the bombing of Hiroshima and do you remember if you had any immediate reactions at that time?
Doty: I was in my office in D Building which was on the first floor. Jim Strides as a matter of fact, fellow who worked with me, he came into the office and said, ‘Ed come on out here.’ I came out there. As I said in a letter to my folks, I thought one of our trucks had gone off the canyon rim or something like that. But instead, people were gathered around a radio and there was an announcement coming over right then about the device having been successfully used over Japan. It did not name the town in that announcement as I recall anyway. We had known that it was going to be one of a series of days. Again I’ve forgotten how I knew that that was going to be the case, but I did.
Strottman: Do you recall any particular reaction, your own or the people who were around the radio?
Doty: I suppose it was a mixture of euphoria of having the success and relief of having been successful. I don’t think there was any feeling of compassion or concern for people who had been on the other end of the detonation. I suppose some of us were concerned if it weren’t successful we’d have a hard time explaining what we did during the war. But it was successful and everyone was quite jubilant.
I have been associated with other projects where people have worked very hard and they have ultimately been successful and there is always a great feeling of euphoria that you finally did it, it has finally been done. With this of course, we were all convinced that the war was over as soon as it was dropped. And it was; we were right. I think all of us had been convinced that when this thing was used, if it was used, that would be the end of the war. It has been a very long war. Four years that we had been in it. Much longer for a lot of other people.
I also by the way think that a lot of Japanese lives were saved by dropping that bomb. I can’ t believe that the Japanese would have given up without something real dramatic like that. I can’t believe it would have been anything but a long 6 to 8 to 10 month blood bath, both sides, both U.S. and Japanese. Course the fire bombs were killing Japanese at a great clip back then anyway. Although Hiroshima was a colossal loss of life for the Japanese. I think it was something like 2 months worth of fire bombing. If that had gone on for another 4 or 5 or 6 months. I think I’m getting ahead of the questioning here.
Strottman: The next question I was going to ask, was simply if you remember the bombing of Nagasaki as a distinct event and if you remember having any different reactions to that bombing than you did to the Hiroshima bombing?
Doty: No, I don’t remember that as a distinctive event. I remember the first one. I think I did remember a little puzzlement that there wasn’t an ending of the war sooner. That it did not end immediately with the Hiroshima blast. I had sort of thought that as I say was the end of the war. It didn’t quite happen that day. It took a couple of more days. Whether the Japanese would have surrendered without the dropping of Nagasaki, I have no idea, I don’t think anybody knows. But it was over after that. But I don’t remember it as a distinct event, no.
Strottman: After the war was over when you told people where you had been and what you had done. Do you remember what their reactions were? I don’t mean in the ’50’s, 60’s or ’70’s, I mean immediately after the war.
Doty: My parents lived in Dayton, Ohio. I had spent my college years in Hanover, New Hampshire, but my home was in Dayton, Ohio at the time. I had a number of friends there. Several of them, one of them had been pretty badly wounded in the Italian campaign. Another had suffered a series of near misses. He was an LST commander. At Enzio you had LST’s on both sides of his ship blown out of the water. So the war was pretty vivid to them.
I do remember one of them saying to me, ‘Its certainly a good thing you were there Doty and not some other place because we never would have forgiven you.’ So it sort of maybe in a way elevated me into the ranks of combat veterans in some limited sense. No real sense of course. But any event, they didn’t despise for my stateside duty. Which was a relief in a way.
Strottman: Those are the people you would be dealing with the next 10 – 15 years. Did working in Los Alamos alter direction of your life in any way?
Doty: Oh, markedly. For one thing I stayed until 1951 and I never would have even been here if I hadn’t been sent here by the Army. I offered my wife before we actually were serious about getting married; I had offered her a job when I was home on furlough. That furlough I talked about the water shortage. Anyway I went home and then I went to New York City. I had dated her roommate when I had been at Rutgers so I went back to see how the girls were. I offered them all jobs if they wanted to come to Los Alamos. They were all quite competent secretaries. So she did. She came out here, and then we got married and then our children were born here.
So yeah, it altered my life. I might have married her, but I doubt it. I really do. I think the circumstances are what brought us together. In any event, having been here until 1951, we didn’t get back east until 1952. Although we have been in the east since, either Buffalo, New York or Long Island or Boston, Massachusetts we get back to Los Alamos for little southwestern nourishment about once every year now. Yup, its altered my life.
Strottman: Given similar circumstances, war time emergency, would you work on a secret government project again?
Doty: Wartime emergency? Certainly, oh yes. I would like to believe it was a clear-cut thing. But certainly World War II was a clear-cut moral decision. Not like Viet Nam, which was tough. It was an easy moral decision to make and if it were similar to that, another easy decision to make.
Strottman: What is your most vivid memory of the Manhattan Project? It can be a continuous memory like the taste of coffee in one of the mess halls or it could be a smell or a sound or it could be an event or a particular person. If you had to define what was the most vivid memory of the Manhattan Project, what would you say?
Doty: It was not mud. I was talking about mud with some friends not too long ago. Certainly the first week I was here I had a very vivid impression of mud every where. My wife’s first impression, she came a couple of years after I did. Her first impression was mud. But she doesn’t remember if after the first couple days. So it’s not mud.
I guess it’s blue sky and people. The people were interesting, intelligent sure, but interesting people. Great variety of their own interests. It’s a great place to have friends and certainly the climate is almost impossible to beat. My goodness. Highest temperature on record when we left was 96. I don’t know what the lowest temperature was, it gets pretty cold at night. But did get a lot of snow but it all sublimates. It doesn’t even bother to melt. This is a great place to live and interesting people to be with. I’m just sorry at the present time there are so many of them here. It’s a pretty tightly packed spot these days. I noticed when we drove around yesterday, the houses which were already pretty close together are even closer because everybody seems to have built an addition. The additions butt up against other additions. It’s a tightly packed community these days. This is a delightful place to be.
Strottman: Is there anything we haven’t covered during the conversation that you would like to add to this interview?
Doty: I can’t think of anything. I’ll probably think of it after we are through.
Strottman: Would you like to look at your notes?
Doty: I don’t have any notes.
Strottman: Well thank you very, very much. Oh, before we stop, regarding the wonderful letter you wrote your father…
Doty: My mother and father. She’s the one who saved it. Although he did have it reproduced by his secretary. I had originally said I’d type the letter that you have, but I don’t think I did. Maybe I did. I have to look at that one again. Because that was in the original envelope. My dad did have a number of them copied though. In case you want copies. I have found a couple of copies that were still around. They are the old carbons. They’re probably as blurred as the photocopies that you make maybe even more so.
Strottman: You mentioned in that letter how strong a relationship you had with Oppenheimer and the other people. You mentioned in the letter, speaking to Oppie at one of the parties.
Doty: No, I spoke to Fermi at one of the parties. Otto Frisch once did a caricature, it was a sketch of me at one of the parties which I wish I had kept, but I didn’t. But Oppenheimer I never encountered him except by telephone. Obviously, I knew who he was and maybe he knew who I was, but I did not have any direct contact with him. I wish I had. Those who did have the contact, cherish it. He was a very fine man. He was almost loved I guess by the people here.
But wish I had had that contact. But it was only by telephone. Several times he would call me to ask for something. Because I had the horde of the laboratory’s platinum chemical ware, heavy walled, heavy bottled, bedded rim, 200 ml crucibles you know which we used to drink whiskey out of on Saturday nights when we didn’t have any parties to go to. Rare equipment that sometimes for some reason he wanted. He called a couple of times. Quartz I think was one thing he called for. He asked if I had a certain type of quartz tube or glass or something like that. And I did. So I delivered it. But I delivered it to his office and his secretary took it and that was the last of that.
Strottman: You mentioned that Fermi was someone who you had dealings with.
Doty: I was at several parties where he was present. I did mentioned in that letter that I had seen him do a jitterbug that I thought was very good, better than I could have done. I never was too good at jitterbugging anyway, but I thought he was very spectacular.
Strottman: You also mentioned Otto Frisch, do you have any particular memories of him?
Doty: He had come to the Little Theater group productions apparently because he inscribed the drawing, a pencil sketch, not by name but with ‘The Actor, he wrote on it and then he handed it to me. So he had seen one of the plays and maybe more. Again, he was not an associate of any kind. Wish he had been.
Strottman: Talking about the theater group, we really didn’t get into it. When you mentioned free time, how much time did you spend with the theater group? Or was it very limited?
Ed Doty: During the war, not too much. I really didn’t get involved with them until late ’44. It was early ’45. But after the war, pretty intensively because things tapered down at the Laboratory quite a bit. We were aggressively putting on performances from August, September, October, November around in there in ’45.
Before that I think I was in 2 productions maybe 3. We put one on about once every month or month in a half during the war. Maybe every two months. Again I can’t remember too distinctly. But I know there was a dress rehearsal and then the performance on Saturday night and then the party. That was it. Maybe we put on a dress rehearsal and 2 performances. But my recollection was Friday night was dress rehearsal, Saturday night was the performance. Early Sunday morning was the party. Then we had to clean up because they had church service in Theater No. 2 on Sunday morning. So you could not let this party go on too long. You had to clean up afterwards.
Strottman: So the plays, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of rehearsal that went into these. They were somewhat more spontaneous?
Doty: Well, there was enough rehearsal so there wasn’t too many fluffs. Certainly, there were fluffs in every play. I guess adequate rehearsal, we learned the lines away from the stage. That’s a little dim too. The rehearsals were at night. Not during the daytime. Again, I don’t really remember, but I do know … That’s how I got to know the Caldeses, because Bebe was very active in the Little Theater group as a performer and Darrell was very active as a stage hand. He did the electronics work in the background. Electronics meaning lights, no sound or anything like that. But the lights were important. Set construction, I got involved in some of that too. But not too much, mostly just acting. I was president of the Little Theater group at the very end. But then again, all the competent people had left, competent Little Theater group people I mean, in case there was any misunderstanding of that.
Strottman: Well, thank you so very much. We appreciate you taking your time to come here today.
Doty: I enjoyed it very much, really did.