Oral Histories

Tony Essaye discusses his life and fascinating career in this interview. He was born in London, England but grew up in the U.S. after being evacuated during World War II. He joined ROTC during his college years at Georgetown and was stationed in Japan during the 1950s. Essaye went on to become a lawyer and served as a counsel for the Peace Corps under Sargent Shriver. He was one of the lawyers who represented the Washington Post during the Pentagon Papers cases; actor Zach Woods portrays Essaye in the 2017 film “The Post.” He went on to work in a legal capacity for various political campaigns and politicians, including for Walter Mondale and Bill and Hillary Clinton. He also co-founded the International Senior Lawyers Project. In this interview, he offers his reflections on his career as well as major political events.

Sam Beall is an American nuclear engineer. During the Manhattan Project, he worked for the DuPont Company at the Chicago Met Lab, Oak Ridge, TN, and Hanford, WA. After the war, he stayed at Oak Ridge and ultimately became head of the Reactor Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In this interview, Beall discusses his involvement with various nuclear reactors at Oak Ridge and recalls his friendship with former ORNL director Alvin Weinberg. He also describes his childhood in Richland, Georgia.

Harris Harold Levee served in the Special Engineering Detachment at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago on the Manhattan Project. At the Met Lab, he worked with Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, who he describes as “not two peas in a pod, one was a pea and one was a string bean.” Levee’s assignments included following up on patents and ensuring strict secrecy was maintained at the laboratory. Levee later worked on construction of nuclear submarines.