Corporate Involvement in the Manhattan Project

Cindy Kelly: All right, I’m Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation, and today is Wednesday, March 20, 2013. And what I’d like to do is first have you introduce yourself. Tell me your name and spell it. William Schneller: Well, my name is William F. Schneller, and it’s W-I-L-L-I-A-M, F, S-C-H-N-E-L-L-E-R. Kelly: Terrific. You did very […]

[Interviewed by Cindy Kelly and Tom Zannes.] Tell us your name. John Tepe: I’m John Tepe, T-E-P-E. Tell us about where you grew up and went to school. Tepe: Well, I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, which was my family hometown. My family had been there since 1794, and I was the first to leave. […]

[Interviewed by Cindy Kelly and Tom Zannes.] Tell us your name. Russell Stanton: I’m Russell C. Stanton. R-U-S-S-E-L-L, C. for Crom, S-T-A-N-T-O-N.  Tell us about yourself. Stanton: Well, I was born in Elephant Butte, New Mexico. My father was an engineer with the Bureau of Reclamation and they built a dam there. I was born […]

[Interviewed by Cindy Kelly and Tom Zannes.] Tell us your name. Hultgren: Roger A. Hultgren, R-O-G-E-R, A was Aaron, double A-R-O-N, and Hultgren, H-U-L-T-G-R-E-N. How did you get to be part of the Manhattan Project?  Hultgren: Well, there’s many avenues. I was born in 1920 and my mother went to the University of Minnesota. She […]

Darragh Nagle: Well, you must realize you’re talking to the people who were very, very junior at the time of the Manhattan Project. We’re mostly the ones that are left, but by that same token we were not privy to the high council—what was going on.  My time started in Chicago. I had been a […]

Anne McKusick: That’s A-N-N-E, M-C capital K-U-S-I-C-K. Cindy Kelly: Okay Anne, can you tell us where you were born and a little bit about— McKusick: Yes, I was born in Rochester, New York. My father was a physicist and was at Eastman Kodak Company. He had many young men working for him who eventually ended […]

Cindy Kelly: The first thing we have to do is ask you your name and to say it and then spell it.  Monika (camerawoman): We’re ready to go.  Kelly: So tell me your name and spell it, please.  Watson Warriner: My name is Watson C. Warriner, Senior. And I happen to be ninety-four years old. […]

William J. Wilcox, Jr.: My name is Bill Wilcox. Oak Ridge, Tennessee resident for sixty-three years. Ever since—pretty much since the beginning of Oak Ridge. Can’t imagine a better calling, a better career, a better place to live, better people to work for, better people to work with, or to be associated with. Very important […]

George Cowan: It’s weighted so heavily in favor—not in favor of—but the emphasis on number one Los Alamos, and then Oak Ridge, and then Hanford, as the three secret cities or something. But the fact is the Met Lab at Chicago was enormously important. The Stagg Field reactor was historic in ’42, and its sort of […]

[Interviewed by Cynthia Kelly and Tom Zannes.] Paul Vinther: I’m Paul Vinther. P-A-U-L V-I-N-T-H-E-R. I have a first name, Alvin, but never went by it so everybody knows me as Paul. And I first came to Hanford on June the 26th, 1950. I remember that vividly because that was the day after the Korean War […]