SECRET CITY FILMS COLLECTION

ORAL HISTORY OF DAVE MILLER

Interviewed by Keith McDaniel

September 13, 2005

1

MR. MCDANIEL: Just look at me, ignore the rest of it. Tell me about how you ended up in Oak Ridge.
MR. MILLER: Well, I was born here. My mom and dad and two older brothers came down from New York. He was in the project up in New York in June of ‘42. He came down as a captain, moved into a Fernhill D house. Uncle Frank Wumbledorf moved in with us because it was a three bedroom, and he only had two boys.We had one on the way. Then I came along in ‘50, and went to Elm Grove, and Jefferson, and then the high school. ‘Course Jefferson was up on the hill at Jackson Square then.
MR. MCDANIEL: Stayed here until when?
MR. MILLER: Until I went into the Navy, right out of high school. ’69, I went in the Navy. And, when I got out of the Navy, went to work at TVA, did a career down there.Moved around Kingston, and finally ended up back in Oak Ridge, still working at Watts Bar, driving 50 miles a day, but we wanted our kids to go to Oak Ridge schools, and high school especially. So we moved back to town, and then I retired, and went into the antique business.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me, what was it like going to school here, and this was, when you went to school, you were born in ‘50 so you started school in ‘55, and stayed until ‘69, so you were here from the mid-‘50’s until almost ‘70 in school.
MR. MILLER: Yeah, I’m a first-generation Manhattan Project kid, I guess. It was just, you know, the life of Riley I guess, looking back at it.You don’t realize it until later on in life, you start comparing notes with people who didn’t live here. Oh, kindergarten, I can still remember the nap times and all the fun and play and all of all the kids.The neighborhood schools, so you knew everyone in your class, but you also might spend the night with them on Saturday or whatever. So it was a really close-knit bunch.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, the gates were open, but the city wasn’t incorporated.
MR. MILLER: That’s right, the gates had opened the year before I was born, but it was still, you know.If you wanted to learn anything about Oak Ridge, you’d probably read it somewhere other than hear about it in Oak Ridge.People still weren’t talking. Of course, stories around the dinner table, it was okay to talk about some of the big secrets, but still, people didn’t talk about ongoing work.
MR. MCDANIEL: So what’d you do when you were kids in school? I mean, what’d you do during the summers?
MR. MILLER: Oh, just rode bicycles, and played, you know, different sports, softball and that sort of thing, church league softball leagues, and, that sort of thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: How was it a different time? I mean, not necessarily unique to Oak Ridge, but I mean, how was it a different time?
MR. MILLER: Well, you know, we always had dinner at five, five o’clock, the whole family sat down for dinner. If we were playing, and we were down below, down the street below or something with another group of kids playing a game of whatever, dodgeball or whatever, and time got away, Mom could always pick up the phone and start dialing you know, one street down.They’d say, “No, I believe they went down to the playground.” She’d dial down to the neighbor that sort of was next door to the playground, and they’d come out on their porch,“Davy, Jimmy, time to go home, you’re late for supper!” So they had this network, everyone knew everyone, and knew whose kids were whose, and it was just different that way. Everyone watched for everyone else.
MR. MCDANIEL: So it was pretty safe.
MR. MILLER: Well, safe as far as being kidnapped or anything, but you know, kids are kids. You’re still going to ride out the street with your bicycle, but yeah, it was a wonderful time for me.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you went in the Navy, then you worked for TVA, moved back to Oak Ridge. Why’d you move back to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Well, we came back, Joseph and Ben were around 5th grade or so, they were getting ready to go into the Junior High School. I really wanted them to take advantage or have, be exposed to the things that I was exposed to. I didn’t take advantage of the school system. I just, you know, absorbed whatever they finally beat into my head, but we had, you know…One of the kids was just a great student, and I thought he could really take advantage of the school system, and it turned out, he did. We’ve got two kids, one kid we had one 1.4 student and one 4.1 student, so we got both ends of the school system, and they both turned out great.
MR. MCDANIEL: Why do you think the Oak Ridge system is so good?
MR. MILLER: Well, you don’t think about it when you’re a kid, but looking back, second grade, one of my best buddies, Freddy Baes, his mom was from Costa Rica.She would come in and we would have Spanish class. Not just, you know, learn a couple words, but she would, we would have a Spanish class. We were exposed to Spanish in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, right up through elementary school. Gave you a pretty good foundation, you know, for a language later.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, so we’re talking about school systems.
MR. MILLER: Yeah, the teachers, not only were they very well educated and from all over the country.But, one story I’m almost embarrassed to talk about, but growing up in Oak Ridge, everyone was the same as far as everyone had a bicycle, or, you know, enough money to buy their milk at lunch, or this sort of thing.There wasn’t a huge difference from the professor’s kids to the laborer’s kids. You really didn’t know who was who.About our 3rd grade teacher realized that we were living in this bubble, and while we were getting a good education, we weren’t getting a real piece of reality.She arranged for us to change, exchange, gifts one Christmas with a school just over the hill, five minutes away. And, the boys were to get a little boy’s gift, and the girls were to get a girl’s gift, and not to spend more than a buck or something. So, we were all excited, you know, Christmas early. We piled on the bus and went over to Norwood, and, we go in, and it was just an eye-opening experience. Here’s a group five minutes away, you know, some of them had shoes, some of them didn’t, most of them had patches on their clothes or whatever.We went ahead and exchanged gifts.We got, you know, carved items, or homemade popsicle stick frames, and we had bought them, you know, slinkies, and toys.And that, I’ll just never forget. That, yeah, you know, there was a big world outside these fences that we didn’t know a lot about. And I appreciate her for that.
MR. MCDANIEL: What were the advantages and disadvantages of that? I mean, obviously, the advantages were that you had a fairly happy childhood here.Do you think that was a disadvantage later on in life?
MR. MILLER: I guess it depends on what you end up doing later in life.But in one respect it was, of course, an advantage to have a very active police force, you know.There was a policeman on every corner, every neighborhood, you know, even the kids knew the police officers’ names, and half the time, he knew theirs. And, not through trouble, they were just Major Miller’s kids, or Vandenbach’s son, or whatever. It was just, a really tight situation. I really, I don’t know. I don’t know what the disadvantage might be, other than not knowing the other side of the coin. That, you know, not everyone’s so well protected or educated or, they don’t have the advantages we had.
MR. MCDANIEL: Do you think that’s mainly because of the way that this city was set up and the people that came in? Why do you think that was, because of the government?
MR. MILLER: Well, I think primarily, it was due to the citizens. The mothers and the dads who overall, were well-educated, on the most part, and knew what was good in life, and what was bad, and they had a chance to start over as well.You know, at the young age of 28 or whatever, all these parents in here had a chance to build their town just the way they would like it to be, without a lot of outside influences. They could control how the schools were built, how the government was run, you know, whether it was wet or dry. They could start over, so they had a pretty good chance to build a new town.
MR. MCDANIEL: So it was almost kind of like a utopia.
MR. MILLER: It was, it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: And it was also, maybe, inadvertently, a social experiment.
MR. MILLER: Well, I’m sure it was. I don’t know what, you know, our founding fathers were thinking.But they had to know they had a pretty good opportunity, a good thing going, to have this fence around their city, and total control of what came in, what was taught, you know, without, the problems of low income or crime, or all these other outside influences that take away from that focus.

MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, good. Do you remember any funny things that happened? Remember any instances when you were growing up in Oak Ridge, things that would be unique to living here rather than living someplace else?
MR. MILLER: Oh, I’m sure, I’m sure there was a lot of unique things.Again, you don’t realize them until you grow up and move away, but in 2nd grade, there was always air raid drills and fire drills.We were having an air raid drill, miraculously, it always just came a minute or two before the recess bell rang.We’d all moan and stand up, and march like little ducks out to the school yard, out to Tennessee Avenue behind the teacher. We’d walk toward Kern Methodist, about time we’d get within sight of the church up there, the all-clear would sound, we would do an about-face, and we would all march back into the school yard. She would excuse us for recess, there wasn’t enough time left for everyone to swing or choose up teams, the bell would ring back up and school would go. After about the 3rd or 4th or 5th one of those during the year, I loved my recess, you know. I asked the teacher,“Now, if this wasn’t a drill, where were we going, where would we go if we didn’t turn around for the all clear.” And she told me Jellico. Well, that sounded like a good, official answer, so I let it go and didn’t think another thing about it, went on for the next several years doing the fire drill. I think I was in junior high, maybe even high school, I don’t know, and we were doing, studying geography or Tennessee history, and Jellico came up. I said,“Jellico, yeah. Now, that’s where we were supposed to be marching.” So later, I found the evacuation plan, and sure enough, everyone over on the east end of town, from the Grove and in Glenwood and those, we were to march to Jellico, for cover in the event of this terrible event, and…
MR. MCDANIEL: And how far away was that?
MR. MILLER: Oh, Jellico, up on the Tennessee line, behind our, seeming it, 80-year old 2nd grade teacher at the time.She was going to march all of us up there. I would compare notes with my buddies later on in the high school, on the west in, yeah, they had it just as bad.They were supposed to march to Oneida, and I think Woodland and Scarboro, that area, were to march to Sweetwater, so, I thought, “You know, what a plan for this modern, scientific city, to march their kids in case of attack, to the corners of the states.”
MR. MCDANIEL: Who came up with that plan?
MR. MILLER: Oh, I’m sure it was part of the civil defense, or, again, some, uh, I guess it’s as good a plan as any. What are you really going to do, other than your duck and cover? You ought to try to get away.People advertised that we were number one or number two target during the Cold War.That, they wanted to get us out of here.So those were kind of spooky times as a kid too.One of my older brothers went off to the service, oh my little brother and I were a year apart.It was great news.We got to move into their bedroom, and part of that deal was it came with a little radio. And, Dad was real strict, we couldn’t play it after bedtime, but we would always crack it on, only to hear another air raid drill, you know, right before you dozed off to sleep.So, there was many nights you kind of slept with one eye open, wondering if you were going to get annihilated during the night.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet that was scary, especially that time, early 60’s and all that.
MR. MILLER: Oh yeah, late fifties and, it was serious business. We were always practicing and drilling, and the plan wasn’t perfect, the evacuation plan. Dad then, had gone from the Corps of Engineers to AEC, and it rolled over to the AEC role.He was a director.Every now and then he would come home with this green can, to test to make sure that the fallout shelter’s food was still good.We would unpeel a military ham packed in, I don’t know what it was, and Mom would bake it up. I guess we didn’t get botulism, so I guess that meant the bunker was good. One night at dinner, I guess, again, I was junior high age or so,the discussion came up about the evacuation plan. “Dad, where are you going to go in the event of a bomb?” “Well,” he would tell me, “they have a fall-out shelter under the AEC building.” “Oh, ok, and Mom would meet you there?” “Well, no,” and then he would go on,“you kids would march to Jellico, and Mom would, she would be going with us to Jellico.”“No, no,” and we start getting kind of alarmed.Well, they didn’t really, they had all the employees accounted for, and all the school kids accounted for, but the moms, I guess they were sort of supposed to fend for themselves. I didn’t really like that plan, but I thank God that we never had to use it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what did your dad do?
MR. MILLER: Dad was with the Corps of Engineers, a supply chief, he came down, Mom and Dad came down in August of ‘43. Right before he came, he and Col. Nichols, I believe the folks have heard of, and Col. Johnson, Dad was asked to tag along, to the depository, where they talked to the Undersecretary Bell.He was there when they made the deal to borrow the silver. Dad pooh-pooh’s the story, that the Troy ounce story didn’t really happen.He was surprised how cordial and how easy the whole transaction went.That it was just a matter of agreement between the secretary of the treasury and the Army, and it was a done deal. The biggest hang-up, and it was minor, was what about in between, not when the depository owned it, not when the Army owned it, but about the travel. What happened to the silver in the mean time? And, of course, they worked that out with great detail. But he said it was one of the easiest things he had to deal with.
MR. MCDANIEL: So he said that Troy ounce story never happened.
MR. MILLER: No, he said it makes a great story.And you know, that’s part of the fun of all this.But that he didn’t recall anything when they told him how many tons they needed,he was just nonchalant, like,“Yeah, we’ve got that.”
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow, so he worked for the AEC, after the war?
MR. MILLER: Yeah, when he was discharged from the Army, he rolled right into the position he was doing and became supply director at AEC, overseeing just a real wide range of needs.
MR. MCDANIEL: And did he do that until he retired?
MR. MILLER: Yeah, he retired with like 40, I think 41 years, government service, and retired here in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, the Atomic Energy Commission, how long did it, well, it turned into…
MR. MILLER: I think AEC turned into DOE [Department of Energy] about 1970.
MR. MCDANIEL: That’s right.
MR. MILLER: He had retired just shortly before that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. MILLER: I think he actually retired before they built the new buildings. So, his career was at the Castle [Castle on the Hill], which is long gone.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, now, you’re a collector of, how’d they say about Indiana Jones? He’s an acquirer of rare artifacts?
MR. MILLER: Well, I mean it’s natural, sitting around the dining room table here, and hearing all the stories of the mud and the boots and the workers, and you know, all that was just a faded memory.Yet there were parts of it that, of course,that still remain: the buildings were still there.So it was easy to imagine what it was like to ride around in the MP’s Jeep or whatever.If the lost kids would get picked up by the MP and dragged home,they’d ask,“Who do you belong to?”And,“Well, I’m Major Miller’s boy,” and my brother Tommy.He was class of ’59.He came here when he was three, and oh, around, he was about four or five.He had wandered off down toward Jackson Square, and some of the MP’s had spotted him, and knew he was in an area he didn’t need to be in, wherever it was.And they asked him, and he said he was Major Miller’s son, so they picked him up, put him in the back of this open Jeep, and drove him right to 305 West Fernhill, you know. Dad and Mom scolded him for wandering off, but to him, it was that free ride in that Jeep.Of course, as soon as they turned their heads, he was ready for another ride in that Jeep. He was always wandering off, hoping he’d get picked up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, that’s funny.
MR. MILLER: Free Jeep ride.
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely, well, that’s great, that’s great. So now, you’re a collector, tell us about what you’re doing now.
MR. MILLER: Since our retirement, we’ve done several things, but I’ve always been a collector of Manhattan project memorabilia from the buttons and badges to letters and books, and photographs, postcards, just the old furniture even. It’s hard to find the old dormitory furniture.But we gather that stuff up and try to get it all preserved. From that, and having the antique store, people would come in from, of course, all over the world, visiting, or coming in for class reunions, and what have you, and want an Oak Ridge souvenir. And there just wasn’t many, or any, available, from a shot glass to a souvenir spoon, or what have you, and I just always saw that as an area that needs to be taken care of. So, now that I’ve got this spare time, retired, we’ve started a little business, and we hope to fill that niche, where we can have Manhattan Project memorabilia or souvenirs, mugs, pins, badges, just little things that someone can take home with them.
MR. MCDANIEL: It’s called…
MR. MILLER: Oh, the name of the company is SecretCityStore.com, the Secret City Store, and our website is secretcitystore.com. And we hope to have that open real soon, and allow you to order anything from this movie, posters, autographed by the director and producer, t-shirts, mugs, just whatever, Christmas gifts. Karen’s Jeweler’s has provided the electron ring pendant, 14k gold with little diamonds.So we’ve got, you know, just a little something for everyone. Gift certificates if you can’t decide what to pick out. We’ll sell you a gift certificate and let you hand that to your loved one, and they’ll pick.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that’s pretty good.
MR. MILLER: Oh, I’ll probably think of something later.
MR. MCDANIEL: That’s all right, we’ll interview you again, if you think about it.
[End of Interview]