Why Oak Ridge?

Continued...

In August 1943, President Roosevelt decided to create the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. He needed a way to set aside a large sum of money without it becoming obvious what was being done.  Roosevelt asked Senate Budget Committee Chairman McKellar if this could be done.  McKellar is said to have replied, “Yes, Mr. President, I can do that for you ... now just where in Tennessee are you going to put that thang?”

A second McKellar story is related by Lester Fox, local automobile dealer.  In 1942, Lester was attending the Oliver Springs High School.  Lester and a friend were skipping school one day when as they walked by the telephone office, the operator leaned out the door and said, “Lester, go get the principal, he has an important phone call!”  Now, Lester is skipping school, but he and his friend go tell the principal what they were instructed to tell him.  The principal went to the telephone office and took the call.  When he returned to the school, he called all the students into an assembly and told them, “I just got a phone call from Senator McKellar who said for me to tell you to go home and tell your parents that the government is going to need to take your land for the war effort so you need to find other places to live.”  Lester swears this is the way many folks in the area that was to become the Manhattan Project first learned they were going to have to move off their land.  In a matter of days, letters started showing up on the front doors of homes giving people only a few weeks to move and find another place to live.

Special thanks to D. Ray Smith for his contributions to this story.

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