Transcript of interview with Billy Paul Smith by Claytee White, October 3, 2013

An Interview with Billy Paul Smith An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White African American Collaborative Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©African Americans in Las Vegas: A Collaborative Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2012 COMMUNITY PARTNERS Henderson Libraries Las Vegas Clark County Public Libraries Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries Wiener-Rogers Law Library at William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas Las Vegas National Bar Association Vegas PBS Clark County Museum Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Editors: Barbara Tabach, Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the African Americans in Las Vegas: A Collaborative Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada Las Vegas iv Preface Chemist, mathematician, and health physicist Billy Paul Smith donates time to tutor young people in hopes of attracting more youth into the fields of math and science. Born in 1942 and schooled in segregated black schools in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Texarkana, Texas, he graduated from high school at age fifteen and enrolled at Prairie View A&M University, where he trained with the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and earned his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry and in 1964 his Master’s degrees in chemistry and math. Most young U.S. Army officers in 1964 went to Vietnam, but Billy’s math and science background steered him to the Army Chemical Corps, where he was quickly selected to join a new team. The team was to develop responses to nuclear weapon accidents and worked under the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At the same time, Billy completed the Weapons Ordinance Army course on classified information relating to the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. In this interview, Billy talks about his service with DASA and his subsequent twenty-seven years working at the Nevada Test Site in a variety of positions with Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company, Inc. (REECo), a company that had “percentagewise more blacks in management positions than any other [Las Vegas] company.” He experienced the quiet racism of Las Vegas residential segregation when he tried to purchase a house in a neighborhood he liked and the unexpected kindness of the REECo general manager, Ron Keen, who made sure the Smith family could live where they wanted to live. He talks about Area 51 and explains underground testing activity and offers the scientific and ecological reasons why scientists deemed Yucca Mountain safe to store nuclear waste. After retiring at fifty-two, Billy and a colleague formed an independent instrumentation company, which, from 1995–2005 provided and calibrated radiological measurement and detection instruments for the decommissioning and closure of the Rocky Flats nuclear plant in Golden, Colorado. During that time, Billy rented an apartment in Boulder, but he and Jackie maintained their Las Vegas home, where they still reside. Billy shares memories of places he and his wife used to enjoy on the Westside and tells of their longtime friends in the black community. He also talks about developing his philosophy of philanthropy through Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and discusses becoming a member of the Knowledge Fund Advisory Council for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) and the advisory council for the Nevada System of Higher Education. v vi Table of Contents Interview with Billy Paul Smith October 3, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee D. White Preface………………………………………………………………………………………..…..vi Talks about growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, through fifth grade and Texarkana, Texas, where he graduated at 15 from a segregated black high school, Dunbar High School. Describes how he came to attend Prairie View A&M University, major in chemistry, enroll in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), and earn his Master’s degree in chemistry and math……..1-4 Recalls entering the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and almost immediately being selected for a special team under the Defense Atomic Support Agency in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to develop responses to nuclear weapon accidents while attending the Weapons Ordinance Army course on classified information relating to the nuclear weapons arsenal……………………4-7 Describes responding to a wintertime nuclear accident off the coast of Greenland inside the Arctic Circle, where he and his team, guided by Eskimos, traveled in dogsleds, slept in igloos, and saw no sun for 35 days….…………………………………………………………………7-11 Remembers coming to the Nevada Test Site to train with the testing program and in 1968 accepting a job with Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company, Inc. (REECo). Describes telling his REECo bosses how he tried to buy a house in a particular neighborhood but was racially steered to the Westside by the sales agent. Recalls the REECo general manager Ron Keen calling to ask exactly what happened, whereupon Keen called the bank, and the sales agent called to tell Smith he could buy whatever house he wanted in that neighborhood………11-14 Talks about different positions held at REECo and details the work of a field health physicist; describes the location of the neighborhood in which he bought. Claims REECo likely had “percentagewise more blacks in management positions than any other company in this town and many other government contractors,” like Al Davis, Claudette Deenus Al Frazier, Lavonne Lewis, Joe Neal, Art Williams, and more…………………………………………………..14-18 Tells of his fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha; local fraternity brothers, Cranford Crawford and George Simmons; and some of their philanthropies; describes how he tries to instill a passion for math and science in local students………………………………………………………………….18-22 Discusses his sons and recalls how he and his wife went to house parties and clubs like Dirty Sally’s and The Fox Trap. Talks about consulting for M.H. Chew & Associates. Shares that his children were the fifth living generation of his mother’s family; his great-grandmother’s parents were born into slavery. Describes his wife’s activities and friends…………………………22-26 vii Returns to his work at REECo and Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc. (EG&G) before retiring at 52 years and, with a colleague, of forming an instrumentation company, Alpha Group & Associates, LLC, which, from 1995–2005 provided and calibrated radiological measurement and detection instruments for the decommissioning and closure of the Rocky Flats nuclear plant in Golden, Colorado. Discusses joining Mel Chew’s team of health field physicist consultants in 2005, joining the Knowledge Fund Advisory Council for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED), and being on the advisory council for the Nevada System of Higher Education…..…………………………………………………………………………………26-30 Remembers his grandfather. Tells of going to the Moulin Rouge and Cove Hotel on the Westside and shares an anecdote about boxer Sonny Liston; also recalls The Place and Bob Bailey’s Sugar Hill. Talks about Area 51……………………………………………………………………30-34 Describes hazardous debris resulting from underground testing activity at the Nevada Test Site; explains the nuclear waste Yucca Mountain project was designed to handle, why scientists deem it geologically safe, and how the public does not correlate risk with hazards…………….34-39 Describes difference between craters and retarcs formed by underground testing; touches on the politics of the Yucca Mountain project; talks about trying to attract young people into fields of math and science and tutoring the youth of his church…………………………………..40-46 viii This is Claytee White. It is October third, 2013. I am with Mr. Billy Paul Smith and we are in the [National] Atomic Testing Museum's library. How are you this morning? Just fine, thank you. Fantastic. I'd like to begin by just talking about your early life, where you grew up, what your parents did for a living, those kinds of things. Well, I was born in a small town just west of Texarkana, Texas, Maud, M-A-U-D, Texas. And my parents were George and Ida Smith. My dad was from Shreveport, Louisiana. They immediately, right after my birth, moved back to Shreveport, to my dad's hometown; that's where his parents were. And so my early preschool years were in Shreveport. You were born when? 1942, June 29th, 1942. I started—I don't know whether it was preschool, but I went to elementary school in Shreveport, Shreveport Elementary School. When I went into the end of my fifth grade year, my mom and dad essentially separated and she moved back to Texarkana with her two sons, me and my brother, Kenneth. I started sixth grade in Texarkana and went through the completion of elementary school and went through high school at a segregated high school at that time and it was Dunbar High School. I graduated salutatorian in 1959 at Dunbar High School. What did your mother do for a living? Oh. Let's see. What did Mom do? Mom was a bottle inspector at the Coca-Cola Bottling Company. My dad was a union heavy equipment mechanic. So now we're up through high school and I've graduated. So right after high school—I graduated pretty early. As a matter of fact, I was 15 when I graduated. 2 Were you mature enough for college? I'll answer that question as I go through this dialogue. Okay, good. I decided to go and live with my dad, who was then working out of Port Newark in Newark, New Jersey. So I went up to Newark, New Jersey and moved in with him with an anticipation of going to the Newark College of Engineers in aeronautical engineering because I had acquired a hobby of building and flying model airplanes. So airplanes just fascinated me. So I thought maybe aeronautical engineering might be the thing for me to do. So that summer I went to Newark and moved in with my dad. We had a very good relationship. My mom and dad maintained a good relationship all through both of their lives. My dad passed away in '74. My mom is still alive. She's 93 and unfortunately still driving. But she's not here in Las Vegas? No. I wouldn't let her drive in Las Vegas. I might have to move out of town. So when I went to New Jersey I decided to get myself a little part-time job. I got a job at a men's haberdashery store in downtown Newark, New Jersey called Howard Clothiers. When people would come in and buy suits and haberdasheries and they'd get them tailored, I'd take them to the tailor shop and back and forth to the stores between the small towns there located near and around Newark. I was making big money; I was making a dollar an hour. So this was pretty good. I applied to the Newark College of Engineers and I did not get in, in the starting fall semester. They accepted me for the semester that started around January. So I said, okay, that's fine; I'll just make this big money. And so when time for me to go and enroll, when the second semester started, my logic at that time says, well, I'm making all this money; I don't need to start 3 school right now in the middle of the year; I'll wait until September. So I didn't enroll. So by the time summer rolled around—my mom was very concerned that I didn't enroll in January—she asked me what was I going to do. And I said, well, I don't know; I'll wait and see how this works out. So I had an uncle—his name was Charles Harrison—that used to teach at Prairie View A&M [University]. She said, well, I'm going to tell you. She said you are going to college in September somewhere. She said I'm going to go call Charlie and tell him to make sure he gets you into Prairie View in September. So she did and told me, now, you go. She says and if you only want to stay one semester...but you will stay one semester. So I went and they didn't offer aeronautical engineering. They offered other—electrical, mechanical, civil, architectural, but not aeronautical. So I wasn't interested in engineering. As a high school student it was very easy for me to do mathematics and science. So I went down for freshman week and all the freshmen would get together. And the various people, the way they did things there, would come in and talk about their various departments and see who wanted to pursue interests in those particular areas. And I didn't know. They said anybody interested in mathematics go with Dr. Stewart. People got up and went over with Dr. Stewart. Anybody interested in biology, go see Dr. Meyers. Anybody interested in chemistry follow Dr. O'Banyon. I'm sitting there and this good-looking honey got up and walked and went over there. I said that's what I'm going to do. Basket weaving. It doesn't make any difference. Yes. It didn't make any...I don't care. So I went over there. And where had she gone, to which of the subjects? Chemistry. I knew her name. I can't remember her name right now. But anyway, we all became chemistry majors. Her last name was Green. What was her first name? But we decided that our 4 major was going to be chemistry. So we had to sign up for all the chemistry and mathematics and other required courses, English and history and all that other kind of stuff. Prairie View A&M was a state school that required freshmen and sophomores to participate in ROTC for the two years. Then if you were selected you were offered the opportunity to stay in the advanced Corps your junior and senior year and when you finished you would get a commission in the [United States] Army as an officer. It was a pretty good deal because I got a check every month for $26.90 a month. That was big money. Anyway, I graduated from Prairie View in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a minor in mathematics. There was a young professor that had just gotten his doctorate degree, a young black man, Charles Erdie. Dr. Erdie, had just come to Prairie View and started some research in X-ray crystallography and he asked me would I stay on and pursue a master's degree in chemistry and he would be my advisor in X-ray crystallography. So I decided that would be a good thing to do. Vietnam was raging hot and heavy and I was a newly commissioned [Army] officer and that was one of the ways that I could keep from going to Vietnam right away. So I stayed another two years and finished up my master's in chemistry and math. Then I had to go on active duty and I went to—because of my major being chemistry—the Army, you could get into various branches. You could get into infantry, the engineering corps, the artillery and whatever. But they also had a Chemical Corps. The Chemical Corps was the smallest branch in the Army. There were only 12 hundred people in the Chemical Corps and they were responsible for all the chemical, radiologic and biological systems that the Army used. So my basic training was in Fort McClellan, Alabama, in the Officer Basic Course for six weeks. While I was in that class a B-52 airplane crashed in Spain, Palmera, Spain, with some 5 nuclear weapons onboard and two of them fell on the ground and two of them fell in the ocean. The Army had to sort of scurry around; the military, DOD [Department of Defense] had to scurry around to try and figure out how they were going to handle that particular situation. And they realized that they had some shortfalls in knowing how and what to do. So the DOD put out a blanket order; let's put some people there, some specialists together that will prepare the military to respond to these kinds of accidents and incidences. So they came to my class in Fort McClellan, Alabama and out of a hundred and some odd people that were in that class, they selected four people out of that class based on their education and their experience. And they didn't have much experience, but the thesis work that they had done, thesis and dissertation work that they had done. They got me. Now, if you know anything about the Army, you know there's not—I'm not going to say that. My master's thesis was on the X-ray crystallography of a particular crystal type, which means I had to use some radiation, X-rays. I guess the Army looked at that and said, well, here's somebody who knows something about radiation; we don't have to start from zero. So they picked me and another guy named Evan Church who was a chemical engineer and they picked a Ph.D. in physics and they picked another guy that was a chemical engineer from Auburn University. So the four of us were selected and sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico to put together a team of people that would be capable of responding to nuclear weapon accidents and incidences anywhere in the world. So we went to Albuquerque and became a part of the Defense Atomic Support Agency. They called it DASA, D-A-S-A. We assembled specialists from around—the thing that was unique about DASA is that you could be a member of this particular group regardless of the service that you belonged to. You could be in the Air Force, Navy, Army; it didn't matter as long as you had a particular set of expertise and skills. 6 So we put this team together, decided what kind of equipment that we would have to have, what kind of radiation detectors we would have to have, what kind of decontamination equipment and materials we would have to have, and the kind of training that we would have to put people through in order to be competent in using these kinds of things. So we spent most of our time training with simulated accidents and incidences. In the meantime, when we weren't training we went through—the officers did, the four of us—we went through what the Army called the WOA course, the Weapons Ordinance Army course that trained us in the classified information that we needed to know about the nuclear weapons that were in the arsenal. That was pretty intense and sort of prestigious in a way. I didn't think it was so prestigious later on because it prevented me from going to Vietnam because I wanted to go to Vietnam then, believe it or not, but they wouldn't send me because they had sent me to this WOA course and I had too much classified information in my head that they wouldn't send me. The reason why I wanted to go...because all of the officers at that time were making rank very quickly. I mean they were just going up the rank. And rank was that important? Well, you know, second lieutenant, first lieutenant, captain, major. And you were already what? I was commissioned a second lieutenant and I was promoted to first lieutenant in one year. The day I got out, and I got out two years after being in, I was promoted to captain. But before I got out—I got out in June of 1968—in January of 1968 we would have monthly drills of the teams. We had four separate teams and each one of these teams stayed on what we called alert for one week of the month. So if the balloon went up, we had to respond; a particular team that was on alert would respond to that incident. 7 What is a balloon? Oh. If an event occurred, we had to respond; say if there was a plane crash with nuclear weapons on it or something like that. I was on alert this January week and I got a phone call that says come over to our muster location, the location we would assemble. I was stationed in Albuquerque on Sandia Base and we had a place where we would assemble, in an airplane hangar, and go through our checklist and make sure that all of our equipment was there, all the people were there, and we were ready to go if we needed to go. Well, this happened randomly but frequently to all of the teams to make sure that we knew what to do, where to go, how to assemble our stuff. Well, this was a Sunday and my wife was cooking dinner. I guess we had been married about a year and a half. So this was not Ms. Green? No. No. No. You're right. No. My wife was cooking dinner. We had a good friend over named George Moss. He was a young captain. He outranked me, but he was an artillery officer. I told him, I said, darn, I've got to go over to this response. I said I'll be back in about an hour. I took off and went over to the muster location and they said this is the real thing and from this point on you cannot call anybody. I said what about my wife? They said we'll take care of that. So we put our equipment on Air Force C-141 cargo planes, trucks, equipment, everything we needed and we took off from Albuquerque, stopped in San Antonio and picked up some more equipment and then took off one more time and started flying north and we flew to Greenland. We flew to a little place inside the Arctic Circle on the west coast of Greenland called Thule, T-H-U-L-E. A B-52 had crashed and it had four nuclear weapons onboard. It had crashed seven miles out at sea. 8 But in January inside the Arctic Circle—there are a couple of things. It's cold. When we landed it was 45 below zero and it was the Arctic winter. We didn't see the sun for 35 days. It was dark; I mean you couldn't tell whether it was noon or midnight. It was dark. The plane crashed out at sea, seven miles out at sea, but the sea was frozen over with ice that was four to five feet thick. So the plane hit the ice like a BB hits a piece of plate glass and just shatters the ice, but it didn't go through. The high explosives and the weapons detonated. That's not a big deal. Oh, it's not? No. They didn't go nuclear and they're designed to be that way. I mean you can drop them and break them. Everything has to happen in a particular sequence in order to make a nuclear weapon work. But these weapons were classified and my team had to go up. When we got there, I led the team out. Well, first off, we had to find out where the plane crashed; we didn't know. The intelligence that we had when we got there from the Air Force people were from the Eskimos that had come back from hunting trips and they told us where the impact sites were. We didn't know the condition of the ice. We didn't know whether or not the ice would support the weight of our trucks and so forth to get out there. So they decided not to let us take our trucks out. So how were we going to get seven of eight miles out? Well, the Eskimos took us out on their dog sleds. Just like “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon,” we went out on the dog sleds. They covered us up with animal skins and they wore caribou parkas and polar bear pants made from polar bear skin, beautiful skins. And did they give you those kinds of clothes, also? No, no, no. Because they had to be handmade. A side story. Eskimo women are considered beautiful if they have no teeth. 9 Because they use the teeth... To chew the hide. They urinate on the hides and chew them to tan them to make it supple so they can make the clothing out of them. Good women. Yeah. Anyway, we went out there and the crash site was about a half mile wide. The plane hit here and threw debris down a mile and a half from the impact site and about a half mile wide. The ice and snow was snow white. The place where the plane hit and the fuel burned was black. It stood out; I mean it was just so easy to see. The contrast was just unbelievable. Then after the fuel burned up—it had melted that much of the snow and ice—it immediately froze. So any contaminates were locked into the ice. About an inch thick. Yeah, right, about an inch thick. But the first thing that we had to do was find the classified components of the weapons. So we got the Air Force to bring out their enlisted men and we told them what to look for and what the shapes were and they would find pieces of materials. The biggest pieces of that plane were about postage stamp size that were left. They brought us these pieces and we had to find the classified components of the weapons and secure them. After we did that then the issue was to clean up the radioactive contamination that was in the weapons themselves. Then the engineers had come out and already decided that the thickness of the ice would be safe enough to support equipment up to a certain weight for a certain period of time, through early spring. So they had road graders. They'd grade the dirt and they lined it up and picked it up in front-end loaders and they put it in big, huge barrels and welded them shut and put them on barges and sent it back to South Carolina for burial. Well, I was there for that for 35 days. 10 In the Arctic [Circle]? In the Arctic. Out on the— Out on the ice. The Eskimos had actually built us igloos, eight-men igloos they built in 20 minutes. They'd find a snowdrift. Now, at 45 below, believe me there is no humidity in the air. There's no moisture in the air; it's frozen out, right? So it's crisp. I mean it's crisp. They'd find a snowdrift and they'd take a carpenter saw and just saw this snowdrift. It would saw pretty easily and it's very light. They made a big cube out of it, about like so. I mean the thing [igloo] was about three feet long, about two feet high and about eight inches thick. They made a lot of blocks like that. Then they would bevel one edge so it would tilt over like that and they would butt them together and then they'd stagger them along the way and then put loose snow in the crevices and then go inside. The wind always blew from south to north. They'd go inside and tell Eskimo jokes for about 30 minutes with a Coleman lantern and their body heat would generate enough energy to melt the snow on the inside and it was like glass, completely airtight. The temperature went from minus 45 degrees to zero; it went up 45 degrees. You had to take off your parkas; it was too hot in there. At zero? At zero. So those were built for us for emergency shelters because the winds would come up and sometimes they would blow as fast as 70 miles an hour, which is threatening the life at that temperature. So we couldn't be outside at that time; we had to be in our emergency shelters if we weren't back on base, the seven miles away. So what do you sleep in because you're sleeping on ice? Sleeping bags. 11 And that insulates you from the coldness of the floor, of the ice floor. Oh, yes, sure. Sure, sure, sure. Right. It's just unbelievable. The down that filled the sleeping bags and were in the parkas and stuff that we wore. We went to the Eskimo village and had to survey the Eskimo village for contamination. We surveyed their clothes and we found some contamination on one of the Eskimo's pants, polar bear pants. One of our technicians was trying to take the guy's pants because he felt that they were hazardous to his health, which in a sense makes sense, but culturally it didn't because if we lose a pair of pants we go over to Mervyns and get us another pair. When you've got to kick a polar bear's behind to get a pair of pants that's a different ball game. And then the woman has to gnaw it. Yes, right, right. Eskimos were nice to be around at minus 45 below zero. But as the temperature got higher and higher and higher, they started smelling more like a bathroom because that was in the hides that they wore. How interesting. That was one of the greatest experiences. I'll never forget it as long as I live. Wow. So how did they inform your wife and what did they tell her? They told her that I was on a mission and I was fine; that I would be able to call her once I got there, but I wouldn't be able to give her much information about what was going on or where I was; but if she needed anything, to call this person at this number and they'd get her whatever she needed. She told me that was the greatest time of her life. [Laughing] I love it. She was pregnant at the time. She had just gotten pregnant because our son was born that 12 following August and this was January. Anyway, when we weren't training in and around Albuquerque, the four officers had to come to the Nevada Test Site to participate with the testing program folks because we were nuclear weapons officers. We had trained that way and understood the various systems. We stayed out here TDY, temporary duty, for two or three weeks at a time and then we'd go back to Albuquerque and resume our training. So I met a lot of the people, the contractors who worked for [Department of Energy] DOE and REECo [Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company, Inc.]. When I decided that I wasn't going to get to Vietnam—well, I didn't decide that; they decided I wasn't going to get to go to Vietnam—I decided, well, I'm going to get out and get me a job. These people from REECo approached me. He said, man, we ain't never seen no black guy doing what you're doing. Would you be interested in coming to work for us? I said, well, what are you paying? Big money. See, this started way back. I says I'll be there. So when I got out in June of '68, I started to work for REECo as a health physicist July first, 1968. I was working with the same folks that I had worked with while I was in the military working at the site on the various tests, so I knew a lot of them already. I worked as a field health physicist—I'm sorry. You have a question? So you moved the family here in '68? Yes. My wife had the baby in August of '68 and her mother, being from the old school, said you don't go nowhere for six weeks. She went home to her mother, had the baby, and six weeks later she moved here and brought the baby. So then I went from doing field health physics; I took over the dosimetry organization, which is in the bio there, because I had done that in the Army. I had ran the dosimetry 13 organization; I ran the dosimetry organization in the Army for our group. Then there was a construction strike at the Nevada Test Site. People were asked to take leave without pay in order to keep the budgets, kind of like what's going on now, I guess. I guess I was sort of a rabble rouser; I didn't think that was fair. Messing with my money. Of course. Let me back up a second. When I first came here and my wife came and I was looking for this house, I found this house. A buddy of mine that worked with me, a field health physicist like me, a white guy, he says, hey, man, they got some nice houses right around me where I live and you ought to look over there. So I went and looked over there. I said I like this. So where were you? Right off Rancho [Drive] and Mesquite [Avenue]. There was a tract of homes over there owned by First Western Bank. I called a representative and he was sort of hesitant about showing me around, but he says, but I know where there are some houses you'll really like. Sounds familiar, huh, Claytee? Yes. Anyway, I said I don't want to live over here. He took you to Berkley Square? I don't know exactly where he took me right now. But anyway, the next day I was back at work and one of my bosses asked me, he said, well, how did your house hunting go? And I told him what happened. He went to the general manager of REECo who was Ron Keen. Ron called me on the phone. I didn't know him. He said tell me exactly what happened. And I told him. He says I know those people over at First Western. He says let me see what I can do. And I guess he called them within the next couple of days and then the guy who was showing me around 14 called me back in a couple of days and said, Mr. Smith, I want to take you back over here and let you pick out whatever house you want. So I thanked Ron for that personally and we got to be good friends. After I had been promoted to dosimetry supervisor, Ron came to my office one day. He always was around, all over the site, working and talking to his people. He said, Billy, I'm fixing to reorganize my staff and I want a guy like you on my staff. I said doing what? He said helping me. I said helping you do what? He said whatever I want you to do. I said, Ron, I'm a scientist. He said