Transcript of interview with Eldon Cunningham by Randall L. Williams, March 14, 1981

UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham i An Interview with Eldon W. Cunningham An Oral History Conducted by Randall L. Williams Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as 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. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham iv Abstract On March 14, 1981, Randall Williams interviewed Eldon Cunningham (born 1920 in Granby, Missouri) about his life in Las Vegas, Nevada. Cunningham first talks about his family background, his reason for moving to Las Vegas, and his service in the military during World War II. He also mentions the Twin Lakes area of Las Vegas, his hobby of prospecting, and his work with Clark County Electric as an electrician. Cunningham also talks in detail about some of his experiences while working at the Nevada Test Site in electrical work. As the interview concludes, Cunningham talks more about family illnesses, experiments at the Test Site, and his former hunting practices. UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 1 Okay, here the interviewee is Eldon Cunningham, and the interviewer is Randall L. Williams. Eldon, where were you born, and where about? Granby, Missouri. It’s a little town. It was a mining town south of Joplin, Missouri, about thirty miles. Joplin was a lead and zinc area, and it extended down into Granby in that area, and we had a stock farm out there—raised mules. My father had a breeding farm with jacks instead of horses for graft animals and field work till the tractor came in. Then we converted it into a dairy farm, and I lived there till I was twenty years old. And I went to Los Angeles; I worked at Lockheed for two-and-a-half years, and I got married. World War II came along; I went in the service for three years. I was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, which then was called Las Vegas Army Airfield. I went through gunnery training there after being in cadets and for the convenience of the government was washed out, and they put me in gunnery training. That must’ve been pretty exciting. It was. I wouldn’t be in the pilot training ‘cause I was already a pilot, and I had no private license before I went in the service, but it was good they had so many pilots by the time I got into the program—they didn’t know what to do with them so they put us out into the fields. Some went to the infantry and artillery, but I was lucky enough, I did stay in the Air Force. You were in the Air Force (unintelligible) brought you here to Las Vegas? Well, no, not really. I was married here in 1942, and my wife’s parents lived at Blue Diamond; my father worked for Blue Diamond Corporation out here. He was transferred from the Los Angeles office, and they lived here. And when we got into the service, he stayed with them while I was in the service. She worked at the Blue Diamond Corporation in the office all the time I was in the service. And when I got out, I had had sinus problems all my life, and the year-and-a-half I was here at the air base, that cleared up completely. I wasn’t bothered with any sinus problems. UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 2 So the weather was very beneficial to your health? Yes, and I wanted to stay here, but I had a job promised back in Lockheed, and everyone who went in the service at that time could go back and take their old job to work. Well, I got out of the service and decided that’s what I would do. We moved one load of furniture down there. And I had worked as an electrician before my brother; he did contracting back in Missouri before I left there, and I helped him kind of like the electrical field. So, I made a statement to a friend of ours in Las Vegas that I’d sure like to get into it. So he said, well, he thought he could do it. And he moved the business agent, and being as I had had experience, well, he called him up, and I was supposed to go to Lockheed the following Monday—that was on a Friday—and the business agent said for me to report to the union hall Monday morning and he would put me to work. So I went down Monday morning, went out on the jobs and called Lockheed I told them I wouldn’t be back. So, the next weekend, we went to Los Angeles, brought our furniture back, and have been here ever since. That was in March of 1946. But actually, this has been my home since I went in the service in ’43, ‘cause my wife lived here, and it’s been our home address—Blue Diamond from 1943 until I got out of the service in 1946. And we’ve made a little house in Henderson; I worked Clark County Electric in Las Vegas, and eventually we bought a home in Henderson. We lived there until 1954, and I bought a home—Twin Lakes area was starting to develop in 1953. It had been just a big meadow of Twin Lakes’ swimming pool and there was big pastures there with horses. And some fellows, Harris brothers came up from, I think, Riverside and bought one of these big pastures, and they converted them to what is now called Twin Lakes District. So we bought a home there in 1953 and moved into it—it was finished, moved in to it in June, 1944. Where about was the house, ‘cause I live right in that area? UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 3 It was 910 Baker Street, and that’s the street that comes down to the Twin Lakes school right straight into the lodge now; it crosses Washington and goes right into the Twin Lakes park now. Dad said that, I guess when he used to visit you, he’d go over and go swimming in Lorenzi Pool that they have now. Uh-huh, we used to go over there. They had fishing—I don’t remember what it was, my kids would go out to fish, they were just little fellows, and they stocked one pool with trout, and they could go over there and fish, and you’d pay ten cents each of trout to come. And they’d go there, and it’d kept me broke if I let them fish all the time, but they caught a lot of fish, and they both learned to love to fish and have loved it ever since. I don’t think they have that anymore—haven’t for years, I believe. But back then in the fifties, they had a pool well-stocked with fish. Did you do any travelling while you were here, when you first moved here, like when you were living in the Twin Lakes area? Well, we took trips down. We always took a vacation; we’d go and see Yosemite and went to Yellowstone one year, went to (unintelligible) Park one year, and Canada, and did a lotta travelling like that, then would get out in the hills. I did a lot of prospecting. I always loved prospecting rock hunt, so I was always out on weekends gathering rocks, petrified wood, and (unintelligible) Arizona, around in Nevada here, really. Where were a lot of the good prospecting areas? Well, they are quite a ways from Las Vegas, up in Lincoln County, found some nice geodes up there; there are a still a bunch there where I found a bunch—and haven’t been there in probably ten years, but there’s still a lot of them there. I have several yet over at my other house that I rent out that came from there. I have a rock, so I cut up several of them, but I don’t have time to do too much finishing work, so about all I do is cut them, see what they look like, and set them UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 4 aside and cut another one. But I have several that haven’t been cut over at the other (unintelligible). And I have all kinds of petrified wood, (unintelligible), obsidian, (unintelligible), lots of raw material to work on when I (unintelligible). My main love is to go out and hunt this stuff. I figure I’ll have time, when I can’t do that, I can work on it and cut it up then. And you spend quite a bit of time prospecting, or? Yes, back years ago, my sister I used to teach in Beatty, Irma Cunningham, back in ’46 to ’50-something, my brother worked for the (unintelligible) Mine. He ran the little mill in Beatty. So I would go up there on weekends with family when I had two children, Mike and Arnie, and wife, and we would go up there— Now, Arnie likes to hunt rocks also, right? Yes, I think that’s about her field, probably. She’s an archeologist now; she works for the Forest Service out of Reno. She lives in Carson City. Her husband’s an archaeologist; he works for the State of Nevada. And I think maybe out trips and getting out got her interested in that line of work. We used to go hunt arrowheads when they were little. Yes, I went a couple times (unintelligible) brought me (unintelligible) finding arrowheads and the rocks. She’s always loved it—and fishing. I think that Twin Lakes experiment started her own loving to fish. She could really catch them there, and she’s never given up the idea, she can’t catch them yet, and she can (unintelligible) to pieces. What kind of occupations did you have while you were in Nevada? You worked at the Test Site— Well, I started out long ago in ’46 when I got out of the service, that’s the first job; when I went down, I went to work for Clark County Electric, which was a contractor then. They’re just in UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 5 appliance work now; they were contractors here for years in Las Vegas. Larry Alsley and Bill (unintelligible) started Clark County Electric, and I worked there. And there’s, oh, different things—lots of businesses was going up everywhere, and the old Ronzone store moved from down on about Second Street down to the corner of Fifth and Fremont—big, new store in that time something. And I helped wire that, and Last Frontier hotel did a big remodeling job; I was out there about two years with Clark County Electric working on the Las Frontier on a revamping job on their complete power system. They built the Silver Slipper at that time and put in their own sewage disposal plant. And as I went out there to put in an air conditioning system, which was supposed to have been a three- or four-week job and ended up out there about two years on all this other work. That was, I guess, one of the bigger jobs we did while I was here in Las Vegas. But the numerous homes and businesses all over, we did electrical work on those. I did that until 1951, from ’46 to ’51, I worked there. Where did you get your electrical ambition? I guess it was working with my brother. I was in junior college, and I come home on the weekends and always needed some money. And the REA systems were just going on; there was lots of farms converting to electrical—they never had electrical, used kerosene lamps, gas lamps, gasoline lamps, and things like that. So, he was always wiring homes and barns and everything. So, on weekends, I would work with him; he was busy, he worked seven days a week. There was a big demand—everyone wanted their home wired with these REA lines as a rural electrification the government put in. There was a co-op with money paid for it, and the government paid so much. So, I think of (unintelligible) I was needing some money to spend, so I worked every weekend and on the summers when I could, and so I got to like the work, and that’s all I wanted to do. Then I went to Lockheed and when I left there, I worked there, I went to school as an UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 6 aircraft instrument mechanic technician, I got a license, and I worked in Lockheed about three years in Burbank. That’s when I went in the service from there. And in the service, I went into the cadet program and, say, I was deferred on account of my job at Lockheed, I didn’t get in—I tried to get in when World War II started, and they wouldn’t take me. I wanted to get in the pilot program, and Lockheed said they needed men. So I didn’t get in till ’43. That’s interesting. But I did have my license; I figured when I got in the service, being as I was an aircraft instrument mechanic that that’s where they would put me, but they put me in the cadet program. And then they had too many pilots, so I was washed out of that, and I guess they had too many aircraft instrument technicians, too, so they put me in gunnery school. That’s when I came here to Las Vegas. It was called the Las Vegas—it was the Army Air Corps, is what it was called at that time, and this was the Las Vegas Army Airfield, which is now Nellis. McCarran Field was there at the same time; commercial planes landed there until 1955 or ’56, I guess, somewhere in there, and they moved out. And George Crocket had the place out there called Alamo Airways out on the Old L.A. Highway, and the county got in there, and they moved McCarran Field out to George Crocket’s Alamo Airways about 1956, I’m not too sure. The commercial planes landed right out here at Nellis. Do you know when the North Las Vegas Air Terminal came about? It was before that; there was a fellow with a name of Bud Barrett. He passed away, I guess, about a year ago. He operated this, it was called Sky Haven Airport. I flew there—I used to fly a lot—and I had two planes out there, parked there, at that time. But he sold out at different times. But that’s where it’s originated: Bud Barrett. He had a little charter service; people parked their planes there and did mechanic work. And I don’t remember just offhand—it changed hands two UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 7 or three times. There was another, Bill Horn—he was there in 1951, ’52, and he operated it for a while. And Bud Barrett was kinda in the background, he still owned it. And someone bought it, they called it Sky (unintelligible), and they went bankrupt, and it’s kinda gone from there. Engelstead, I think, I bought it. Then Hughes, I guess, bought it, and then they leased it to Las Vegas—I believe Hughes still owned the property. I’m not sure, but it’s leased to North Las Vegas, I think. I’m not sure what’s going on (unintelligible) but Hughes was buying it and I think leased it to the City of North Las Vegas. Hughes still has operations out there: shops and training and sales. What kind of testing were they doing at the Nevada Test Site when you first started working there? Well, they were open-air shots. See, I guess they didn’t realize too much what research they’ve made in radiation; they thought everything would be all right. They didn’t realize that they keep shooting and keep shooting, there’s (unintelligible) the world, probably. So, for the first several years, they had their first test there in 1951. I came in and (unintelligible) when Las Vegas hardly knew what was going on, they were ready to shoot (unintelligible). They came in from Los Alamos, New Mexico—that’s near Santa Fe—and they put (unintelligible) in 1951. Then, they decided to make it a permanent test site, so they started hiring people from this area then to go up and work. And they used towers and they put them up on 700 or 750-foot towers, detonated them on top of the towers, and there was still some air drops. That went on until 1958 or something, then they had the Test Ban Treaty, so there were no air shots. And the moratorium left and they did have a few down (unintelligible), in ’60 or ’61 had a few open air, and then they’ve all been underground since then. They still test all the time, but they’re all underground. So there’s no radiation, get out into the atmosphere, it’s all contained underground. They did have one UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 8 (unintelligible) send some radiation out here a few years ago, but very (unintelligible). As many as they shoot, it’s pretty safe. With your electrical background, what exactly do you do at the Test Site with the testing? Well, we put in all of the power and all the diagnostic cables that go to the device, back to the diagnostic trailers from the buildings—lay the cable on the ground and (unintelligible) just support everything that goes on with the scientific people. Our crews do most of the actual labor part of it. They don’t do any scientific work; it’s all specialists from Los Alamos, from EG&G. We have handled all the equipment, the cranes, and do all the dirt work to get the event ready and run this electrical work where they drill the holes to put it down and (unintelligible) anything that goes with the operation and get it ready to go. What were some of your key points in life, like maybe some of your higher goals that you had set, or aspirations that you—? Well, the one I had set for years never did come down. I always wanted to be an airline pilot, but got married and then had a child. So I went to work instead of back to school to make a living, and I’ve never been sorry for it. I’ve enjoyed it all, the work, and I flew a lot, which I enjoyed—just went out for pleasure—I haven’t been flying anywhere for a few years, but I probably won’t. I’m sixty years old now, I don’t know. I keep think I’d like to get back in it, but I probably won’t. It’s just a hobby, and it’s pretty expensive, that’s the main reason. I can still go out and take a ride down (unintelligible). Have you ever been in any other kind of activities or other organizations, or? Hmm, no— You were a head of some kind of committee a while back when you first started working at the Test Site, as a kind of an electrical laborers union or something? UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 9 Oh, that was (unintelligible) union, I was, different things there, bylaws, redid the bylaws for the union, like (unintelligible). That was 1954, I guess, had a bunch of problems in the internationals that we had to rewrite the bylaws, get things shaped up with the times, and I was on the committee to do that. But the times have changed; they’ve rewritten them again three or four times since then probably. Have you or any of your family had any serious illness while you’ve lived here in Nevada? Well, yes. My first wife, the mother of my children, she had cancer and passed away in 1971. And my present wife, she’s had cancer, but she’s had surgery and chemotherapy, and it’s been five years—we’ve only been married three years—she had this before we were married, but it’s been five years last November, and she just had her periodic checkup last week, and everything’s perfect. So, say five years, if it doesn’t show up within five years, then shows up, it’s another cancer—it’s not the old one—so, evidently, she’s cured from the original. She’s got it (unintelligible). Any other illnesses besides cancer, like chickenpox or? Oh, we’ve all had that. My children gave me chickenpox 1954. They got the chickenpox, and my mother always said I had had chickenpox, but I guess I hadn’t. I was off work for two weeks with it—sick, didn’t have spot on my body, you could stick the (unintelligible) without hitting a chickenpox mark—a solid mass of scabs and sores. And I was really sick. Quite an ordeal. I’ve always thought it was a little fun thing when I hear about chickenpox, but it’s not—it’s pretty serious for some people, and I was one that happened to be, that was in 1954 around March. And kids got over it two or three days, and I was off work for two weeks with it. I was sick in bed, really sick. We haven’t had any other, I guess, no serious illnesses. UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 10 You had any other activities with any of the other communities around, near Las Vegas and here in Nevada? Oh, not really. I belong to the Sonic Lodge; I go up to Indian Springs once in a while for a meeting or something, but not too often. Do you get into the main purpose of Las Vegas, the gambling and staying out all night? No. There were times I stayed out all nights when we get stuck up on the job and have to work. Sometimes we have company and I go out and get in two or three in the morning, but I try not to do that too much. I used to do it, but anymore, I need to sleep too much it seems. Do you usually win or come out pretty even? I have never won much and never lost much. I am no gambler (unintelligible). I play five dollars and lose it or might win, but I never lose over five dollars when I got out, ‘cause I just don’t care for gambling, really—never have. I’ve gone out many times and never even put a nickel in a slot machine—just watched the rest of them. When you worked at the Test Site, you worked your way up from (unintelligible) you became an engineer? Well— An electrician foreman? I started out, went up January the 11th, 1952, and that was supposed to have been another short job, too, like the one at the Last Frontier. And there was a contractor up there in Newberry of Arizona, had the electrical contract, and they were ending their contract in two weeks, and I had a couple of jobs they was supposed to have finished in this two-week period. So, I went up on that, and we finished that job. And Reynolds Electrical Engineering, which are there now, came up and took the job over. They got the contractor for support, so instead of being laid off, they UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 11 just transferred all of us that were working for Newberry right over to Reynolds. So, we remained there on the job. Then the Reynolds left, then they had the support for the spring in 1952, and they left, and there was a company at the time Reynolds came in who was formed by the (unintelligible) engineers, which was the prime contractor, and Newberry— [Recording cuts out] The company formed there, the Nevada company that had the maintenance, were there for the full year, 1952. And when Reynolds left, I went back to them in June and worked until December 1952. Then their contract ended, and Reynolds came back in and took the whole operation over, maintenance and support out in the area. I worked for Reynolds, then, up until 1963, worked on the Test Site and they did the first tunnel shot, which was the one that amounted to anything, was B Tunnel (unintelligible) A Tunnel. That was much of a job. Then, spring of 1958, the nuclear engine development station started, so Reynolds had to support over there; I went over there in March of 1958 and worked for Reynolds there through that first development of rocket engines till 1963, and Reynolds lost the contract there. And Catalytic Construction in Philadelphia—and Pan American Airways’ support people came in and took over the contract we had been working on. So I quite Reynolds and stayed on the jobs with Catalytic Construction. I was there roughly two-and-a-half years. Then I went back to Reynolds over on the Test Site. Did you work for (unintelligible) when you were working for the other? No. I just liked the work better; it was real good work. It was good electric work you put in to stay (unintelligible) conduit and controls, and it was a more interesting job than the coaxial cable, stuff we had at the Test Site. It was— More of a challenge? UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 12 More of, yes. More experience. Real good work—work would (unintelligible) at the Test Site, you put it in and blow it up and then put in another one. These jobs were put in conduit explosion (unintelligible) stuff, it was put in to stay and was a good permanent installation. It was permanent? And it’s still there in those buildings. They’re standing there like ghosts probably, but there’s still there—conduit and work and everything is almost like we left it. And they finally did fold up, and now there’s other work going on over there, probably some of the MX preliminary stuff over there. What do you think about the MX? Do you think we need that, or do you think it’d be good for Nevada, or? Well, I don’t know it would be good for Nevada, but I think in the meantime we need something. I don’t know if exactly the MX system or—I’d prefer going back to the B-1 Bomber and the submarines myself. And not so much that I think it’s willing to ride in Nevada, but I think we need them to move them around over the world more, and they can put the same thing on the submarine and no one knows where it is. They can pop up closer to their targets, and it’ll be harder to find—that’s just my opinion, I don’t know. I pretty much agree with you the B-1 was supposed to carry about two-thirds a payload of the B-52, and it’s about half the size, and goes supersonic. Yeah, I’d rather see them, so this MX system is (unintelligible)—system would head up Montana and across the Dakotas there, and if they do the MX like it is, it won’t hurt the country (unintelligible). You can drive right along the highways across Montana; there’s a nice little UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 13 complex fenced off there, and that’s where the missiles are right along the highway in instances. And cattle graze right up to the fence and probably much more than five acres, the (unintelligible), and the rest of it’s open range land. And they say that MX will be that way, too. If that’s the way it is, they talk about riding the cattle industry, which is not much of an industry in Nevada to begin with, and closing up mining research, doing away with our water supply. If it doesn’t amount to any more than systems I’ve seen through that country, I can’t see where it would hurt the area a bit. Other than the underground testing at the Test Site, what other kind of rocket engines were they testing? Well, there’s nuclear rocket engines for outer space, primarily, like going to the moon or Mars or (unintelligible). And there was one you could take off in and go way farther than what they have nowadays. But we had one, also called Pluto in design, which was for use down in the atmosphere that I think was, the primary object of it, but they scrapped both programs, and I don’t know why, really—too much money, I think, but most of the test they ran on them were satisfactory as far as I knew. I was there when they had preliminary tests on (unintelligible), they always said they were satisfactory. I really don’t know why it was scrapped. You said something about the U2s; what kinda testing did they do on them? Well, that was, I think, 1955—that was a real secret job, and nobody supposedly knew what they were working on or what was going on until a fella by the name of Powers was shut down in Russia, I guess, in a plane called the U2—it was a spy plane, a high altitude plane, and then it came out that it had been tested and developed (unintelligible) right on to the Test Site. And that’s the job we had worked on (unintelligible) 1955 and built hangars and housing and a cafeteria, power systems, and everything there in 1955. It’s still out there; the operation’s still UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 14 going out there. It’s under the Air Force now; it’s a secret job, and I have no idea what’s going on out there now, and I don’t wanna know. It’s a government secret job. I haven’t been over there for several years—last time I went through there, I had a special permit to go through to make a shortcut going deer hunting, but I haven’t worked there since. I only worked there ’55, ’56 when it first went in, and I was out for a few days at a time on later up till about 1960, ’61, but I haven’t been there since. Other than fishing, do you like to go deer hunting also? I used to. I haven’t been for several years. I used to hunt every year, but last few times we went, game was getting scarce, and so I just quit going. Now you have to— They (unintelligible) for it, but back when I went, you could go get your tag, go anywhere in the state you wanted to go, and sometimes, that might be the reason they’re so scarce now, for special hunts and different tags, (unintelligible), and you could get up to three or four deer in a year legally by going on these special hunts. So, now it’s where you have to draw to get one tag. You have to draw, and then you get picked for a certain area? Yes, you got just an area, but back then what you did was buy a tag and go anywhere you wanted to go, and a lot of the areas, either six, and you could get a buck or a doe and take two or three of those special hunts and you could end up with, I don’t know, four or five deer, one person, in a year back then. That was in the forties and fifties, but they are not that plentiful now, and that could be the reason for it. So other than fishing and deer hunting, you didn’t do any kind of hunting here in Nevada (unintelligible) antelope hunting, or? No, never went antelope hunting. I used to go duck hunting, quail hunting. UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 15 Chukar? No, only one time I went chukar hunting, but I used to love to go duck hunting, go up to Alamo and Pahranagat Lake area, used to go down below Crystal Springs, in between Crystal Springs and Pahranagat Lakes. I used to timber down through there and ducks would fly back and forth between the lakes, the upper lake up toward Hiko, and some would stop on a little stream there, and it was real good hunting. And there was a few pheasant in there and quail. I did quite a lotta duck hunting and quail hunting, mainly, but it’s so scarce, I (unintelligible) do that, I haven’t been out ten years. The limit’s, what, ten per day? Well, it used to be. I don’t know what it is now. I had quail. Okay, well thank you very much, Eldon. I appreciate it. Well, I know there’s a lotta little things about it, but I, just how to put this thing together, but I didn’t finish out my thing on my family. My wife passed away, and about seven years later, I remarried, lady by the name of Ada (Unintelligible) she works as a secretary to Gibson Junior High School. Which I used to go to. Yeah, I remember. And she has two daughters: Gail and Laurie, and they both went to Gibson, Western. And Gail went to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Laurie went to the University of Southern California. She just got her master’s degree in gerontology, 27th of January this year. So, she’s job hunting right now. Gail is a registered nurse at Sunrise Hospital. Ada still works at Gibson. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time. (Unintelligible) I haven’t had time to pick things up. UNLV University Libraries Eldon Cunningham 16 Okay. All right, well take care.