I immediately went into night school at the University of Tennessee, who offered a degree in nuclear engineering here in Oak Ridge. That’s how we ended up coming here, and it was a great career decision. I go back to Penn State and told my wife that we were going to Tennessee and she said, “You’re going where?” But we did, much to her parents’ consternation that I was taking their daughter to Appalachia and we’d have a washing machine on the front porch. I’m just glad I was around to see it happen.”

He sent me a note and he said, “You said you were going to do it. Finally I took his job some thirty years later. I, being a cocky guy from Penn State, said, “To take your job.” He reminded me of that every year. Paul Vanstrum over lunch asked me what was my career goal. One question that they asked me there haunted me then for the next fifty years. Really rolled out the red carpet for me and offered me the opportunity to take a job in a training program, where I would circulate through each of the departments at the gaseous diffusion plant and decide which one might fit my desires the most. A mutual friend of yours and mine, Bill Wilcox, interviewed me along with the vice president at that time, Paul Vanstrum. I came to Oak Ridge and I fell in love with the people. Let’s go find out what they do in Oak Ridge.” I had no intention of really looking for a job, because I was going to Pittsburgh. I’d never been south of the Mason-Dixon Line in my life, and so I said, “That sounds like a good lark. I see this little plaque on the bulletin board one day that said they wanted to interview people to go to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Senior year was pretty well over and the courses were easier. We immediately contacted some friends at Westinghouse, and before a couple of weeks were out, I had a job offer from Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. My wife, who at that time was my fiancé, was from Pittsburgh and she had a strong desire to go back to Pittsburgh. I had no job, I had not ordered a cap and gown, because I was going to graduate in uniform in there. Here I am at 83, and of course, fighting heart problems now. In there, you’ll have to pick up your draft card.” He had heard a heart murmur that nobody after that ever heard. He said, “Oh, by the way, that’ll make you eligible for the draft. You just failed.” In one brief moment my entire career changed.

He put it on me and he said, “You’re out.

We’ve got to double-time over to his office.” He ran us a mile, and in about ten minutes they called my name and I went into the cardiologist. One Saturday morning, they loaded about twenty of us on a bus and hauled us off from Penn State down to a military base to take our physical, to allow us to become a career officer.Ībout 11:30 that particular Saturday morning, the old sergeant that was leading us around to the various stations to get our physical looked at his watch and said, “Hmm, I just forgot the cardiologist has got a tee time at 12:30. Going in as a fulltime officer meant that I had to take a special physical. I was a senior at Penn State University in 1956, and at that particular time, I was going to follow my father’s footsteps and go into the Army as a career officer in the Signal Corps as a physics major out of Penn State. Gordon Fee: I came to Oak Ridge almost by accident. It is Thursday, April 26, 2018, and I have with me Gordon Fee. Gordon, first, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about your background and how you happened to come to Oak Ridge and what you’ve done here.

Get er done dumpsters