ORAL HISTORY OF SALLY WARD

Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt

Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.

July 6, 2018

MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview's for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History. The date

is July the 6th, 2018. I'm Don Hunnicutt with Sally Ward in the studio of BBB

Communications, LLC., 170 Randolph Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to talk about her

oral history of living in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Sally, state your maiden name, full

name, maiden name, place of birth and date, please.

MRS. WARD: Sally Carter Woodside Ward. Born April 2nd, 1950, in the old Oak Ridge

Hospital. My middle name is after King Carter, who is in my family tree.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Remember what day it was that you were born?

MRS. WARD: No. I don't know. I don't think I've ever looked that up.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Look on your birth certificate, it'll tell generally.

MRS. WARD: Yes, I should do that. (Sunday.)

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Please give me your father's name, place of birth and date.

MRS. WARD: Okay. Howard Nathaniel Woodside, and let me make sure I get all that

correct. I have that down here. He was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on April the

14th, 1912.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And your mother's maiden name, place of birth and date.

MRS. WARD: Ellen Warren Taylor, and she was born in her grandparent's home on

September 7, 1915, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You recall on your grandfather's side of the family what his name

was and place of birth and date?

MRS. WARD: I tell you, Mom and Dad were older when they had us, and when we

came here to Oak Ridge, the only grandparent I knew was Richard Cardwell Taylor.

He lived in Hanover County, Virginia. We called him Papa Taylor.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what his wife's name was?

MRS. WARD: Mary Gillespie Sprinkle Taylor.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Speaking of, you have I know one sister, you just said. Do you

have brothers and more sisters?

MRS. WARD: No, just one sister.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What is her name?

MRS. WARD: Her name is Ellen Warren Woodside Smith.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Is she younger or older than you?

MRS. WARD: Two years older.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And where is she today?

MRS. WARD: Well, today she's at her home in Chesapeake, Virginia, but they also live

in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated here in '66 and I graduated in '68, so we're true

Oak Ridgers.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you know about your father's school history?

MRS. WARD: Let me get that. I'm so glad I looked some of this up. He attended

Central High School in Charlottesville, North Carolina. He received his law degree from

Southeastern University in Washington D.C. He passed the bar in Georgetown Law.

He was admitted to the Tennessee Bar in 1952.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have the date on that?

MRS. WARD: Well, let's see, in 1940. And then he entered the Army in 1941. He

worked as a civilian in the Navy Department. He served five years in the Army, first in

Engineering Corps and then Counter Intelligence in Africa. Got some good stories

about that counter intelligence stuff.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay, hold your place right there with him.

MRS. WARD: Okay.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And how about you mother's school history?

MRS. WARD: Okay, she attended Washington and Henry High School. She was a

graduate of Strayer Business College in Washington, D.C., where she was an

employee in the War Department in the Army Services Forces. She was put in charge

of the Legislative and Liaison Office of Chief of Staff. This is, I think, the most

interesting thing. She developed an award program covering both civilian and military

persons. She received the metor ...

MR. HUNNICUTT: Meritorious?

MRS. WARD: Yes, thank you. Service Civilian Award, the second highest award given

to a civilian for services during World War II. She was then promoted to the

Communications Service for the Merchant Marines and later to the Legislation and

Liaison Division. And then after leaving the War Department she went to work for War

Assets Department, and what she developed was the current way of informing families

that their son or daughter or husband had been killed in the war. At the time, they

would send a message or a letter type thing-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Telegram.

MRS. WARD: She developed where they actually go the house in uniform and present

it in person.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Wow, that's quite an achievement, there, isn't it?

MRS. WARD: That was something else, though.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you imagine, you a mother, getting a telegram that your son or

daughter had been killed? Versus a military person bringing-

MRS. WARD: She felt it was very impersonal, very cold and she was the only female

at the time, in the department where she was working. So maybe she saw it from a

mother's point of view.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I'm sure she did.

MRS. WARD: So I was very impressed. I didn't know she got the second highest

civilian award for it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, while you're on your mother, go ahead with whatever else you

have about her educational background.

MRS. WARD: Okay. Well, that was it. She had that business degree, but what she

accomplished in her life was far above that. I mean, I can go later on after coming to

Oak Ridge where she later become Life and Style Editor at The Oak Ridger.

MR. HUNNICUTT: We'll talk about that. Let's go back to your father and what other

accomplishments did he have in the military?

MRS. WARD: Mainly, because he was in counter intelligence, and I being so young at

the time this is going on. But I was told that he escorted spies back to the United

States. I was trying to find the picture of him coming off a plane where he has an

overcoat between his arm and another guy. They were handcuffed. He had flown him

back on the plane. They were hiding the handcuffs as they were walking off the plane.

So he was involved in that kind of stuff during World War II.

MR. HUNNICUTT: So he would go get the bad guys and then catch them-

MRS. WARD: Yes, he was in North Africa.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: ... and bring them back.

MRS. WARD: When they caught any kind of war spies, he would escort them back to

the United States.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he mention anything else about what they did with them or

anything other than just bringing them back?

MRS. WARD: No, I wish I had talked to Mom about this more before she passed. I

have nobody really to ask questions.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, we all have that problem.

MRS. WARD: I would love to go back and interview her and get all this down.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that's the importance of this interview, that your mother's

history and your father's can be brought out so that someone out there may read this

interview and say, "I know them," and you may get a phone call one day-

MRS. WARD: That'd be nice. I could sit and talk to somebody-

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... and say, "I could tell you a little bit about your mother and

father."

MRS. WARD: ... about what he did. I do run across people in Oak Ridge, not as many

now because of our age, that would tell me stories about my father or my mother,

things I didn't know about them, you know. It's interesting.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did your mother and father meet?

MRS. WARD: Actually, Washington, D.C., working up there. She was in the Pentagon

and I don't know exactly where they were located, but they met in Washington, D.C.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother ever talk about what it looked like in the

Pentagon?

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MRS. WARD: No, just that she was the only female. And again, I have a picture of her

somewhere, standing with all these men, or sitting at this huge round table, and she's

the only female. She did say it was so large they rode carts to get around inside.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now was she in the military or civilian?

MRS. WARD: Civilian.

MR. HUNNICUTT: She must have got a lot of respect from those military-

MRS. WARD: That's what I'm saying. She was 5'2", my dad was 6'3", Mutt and Jeff, as

they called them, and to have just a business degree, she was quite intelligent.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You've probably heard the phrase 'Dynamite comes in little

packages.'

MRS. WARD: That's right. That was Bootie. That's my mother. She was known as

Bootie here. My sister is Bootsie. Nicknames.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How did she get that nickname?

MRS. WARD: She wore a pair of red boots when she was real little around

everywhere, and they just called her 'Little Boots' and then it turned into Bootie and

then my sister's Ellen Warren, and my mother was Ellen Warren, so she was Bootie

and my sister Bootsie.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your sister wear red boots, too?

MRS. WARD: No, no, they just passed it on because they had the same name, first

born, and I don't know if she wore boots or not. I'll have to ask her that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your mother and father got married?

MRS. WARD: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Hanover, Virginia, in 1938.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When did they come to Oak Ridge?

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MRS. WARD: Dad cam in 1947 and Mom in 1948.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Have you told me everything you've got on that first page there?

MRS. WARD: I'll go back a little bit on Dad. Following the war, he returned to the Navy

Department as the Director of the Personnel Department until coming to Oak Ridge in

November of 1947, to serve as Deputy Chief, Security Division and Chief Field Service

Branch, Security Division of the Oak Ridge Operations Office of Atomic Energy

Commission [AEC]. Which simply means back here, he was transferred here as

Assistant Director of Security. So he was the security out at the plant. He was over the

whole division. He came here with Russell Chatham, Inc. They were personnel

consultants for AEC. So with his background, I'm assuming, in counter intelligence and

security in North Africa, he was brought here to be over the security division.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever hear any stories from either of your parents about

spies being in Oak Ridge?

MRS. WARD: Not so much the spies as the ... It's just how tight security was. I couldn't

understand how so many people could work together and never talk about what they

were doing or anything. I do remember Mom used to say that they had a really nice,

fun life, with meeting all these people from all over the place and that they would have

parties and cookouts and that kind of thing, but they wouldn't talk about what they were

doing at the plant. I mean, it was very, very secure.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, a lot of these people were young.

MRS. WARD: Oh, yes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Mid-20s.

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MRS. WARD: Yes. I guess Mom and Dad were considered the older ones. Because it

was ‘47 and he was born in 1912, so, you know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's not too long.

MRS. WARD: No.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And a lot of the girls were just out of high school, so you had a lot

of young people here. A lot to do?

MRS. WARD: I have a lot of pictures of them at, I believe, at the Country Club. They

are signing in at a Country Club dance. Maybe it was just started and going to parties

and sitting around in homes. Lots of pictures of them in homes, all sitting around and

smiling.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That seemed to be the trend. You'd have your company come and

have your gathering in your home-

MRS. WARD: They did a lot of that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... or somebody's home. But-

MRS. WARD: I guess that's how you met your neighbor.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Well, everybody knew everybody, because you went out to

hang your clothes on the clothesline-

MRS. WARD: And your neighbor was right there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, and there you are. You'd talk.

MRS. WARD: You got to know each other. I know the biggest joke I ever heard

growing up was that you better mark your house before you leave to go to work,

because when you come back, you might not be able to identify it, because there will

be 20 more houses around it. You know, how fast they built them.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the case when they started construction. School kids go

to school in the morning, they come back-

MRS. WARD: Come back and count the houses.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, they've got to figure out which house was theirs.

MRS. WARD: Or what corner was theirs.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MRS. WARD: But I love my D house. I wouldn't give anything for it. I've always wanted

a D, I finally got one.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They're one of the premier houses. I always thought I'd like to live

in an F.

MRS. WARD: F's are nice too.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They didn't build but about 32 of those things, and the VIPs got

those, generally.

MRS. WARD: I was looking at the prices of homes. We're doing our 50th high school

reunion in October and we were looking up the prices and things, and I think the top of

the line house was what? $7,000 or something.

MR. HUNNICUTT: My daddy bought a B house for like $2,000 or something one time

when they were for sale.

MRS. WARD: I grew up in a B on Outer Drive.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the address on that?

MRS. WARD: 138.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Let's see, 138 is located, what? What proximity?

MRS. WARD: Right between Orange and Orchard.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, yeah.

MRS. WARD: I now live in the former Ramsey House on the corner of Orange and

Outer. They had five sons: Richard, Jim, Bobby, Dick and Jack.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I’m familiar with that. Ramsey Jackson is a friend of mine.

MRS. WARD: Big gray house on the corner.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MRS. WARD: I grew up at 138 with all the kids on Outer Drive. There were tons of us

back then.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You made a statement about how you didn't understand how the

secrecy was kept between the people. You know the development of the uranium

separation was important, but the secrecy and the dedication of the people is what

made this work.

MRS. WARD: Yes. I don't think it would do it today.

MR. HUNNICUTT: No, no.

MRS. WARD: I really don't.

MR. HUNNICUTT: No.

MRS. WARD: Nothing's secret anymore. Nothing. Well, I think the patriotism and that

they really believed in what they were doing.

MR. HUNNICUTT: A lot of people came with their families, more came single, because

they had siblings in the military, and they wanted to get the war over with.

MRS. WARD: That's right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And they went to work here-

MRS. WARD: Helping to stop the war.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: ... Colleen Black is a good example of that. She came with her

mother and sister-

MRS. WARD: I know Colleen.

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... and then she met her husband. Blackie, they called him.

MRS. WARD: Mom and Dad ran around with all of them.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. So you know it was a big community of people, it didn't

matter where you came from or what you were doing, people blended together.

MRS. WARD: They did, very well.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And like you said, there was kids galore in all the neighborhoods.

MRS. WARD: Your dad could be the guy that was doing the uranium all the way to the

guy pushing the broom. I mean, nobody cared about your background. We were all in

the same boat. We were all doing the same thing and doctor/lawyer, Indian chiefs, I

ran around with every kind of kid there was on Outer Drive including Doctor Pugh's

kids. I can tell you a funny story about them.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Sure. Tell me about Doctor Pugh's kids.

MRS. WARD: Ginny and Evie and my sister and I, more or less grew up together. We

were like a year apart, all the way up. Anyway, Mrs. Pugh would make us these real

cute little outfits every summer and especially after my dad died, at that young age, I

was eight and my sister was 10. The whole neighborhood sort of helped out Mom, you

know, did stuff for us. But Evie and I decided we wanted to be blood sisters. Oh,

you've got to get this in the record. We decided to be blood sisters, so we cut our

finger and we mixed our blood. Then Evie said, "Well, you know we have to go bury

something in the woods to seal our thing." I just followed along, I said, "Okay." She

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went in and got her mother's pearl necklace. She said, "We'll go bury this and then

we'll go dig it back up." Well, we forgot to mark where we put it. So to this day,

somewhere on Outer Drive, in the woods, in the Green Belt, there's a pearl necklace

buried and I guess it's still there, I don't even know if we put it inside something, but

needless to say, Mrs. Pugh was not very happy with us. But I will remember that until

the day I die. The look on her face when Evie said, "Well, we'll just go get it." And we

marched through that woods, my mother, everybody, but never did find it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I bet Mrs. Pugh's jaw dropped about two foot, didn't it?

MRS. WARD: Yes, because I guarantee you those were real. Those would not have

been faux pearls in any way.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Have you got any foggy idea where they might be?

MRS. WARD: They're behind 138. Somewhere down there in the woods.

MR. HUNNICUTT: If they're very valuable, maybe we ought to go search for them.

MRS. WARD: I know. I've thought about it and I thought, "I wouldn't even know where

to begin to look." And you know, being a kid's perspective, to me, we went really deep

in the woods. We used to have the G Road, right behind my house with wooden steps

to the gravel, G Road, for evacuation. I don't know where we were going to go, but

anyway, to Oliver Springs or something, and so we walked down that road and then

we just went in the woods somewhere and buried it, so I have no idea.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And that was off of?

MRS. WARD: Outer Drive. Right behind 138.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Didn't realize there was one of those there. There was several of

those roads off of Outer Drive.

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MRS. WARD: I went back there, oh I'd say 20 years ago, to see. It's all overgrown and

nothing's left. The road's not there. The woods just took it back over.

MR. HUNNICUTT: A lot of those roads were from, down in the Marlowe community,

those people down along Highway 61, which wasn't there before Oak Ridge, and they

would come up that way where you lived, up on Orchard, in that area. There was a big

orchard and there was families that had ... It was the black families that lived up there,

I understand, and they had peaches and apples and things of that nature.

MRS. WARD: Oh, I didn't know that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MRS. WARD: I just know we walked that gravel road many a day in the summer. And

we went all the way to the bottom, to 61, and walked back up. Of course back then,

kids played in the woods all day long. That's all I ever did growing up.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that's a little more healthier than sitting in front of these

gadgets and messing around.

MRS. WARD: I wish these kids would enjoy what we did.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Well, society changes.

MRS. WARD: It does.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe it'll go back to that. Things have a way to come around that

was lost.

MRS. WARD: I think the simpler life maybe needs to come back around. Pretty soon.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Let's go back to your mother and let's talk a little bit more about her

achievements and career.

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MRS. WARD: All right. Well, like I said, she came here in 1948. She began her work

career as a secretary and bookkeeper for McKinstry Lumber Company. He was so

nice. He would come in the home, so that she would be there when we got home from

school. We were going to Cedar Hill, so we'd walk home, and she'd be there, and that

was one of the agreements, until we got older. And then in 1967, and I don't know if

you remember this or not, we used to have a column in The Oak Ridger called

Welcome Neighbor.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MRS. WARD: She started that and worked on it. That's how she got her foot in the

door at the newspaper. And then her duties later expanded to include community,

religion, and obituaries. I'll tell you about me working in the newspaper in a minute. At

the time of her retirement in 1988, Bootie, as everyone called her, was Life and Style

Editor of The Oak Ridger. Her work garnered her several awards from the Associated

Press. She also helped to mentor, during this time, lots of seniors from Oak Ridge High

School. And that included Wanda Ensor [Grooms], who later worked there. I think

Donna Smith may have been one of her mentors. Anyway, she kept in touch with

many of them over the years. They formed a bond with her.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, it was related to newspaper?

MRS. WARD: They were journalists-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Work journalists.

MRS. WARD: Yes. And a lot of them went on to careers at bigger newspapers, like

The New York Times, Washington Post, that kind of thing. And she always kept in

touch with them. This was during the Dick Smyser/Tom Hill era of the newspaper.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother ever say anything to you about, when she first

came to Oak Ridge, what she thought about Oak Ridge?

MRS. WARD: Back then it was hard just to get in the car and come to Oak Ridge, you

know, the roads and stuff. So she felt isolated from her Virginia family, but that's all she

ever talked about. How they just couldn't see each other as much as they wanted to.

She has a sister and two brothers. But other than that, I think Mom and Dad were just

made for Oak Ridge. I mean, they were a young couple, he had become a lawyer

here, he had a law firm here with Roland Prince. It was called Prince and Woodside

law firm. Which I'm sort of getting ahead on him, but they just seemed to fit in with all

the young couples and raising their kids. I don't think she was ever really unhappy.

And Dad never seemed to ... You know, he was excited. This was a big career for him.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's quite different from what he was doing before.

MRS. WARD: Right. But again, I'm jumping ahead. If he had lived past the age of 46, I

think, and Mom thought he would've gone as far as the Supreme Court level. He was

that much of a go-getter and very, very highly respected. The Oak Ridge Police

Department, which I still have today, nickel plated a special gun for him, when he died,

and gave it to Mom. Mother always told me it was the largest funeral procession in Oak

Ridge history up to that time, out to the Oak Ridge Memorial Park. We have letters

from then Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, saying how sorry he was, as from

[Carey Estes] Kefauver. I found those letters and several more, saying how sorry they

were about his death. He had just defeated Buzz Elkins, which was a great

accomplishment because Dad was the “newbie” on the block, and Mr. Elkins was one

of the good ole guys from 'The Boys Club' they called it, in Anderson County.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: How do you think he did that, do you know?

MRS. WARD: I know exactly how he did it. We went door-to-door and handed out a

flyer. This is, well, I'll show you, this is the original newspaper. And this is a flyer that

was hand drawn. I don't know, some friend of his. I have the original, it's on a big

board, and then they shrunk it, but this was hand drawn. And that's the flyer that tells

all about him and where he's from and his background.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's pretty clever.

MRS. WARD: We went door-to-door, my sister, myself, my mom and introduced him

and handed out the flyer. Do you remember the train?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Freedom train?

MRS. WARD: Well, it was big, open. The kids used to be able to ride in the back of it.

They used to give rides to the kids in the old Downtown area.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh.

MRS. WARD: I think it was owned by AMVETS [American Veterans] or the [American]

Legion or something.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, one of the club organizations.

MRS. WARD: We drove that and sat in the back. Dad put all the kids in the

neighborhood in the back. You know, kids yelling, "Vote for Howard Woodside." And

we drove through all the counties. All the back roads like Marlowe, just everywhere. I

remember being in these fancy little dresses and we'd wave and smile.

MR. HUNNICUTT: This article was dated Wednesday, August 7th, 1958.

MRS. WARD: Right. And unfortunately, he passed just two months later in September.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: So you think knocking door-to-door, and this is clever right here,

but you think knocking door-to-door was the ticket?

MRS. WARD: Absolutely.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I have a friend of mine that did that some years ago. Got elected

and he's doing it some more. This time he's running for something else. But you can't

just quit at that, you got to still stay at it.

MRS. WARD: I know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Apparently there must have been something that needed to be

changed and people decided they'd give him a shot to see.

MRS. WARD: That's right. We had the same people holding office in the county. Not

that they were bad, not that they were not doing a good job, but this was a new, fresh

face who says, "I'm here." I figured it out later that he put all the kids in that train

because he was the first juvenile trial justice judge for Anderson County. That court

had never been established before. Juveniles were in the main court with adults in

Anderson County. They wanted to split juveniles, families, divorces into a separate

court. He put the kids in the train to say, "Hey, I'm going to back these kids. I'm here to

help these kids." And it says in the ad that. "I will give the families-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Front says that. Divorce and child custody.

MRS. WARD: He will give utmost consideration to divorce and child custody cases.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Who was his successor?

MRS. WARD: Oh gosh. Who took over when he died? Oh, I should know that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It's on the tip of my tongue. Can't think of his name.

MRS. WARD: It wasn't ...

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, I remember there was a Judge Buford Lewallen at one time.

MRS. WARD: He may have been right after Dad.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Seems like that's the one I used to go see occasionally. It wasn’t in

his home either.

MRS. WARD: Well, we made a joke. If Dad had lived and I'd been older, I may have

had to go before him!

MR. HUNNICUTT: You're all right.

MRS. WARD: That I may have had to gone before him on something or other.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, they used to have, when you were a juvenile and you got a

ticket, you know, you went to ... Heck, I'm sure it would be him.

MRS. WARD: Yeah, juvenile court.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Lewallen, I believe, replaced him.

MRS. WARD: I think it was Lewallen.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MRS. WARD: Unfortunately, under my dad's portrait ... Let's see if I have it here. I

know I brought it. That's my mom Bootie. That's a good picture of her. This is when

they hung the portrait, which is not a great picture at all.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now tell me about this portrait.

MRS. WARD: Okay, they always put a portrait of all the judges in the courthouse. This

is actually the picture they used in the portrait. And I particularly like this one, that's

when he was a lawyer with Prince and Woodside. And he had to dissolve the law firm.

He can't be a judge and a lawyer at the same time, so he had to dissolve the

partnership of Prince and Woodside.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was his law office located?

MRS. WARD: Right at the corner of Kentucky. It's Bill Wilkinson's office now.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Broadway.

MALE VOICE OFF CAMERA: Kentucky and Broadway.

MRS. WARD: Yeah, it's the brick building. It's still there. But anyway, I didn't know if

you wanted to ...

MR. HUNNICUTT: This is it?

MRS. WARD: That's all the Anderson County officials on the steps of the Clinton

Courthouse.

MR. HUNNICUTT: This is your father right here, is that correct? In the middle?

MRS. WARD: No, that's Lewallen.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Lewallen, I'm sorry.

MRS. WARD: That's Dad, right there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Right here next to him.

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

MALE VOICE OFF CAMERA: Tilt it so I can see it.

MRS. WARD: Okay. This is in Clinton, September 1958. Which, at the time, Dad was

extremely ill and we didn't even know about it at the time. That's sad, I think. He just

thought he was tired from campaigning, and that once he could rest he'd be fine. And

that was far from what was going on, but unfortunately, anyway ...

MR. HUNNICUTT: You might have been too young to remember, but did your family

get to be pretty acquainted with most all the people and judges and lawyers and that

group?

20

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I've known Roland Price, I've known of him and I know who he was.

What kind of person was he?

MRS. WARD: Well, of course, I grew up with his kids. Nancy actually worked at The

Oak Ridger with Mom. I just remember going to their homes, having cookouts.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where they used to live?

MRS. WARD: They were on California. It's near the end of California, that real steep

climb, then you go 'round the corner and you're near North Alabama, you know, down

at the bottom. Near where the Elks ... Not lodge, club, lodge, there's a difference. The

Old Elks, it's down there on North Alabama. They were on that part of California down

there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: The steep part?

MRS. WARD: The steep part. They were in a B house, like us, at the time.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever see that yacht he had at the marina?

MRS. WARD: Okay, I knew we'd get to that. Nicely put, because his kids are still alive

and I love them both to death, when his wife died, Roland, I understand, now at my

age, went through this mid-life crisis. Let's be nice about this. And he had a very pretty

secretary, red head, and a yacht and yeah, it was his second life he did. By that time,

Dad has died and so only sad thing about back in the '50s and '60s, when your

husband, who was the 'known' person more in the community passes away, you're sort

of left out of it. You're not kept in the loop. Mom was not ostracized, but she was not

invited to things anymore, because she didn't have a husband. And I've always

wondered if some of the women were not jealous of her, because she was very

21

attractive, very smart, very outgoing and you know, who knows. Maybe they just didn't

like that single woman hanging around. Don't know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well ...

MRS. WARD: I don't know, this is getting sort of personal, but anyway she-

MR. HUNNICUTT: No, it is, it's the way it is-

MRS. WARD: ... was not invited to all that, so we fell out of that whole crowd very

quickly.

MR. HUNNICUTT: A lot of the times the widow just decides that she doesn't have a

spouse, she don't want to mingle with that because it's bad for her.

MRS. WARD: And you don't have somebody to go with you.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What I was saying about his yacht, it was the biggest yacht in the

marina at that time. You couldn't miss it.

MRS. WARD: Of course it was. We went out on it a couple of times. Very impressive.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Everybody in town knew who owned that yacht.

MRS. WARD: Oh yeah, Roland's yacht. And the bright redhead on the yacht.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, I don't remember anything about the redhead.

MRS. WARD: Well, they married and everything, but she was a very, very nice lady.

But yeah, that was the beginning of the end for us running around with that group.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Let's talk about-

MRS. WARD: Harry Lillard was also in Dad's law firm. He came in as a ... Sorry, Harry.

Mom referred to him as the ambulance chaser lawyer. They're all gone now, so I can

say this. But Harry had just come into the thing, he was young, but yeah, he was after

those. And Harry didn't change a whole lot over the years, but he was a good guy.

22

MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember using him one time for something, advice or something,

and I liked him.

MRS. WARD: He'll go after something.

MR. HUNNICUTT: He could talk with the common person as well as the upper crest.

MRS. WARD: Right. He and Joyce-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Gene Joyce.

MRS. WARD: Eugene Joyce was used a lot. They didn't practice law so much as they

were called in to give their opinions and confer with big, big law firms.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I think we used Eugene Joyce ... Maybe not. I think he was noted

also for adoptions and things-

MRS. WARD: Oh, yeah, he adopted his two daughters. We ran around with them, too.

They were all in the same group.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I'm sure that we used him as well.

MRS. WARD: Yeah, they lived up on West Overlook. Now, they originally were across

the street from us on Outer Drive in a little A house, which is still there. That's when

they adopted their two little girls. Then they moved up to a big home off West

Overlook.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That was a new subdivision that was kind of developed.

MRS. WARD: Right. You know, you go out West Outer and all of a sudden you go up

this street and it's a whole different world up there on top of that hill.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You know they were out of the city limits for a long time.

MRS. WARD: Yeah. Yeah. Brought them back in.

23

MR. HUNNICUTT: It was a nice place up there, but being out of the city limits, you

didn't have any fire protection or police protection or anything.

MRS. WARD: I know. Mother used to joke when I ran around with Nancy Preston and

of course, the Preston house is way out there at Elza Gate. Well, it's not way out now,

but Mother used to say when I was invited to go out there, the only thing was she had

to take me, and she would complain about how much gas it took to drive me from

Outer Drive to Elza Gate and she'd get so mad because you know, "I don't want to

waste my gas going all the way out there. Why can't Doctor Preston live inside the

limits? Why does he have to be way out there?" I remember that, and I keep thinking,

"It's not really way out there." But to her it was.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know whether that house is in their family still, or has it

been sold out?

MRS. WARD: I don't know. I’m hoping Nancy will come to the 50th reunion and I can

catch up on everything.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember the kids in school. Of course, I used him as a doctor.

MRS. WARD: Oh, yeah. Doc Preston was my pediatrician.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And Doctor Hardy and Doctor Preston were about the only-

MRS. WARD: Then I went to Dr. Crews when I became an adult. That's a whole other

world. We won't talk about Crews right now.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, if you've lived here long enough, you know about Doctor

Crews.

MRS. WARD: I ran around with Mary Ann but unfortunately, she just passed this year.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he have any more children other than her?

24

MRS. WARD: Jane and Tom. And Tom and Jane were both at Mary Ann's funeral. I

enjoyed seeing and talking with them about Mary Ann.

MR. HUNNICUTT: One thing on Doctor Crews, then we'll go away from him, he was

the best diagnostic doctor in Oak Ridge.

MRS. WARD: He put his finger on my gallbladder and I went straight up the wall. He

said, "You can either go home and have it rupture within an hour, or you can go to the

hospital." He said, "I suggest you just go straight to the hospital." And that's what I did.

When I got there, and that's when the doctors used to come in to the hospital. If you

had a doctor, he came in the hospital, which they don't do now. I was up there and

they ran the whatever test, and they said, "We just don't think she has gallbladder

problems." He marched in there, I can still hear him come down the hall. "Damn, she

does too have gallbladder problems, and I'll show you." He got me out of the bed, put

me in a wheelchair, took me down to the X-ray room, put that, you know like you do for

a baby?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Ultrasound.

MRS. WARD: Ultrasound. Ran it right on to it, pushed down real hard, and of course,

I'm breaking out with sweat. Up on the screen, there they are. Big ole gallbladder

stones. He said, "Now, would you please set her up for an emergency surgery right

now?" "Yes, sir. Yes, sir, Doctor Crews." I can still remember that and I'm sitting there

going, "Just do something. You've proven your point, you made them look bad, but you

know, I'm in a lot of pain here, so let's get this over with." He was excellent, excellent

diagnostician. You could go in and he listened, and you told him your symptoms and

he'd tell you right away what was wrong. Really miss that guy. He was a good guy.

25

MR. HUNNICUTT: He was. He was most people's family doctor.

MRS. WARD: A lot of big, colorful stories, but like I said, we won't get into their family.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You know, they used to make house calls.

MRS. WARD: Yeah, I know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Doctor came to your house when you were sick.

MRS. WARD: I know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Of course they couldn't do that today. There's too many people.

MRS. WARD: No, they couldn't. But I think some could. Depends on how long you've

known them or something. They might, but you don't have that anymore. Yeah, you

just don't have it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, where were we? We were on your mother.

MRS. WARD: Well, let's finish up Mom here. She supported lots of community

organizations. She was presented the Ernest Seton Award from the Campfire

Organization. She was so proud of Campfire, she was a leader and everything. She

was a charter member of the Oak Ridge Pilot Club, which is still active, and she was

also a charter member of TN Bank [Tennessee Bank]. She was a 50+ year

membership at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. Very active in the Democratic party

and I noticed in her obituary there were lots of quotes from a lot of community leaders,

such as Selma Shapiro, for the Children's Museum, on saying what a great person she

was. You can say Bootie Woodside, and just the word, the name, they would say, "Oh,

I remember Bootie." Unfortunately, she passed away on April 20th, 2002 at the age of

86. She and Howard, my dad, raised my sister and me, at 138 Outer Drive. She later

moved to 109 Moylan Lane, where she remained until her death. She lived next door

26

to Alvin Weinberg, who at the time was Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

You want to know a funny story about that?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Sure.

MRS. WARD: One Christmas, Mom had a Christmas party every year for the people

on the street and Dr. Weinberg ran in, said, "Merry Christmas!" Sat down at the piano,

played a Christmas carol, got up, said, "Merry Christmas!" And went back out the door.

He was a really, really nice guy. Very down to earth. I really liked him.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You would've thought he'd be real high brow and spacey.

MRS. WARD: Yeah, but again, I think it goes back to how they all started here

together, in the '40s, and that bond just never went away. It was like we were all here

and started this together.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I've interviewed people who either said their mother said this, or the

actual person, that when they came they'd say, "Why did you bring me to this god-

forsaken place?"

MRS. WARD: The mud.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And they end up dying and getting buried here.

MRS. WARD: Oh, yes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Never left.

MRS. WARD: Never left. Well, I know we went from what? 75,000 at one time down to

where we are around 30,000. I think all that was the pull outs of companies, big

companies like Chatham and all that. But a lot of people did stay. It's a unique city.

You're not going to find one like it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It's supposed to have been just temporary, too.

27

MRS. WARD: Oh, yeah, the houses.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MRS. WARD: Oh boy, I’ll tell you, I love a cemesto. You can knock down every interior

wall, because all your support's exterior, and literally make it one huge room and it will

not fall down. They were well, well built.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When you moved into the B house, what do you remember how it

looked inside?

MRS. WARD: Okay, you came in the door, there are the two bedrooms to the right.

You went around a little corner and there was the bathroom. There was a closet. There

are a lot of people that have knocked that out so you could walk all the way around to

the kitchen. We didn't, because I used to hide in the closet. I thought it was a neat

place to hide. There was a long living room and at the end there was supposed to be a

dining room, but that's where we put a baby grand piano. My father got it as a payment

from a client. The client couldn't pay his bill, so he gave Dad the baby grand, which is a

Chickering. It is now in my house. I found a note on it saying, "This pays my debt to

you." Anyway.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did anybody in the family play?

MRS. WARD: I do.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, great.

MRS. WARD: But that little dining room area, that was all piano, and so we just ate in

the kitchen.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember going into the kitchen from that dining room area,

on the right, up top, there's bookshelves.

28

MRS. WARD: Oh, all the way around the door.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, neat. A houses didn't have that or the dining area, either. Did

you recall under the window of that dining room that looked out by the-

MRS. WARD: I played in there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall that flower box out there-

MRS. WARD: I played down there. That was my fort.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Every one of those. Every B they ever built had that flower box.

MRS. WARD: I climbed up and I climbed down in there and we cleaned it out and it

was my fort. Oh, I played outside all the time. That was my hiding fort.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You think you were a tom girl?

MRS. WARD: Absolutely.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Tomboy, rather.

MRS. WARD: Hey, I helped build a 20 foot tower in the field behind the Olsezewski

house one summer. It took us all summer to build it. We went in the woods and we cut

down the trees and they were good sized. The center post was, that held the whole

thing, was good-sized. We cut it. I guess I don't know what we cut with, pulled it up out

of the woods, put it in the field, dug the hole, set the poles, criss-crossed, tied them off,

did another landing, criss-crossed, put a flag at the top. The day we put the flag at the

top, one of the parents saw it, came down there and said, "You've got to take that

down, you're going to break your neck." We had to take it down. I was so mad. Just as

we got it built.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How many built it?

29

MRS. WARD: There was oh, all the Olsezewski boys and the O'Briens and myself. My

sister didn't. She was at the house putting on make-up all the time. Let's see. Gosh, up

on Orange we also had the Niemeyers working on it. Charlie White across the street,

he was the only kid in his family. We sort of hated that because the rest of us had big

families. I don't think the Pugh girls worked on it, but that wasn't their thing. But

definitely all the Olsezewski kids.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did Ramsey live there in the house you're living in now then?

MRS. WARD: Yes, all five boys. Unfortunately, their dad committed suicide right there

in the woods. Mrs. Ransey remarried Mr. Kernham. I knew him, I didn't know their

father. He had already died when I was just a kid. But yeah, Jack, Bill, Dickie, Bobby,

Jim. Jim was Attorney General. Loved Jim. Jim told me a story about my dad. This is

the kind of stuff that he told me later. That my dad took all the boys in the

neighborhood to the police station. Took them back to where the jail was, made them

get in the cell, closed the door and said, "Now, if you don't act right, this is where you'll

end up and then you'll have to come in front of me." Jim says he remembers that so

clearly. And he also credits my dad getting him into law. He said at that point he was

really interested in law, and of course, you know, Jim's been Anderson County

Attorney General. I don't know where he is now. I think he's in Sweden or somewhere.

But he credits my dad getting him into the law profession. I was real impressed about

my dad doing this.

MR. HUNNICUTT: From your description of your father, it's too bad he didn't live

longer to help kids, because it sounds like he was really the type of person that was

interested.

30

MRS. WARD: He would've been perfect. He would've really have been good. Yeah,

we lost a good, good defender of the youth. But he was a good man. Like I said, he

only served five weeks on the bench. My mother never got to see him in his robes. She

thought she had all the time in the world. So there's a picture, and again, I can't find it.

My sister and I sitting on each side of him during court. We got to be up there with him,

but Mom for some reason either didn't come in or she dropped us off. She never really

saw him preside over any court.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the court proceedings held?

MRS. WARD: Anderson County Courthouse, Clinton, in the courtroom. His portrait's in

the courtroom. I don't know which room it is now, because they've changed the name

of the courts.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I was over there not long ago and I saw the portraits of everyone.

Of course I didn't know-

MRS. WARD: Now you can go by and see Dad. Unfortunately, instead of saying how

great he was or whatever, it says, "Served the shortest amount of time as Judge in

Anderson County." I mean ... Okay.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You begin to wonder how come.

MRS. WARD: Why you put that there. Come on, you know?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he get caught doing something wrong or what?

MRS. WARD: Well it said, born such and such, died such and such. But I thought they

could've put something else on there like first juvenile court judge.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, that'd been more appropriate for sure.

31

MRS. WARD: But it does say 'Served the shortest amount of time on ... ' I thought,

"Well, okay." That's what he's known for.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How long did the family live in the B house?

MRS. WARD: Oh, let's see. I was 16 when we moved to Moylan Lane. So I was taken

there from birth.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And what type of house was that, then?

MRS. WARD: The one on Outer, you're talking about?

MR. HUNNICUTT: After you left the B house.

MRS. WARD: Oh, we went to Moylan. It was a converted A. The back porch had all

been added on and there was steps to a full basement.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did you move?

MRS. WARD: Bedrooms. You know, it was a two bedroom B and there was three

females. And my sister and I had got tired of sharing the same room. Mom took the

whole downstairs at the A because it had a bed and a bath. So my sister and I had the

two bedrooms, in the A, upstairs.

MR. HUNNICUTT: So how long did you live in that house?

MRS. WARD: My sister went off to college and didn't come back. She got married.

Well, she flew for Delta and then got married. Then I went off to college, so Mom just

stayed there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: So your first school was Cedar Hill?

MRS. WARD: Cedar Hill. Cheater Hill. We were called Cheater Hill.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Why'd they call it Cheater Hill?

32

MRS. WARD: Because we won too many softball games. And I played outfield, left,

which is the way they put people, they ... "Okay, play her, but put her over in left field."

I just liked to play, but I wasn't that good. Loved Cedar Hill. Loved the summer

program.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember some of your teachers at Cedar Hill?

MRS. WARD: Miss Huffman. Spent a whole week in the woods. And I will tell you, I'm

a retired teacher, 40 years, Morgan County. I started an outdoor classroom when I was

there. It took me a little while to figure out why I was so adamant to have an outdoor

classroom. Click. That week in the woods, when I was in 5th grade, at Cedar Hill

School. It had to be the motivation behind it. I retired in 2012. The teacher now

teaching 4th is one of my former students named Kelly. I have a lot of former students.

The principal's my former student. But anyway, third generation. I taught three

generations before I retired from out there. Kelly is revamping the outdoor classroom.

And the reason is because she remembers it when I started it in the '80s at the school.

Now she's there, she's revamping it, and bringing it back up to speed. So you've got

my fifth grade teacher that encouraged me, and now my student from 4th grade who is

now the teacher. So I thought that was a neat.

MR. HUNNICUTT: So tell me what this outdoor classroom that you first was in-

MRS. WARD: Out in Cedar Hill?

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... consisted of, other than being outside.

MRS. WARD: Okay. What's so funny is I can't remember anything in high school, I

barely remember junior high, but I remember this week in the woods. First day, we

were split up into teams, I think maybe five or six to a group. You went and found your

33

campsite. The first day, you cleared it; cleared all the leaves and made a circle. Then if

you found any logs or anything, you outlined it. Next we made 'sit-upons'. You

remember sit-upons? They were made out of newspapers. You would weave them,

and you put a plastic bag over it and you carried it every day and that's what you sat

on.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay, let me stop you a minute right there. I’ve heard that term. Tell

me how you weaved the newspapers together to make these.

MRS. WARD: Okay, you would take two newspapers and cut strips, but not all the way

to the end on both. Then you'd put them together and weave them-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Lace them in and out?

MRS. WARD: Lace them in and out and then put a plastic bag of some kind-

MR. HUNNICUTT: So it looked like the bottom of a cane chair?

MRS. WARD: Right. Exactly. And they lasted all week. And being now that I'm an

educator, I know exactly why Betty Huffman did this. As I look back on it. Every camp,

and she brought out UT people from, we thought, "University of Tennessee? Wow!"

You know, "Wow, they're coming from like, Mars, coming out here to do this." And they

were core people, who dug cores in the ground. They would pull up the ground and

show us the layers. Then we had a tree guy come out. Every day we had a special

person come to our camps. And each camp had a secretary who took notes. I was the

secretary in my group. At night, on Mom's typewriter, with carbon paper, I would type

up the minutes of what happened that day. I kept a book for the whole week and gave

it to Mrs. Huffman on Friday. And I remember her telling my mother, or gave her a note

or something, that she took my book to the University of Tennessee to show it to

34

somebody. I thought, "Wow." Now as I look back on it, she was probably working on

her graduate degree, and this might have been part of her program. When I was a

teacher, I worked on graduate stuff. I had to do projects. So now looking back on it and

thinking, "I bet maybe this tied in with her maybe getting her Master's or something."

Which is fine. We had a great time. But I was just so proud that my book was taken to

the University of Tennessee to be shown, maybe to her committee.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that should be something you should be proud of.

MRS. WARD: And that stays in my mind. Like I said, I don't remember anything else,

mainly, from school, except that one week. It also taught me hands-on teaching.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where in relation-

MRS. WARD: I'm a very hands-on teacher.

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... in the school lot, where did she have that?

MRS. WARD: Right across the street from Cedar Hill School. It was in the greenbelt,

where there's now a trail you can walk down to.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It would kind of be on the back, west side of the school then?

MRS. WARD: Right across the street from the playground. If you start at the top of

Michigan, and you turn in and the big playground's on the right, it's just right across the

street to the left.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh, okay.

MRS. WARD: It's marked, and you can walk the trail all the way down to the practice

field at Blankenship. Comes out down there in Jackson Square. It was the beginning, I

guess, of the trail that actually is still there today.

35

MR. HUNNICUTT: That might have been a boardwalk at one time. There was a lot of

that boardwalk stuff throughout the woods. Quick places to get to.

MRS. WARD: I know we used to sled down through there. And why we didn't knock

our brains out on a tree, I do not know. We would pack down the snow and we'd sled

through that woods with trees. You know, if we had hit ... Of course, back then, kids

didn't think about stuff like that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Kids are kids.

MRS. WARD: We just had too much fun.

MR. HUNNICUTT: So what was your next school besides Cedar Hill that you went to?

MRS. WARD: Well, I went to Jefferson Junior. The one up on the hill that used to be

Oak Ridge High School. And I've been doing research on that one. I did not know the

first Jefferson. The first Jefferson Junior High School was at Robertsville, which was

the former Robertsville High School, for the community. I think that's so interesting.

And then the high school was at the top of the hill at Kentucky. Moved out and

Jefferson moved in. So I went there. I had to walk just like to Cedar Hill, because we

were within a mile, they wouldn't let a bus pick you up. I had to walk down there and

back every day.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's not too far, though.

MRS. WARD: Nah. I used to go down to the drugstore at Jackson Square and sit in

the soda booths and that was fun.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You mean where Big Ed's is today? Service Drug?

36

MRS. WARD: Yeah, Service Drug. Used to go down there every day after school.

Mother would be shopping at the White Store or something and I'd meet her over there

and get a ride home sometimes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That story about the schools, Jefferson was named after the kids.

Kids named that school. Jefferson.

MRS. WARD: Oh. Okay.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And you're right-

MRS. WARD: After Thomas?

MR. HUNNICUTT: No, it was just the Jefferson area down there.

MRS. WARD: Oh, okay.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I'm not really sure why-

MRS. WARD: Should have been named Jackson, then. Shouldn’t it? Jackson Square

and Jackson High. I don't know why.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, actually, all that up there was called Townsite originally.

MRS. WARD: Townsite. Beause it was the center.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Then it became Jackson Square and the word is it came from

Jackson Square in New Orleans, but there's no documentary of that.

MRS. WARD: That's interesting.

MR. HUNNICUTT: But Robertsville School, before I knew all this, is very confusing to

me.

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Isn't it? It was an original school here, as you said-

MRS. WARD: Yeah, till they disbanded the community.

37

MR. HUNNICUTT: Then they made Jefferson out of it and then the high school moved

to where it is now, and Jefferson up on the hill and Robertsville came back as

Robertsville Junior High.

MRS. WARD: And I didn't know that brick gym part on the end is the only original

remaining part of the first school.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Correct.

MRS. WARD: I think that's interesting to know. We had what? 10 elementary schools?

When I was in the '50s school, at one time.

MR. HUNNICUTT: The part you're talking about that's down there now I think is our

cafeteria.

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the original gym, that front part.

MRS. WARD: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MR. HUNNICUTT: They had two silos on the side of that front part of the building that

was used for evacuations.

MRS. WARD: Oh.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That was built later onto it. The original school is just an open front

with steps that went up. And if you need some of those pictures, I can get them for

you. But they had these silos and I've interviewed guys and gals that went to school

there. They would slide down that to evacuate. Boys stand down there at the bottom,

they wanted to go first and see the girls-

MRS. WARD: Okay, I know why. I think I know why.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I believe you do.

38

MRS. WARD: Yup.

MR. HUNNICUTT: But that's kind of a unique thing about ... And the buildings, the long

buildings, they are the original structure, but they have put the brick on the outside to

match, sort of like the high school.

MRS. WARD: Yeah. I just thought Robertsville had already been there as Robertsville.

But then again, if you think about it, we didn't have junior highs at that point.

MR. HUNNICUTT: No.

MRS. WARD: So they had to come from somewhere. So anyway.

MR. HUNNICUTT: So you got to Jefferson, and did you like junior high?

MRS. WARD: It was all right. I remember walking the Annex, where it connected the

two parts. I remember Buddy Pope, who I ran into in Farragut the other day, believe it

or not. My science teacher in junior high. Still looks like Buddy Pope. I said, "Are you

Buddy Pope?" He went, "Yeah." I said, "I'm not going to tell, but I hate it when my

former students say 'Hey, I had you,' and you know, we're so much older. But I did

have you as a science teacher at Jefferson Junior." He lit up. He was like ... I said,

"Down there in that bottom Annex, in that room." He went, "Yeah." His wife was

smiling. But I remember he hung a string from the ceiling and every day you had to go

and stand up next to it and see if your posture was correct. And you had to touch the

string in three places. Your head, your back and your buttocks, I would say, or

something. But he would check our posture. Which I always thought was sort of

strange, but at the time, maybe there were kids with scoliosis or something and he was

trying to make sure they were taken care of.

39

MR. HUNNICUTT: I'll tell you where that might have came from. When I was going

through the elementary school at Woodland, they did some photographs of boys and

girl separate and photographed our spine. Probably for that reason right there. And

that was his era too, you know, I mean, he's older than I am-

MRS. WARD: So I would think they were checking for it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's where that came from.

MRS. WARD: Scoliosis or curvature or hip displacement because you know he was a

big football guy, too. He was a big coach, so health was very important to him. Then

there was Mr. Plumley.

MR. HUNNICUTT: George. Did you like the smell of garlic in his class?

MRS. WARD: I just couldn't watch him eat onion and molasses sandwiches.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I never did have him, but I knew about him.

MRS. WARD: One day, absolutely this is the truth, I was sitting right there, these guys

yelled, "Mr. Plumley, Mr. Plumley! We just found our, blah blah, blah." Some kind of

butterfly. By the window. "Go get it, go get it." And they actually went to the window,

went out, set there, skipped class, came back. "It got away." He went, "Oh, I'm so

sorry." He said, "Yeah." "It got away Mr. Plumley, but we'll try again tomorrow." He

said, "Okay." I mean, I was sitting there. I knew what they were doing. I was at

Jefferson when the assassination of Kennedy happened. My mother called the school.

She was with the paper at the time, and told them, because we didn't have TVs or

radios or anything in school then. Which I thought back on it, we should have had

something in schools for you know. But she called the office and said that President

Kennedy had been assassinated. They didn't believe her. They thought it was a crank

40

call. They checked it out, she said, "Well, I'm at The Oak Ridger. You can call right

back and you can talk to the editor." They verified it. So my mother was the first to tell

Jefferson Junior. And then I remember all the teachers going out in the hall.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember who the principal was when you were there?

MRS. WARD: I want to say, and I can see his face, he's white-headed, sort of large.

Oh, gosh, what was his name? I'm sorry. It's just not…

MR. HUNNICUTT: I can't help you on that one, either. I don't either.

MRS. WARD: I know him, I can see him just clear as a bell. Bobby Smith, Nick

Orlando, Plumley, Buddy Sharp. I can see- (Wallace Spray)

MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember Clifford Smith?

MRS. WARD: Clifford Smith, math.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Coach Teague.

MRS. WARD: Yeah. So I can see-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Was Mrs. Wilson there when you went? She would've taught 7th

grade.

MRS. WARD: I don't know. I remember Miss Coffman, because she had blue hair. She

was who I had when they told them about the assassination. She was a very strict,

straight-faced, no emotion, and she just went all to pieces. I remember that. She

couldn't come back in the room.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember who the librarian might have been?

MRS. WARD: Yeah, she was little, sort of fidgety. Oh my goodness, it wasn't the story

puppet lady. The famous puppet lady from here (Anna Cebrat), had all the puppets,

gave them all to the museum when she died. I am so horrible on names. No. Our little

41

librarian, I remember she had real tight-curled hair and little glasses and she was sort

of a little nervous thing. But I can't think of her name either. But I can picture her there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I don't recall.

MRS. WARD: And she'd get so mad if we treated her books wrong. You know, it was

like her babies. Which I appreciate, because I love books.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember when you first went through the library, how you

were taught to look up a book-

MRS. WARD: Oh, in the card catalog.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MRS. WARD: Yeah. We even had a card catalog at PJ up until about, oh, I went there

in '75. I would think we had a card catalog until probably mid-'80s.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What's PJ stand for?

MRS. WARD: I'm sorry. Petros Joyner Elementary School, Morgan County,

Tennessee.

MR. HUNNICUTT: All right.

MRS. WARD: We just call it PJ. It's right above Coalfield.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How many pupils do you have here in class?

MRS. WARD: When we first opened, we were the only air-conditioned, we were brand

new and we were full to capacity and at one time I had 34 kids in my class. But we also

had split grades.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay, when you went to that, how many kids was in your class

when you went?

42

MRS. WARD: I would say around 30. And I had some group pictures of my elementary

classes and I counted one time, there was 29 in one of them. So they were large, and

then as the other schools. When Coalfield was rebuilt and Wartburg was updated, pur

numbers went down. We are a Pre-K through 8th school, which is unusual, so we're a

feeder school to Coalfield and Wartburg. When they graduate 8th grade, they can go

either way. So today there's around 133 at Petros Joyner. There's one class per grade

and there may be 22 at the most in each class. So it's shrunk quite a bit, but it's a great

school. It's like a little family school, which you don't find a lot anymore.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What'd you do in the summertime?

MRS. WARD: When I was a kid?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes. Yes, when you were a kid.

MRS. WARD: Stayed in the woods. Went to Cedar Hill School for the Playground

Program. Marylou Sewell and all that group. Stayed there from morning till night.

Bought the, for a nickel, six feet of that plastic stuff we rolled into lariats.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Plait together?

MRS. WARD: Yeah, the plait. Sat there for hours. Played on the softball team. Oh, and

at the end of the year, the playground circus and that's when Evie and Jenny and

myself and my sister did a tap dance one time.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was that held?

MRS. WARD: Originally it was right where the Civic Center is. There was a ballpark. I

don't know the name or what it was called, maybe Center Park.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Middletown.

43

MRS. WARD: Middletown. It was always held there. Always very dusty and dirty

because it was a ballpark, so we took a piece of plywood, put it on the ground and did

our little tap dance.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now each playground had a program they'd presented, didn't they?

MRS. WARD: Right.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Some of those were pretty elaborate, back before your time, they

really got really elaborate.

MRS. WARD: Well, Mrs. Pugh would make us outfits and little skirts with all the

bangles for our tap dance.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Every playground, back in the day, had people in a parade. That

was part of the parade.

MRS. WARD: Yes, it was huge. It was quite-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Of course there was a lot of kids then.

MRS. WARD: ... quite a thing. Each school tried to outdo the others. Of course, the

coaches, they were in that battle of "Ours is better than yours." All summer it was

always, "Ours is better than yours."

MR. HUNNICUTT: Especially that softball stuff, like ball playing.

MRS. WARD: Right. Oh, I won a checker championship. It was held down in the old

library at Jackson Square.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you learn how to be a checker player?

MRS. WARD: Sitting around all summer watching people play. I wasn't supposed to

win, but they didn't have anybody in my age division, so they sent me down there.

Somehow I kept winning and then they put this older girl, Depersio, Mary Depersio, or

44

her sister as my competitor. I kept working my way up and she was like 16 or

something, I mean she was old, and I wasn't going to beat her. While we were playing,

she made a mistake and she went, "Oh!" And it made me look and I beat her. I have

the certificate somewhere that says I'm checker champion for the Cedar Hill.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Are you playing checkers today?

MRS. WARD: No, I don't.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's one of my favorite pastimes.

MRS. WARD: I should teach my four grandsons. If they would sit down long enough to

listen to me.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, if you find people that can play, to me it's better than a video

game playing.

MRS. WARD: Oh, yeah. My fourth graders played it. I tried to teach them some chess,

but I'm not that good. I told them how they moved, but I didn't know how to do that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It makes you think ahead and visualize where ... some of this stuff

is so fast now, it's all-

MRS. WARD: My two-year-old grandson is already doing that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It's amazing how they learn that real quick. Their hand/eye

coordination, that helps that.

MRS. WARD: But the thinking is sort of stalled at one level. I want them to ask why.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe 50 years from now when they digest all this that the youth

are doing and say, "Well, that's caused this, or maybe that was good for this."

MRS. WARD: I'm just telling my grandsons part of that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Each generation has that kind of stuff.

45

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of games did you play in the neighborhood when you

wasn't in the woods?

MRS. WARD: Well, I remember the hula hoop when it came out. We used to that a lot.

Along with the bike, I rode my bike all the time. Just everywhere. No pads, no helmet.

Did tricks on it and thought I was really cool, but I had a blue bike-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Remember what make it was?

MRS. WARD: I keep watching American Pickers and I think it was one of those ones

that everybody's looking for one, one of those Schwinns.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Schwinn.

MRS. WARD: And it was a female bike, even though I thought the male bike was

cooler, but it had that bar thing. Did a lot of bicycling. Just walked everywhere. On

Saturdays, Mom would drop us off at McCrory’s. I mean, nobody worried about your

kids then. Nobody said, "Well, you got to be with so and so." A bunch of us would go to

McCrory's and sit at the soda fountain. You know, just stuff like that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of store was McCrory's?

MRS. WARD: It was like a pharmacy, but it was like Rex.

MR. HUNNICUTT: No, I mean, the McCrory's, not Service Drug Store, but-

MRS. WARD: Yeah, McCrory's was a five and dime store.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember-

MRS. WARD: Oh, the bakery. The wonderful smells in the bakery. The Federal Bakery

Shop. We'd just go in there and get a cookie.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That was down to where our new town center is now.

46

MRS. WARD: It was in the strip mall where the mall was later built.

MR. HUNNICUTT: We need another bakery shop, don't we?

MRS. WARD: Yeah. We need a whole new downtown area.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Remember the cakes they used to make? The icing they used to

have on those cakes?

MRS. WARD: I used to stand there and watch them decorate them behind the glass.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Everybody did.

MRS. WARD: Oh, and the smell. Just the wonderful smell.

MR. HUNNICUTT: As a kid that was like watching somebody perform something. I

mean, it was-

MRS. WARD: Trampoline. Do you remember the trampolines?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Mrs. Swayze had across the street? At the high school.

MRS. WARD: Yeah, they had them on corners. I mean, literally trampoline parks. And

think about they had concrete all around them. They had no spotters and you just

jumped and jumped and jumped and I'm thinking ... Oh, we also played Putt Putt

where Wendy's is now. We'd play Putt Putt there. Roller skating rink, Hot Wheels, went

there too.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Now where was that located?

MRS. WARD: Down where Weatherford's is now. Down near Bruner's. It was a

wooden, totally wooden structure.

MR. HUNNICUTT: There where the bank is on the corner?

MRS. WARD: Further down past Jefferson Drug.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.

47

MRS. WARD: It was, yeah, near where Boy's Club is.

MR. HUNNICUTT: There's a bank sitting there on the corner.

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's the old roller rink.

MRS. WARD: I'd love to have some pictures of that. We have no pictures of that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever go to the one that's on the east side that had the

concrete floor?

MRS. WARD: No.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Inside, where a building supply place-

MRS. WARD: Didn't know that, no. Was it Hot Wheels, too?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MRS. WARD: No, this was all wooden. Organ playing. The back porch, where you

could go sit if you got too hot, and again, that's something we're looking for. We're

doing a PowerPoint for our 50th, so that's something else. We're trying to find pictures

of. So that would be nice to have. But let's see. Trampolines, Downtown, bicycling,

summer programs at the park, in the woods, hula hooping.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of shoes did you wear as a girl? When you wore shoes?

MRS. WARD: I think they were Keds tennis shoes. Yeah. I don't remember flip flops or

any of that kind of stuff.

MR. HUNNICUTT: No.

MRS. WARD: I think we wore socks and shoes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did the girls have a different color than black and Keds?

48

MRS. WARD: Or I went barefoot. Oh, the saddle Oxfords? Now that was more school,

but during the summer-

MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember the tennis shoes-

MRS. WARD: Probably sandals, we had sandals.

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... they were black uppers and they had a round circle on the side

that said 'Keds'?

MRS. WARD: I don't remember that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe that was-

MRS. WARD: I don't remember that. I remember Ladybug and Villager clothes. My

sister liked the tag. She wanted Ladybug and Villager and she'd sort of leave the tag

out so people would see it. I was in a t-shirt and blue jeans, so I didn't care. I

remember I had to wear those dresses. You know, you've couldn't wear pants or

anything back then to school.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's to school?

MRS. WARD: Always in skirts and sweaters and all that stuff, which I thought was silly.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Let's go back a minute to your mother's duty at The Oak Ridger.

MRS. WARD: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MR. HUNNICUTT: What was some of her job duties?

MRS. WARD: Well, she did all the Life and Style, which you don't find anymore, she

did weddings, full write ups of weddings. She had to learn all the jargon about the

different kinds of cloth. She made beautiful wedding articles for the paper. There were

full picture page, half-page spreads of weddings. People really appreciated that. She

did the obituaries. I will tell you, when I worked at The Oak Ridger one year, before I

49

became a teacher, I started with obituaries, and back then we went to the home. I

called Martin's, Weatherford's, Sharp's and Holley-Gamble, every morning. Buddy

Sharp always laughed at me, because I would say, "Do you have any body today?" He

said, "Well, I'll go check." He thought that was funny. They'd say, "Okay, you need to

get it in today, or no, we don't have the information yet, I'll get it to you tomorrow." But

we still had to make an announcement. Dick Smyser taught me a lot of stuff, and back

then, you didn't put 'died suddenly'. You had to put the cause back then. 'Died of

cancer', 'Died of self-inflicted gunshot wound', which was a separate article you had to

write. But I remember the very first one, or one I had to do, was in Coalfield, and I went

to the house and the boy had hung himself in the attic, I had to sit with the family and

talk about it. We wrote a story, because my mother said, "This is your last story. This is

your life." And that was hard. They gave me pictures of him, and they gave me the

family Bible to write down all the relatives. His suicide was a separate story. That was

a police report. That was a hard one to do, but we actually went in the home, then had

to get back to The Oak Ridger, to type it. We had glue pots on our desk, glue jars, and

then when you did one page, and you started typing, you would glue it to the next

piece of paper, and the next piece, and then you'd roll it up, and hand it to the proofers.

They had to read the whole thing, mark it if it was misspelled and other corrections.

Dick Smyser always said, "Are you sure you're not German? You put everything

backwards." He would say, "This should've been at the top." Well, I wasn't a journalist,

so I learned a lot, but it was quite an education, how we used to do obituaries back

then. Then they had to set type and print. It was quite a production and it was done

every day. We got the paper out by noon every day. That was our deadline.

50

MR. HUNNICUTT: What time did you start in the morning?

MRS. WARD: I was there at 7:00, calling the funeral homes. Because I knew if I had to

go out somewhere, I'd have that time to go.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And what was your deadline to getting in that paper?

MRS. WARD: They had to be proofing it no later than 10:30. Especially mine. Mine

had a lot problems. They were so patient with me.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, they didn't have anybody else to do the job, either, did they?

MRS. WARD: So it was a learning experience, I will tell you that. And then I got more

assignments. I had to cover all the Anderson County committee meetings, including

the board, the commissioners. That was an experience.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how when you cover something like that, how do you keep

up with all that?

MRS. WARD: Well, we didn't have recorders. So I had to make up my own notes. Like

if I did a commission meeting, when it lasted all day, and they had one of those a

month. Because I didn't know these people, I would give them a number, one through

whatever. Then by the number I would write their name one time and so if this guy

over here said something, and they would talk so fast, I put his number down and then

later I would match the name to the number. That's the fastest way I knew how to do it.

But you never did quote Brody. I can't remember his first name. He was over the

Emory Valley Center. Because every other word he said was bleeped. So you couldn't

quote him, so I learned never to put quote marks around anything he said because I

did one time. I thought that's really what he said and he called me up and said

51

something like unless you can prove I said that word for word don’t use quote marks.

That was quite a learning experience.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You had to write a retraction for that?

MRS. WARD: No, he said something like I'll let it go by this time, but don't quote me

again. And I started laughing and I said something like, well, I really can't quote you

word for word, can I? He replied with the idea that no, you can't, honey. It'd be bleeped

every other word. But he fought hard for the Emory Valley Center. I wish I could

remember his first name, but I remember his name was (Steve) Brody. And I kept

telling all the commissioners, "You know, I really want to teach. That's my degree." I

just graduated from Cumberland College, in Williamsburg, which is now University of

the Cumberlands. And I told them that I really just want to teach. And I thought, you all

could get me into the teaching, I covered the Anderson County Board of Education

meetings, and I told them too. Well, when I got a job teaching and left to go to Morgan

County and told them that this is my last meeting with them, they told me that they

didn’t know I wanted to teach. Anyway, I know that's a silly thing, but it stayed in my

mind. I don't know if they just wanted to keep me as a reporter, because I was pretty

easy on them.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you read about your mother, of how long she worked at The

Oak Ridger?

MRS. WARD: She was employed in '67 and retired in '88.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Let's talk about what you have in your hand before we forget it.

MRS. WARD: Oh, yes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: That's showed a picture of your mother.

52

MRS. WARD: Oh, okay. I like this one because this is her at her desk. I just think that

so looks like her. Got it? Okay. That's Bootie. But I found this in some of her stuff. Bill

Wilcox gave it to her, saying, "Hope you might find this of interest. Best regards, Bill."

And it's ... You can hold it up, I don't know. Is that too much of a glare?

MALE VOICE OFF CAMERA: [Inaudible 1:26:30]

MRS. WARD: And this is the kind of stuff people would bring her and she would read it

and then summarize it or something and put it in the paper for them. She was an

excellent writer.

MR. HUNNICUTT: This dollar bill's in the museum today and I hope it goes over with

the new artifacts that they're going to exhibit. I'm not sure what the history is of it. I've

known before, but I can't remember now. But it's very rare.

MRS. WARD: It seems to me that might be one of the first copies, because he gave it

to her, and she was at the paper at the time.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I was trying to remember who autographed all this, but I can't, it

doesn't come to me.

MRS. WARD: I don't know. But if you like the copy, I can leave it with you. Anyway,

'From us in Oak Ridge to Tojo'. The story of Lieutenant Nicholas Del Genio's

autographed dollar bill. Anyway, I just know that Bill Wilcox did a lot of good history for

us, too. But that's the kind of stuff she did, too. It was feature articles, she did a lot of

feature articles, too, that won a lot of Associated Press Awards. Yeah, she was very

good-

MR. HUNNICUTT: It's too bad these times were not like that.

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

53

MR. HUNNICUTT: Newspapers today is not much.

MRS. WARD: We don't have a family paper anymore. We pay for obituaries, we don't

have any weddings written up, you don't have any wedding announcements, you don't

have engagements, and that's what made Oak Ridge such a unique family, because

they could come to her with anything. Selma Shapiro would come for the stories-

MR. HUNNICUTT: You know when we lost our radio station, that's just the beginning

of…

MRS. WARD: Losing our identity.

MR. HUNNICUTT: …what's happened to history is going to start going away, because

different ways of getting your information.

MRS. WARD: That made us a family. Unfortunately, the people who were murdered at

that Gazette, they wrote community stuff. They were a community paper, and when

they kept saying, "They were such a good community paper," I kept thinking The Oak

Ridger at one time was, too. But now everybody goes online. I buy one every day, for

Mom. She said, "We lose our newspaper, we lose our identity." So I buy one every

day, even though it's paper thin and it's a buck, but I still support it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Smaller in size, overall size.

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How was Christmastime in your house?

MRS. WARD: Oh, we had all these pictures made and postcards. You remember how

you used to send them out? I've got all those, my sister and I. We didn’t get a lot. We

got a doll and a stocking. I carry on the stocking tradition now, and all my kids and

grandkids look forward to it, not so much what's under the tree. They love the stocking.

54

It was the big thing for me and my sister, because we got oranges and nuts and

chocolate covered cherries. That was all Mom and Dad could afford. Today, I put the

same kind of stuff in the stockings for my kids. In the toe I'll put something special. This

is something we do every year.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What kind of Christmas tree did you grow up with?

MRS. WARD: Real. And I still have a real one today. I love real trees. You know how

you used to put the trees on the curb on Outer Drive? Everybody had a tree out in front

of their house on the curb, and they all had a little bit of the silver icicles still stuck to

them. We used to drag them, here we go to the woods again, down to the woods and

made like an igloo out of them. They smelled so good, and we made it to where you

could crawl inside and sit inside. Again, I think one match, we didn't have any matches,

we didn't play with fire, but just one match and how fast it would've got 'fwoop', you

know? They were so dry, but they smelled so good. We'd always make a little

something to crawl inside and sit there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of lights did you have on your trees?

MRS. WARD: Type of lights?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Uh-huh (affirmative).

MRS. WARD: The hot ones. The kind that if you touched them, they'd burn you. We

didn't have the bubbles. I would have loved to have had bubbles. Mom couldn't afford

those, so we had the hot ... They did keep, from World War II because they couldn't

get a lot of stuff then, they were like little metal stars, and you'd put them on and then

screw the bulb and it made it reflect more. I remember those. And the ornaments that

we passed on, they're all broken now, were so ugly. That's the only thing you could get

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during the war. They were like dark blue, but very fragile. I remember those. But

they're all broken now.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What'd you put on the very peak of the tree? On top?

MRS. WARD: I believe it was a star. I don't know, didn't really stand out in my

memory. I'm pretty sure it was probably a star of some kind.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother remind you, or did you remember putting water in

the tree base holder?

MRS. WARD: Oh, we watered it every day. See, I still have a live one to this day, but

they've invented a really neat thing. It's a long funnel, and you stick it, it's got a long

tube, and you stick it in the tree and you pour in the funnel, you don't have to get down

on your hands and knees anymore. But I do remember doing that, and sweeping up

the needles. Yeah, that was always fun.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you use any of that, what'd they call it? Garland? That they put

around the trees?

MRS. WARD: Oh, yeah, we did all the icicles. I would go all out on icicles when I was

a kid. I'd even throw them on by the handful.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, I used to do that and my mother would say, "You hang them

there individually. Don't throw them on the tree."

MRS. WARD: "Individually, one at a time, don't throw them, it's looks like a ... " You

know ...

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever pop popcorn and make ornaments out of popcorn?

MRS. WARD: I don't think we did. Maybe we did, I don't remember.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: They used to take popcorn and make a big loop out of it and I

guess needle and thread run through it.

MRS. WARD: I don't remember doing that. It was mainly icicles and lights, which if you

touched them you burned your hand. And the garland. I think that was about it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: So you passed on to your family, when you was growing up, the

traditions you lived with?

MRS. WARD: Yeah. I don't do the icicles.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you still buy those?

MRS. WARD: I don't know if you can. I guess you could order them from somewhere.

I'm sure. If you can order spoolies, you could find icicles. You know what spoolies are?

It's what girls used to wrap their hair in.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Oh yeah, those big, round cone things?

MRS. WARD: Yeah. If you can still order spoolies, I imagine you could probably find

some tinsel.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You know what you used when didn't have spoolies?

MRS. WARD: Orange cans or-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Toilet paper-

MRS. WARD: Toilet paper rollers. Bobby pins. Fact is, we have a memorabilia table

for our 50th. We have a wig and on the wig we have spoolies, we have the roll up

things, we have bobby pins, and Dippity Doo, and we're going to do all that on one part

of the table and the big hair dryers and the lacey necks that girls used to put over their

heads and wear Downtown, because you thought it looked all right. And my mother

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would say, "How can you go out in public with your hair rolled?" I'd say, "But mom, it's

got this nice net over it!"

MR. HUNNICUTT: Also used to use bandannas over those rollers.

MRS. WARD: Yes, and we thought it was just fine. We'd go all day with it rolled up.

Sweat in it all day. You started clean hair, you kept it up all day, you were outside, you

were sweating, came home that night, took it down and it just was 'bloop', because it

was dirty by the end. It was all sweated out.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember those little hair clips you pinched the end, stick

them up through there?

MRS. WARD: Mm-hmm (affirmative), stick them up through there. The hot rollers that

you'd roll and stick those pins over. Ironing it on an ironing board.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you iron a lot for your mother?

MRS. WARD: We did a lot of ironing, because we kept it up just about forever in the

kitchen. We did a lot of ironing back then, yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: My mother used to iron the handkerchiefs, the wash clothes.

MRS. WARD: Everything was ironed. Or put out on the line. Oh, did that not smell

good. Those sheets and stuff smelled so-

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they have pant stretchers when you were growing up?

MRS. WARD: I don't remember that. See, with Dad gone, it was just three women in

the house, so it was mainly just female stuff.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, even for girl's jeans, I thought maybe they'd have…

MRS. WARD: No.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: ...they'd put those stretchers in there and pull out the top, you

know, they were metal.

MRS. WARD: I don't remember that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Because when you washed the jeans, a lot of times they used

starch back in the day.

MRS. WARD: Oh yeah, I remember the starch.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And then you'd take those stretchers out of those pants and just

hang there like a piece of-

MRS. WARD: They'd just stand there.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, they'd almost stand up.

MRS. WARD: They'd just stand, yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You were speaking of your children.

MRS. WARD: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me who they are.

MRS. WARD: I have a son, Jason Howard, named after my dad, Ward, he lives in

Knoxville with his wife and three boys, Asher, eight, Myers, five, Turner, two. And then

my daughter, Elizabeth Warren, after my mom, is Phillips. She lives in my mom's

house at 109 Moylan Lane with her son and her husband. And they all-

MR. HUNNICUTT: What's her son's name?

MRS. WARD: ... went to Oak Ridge High School. Matthew Ownby.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And her husband?

MRS. WARD: Kevin.

MR. HUNNICUTT: And what is your son's wife's name?

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MRS. WARD: Lindsay, sorry about that. My son graduated from Oak Ridge High, then

he graduated from UT [University of Tennessee]. My daughter graduated from Oak

Ridge High and then graduated from National School in Knoxville, National School of

Business. She has a 15 year old, Matthew, who is going to be a sophomore at Oak

Ridge High School. So we all went to Oak Ridge High.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How much did the Oak Ridge school system influence you in your

career as being a teacher?

MRS. WARD: Well, my senior year I still didn't know what I wanted to do. I decided to

attend Chattanooga State Tech at the time. I don't know what it's called now. At that

time, computers were just starting to come in to the existence. I went to Chattanooga

State Tech and wired, hand wired, the boards. I don't know if you understand what I'm

saying. The computer had literal boards that had to be wired into this port to this port

and that port. Then you had to do a bunch of cards that you had to code with a code

that went to a stacker, and by the time you did all that, it printed out a little program

about five inches long. And I found out I didn't like that.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have to use a soldering iron to do that?

MRS. WARD: Nope, it was just cords like, you know, cords like in his ears. Except you

just had to put it in the right configuration. They were called hardboards. Wiring the

hardboard. And every time you changed the program, you had to redo the board. But

then you also had to give a set of instructions on cards, which were stacked and then

fed through the machine and it had to match the board, and then the printer at the

other end would print out your program. I was not a machine person, and I figured from

there, I needed to deal with humans. I didn't like machines, so I changed to education,

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went to Cumberland College and graduated with my degree in teaching. So it was

totally opposite. I mean, the computers were the size of the room, you know this big

thing spinning and stuff. So that was a long time ago.

MR. HUNNICUTT: It's amazing how technology has advanced from those days.

MRS. WARD: Oh, yes.

MR. HUNNICUTT: They got a little phone that can take a picture about as good as any

camera did.

MRS. WARD: And you don't need to wire the computers. I mean you sit at a keyboard

and do all that now. So it was different.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What'd you see different in teaching when you started teaching

versus when you went to school?

MRS. WARD: Well, I'm in a different environment from growing up in the city school

system and then teaching in a county school system. It is different as night and day.

There's pros and cons for both. The city can afford ... My kids, even though I was in

Morgan County as a teacher, I did not take them with me because they had music and

art and band and they don't have that in the county. In most schools, they can't afford

it. But then again, the smaller school, you have the family closeness versus the huge

schools here in Oak Ridge. I don't know, pros and cons on both sides.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you feel like you gave your students the amount of time that

you was given when you were in school?

MRS. WARD: I gave them more time. I was their librarian, I was their art teacher, I was

their music teacher. The only thing I wasn't was the PE [physical education]. We had a

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PE teacher. And then later we got a librarian. So I had them all day. I was their teacher

all day. So it's totally different.

MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you determine how you was going to discipline your

children in today's society?

MRS. WARD: Well, luckily for me, I didn't really have to deal with that where I taught. I

got on the phone and called Mom. Mom came down to school. That's all I had to do.

Or just look at them and say, "You know, you really disappointed me." There was a

total difference in my classroom. I don't even remember any discipline when I went to

Cedar Hill. I don't think there was any discipline. I think kids just knew to act correctly

or their parents would be up there in five seconds, so I used that idea when I taught in

the county. The parent is my discipline. No hitting, no yelling. Some of them got hit too

much at home. Abuse was rampant up there. So you did like my mother did, she'd say,

"Oh, you so disappointed me." That used to kill me. I'd rather her hit me, yell at me, but

when she looked at me and said, "That disappointed me." It'd just kill me, so I used

that philosophy more when I was teaching. Spanking kids, that's archaic. I never did

that. Besides, you had to go get a witness, you had to get somebody to watch your

classroom, you had to write it up. I thought by then, do we even remember what the kid

did? I mean, was it really that bad?

MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you send any to the principal's office?

MRS. WARD: Only when it got to the point that I had tried all I could do. I never did it

the first time, or the second, or the third. And I documented it and I said, "Okay, let's go

up and talk to somebody else. I'm just not getting through to you for some reason."

And I had to document what I had done previously to try to stop it.

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MR. HUNNICUTT: Sally, how do you think living in Oak Ridge has been for you?

Good, bad, great or what? Describe it.

MRS. WARD: Oh, I love Oak Ridge. It gave me a wonderful childhood, it gave me a

good education. It's given my kids a good education. I wish my other grandkids came

here. I feel like I'm part of a community. I still live on Outer Drive, two doors up from

where I grew up. My daughter lives in my mother's home. I love it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When you go visit her, I'm sure you've got fond memories of

walking in there at certain times.

MRS. WARD: Oh yeah. I've got pictures of ... me out in the yard going to a dance or

something. Mom's sitting there. A lot of good memories. I never left. Of course, my big

thing was, "I'll never live in Oak Ridge. I want to get out of Oak Ridge, I don't like Oak

Ridge." So I lived in Camden, South Carolina, the first year I was married. All I wanted

to do was come home. And I haven't left since, and I've been married 45 years.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I don't think we've mentioned your husband.

MRS. WARD: Oh, yes. Curtis Jackson Ward.

MR. HUNNICUTT: We better do that.

MRS. WARD: We need to put him in there, since I've known him 50 years of my 68

years. I met him when I was 19, at Shoney's, at the drive in, the drive around, when

Barney was there with his one bullet. I worked at Shoney's so I can say all this. Met

him at 19, he'd just come in from the Army. He served in Korea. He's from Windrock,

he grew up in the coal-mining camp at Windrock. His parents are Lonny and Sue

Ward, they're both deceased. I knew him when he lived up there at the foot of the

mountain at Windrock, when I was in college. We got married in '73. Two kids. He

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retired from the city of Oak Ridge. He was the guy who did your traffic signals, and we

would get calls all the time, "Can you please make the light at Tennessee Avenue

change quicker? It's too long." And he said, "Well, I put in the loops and I do the

programs. That's all I can do." Every time we go into a new town, he criticizes the light

system. In every town between here and North Carolina. After retiring from the city, he

went to work at Home Depot. He worked in the electrical department of Home Depot. A

lot of people know him from there. He knows more people than I do. He retired from

there and he now, for the past five years, he turned 70 in June. He works at S.E.T.

Gun Range and sells guns and runs the indoor range.

MR. HUNNICUTT: What have you done since you retired?

MRS. WARD: Well, actually, I only took one year off. Went back and did student

teaching in junior high. I'd always been in elementary, but I figured, what are they

going to do? Fire me? So I went in to do junior high to see what it was like, forgetting

that when I went back, the kids I'd had in elementary were now in junior high, so the

first day I came back, the first group, I was sitting behind the desk in Miss Carlena's

room to do math. I had my glasses down like this. They walked in the door and they all

went, "Miss Ward! You're back!" I said, "Yes, and I know every one of you, so sit

down." And then I started laughing. Had a ball doing junior high, because they all came

up and set around the desk and told me all the stuff they had done to me behind my

back in 4th and 5th grade. And I said, "No, I know you did that." I didn't. They said,

"You did?" And I said, "Yeah, I was just a cool teacher. You all just didn't realize it." I

had a good time. Then the next year I did children, Save the Children Program. This

program was started in Europe to aid orphaned children.

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[Editor’s Note: Portion omitted at Mrs. Ward’s request.]

MR. HUNNICUTT: You've certainly had a variety of life, I have to say. Very interesting.

MRS. WARD: I've had a good life. I've had a fun life. I'm looking forward to my 50th

high school reunion. We're really going to have a fun time at that one.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Sounds like it.

MRS. WARD: Thinking of all the stuff we did growing up together. Catching fireflies,

selling them, you know, the whole thing.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how much you used to get for those?

MRS. WARD: What was it, a dollar a pound or something? You had to get a whole

bunch.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Where'd you take them?

MRS. WARD: I froze them and gave them to this other guy. One of the Ramsey boys I

think. I didn't ever get the money for it, I just helped collect them. I couldn't stand the

thought they were being frozen, so I gave them to away.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that just put them in suspension-

MRS. WARD: I know it, but you know. I thought it was being cruel.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Military did a lot of research on those things.

MRS. WARD: Yeah, they did.

MR. HUNNICUTT: But I can't remember where you took them.

MRS. WARD: But I remember catching them. I don't remember.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I think I kept it, but I never did take them.

MRS. WARD: I just gave all mine away, like I said, to somebody on the lane was trying

to make money.

65

MR. HUNNICUTT: Seems like I don't see as many now as there was then.

MRS. WARD: I don't neither. Except one night around 2:00 in the morning, my dog

barked. I went on the back porch and I swear, my whole magnolia tree, that's that huge

one out there on Outer Drive, the pine tree and the one next door were covered in

them. And they were just flashing. I was mesmerized. There must have been

thousands of them. I don't know if it was a mating time or if I just happened to catch it,

you know that time of year. I've never seen it again. Have I over talked?

MR. HUNNICUTT: No, we could probably talk two or three more hours.

MRS. WARD: Oh, I don't know.

MR. HUNNICUTT: But sometimes you got to stop. All good things got to come to an

end.

MRS. WARD: Things keep popping in, you know, when you mentioned something.

MR. HUNNICUTT: I want to thank you for your time-

MRS. WARD: Okay, well, I hope you can use some of it.

MR. HUNNICUTT: ... and your willingness to come. Everything that people says is Oak

Ridge history, and you're now part of Oak Ridge history.

MRS. WARD: Oh, wow, that makes me feel even younger.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of anything else you'd like to say before we end?

MRS. WARD: No, I'm glad I mentioned my husband. Thank you.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.

MRS. WARD: That was so important.

MR. HUNNICUTT: When you get the written transcript of this, he may read it. If he's

not in it-

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MRS. WARD: He'll say, "Oh by the way, should your ... " Oh my goodness, that's

going to be embarrassing.

MALE VOICE OFF CAMERA: Did you say his name?

MRS. WARD: Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: You want to repeat his name one more time, make sure?

MRS. WARD: Curtis Jackson Ward, from Windrock. Poor guy. He's a good guy.

MR. HUNNICUTT: We could talk about his job setting the street lights, the signals up.

MRS. WARD: Oh, you don't have to put all this on there, but originally he was in

electrical and he almost got killed. A friend of his pushed him off the pole just in time to

save his life. And I remember them walking up to the door, it's sort of like that military

thing, I knew something was wrong, because there was a bunch of them parked

across the street, because they all love him. And two of them were arguing and finally

one of them said, "Okay, okay." And came walking. I was watching all this out the

window. My Jason was sitting on the counter, he may have been three years old. And

he started walking towards the door, and I thought, "He's coming to tell me he's dead."

That's the first thing. So I opened the door and I said, "Where's his body? Where'd you

take it?" He said, "Oh no, no. He's not dead. But he's been injured, but he's okay." And

his buddy had pushed him off the pole just as the 36,000 volt thing ... They'd gotten the

wrong line and he saved him. He said, "He's a little sore, but he's alive." I said, "Okay,

that's all I wanted to know." He got out of electrical department after that and went to

traffic control. Little safer. Just made more people mad at him. Yeah.

MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, thanks again, Sally. It's been a real pleasure interviewing you.

MRS. WARD: Well, I appreciate you asking.

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[End of Interview]

[Editor’s Note: This transcript was edited at Mrs. Ward’s request. The corresponding

audio and video components have remained unchanged.]

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