someday, some point in the distant future, if we still exist, the world will come to its senses, will form a truly well-policed, organized organization, part of the united nations, hopefully, and atomic weapons will be destroyed. i doubt if i'll live to see it, but maybe people in the audience will live to see it. it's worth looking forward to. if it happens, it will save -- it won't happen for a long time, but it might happen. a couple of live events on c-span2 to tell you about. first, a discussion on how to bridge u.s. and russian policy on security and arms control, with the goal of limiting non-strategic nuclear weapons. from the center for strategic

and international studies, that's live at 9:00 a.m. eastern. as congress prepares to vote on the iran nuclear agreement, a conversation on the deal's pros and cons, at 11:00 a.m. eastern. also on c-span2. on c-span friday night, a discussion on efforts to improve american infrastructure. including author and journalist ginger strand on cities taking control of their power grid. burlington had rested their municipal utility, and it was done because of money. the rates were too high. not surprising. still a reason that many towns are trying to get in on it. community power can be a source of revenue for the town.

with public power, actually public power consumers pay significantly less on average than private power consumers. some towns wanted to develop green power. bolder, colorado, recently didn't renew the contract with their private power producer because they were tired of the company dragging its feet on developing green power. the citizens said, great, we'll do it ourselves. another reason is to get more responsiveness from your power company. winter garden, florida, needed a series of electrical upgrades, and their private provider wouldn't do it. they said, we're not renewing your contract. they invested some money, taxpayer dollars, in their needed updpragrades and now the paying less for power than they were before. in addition to author and journalist ginger strand, the

discussion on american infrastructure will include california urban designer benjamin grant. that's at 8:00 eastern on c-span. august 1945, 70 years ago, american forces dropped two atomic bombs over japan. one in hiroshima and the other in nagasaki. up next, peggy bowditch remembers growing up next door to robert oppenheimer, director of the los alamos laboratory, who was known as the father of the atomic bomb. she talks about the parties her parent s hosted for famous scientists, as well as her family's relationship with the oppenheimers. this oral history is from the voices of the manhattan project, created by the atomic heritage foundation, and the los alamos historical society. i was born in washington,

d. d.c., in 1934. my father was in the navy, so we moved here and there. i remember living in california and virginia and then new mexico. when we first arrived in new mexico, i thought it was the worst dump i'd ever seen. having moved from tidewater, virginia, with lots of vegetation and tons of water, i couldn't believe the dust and the lack of plants and the tiny amount of water, even in something that was called the rio grande. but over the years, that came to be my favorite place of all the places i've ever lived. we'd go back from time to time, more to santa fe than los alamos. we had our children and

grandchildren join us in santa fe for our 50th wedding anniversary a few years ago. but it took me time to warm up to los alamos. should i tell you about where i live there had? >> tell us how old you were and what brought your family to los alamos. >> i was 8 when we moved there. just short of 11 when we left after the war. my father had worked on the proximity fuse, although he was a regular navy officer, he'd work science and -- from the beginning of world war ii on. general groves picked him, and he meshed with oppenheimer, so he became head of ordinance at los alamos. >> i don't think you've mentioned his name. what's his name? >> he was captain -- navy captain williams sterling

parsons. later, after the bomb was dropped, he became commodore and then admiral. >> can you spell his name? >> sterling, as in sterling silver. >> he has a nickname? >> deek, at the naval academy, class of 19 t22, they gave everybody nicknames. deacon and parsons. d-e-k-e or d-e-a-c, depending. >> your mother, tell us about her a little bit. >> she was a many generation navy kid. her father or grandfather had both been admirals, and she was used to moving and taking

charge. she was a natural athlete. she loved anything to do with athletics. skiing, riding, you name it. you know, she just picked up and moved. >> what was her maiden name? >> cluvarious. >> first name. >> martha. >> together. >> martha. >> how do you spell it. >> m-a-r-t-h-a. cl-u-v-e-r-i-u-s. her grandfather was admiral samson, who was a big deal in the spanish-american war. she was a take charge type. my father was a more quiet intellectual type. mother was a doer. he was a thinker.

i had a younger sister who was full of spunk. i was shy, painfully shy. but i was good at eavesdropping and remembering what i heard. >> okay. tell us now, when did you arrive? what time of year? >> june of '43. that's the back road, up the mesa. it was terrifying. the trucks that were going up, since so much was under construction, the trucks have a lower gear than the cars. they would slow further and further down, and the car would start to stall. you were on the edge of this drop. it was -- but my mother, she could handle it. we got up there, and i think

this has been written about, but when we got to the first gate to come in, the guards thought they had a spy because my father fat announced that he was captain parsons, which was true, a navy captain. but it was an army base and they expected somebody who was a captain to be wearing the appropriate stuff. and they were very excited that they caught this spy. well, it was just the difference of service. and we went to -- we had a very nice house. i think it was probably the biggest house on bathtub row. los alamos had been a boy school. and there was fuller lodge in the center and then -- i can't remember the number of houses on bathtub row. we were down at the end. and we had the distinction of having two bathtubs.

and that got us in a bit of trouble once. because there were only showers in all the army construction. and there was a soldier being released from the hospital. but the nurse told him that he would need to take baths. and he said, well, where? and she said, mrs. parsons wouldn't mind. the trouble is, she didn't tell my mother. mother arrived home to find this poor soldier in the bathtub, which i'm sure embarrassed him more than it embarrassed her. we lived next door to the oppenheimers. and at times, i guess there were times of great security. and we would have somebody patrolling our house or the oppenheimers' house or two walking around together.

but that was kind of hit or miss, i'm sure, dependent on something that was going on. but my mother forgot her pass once. the guard wouldn't let her in her house. it was a magical place to live. i mean, you had no fear. at first, the army thought that patrolling it with horses would do. but the horses that they got were from kentucky, and the terrain and kentucky horses did not match. so they were left with all these stables. the horses left, but the stables remained. and the stable help remained. so they opened the stables to anybody who wanted to keep a horse there. so that was great. my mother had a horse. they bought me -- well, they bought my sister and me a small

horse. and my mother thought she had -- she seemed a little swayback. they said, she has a hay belly. well, she was carrying. so that was very exciting. after school, several days a week, my mother would ride over and my horse would be with her. she would have the reigns. and then i would hop on and off we would go. and she rode a lot with kitty oppenheimer. so that was -- they were a good pair. quite different, but they both loved riding. and i think kitty liked the fact that my mother was a take charge type and willing to give parties. so there were a lot of visiting firemen that came. and often i would be passi inii

food at cocktail parties. one night i was told someone named nicholas baker is here. but that was the code name fnei bore. i passed him cheese and crackers, but i don't remember anything about that. and after some party, probably a dinner party, somebody gave me a taste of that liquor, orange cu cur cur curasao. i was alone one sunday. i was a studious nerd.

i didn't know where the key was but i saw that there were two silver drawers. i removed the drawers and reached in until i pulled the right thing out. when my parents got home, my mother was appalled that i had been drinking at age 9. my father was delighted, because it showed i figured out how to get the liquor. another time that it was apparent that my father favored brains over good behavior, the famous english physicist sir james chadwick was at los alamos and chadwick had twin daughters age 21 who were -- who had been evacuated from england. and it turned out that my father, who went to washington fairly often, would be taking the same train west as these two

british twins. so sir james asked dad to watch out for them. well, british twins of 21 don't want some old guy watching out for them. but the last morning as they were getting up toward the station for santa fe, he sat with them at breakfast. and they ordered two eggs boiled precisely at three minutes each. so my father explained the physics of the fact that three minute eggs at that altitude would be practically raw. they listened to his explanation, turned to the waiter and said, two eggs, boiled precisely three minutes. and the waiter translated that into soft boiled eggs. so when daddy told us the story,

i was appalled that people would be so rude. what upset my father was that sir james would have two such stupid daughters who couldn't understand a physics lecture. there were a lot of interesting people. my best friend at los alamos was named joanna jorgenson. she was from nebraska, a couple of years older than i was. but we had a great time going around together. and by day, our object would be to find courting couples somewhere in the woodland area and by night we would just be out walking. but i think there is some connection between math, physics, science and music, because practically every night

you would hear a quartet, four scientist getting together in a chamber group, having a marvellous time. so it really was a fascinating place to grow up. and people were -- my father, who was in his 40s then -- early 40s, was about the oldest person there. and the younger ones kept having babies. so there were a great many babies born at los alamos. and i think that the birthplace of record was a p.o. box. and the school was very good. i mean, you can't get scientists to come and have a junky school. so it was fun. but i do remember there were i.q. tests given at the school.

and this was something i picked up at a cocktail party. everybody was shocked, the child who tested highest on the i.q. test was the daughter of the man who shoveled coal into the furnace in the morning. go figure. i've often won determined what happened to her. oh, we had -- i told you about the horses. and each day after the hired crew of what we called them indians then from the local pueblo would be carefully checked out, the daily help that could clean and then the men who

did work, they would be carefully checked off at 4:30 or 5:00 and bussed down to the pueblo. but at night, we had first run movies for 10 cents a piece. and here in the first row of the movies were all the indians who had been checked out. they would ride their ponies up, scale the mesa to see the movies. they weren't spying. a spy under our very roof was our baby-sitter. he would come and take care of my sister and me. since we were 5 and 8, we didn't need much looking after. but we had a piano in the house. and he loved to play the piano. so that was our baby-sitter. then when i got a little older,

i was actually peter oppenheimer's baby-sitter. you shouldn't really trust a 10-year-old to baby-sit. but with a guard walking around outside, what could go wrong? >> what do you remember of that? >> oh, you know -- i never had any trouble with him. i don't remember his sister, toni. maybe later. we were pretty close to the oppenheimers. the thing that impressed me, chicken pox was going around. and he had been so carefully brought up. he never had chicken pox. so he got it as an adult. he was really sick. but even though he felt like nothing, he would still go to work as soon as he was no longer

contagious. i revelled in the fact that i could stay out of school with chicken pox. and about the first day i had chicken pox, i was lying in bed listening to the ratd dio. my mother was out riding probably. they broke into radio programming to say that president roosevelt had died. and then they immediately went back to their previous scheduled program. which seems odd under the circumstances. but i'm pretty sure that's what happened. when my mother walked in, i said, mother, mother, i heard on the radio that roosevelt died. she said, nonsense. you have a fever. you probably imagined it. i kept trying to tell people that roosevelt had died, but nobody believed me. the next day she had an all-day

ride planned with kitty oppenheimer. and she said, are you sure i should go? i had planned a whole day of listening to soap operas and things. i was absolutely infuriated when all the programming was about roosevelt. no soap operas. and when i finally went back to school, having gotten hooked on soap operas, i asked my mother if she would listen and tell me what happened. she gave me a look as if that were beneath contempt. so that was not her thing. and we had two dogs while we were there. and one tom cat. in those days, i think nobody thought of neutering and

spaying. and our tom cat appeared to be the father of every litter. we got a phone call from a woman who said, we have had a first. we have a litter of kittens and taffy could not have been the father. they are different color. so my mother went over to see the litter. she turned one of the kittens over and it had an orange stomach. taffy got around. i think -- after the war, we certainly continued our friendship with the oppenheimers. and went up to princeton.

it's hard to remember how often. the friendship continued. and it was fun to go and visit them. and i remember i was struggling with my geometry homework. and kitty oppenheimer was the one who helped me. and then in december of '53, my father heard at a cocktail party that oppy had been separated from his clearance and he was so upset that he came home and began a heart attack, which he checked with the encyclopedia, and it didn't sound as if he had a heart attack. the next morning mother took him

to the hospital and he died a week after his 52nd birthday. of course, oppy did lose his security clearance. and years later, when he was reinstated by being given the fair me award just after -- well, 50 years ago, just after jfk was assassinated, lyndon johnson chose to present him with the fair me award. and mother went to the gathering. of course, there were many scientists, people she had known. and all of a sudden secret service came into the room with 100 or so people and said, is mrs. parsons here? she thought, what have i done? and because of the friendship,

they wanted her to come in and be with them when the johnsons a in the family quarters. they took her in for the award presentation. there's a new book and there she is in the background with the oppenheimers as he got the award. i had three little kids then. and we were watching on television. and there was their grandmother up there in the limelight. but she continued to go and visit the oppenheimers after my father died. and one day they said, we're going over to the george school in bucks county where peter was a student. i guess he was a border. and i suppose everybody who was at this picnic was aware that an

oppenheimer was something special and kept kind of looking at him. and mother said she was really embarrassed because oppy got up from the table and he said, martha, i've brought your very favorite thing. mother looked surprised. he said, heinken beer. the quaker school picnic, that's not the drink of choice. but it was a lovely thing to have done. any questions? follow-up? >> these are great stories. i want to ask about everybody and everything. let's start back with what it was like to live on bathtub row. were you one of the only children there? >> oh, no. no. i think -- it's hard for me to

remember. the bradburys were up the row. and lois, when first knew her, had two boys, james and john. and then when the third child was imminent, one of the scientists at a party said, well, you have to keep with the js. so how about jesus or jemus? it turned out to be, i believe, david. but everybody had young children on bathtub row. the younger unmarried ones were living elsewhere in pretty miserable housing. i mean, we had an asparagus bed. a fenced-in vegetable garden. we had quite a nice place.

>> so what special occasions do you remember? did you ever go down to the bridge to -- >> oh, yeah. not to have dinner there. if i had been as far as i can remember a really well behaved child for a year, i would be taken to santa fe. that was the big deal. >> did that happen? were you a good girl for a whole year? >> i was a nerd. i was boringly good. i don't think my sister ever got taken, because she was more adventurous and naughty. >> what kind of adventures did she -- >> oh, god. you know, all you had to say was don't jump off that and she would do it.

she fell off our horse early on. so i was the rider. and she was not. but, you know, i remember we were going to some kind of pot luck supper at school. and my mother had made devilled eggs. so, of course, my sister -- i'm sure this was an accident. she stepped in the devilled eggs. so that made life a little difficult for her. i did try to cook at los alamos. our mother was not a cook. and i could get a cookbook. and my sister would be the lookout. when mother came home, she didn't want to catch us messing up the kitchen. i would try to make brownies or fudge. probably brownies because they

had to rise. following the joy of cooking, which was not written for that altitude, i made the worst mess. i mean, even my sister and i couldn't eat it. and when she would call out that mother was coming, i would quickly ditch the pan of failed brownies on a lilac bush outside the back door. and then quickly clean it up. since mother didn't come in the kitchen first thing, we had time to clean up. but years later when i went back to the house -- i think it was 12 years later, i checked the health of the lilac. apparently, it liked my cooking even though it was inedible. fairly often -- it's hard for me to remember how often -- although, there was rationing.

you could go to fuller lodge and have a very good dinner. roast beef, i mean. we didn't suffer the way the rest -- i think they wanted the scientists to be well fed. and i can't remember whether that dinner at fuller lodge was open to everybody or not. general groves would show up now and then. and he was a terrific administrator. i mean, he got the pentagon built. and then he was head of the manhattan project. but he was basically -- i would describe his personality as bully. and there was an army colonel maybe whitney ashbridge -- i think he was a graduate of west point. and a very nice fellow. but groves was a regular army

officer and ashbridge was maybe engineering duty only. so groves looked down on him. and one morning at inspection time, he and groves were marching along. the soldiers were coming by. and groves saw a piece of trash blowing and ordered ashbridge to pick up the trash in front of the troops, which was really demeaning. and i remember my father talking about what a nasty thing that was. and after the war, my parents would still see groves. and they would play tennis with groves and his daughter. groves was the kind of tennis player who did cuts and nasty shots. his daughter was -- she was a good player. i remember general groves asking

me -- he said, would you like me to send your father back to los alamos. since i loved it, oh, yes, yes. he was just fooling. just typical bully type taking advantage of a kid's enthusiasm. i don't think i have anything more. >> tell me about the relationship between your father and groves. they had worked together before the war? >> i don't think so. i think groves asked bush for his suggestion. first, of course, being an army base, they wanted an army ordinance expert. but bush said the guy you need is parsons. well, groves was more interested

in somebody who could do the job than somebody -- and my father ended up with quite a few people from dalgron, the navy base, because he knew their capabilities. ashworth was navy. bradbury he brought. and the trouble was the army and the navy ranks don't match up. so my father, when he went off the base, was required to have a driver with security clearance. he would call for a driver. he would say, is captain parsons. the guy at the other end at the motor pool would say, no cars for captains. so eventually that would get worked out. and i remember one hair raising trip. there was this secured driver.

he had the right clearance, but he didn't know how to drive properly. so we got through the guard house and the minute we are out of sight, my father said, son, you sit here, i will drive. but since my father's family lived in new mexico, we would go with permission to albuquerque for thanksgiving once or twice. there was a lot of social life. there was square dancing and i think bernice brode was behind some of the exchanges. they had square dances and they would invite the indians from the pueblo to come up and observe the square dances. then we would be invited to go down there and see their dances. so a lot was going on.

one night i came home from a dance and got violently ill. apparently i had been bitten by a black widow spider playing outside. i was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. that's pretty -- when you are 10, that's a big deal. of course, my parents feared for my life. but i just thought, this is exciting. i recovered in a day or two. but that was their best guess about what had happened. there was a pool at los alamos, a pond. and a child about my age drowned in the pond. so they built a wonderful swimming pool. and we had lessons and could do that. but mostly for me it was riding.

and i just lived at the stable. i mean, waiting for the horse to produce the foal. being the nerd i was, when it was 8:00, i had to go home and the foal was born at 9:00. so i missed it. but that was fun. probably my judgments of adults were skewed because there was a famous scientist, george kistakowski, and he had a nasty horse. so i assumed he was a nasty man. probably not so. but the people who rode -- i forgot whether you paid $9 or $18 a month to keep a horse there and practically every horse had its own stable boy. and when my horse's foal turned

out to be male, we named him for our stable boy, charlie. he was a delightful guy. >> were these stable boys -- where did they come from? >> they were army. i think maybe they had come from kentucky. but they adjusted better to los alamos than the horses. that they brought from kentucky. i guess i just didn't know what was going on, nor did my mother. my father came and went. he went to washington quite often. and groves, i don't know whether he was nervous -- for some reason he was nervous about air transport. so you always traveled by train. that was considered safe.

and, of course, the trains were pretty nice then. i never got to leave los alamos except to go to albuquerque or santa fe. but who cared to leave? it was paradise. and in my years there, i never saw a rattlesnake. i understand there's some there. but i guess that's -- >> did you feel that you were living, you know, in a highly secure and military-run place? were you aware as a child of this? >> since we had moved there where there was a guard house and gates, it seemed normal to me. there was the inner sanctum where the men worked.

my sister, i hooted with superiority when she couldn't say it properly. she called it technic malairia. you felt safe. but i had felt safe in other places. when my father left for the test and then to go to drop the bomb, you know, it was just another absence. and there were many sort of false vj days. the rumors would go around that the japanese had surrendered. not so. i don't remember that that -- we were more interested in vj day than ve day. but i vaguely remember hearing my father had been on the

mission. you know, so? so can i ride today, mom? and because he died so young, i never really talked to him much about it. the one thing i learned later, there was a physics lab named for him at johns hopkins. and i got a tape of the dedication. and he described the hiroshima run as a typical parsons job. my father was every possible -- worse case scenario planning. and everything went like clockwork, partly because of the planning and partly because of luck. and then i realized that that must be in some way a genetic trait. because when i'm going some place, i plan it all carefully,

worst case scenario. i think, yeah, he was dropping the first atomic bomb. i'm just going to do errands. but if you are made up that way, that's the way you behave. i did see oppenheimer once fairly late in his life. i was working at harvard after i graduated from college. and oppy came to give lectures. i think it must have been 1957. and, of course, he was mobbed. the theater was -- they had to broadcast it to other buildings. but my mother had said i had to go speak to him afterward. still being shy, i was a little -- you know, being a nerd, you do what your mother has told you. so after this jam packed

lecture, i went up. and he was surrounded by the top physicists in the inner circle and then many concentric circles. and i stood on the outside and since i look exactly like my mother, he looked through all these people and he said, is it peggy? and the multitudes parted. and we had a sort of cryptic conversation about los alamos and people. and physics students followed me out of the lecture. who is this woman? that was fun. and i could call my mother and tell her that i had spoken to oppy. but that was the last time i saw him. he was just -- well, he was god to the fiphysicists and to the people who knew him just casually like me.

>> the stories are that if kitty was not disposed to be the host for a party, that it fell to your mother and your parents. how did this work? what were those parties like? >> well, as long as i didn't spill anything i was passing. i think my parents' parties were more staid. those were the parties for visiting firemen, and everybody behaved. i think the scientists worked so hard all week. you worked saturdays. and then saturday nights, the parties without visiting firemen, which were not held at our house, were pretty heavy dri drinking. fun and a way to relax the

tension. i don't -- i never heard of anybody being described as an alcoholic, but there were plenty of heavy drinkers. but that was just maybe saturday night. but i was -- i wasn't passing anything around at those parties. >> were you allowed to be a part of it? >> just when the parties were at our house. i mean, i was 10 years old. after the war was over, we moved to washington. the hardest part of leaving los alamos was being told i had to take my beloved mare dolly out and show off her paces to perspective buyers. that's pretty tough on a 10-year-old. there's no way you can take a horse to washington. my mother had a rule. you traveled with your dogs.

you found homes for cats and horses. so that was the way it was. and it just -- it's impossible to imagine what a beautiful place it was, once i got used to the lack of vines and that kind of thing. every time we go to santa fe, we take a back road through that giant -- have you ever been there? i mean, that has to be one of the most spectacular places. a few years ago, a big pbs fan and i just automatically turn on public television. and there was a wonderful -- i would say it was no more than half an hour long documentary called sky island about via

grande and maybe a little bit about bandolere. but it was narrated by a native american and meryl streep. i think why that's such a special spot is because it's probably the highest point in the land. and it somehow catches precipitation as the air rises. being a whort iculture teacher, that's where there were trees, shrubs and grasses, not close together the way they are in the east. but much more so than other places out there. and that to me made it very special. we went over there once.

now they have cattle raising there. when i was a kid, i'm certain it was sheep, because we went once and it was during sheep sheering. i was horrified, because they nicked the sheep and the wool would be bloody. and for a 10-year-old, that's -- you don't forget that. but it would be an all-day ride to get over there. and that would be something special. >> on horseback? >> mm-hmm. mother and kitty would sometimes see mountain lions over there. and then we would -- we would go to various festivals, indian things. i was always terrified. indians

too much to drink that would come up at my mother. she could handle anything. my father was always working. so he wasn't part of that. but it's hard to imagine a better place to grow up than los alamos. moving to washington later was a big come down. city, schools weren't as good, that kind of thing. >> what about the hispanic community that surrounds los alamos? i understand many of them worked -- >> yeah, there were -- the girl who i mentioned as having the highest i.q. in the school and there was a boy, i think he was

roberto sandoval. he was offended or his mother was when he was referred to as a mexican. spanish-american was the preferred designation. i caught on to that. i was a pretty good student. boys were -- girls grow up faster than boys. i couldn't believe some of the stupid things boys did. somebody invited me -- i can't remember. one of the scientist's sons invited me to come over for glass blowing. it was boring. he ended up cutting a little place in his wrist and putting a piece of glass under. and i thought, how can these -- i thought boys were next to sub-human. i mean, why did they do such dumb things? sort of like my sister, always

putting your foot in the devilled eggs. some were nice. the bradbury boys were very nice. there was a sim alanson i used to play with and joanna. it was a nice group of kids. riding was my chief -- riding and doing school work and a little gardening. riding in ambulances. >> you mentioned later on in your life you met oppenheimer when he was speaking at harvard. how much did you interact with him when you were a child other than serving?

>> he would come over to our house. we would go there. much more memorable are the times we went to princeton. then it would be the oppys and us. and me trying to do my geometry homewo homework. and i think kitty came down -- they came down to washington once. and mother and kitty and i went out to lunch. and then kitty said she had to do some shopping. so we went with her. i was astounded. because our family is fairly well fleshed. as i remember, kitty could only buy size 5 under wear. and we had bigger under wear. so that stuck in my mind. kitty -- this was the beginning of this sort of mccarthy era. and i think kitty felt guilty

because she had been a communist. and she said to my mother, do you think they're down on robert because he's jewish? well, i don't think that could possibly have been the case. but the fact that his brother was a communist and kitty had been a communist, she wanted to find some other reason, which is perfectly human. i once asked lois bradbury when i was an adult -- in fact, we had a child who graduated from college in colorado. and we went down to show him new mexico after graduation. and we went to call on the bradburys. and i said to lois, why is she always portrayed as such an unpleasant person? that wasn't my memory of kitty

at all. and lois said, that's easy. she respected your mother. she liked your mother. she was a completely different person with your mother than she was with other women. although, i understand from reading a book, she would have -- brief friendships with people and then drop them. but that was not the case with my mother. i don't think she was a natural mother, and i gather she drank too much. but it was hard on wives, because husbands worked so hard. luckily, kitty had riding. >> sounds like your mother was also very energetic and engaged. so she took well to the isolation. >> yeah.

she was used -- from the time she was a kid, she had grown up on navy bases and having a husband or a father who was away a lot of the time. so it was a natural. i do remember -- i can't be sure just who this was. but i suspect that since ashworth was the weaponere on the nagasaki wife. and she heard that ashworth -- my father decided he would be the weaponere on the first and ashworth on the second. and this woman whom i knew but not well came over one night and she burst into tears asking my father to change his mind and not send her husband on this dangerous mission.

well, an adult bursting into tears. i didn't know adults cried. so that made a big impression on me. and, of course, that flight was fraught with peril for various reasons. and ellen bradbury was even thinking of making a movie on that flight, because it was so interesting, because it didn't go like clockwork. you know, barely made it back. it was really the one that would you like to see a movie about, because so much happened. i think one of the planes, as ellen said, one of the planes that was supposed to rendezvous at a certain altitude got the altitude wrong and circled and circled. meantime, the other planes were using up fuel circling at the stated altitude. and finally, the plane that had

gotten it wrong figured the others had not made it, turned, headed home. eventually broke radio silence and said the other planes had never arrived. therefore, it was assumed that they had gone down at sea. did ellen tell you this? >> yeah. >> good. because i thought that was a fascinating story. they landed practically on fumes at the end. and were not expected back. >> she was right to be worried. >> yeah. right. >> did your father ever talk about being the weaponere? >> well, the thing that amused me, he armed the bomb in flight. my father literally could not fix a leaking faucet.

the irony of his doing that. and then he brought home two fuses, a green and a red one that he had taken out. and then general groves came out to take my mother out to dinner when she was a widow. and he said, i want to take those and have them cataloged. of course, that was the last we ever saw of those. i dare say, that was right. they belonged in a museum. but when i went down to see the -- right at the smithsonian, sure enough, there were things like that. so i wrote a little note saying those matched up with my recollection. slipped it in the suggestion box, which probably went in a circular file, because i never heard anything more about it. then we went out at that huge

museum outside washington and saw the -- i mean, i'm afraid i always sort of poo-pood tibits role. when i saw the enola gay, thaft was one impressive plane. he must have been the best of the best. i always thought, they were the delivery crew, not the bomb people. he was speaking in philadelphia once. i certain sly wasnly wasn't goi and hear that and pay to hear it. scientists i certainly respected. once i saw the enola gay i had more respect.

i guess the b-29s were not that safe either. so it really was -- it was something. i will give him his due at last, now that he's dead. i wonder if there were any of the people on that mission who are still alive. >> one. dutch van kirk. >> what was he? was he the navigator? >> i think so. your father was in a small plane to be a scientific observer at the trinity test? >> he never talked about that.

there's the old lose lips sink ships. and one ironic thing, i went to the post office one day and they were taking down posters and replacing them with some other war poster. and i asked if i could have one. i put it over my bed. and i can still remember what it said. wipe that jap off the map. and i thought, gee, prophetic. i mean, you know, in those days, all you cared about was ending the war. and i've heard japanese people saying that it was a good thing that we dropped the atomic bombs because that saved japanese lives and certainly american.

but i have mixed feelings about that. we are the only country in the world that ever used atomic weapons. so i fit right in at a quaker retirement home. >> did your -- i guess your father didn't talk much. so you didn't have a sense of how he felt about his participation in the manhattan project? >> no. i don't think he ever regretted having worked on it. one time as a little kid i said, you know -- i was maybe 11. i said, how did the atomic bomb work? so we got out physics books and we went through them. it went over my head pretty quickly. another time i asked him how to play chess. and he didn't want to sit down and do something elementary.

he got out the encyclopedia and they had all the moves of the world chess championship of the year -- the latest year the encyclopedia had been published. the one we had. you do this and i do this. i was infuriated at the end. he said, oh, i won. i thought, at least he could have given me the winning. so that was my first and only chess game. how to kill a kid's interest in one easy step. but he took everything we asked seriously. and my mother was forever trying to teach us how to play games. my sister was a better athlete than i was.

horseback riding was about all i mastered and flower shows in later life. >> tell me about -- you mentioned on the phone sunday picnics at the -- >> we used to go. we would pack a lunch and go off in the jeep. not always to bandolere. but the trouble was, my mother would take a "new york times" along to use as fire fuel starter. we would pick up -- my sister and i would be sent to find small sticks and things. the trouble was, my father -- although we had already read "the new york times" before she burned it, he would have to re-read it which infuriated my mother. we would have hot dogs or hamburgers or something like that. and the strange thing was that

the two things that were his bibles, the inside clencycloped "the new york times," after the drop on hiroshima, "the new york times" published his picture. only they got -- they asked the navy for a picture. and it was the wrong william s. parsons. my mother found that highly amusing. >> did he? how did he find that? >> i don't really remember. i knew -- in those days, mothers had the responsibility of raising children. and with hard working fathers, that was a natural. i dare say there were a fair number of working women at los alamos.

but most i knew were housewives. and they were the mothers of my friends. >> so was lois bradbury a good friend of your family? >> yeah. i think because they -- they had known each other in virginia. and my father had gotten norris bradbury to come, yeah. but i would say probably her closest friend was kitty, because of the riding. i mean, if my mother wasn't hitting a ball or skiing, she wanted to be on a horse. luckily, i was good at riding. >> did peter ride? was he too little? >> he was too little, i think. and kitty was -- she wasn't a natural mother. i mean, you know, the kids

stayed with baby-sitters. she would go off. and i dare say, my mother was -- she was perfectly intelligent but no intellectual. i think kitty was probably more intellectual than mother. but that's not a barrier when you are on horseback. let's see. anything else i can remember about -- well, going to see my friends in the army apartments, they did not have it -- those apartments were not very nice. and it must have been a struggle to cook and all that. but i was -- i wasn't aware of that. who worries about that at age 10?

>> how many children were in the school at your age? you were a little older than the other kids born, obviously. >> yeah. i was in fourth, fifth and sixth grades. fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. and all i remember was these boys who were not, not paying attention. they didn't, you know, they didn't study for the pespelling tests and that kind of thing. it just, well, we certainly had one class, i believe there was a high school, but i don't know. i left in sixth grade. and because there were no houses available in washington, we lived in worchester, massachusetts. so three months in los alamos, three months in worchester and three months in washington at the end of sixth grade. and that leaves great gaps in

your education when you keep changing schools. i have yet to study grammar anyplace. it was either the thing that they had just finished studying when i arrived or were about to study when i left. so it's, but you certainly, i think, get an education living in different parts of the world. and hearing that, you know, you're not worth much if you can't understand why eggs aren't cooked after boiling three minutes at 7,000-some hundred feet altitude. >> you had mentioned something -- oh, no, you did talk about that. i'm sorry. any more comments about claus

fuchs? >> all i can remember is the man played the piano all night. my sister kine get into all kinds of things upstairs. the i really have very little wreck lesbian of him except that he was there, and my parents felt comfortable going off with him playing the piano. >> who played the piano in your family? >> i did, a bit, but the piano came with the house, i'm pretty sure. we would not have moved a piano out from virginia. >> now, i was reading the notes that were made on you and then other children. she talked about john bradbury, who talked about the stress, the pressure, the urgency of the project as it passed down to the

kids, and you get the sense of that, did you -- >> i never felt that. >> okay, could you -- actually no one's going to hear my question, so they might not. so maybe you could say. >> well, he may have been more in tune with things. i certainly was much more in tune with daily life, and i, my father came and went so much that i just accepted that. and i think, perhaps, the closest i came to sensing stress is when oppi isy had to go to w despite the fact that he had just begun to recover from chickenpox. that seemed a little strange when i had a long time at home watching soap operas, this man had to go to work. the injustice of the thing. i don't know whether i figured oppy would have enjoyed

listening to soap operas or not, but i didn't even know why they were called soap operas. it was because they were for housewives. and the advertisements were for soap, oxydol and things like that. that's why they were called the soaps. i am not, i'm a pbs listener now, i don't do series. >> you've done a great job. >> well. >> yes, please, alex. >> what about oppenheimer made your father respect him so much? >> oh, i think the fact that he was such a serious scientist and also a good administrator, which

nobody, nobody knew, you know, when he was hired. who knew who would be a good administrator? he was also a wonderful role model. an inspiration for the other scientists, which certainly helped with things. so, that was, it was hard to know, since my father was rather a quiet person and didn't ever share emotions. i guess i'm relatively clueless, as my children would say. and even my grandchildren. >> so, but your father and oppenheimer had a very close relationship? >> mm-hm. >> is that correct? >> yes. and i guess my father was in

some ways oppy's deputy. so they talked a lot. and i'm sure there were disagreements about how to proceed with this, that, and the other, and i'm sure they probably talked over things. and i knew the fairmeeves. i mean, for years every time a family scientist appeared, i thought, oh, no, i knew him. >> do you have any recollection of the fairmy. >> i don't think they lived on bathtub row. and fairmy came later. certainly he was a very highly respected scientist.

it just seemed that mostly you knew the people on bathtub row and the people who had children your age, that was the natural way. and your parents' friends so. and, as i say, the only social life i saw among adults was the cocktail party circuit for the visiting fireman that my mother would do. she wasn't much of a cook. i can't imagine what she served, but i think drink was more important than food at those things. and of course, i don't know whether this has been written about, but the effect of alcohol at that altitude, it hits you much faster if you're not used to drinking there.

so visiting firemen would be disarmed quickly with a few drinks. >> when you use the expression visiting firemen, what are you -- >> well, somebody like neils bore who wasn't there. it's hard for me to remember just why we gave those cocktail parties. the neils bore one sticks out in my mind. and figuring out the liquor closet kind of thing, but, my mother having this military background, she was a natural to organize things. >> so how did she communicate with folks when it was time for a cocktail party? did they send notes around? >> i have no idea. >> was there a telephone? >> oh, yeah.

mm-hm. >> was it a party line? >> i don't remember that it was. we had party lines in maine, but i don't, i think that was my first experience with a party line. and once my mother was permitted to go and visit her father back in massachusetts, and my sister and i both wore braids. and she said, can you braid the girls' hair, and my father said yes. and she laughed, and he said, i guess it was knitting i knew, not braiding. so i don't know who braided our hair. but pigtails were the way to go. and we had some really nice

teachers. i think the school was set up by a chicago -- i don't know whether it was a private school, a lab school, something like that. but they send a whole batch of teachers, and they had built a nice, instead of the junky apartments and quonset huts, we had a nice school. >> and where was the school located? >> well, i don't know. i just walked there every day. and then usually rode after school. so my mother could come. en one of the dogs would sometimes come with us on the rides. and i hung around the stables a lot. the stableboys were extremely friendly