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Authors: Denise Kiernan
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!”
Mr. LeSieur escorted Toni out and asked her to sit down and wait for a moment.
I can work for anybody , Toni thought to herself. I don’t have to work for him. There are plenty of jobs. Maybe, just maybe, she would take a factory job if she had to.
They kept her waiting, and waiting . . .
Heck—enough of this.
Toni got up on her feet and was ready to storm out the door. But Mr. LeSieur appeared suddenly and stopped her.
“Mr. Diamond wants to know if you can start on Monday.”
★ ★ ★
DO YOU KNOW . . . That owing to, shall we say, circumstances over which we have no control, the Journal cannot print the names of any persons in its columns for the present. This will explain our failure to publish various news items contributed, bowling scores—We are unique—the only newspaper in the country without any news.
— Oak Ridge Journal ,
October 17, 1943
Jane unfolded the thin, brownish onionskin paper. A telegram. Finally. The Clinton Engineer Works and Tennessee Eastman Corporation had deigned to write to her family’s elegant home in Paris,Tennessee, with instructions. She’d thought the interview with Mr. Powers had gone well, and the offer of work had come the first week of October. But that hadn’t been the end of it.
“We are at present making the necessary investigation and on receipt of a satisfactory report from this investigation, you will be immediately notified to report for work.”
Investigation ? Jane wondered. What kind of investigation ?
It was all very hush-hush. Daddy had heard from a few of the neighbors that men had come around asking a lot of questions about Jane. They were “Secret Service.” That’s what everyone in town kept calling them, anyway. That, or FBI.
What kind of girl was this Jane Halliburton Greer? Was she wild? How did she do at school? Did she drink? Really now, tell the truth. And what about that family of hers? Any rotten apples there? High school teachers, college professors, neighbors—everyone, it seemed, got a visit.
Jane didn’t know the specifics about the Project, but it was clear that whatever it was she would be doing must be important, or else why all the fuss?
A petite 22-year-old, Jane carried herself with a down-to-earth air, despite her family’s long history in Middle Tennessee. She wore her dark brown hair parted on the left, undulating tousles washing past her prominent cheeks, ebbing again at her gymnast’s shoulders, before landing with a final bounce at the top of a spine that exhibited the kind of impeccable posture grown out of a lifetime of grooming and horseback riding. Whatever bad things the “FBI men” might have been looking for they apparently didn’t find because now, in front of Jane, was the final word. She was to report to work at 204 Empire Building on Market Street in downtown Knoxville. She would work as a statistician, and the pay was good. She would earn $35.00 per week to start, three dollars more a week than General Electric had offered her. She was expected to work 48 hours each week. So factoring in overtime, the total would come to $45.50. Nice.
But it all wasn’t about the money. She wanted to work close to home, and this was a good job doing what she had studied to do.Not what she had wanted to do, of course, but what she had ended up doing. Several years earlier, she had decided to become an engineer. And she had worked hard at Judson College in Alabama to take all the right courses that would allow her to study engineering once she’d transferred back home to attend the University of Tennessee. But come registration day, a university official rudely yanked her out of line where she stood waiting to register for the School of Engineering.
“We don’t matriculate engineering as a major for females,” he told her.
Jane stared, heat rising up through her cheeks, speechless. Angry. Who did he think he was to tell Jane Halliburton Greer what she could or could not do?
“See that man standing over
Mr. LeSieur escorted Toni out and asked her to sit down and wait for a moment.
I can work for anybody , Toni thought to herself. I don’t have to work for him. There are plenty of jobs. Maybe, just maybe, she would take a factory job if she had to.
They kept her waiting, and waiting . . .
Heck—enough of this.
Toni got up on her feet and was ready to storm out the door. But Mr. LeSieur appeared suddenly and stopped her.
“Mr. Diamond wants to know if you can start on Monday.”
★ ★ ★
DO YOU KNOW . . . That owing to, shall we say, circumstances over which we have no control, the Journal cannot print the names of any persons in its columns for the present. This will explain our failure to publish various news items contributed, bowling scores—We are unique—the only newspaper in the country without any news.
— Oak Ridge Journal ,
October 17, 1943
Jane unfolded the thin, brownish onionskin paper. A telegram. Finally. The Clinton Engineer Works and Tennessee Eastman Corporation had deigned to write to her family’s elegant home in Paris,Tennessee, with instructions. She’d thought the interview with Mr. Powers had gone well, and the offer of work had come the first week of October. But that hadn’t been the end of it.
“We are at present making the necessary investigation and on receipt of a satisfactory report from this investigation, you will be immediately notified to report for work.”
Investigation ? Jane wondered. What kind of investigation ?
It was all very hush-hush. Daddy had heard from a few of the neighbors that men had come around asking a lot of questions about Jane. They were “Secret Service.” That’s what everyone in town kept calling them, anyway. That, or FBI.
What kind of girl was this Jane Halliburton Greer? Was she wild? How did she do at school? Did she drink? Really now, tell the truth. And what about that family of hers? Any rotten apples there? High school teachers, college professors, neighbors—everyone, it seemed, got a visit.
Jane didn’t know the specifics about the Project, but it was clear that whatever it was she would be doing must be important, or else why all the fuss?
A petite 22-year-old, Jane carried herself with a down-to-earth air, despite her family’s long history in Middle Tennessee. She wore her dark brown hair parted on the left, undulating tousles washing past her prominent cheeks, ebbing again at her gymnast’s shoulders, before landing with a final bounce at the top of a spine that exhibited the kind of impeccable posture grown out of a lifetime of grooming and horseback riding. Whatever bad things the “FBI men” might have been looking for they apparently didn’t find because now, in front of Jane, was the final word. She was to report to work at 204 Empire Building on Market Street in downtown Knoxville. She would work as a statistician, and the pay was good. She would earn $35.00 per week to start, three dollars more a week than General Electric had offered her. She was expected to work 48 hours each week. So factoring in overtime, the total would come to $45.50. Nice.
But it all wasn’t about the money. She wanted to work close to home, and this was a good job doing what she had studied to do.Not what she had wanted to do, of course, but what she had ended up doing. Several years earlier, she had decided to become an engineer. And she had worked hard at Judson College in Alabama to take all the right courses that would allow her to study engineering once she’d transferred back home to attend the University of Tennessee. But come registration day, a university official rudely yanked her out of line where she stood waiting to register for the School of Engineering.
“We don’t matriculate engineering as a major for females,” he told her.
Jane stared, heat rising up through her cheeks, speechless. Angry. Who did he think he was to tell Jane Halliburton Greer what she could or could not do?
“See that man standing over
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