About

It is Wednesday, November 5, 1947. F. N. Case holds an umbrella above his wife Claudia as the two of them carefully step off the front porch of their apartment at 205 Vermont Avenue, splash across the front yard to the street, and pile into Case's 1936 Oldsmobile coup. Usually, he would be well on his way to Y-12 at this hour, but today is different; they are on their way to the Oak Ridge Hospital instead. They live close by, an eight-minute walk at best, but today it is raining, and they are in a hurry because Claudia is in the beginning stages of giving birth to a child. Case steps on the gas, and they arrive at Oak Ridge Hospital in less than three minutes.

Type E Apartment like the one F. N. Case and Claudia F. Osborn

lived in at 205 Vermont Avenue, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The E Apartment shown above was photographed by Ed Westcott in the 1940's.

It still exists and is located at the corner of West Fairview Road and Florida Avenue.

At the hospital they are asked a few simple questions as part of the admission process, their answers to which can be summed up as follows:

The woman in labor is a 21-year-old married white female from Sheffield, Alabama,
whose maiden name is Claudia Felicia Osborn,
whose occupation is "housewife," and
who is about to deliver her first child at the end of a nine-month pregnancy; and

the father of the yet-to-be-born child is Forrest Neil Case, her husband,
a twenty-eight-year-old white male from Mansfield, Ohio,
whose occupation is "chemist."

The paperwork done, the woman is admitted to the hospital shortly before 9:00 AM.

The original Oak Ridge Hospital, as photographed by Ed Westcott in 1944.

I have no idea what happened during the next forty-eight plus hours. I only know that the rain continued all that day and into the night. By Thursday morning, the rains subsided, and the day continued fair and cool. Friday, November 7, began with grey skies and dark clouds rolling in from the Cumberland Plateau. By 12:40 AM, fifty-two hours and forty-five minutes after checking into the hospital, rain again begins pelting the roof of the hospital as the woman finally gives birth to her first child, a healthy baby boy. Mr. Case lingers a bit, looks at the baby through the nursery window, then returns home for a few hours. He had not noticed that the rains had come again and runs to the Olds to keep from getting soaked.

Wrapped in blankets, the newborn baby boy lies in the nursery asleep. The rain continued throughout the night, but it was not the booming chaos of thunderstorms mind you, nor the threatening roar of a torrential downpour, but the peaceful drumming of soft, steady rain, punctuated from time to time by the soft voices of the nurses and the occasional crying of the baby whose life on this earth is just now beginning.

The nursery in the original Oak Ridge Hospital. Photograph by Ed Westcott.

My name is William David Case, and I was the baby in that story. All my life I have loved the sound of rain. Not the booming chaos of thunderstorms mind you, nor the threatening roar of a torrential downpour, but the peaceful drumming of soft, steady rain.

~~~

I grew up in Oak Ridge and never lived anywhere else until I entered college after graduating from Oak Ridge High School in 1966. I graduated from the University of Tennessee in June, 1970, with a Batchelor of Arts Degree, majoring in Sociology, with minors in Spanish Language and Literature, and Economics. At the end of that summer I married a charming young lady from Colombia named Stella Gaviria Neira, who I met on an Avianca flight from Bogota to Miami several years earlier. (This year (2023) we will celebrate our fifty-third year together.)

I entered the University of Tennessee College of Law that fall. While still in Law School I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve in 1972. I graduated from Law School in 1973 with the Doctor of Jurisprudence degree, and quickly accepted a job offer from Chicago Title Insurance Company in Chicago to begin after I completed compulsory training (Armor Officer's Basic Course) at the United States Army Armor School at Ft. Knox, Kentucky*. While I was stationed at Ft. Knox, Stella gave birth to our first child, a daughter who we named Michelle Cristina, in January, 1974, on post at the old Ireland Army Hospital. After graduating from the Armor School, Stella and I packed our few belongings into a rental truck, crammed ourselves along with little "Michelle" into the cab, and headed North to Chicago, towing our vintage Ford Mustang along behind.

I loved Chicago but it only took two winters in the Windy City to convince me that Stella and I, along with our now two daughters, (Maria Stephanie, born in November, 1975), belonged in warmer climes. So in 1976 we packed our belongings and daughters into another rental truck and drove back to Tennessee, settling in Sevierville, the county seat of Sevier County, and the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains. There we lived for the next thirty-six years.

To be continued...

NOTES: *The United States Army Armor School is now located at Fort Moore, Georgia.

William David Case, Fatima, Portugal, 22 Oct 2019. Photograph by Stella Gaviria Neira de Case.

William David "Davy" Case and mother, Claudy F. Osborn, a/k/a Claudia "Butch" F. Osborn, and later Claudia F. Case. Photo made in our first home Vermont Avenue, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, circa 1948.