My father, Forrest Neil Case, of Mansfield, Ohio, began work with CEW/TEC on January 27, 1944. His job title was "Junior Chemist", and he performed analytical chemistry in Y-12 Buildings 9202 or 9203. Later that year he was transferred to Building 9206 where, as a foreman, he supervised several shifts of chemical operators.

 

One of those operators was my mother, Claudy F. Osborn of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, who was hired on as a "refining oxide operator" on August 3, 1944. She was eighteen years old at the time***. She also initially worked in Building 9203, but was transferred to Building 9206 at the same time as my father. 

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When Mom began work at CEW she earned $0.70 per hour. She worked there without interruption until February 18, 1947, when she and thousands of her co-workers were laid off as part of the reduction in force that followed the termination of the Manhattan Project. When she received her final paycheck she was earning $1.21 per hour. She was twenty-one years old when she left Y-12, and never held another job, preferring to live the remainder of her life as a mother and housewife. 

 

I entered the picture on November 7, 1947, when I was born in the Oak Ridge Hospital, which, at the time was in the final stages of transitioning from its status as a U. S. Army hospital during the Manhattan Project to a civilian hospital under the control of the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). I grew up in Oak Ridge and never lived anywhere else until I entered college after graduating from Oak Ridge High School in 1966. You may learn more about me on the About page of this website.

 

Mom died of cancer on October 17, 1979, and her body was laid to rest at Anderson Memorial Gardens, Dossett, Anderson County, Tennessee. She was fifty-three years old when she died. Searching back four generations on both her paternal and maternal lines I find no close relatives or direct ancestors who died so young. In that regard she was an anomaly.

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On March 15, 2006, my father submitted a claim for compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), as Mom's surviving spouse. He was eighty-six years old on that date. It had been fifty-nine years since Mom walked through the gates at Y-12 for the last time, and twenty-six years since we buried her. 

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On May 3, 2007, more than one year after submitting his claim, a Final Decision was made approving his claim for $275,000.00. On June 8, 2007, a second Final Decision approved his claim for an additional $25,000.00 for lost wages. One evening during the period that Dad was waiting for the final decisions in re his EEOICIPA claims, he brought up the matter during a quiet conversation in 2006 ("They Were Expendable"), and during that conversation, he revealed details about wartime processes and working conditions in Building 9206 that I found very disturbing. That conversation re-awakened a long repressed memory from my childhood, of a 1947 letter (F. N. Case's 1947 Letter Home) I stumbled upon in which he revealed to his family some "secrets" that he had kept from them about my mother and I.

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Dad would live another six years after our conversation, passing away on July 24, 2012 at age ninety-three. He is buried next to my mother. In the course of cleaning up his home after his death I discovered more documents related to the matters we had discussed in 2007, but not mentioned by him in our conversation, including:

 

• a Memorandum concerning exposure to radioactive materials by workers under his supervision to Dr. Riley, of the CEW Medical Department, and which lists the names of said workers;

• a Letter to Dr. John Cruse, M. D., following my mother's death in 1979, in which brings up the subject of her (and her co-workers) exposure to radioactive materials during the Manhattan Project;

• his notes and rough drafts for an unsolicited "Addendum" to his 2006 EEOICIPA  claim in which he presents details about working procedures and conditions for the shift workers under his supervision.

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