Interview with Garrold Lyon
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Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Garrold Lyon on August 30, 2018. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Garrold about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full legal name for us?
Gerrold Lyon: It’s Garrold, G-A-double-R-O-L-D. I use F as in Frank as an initial. And Lyon last name, spelled like the cat except a Y instead of an I.
Franklin: So L-Y-O-N?
Lyon: Yes, sir.
Franklin: Great. So, Garrold, tell me how and why you came to the area to work for the Hanford Site.
Lyon: Well, I was in service in Korea in ‘52 and ‘53. And I had two brothers out here when I got the release from active duty. Actually, I didn’t get a discharge until 1960.
Franklin: Okay.
Lyon: But I got released from active duty when I got home from Korea. Anyway, I had like brothers out here, so that’s why I come out here.
Franklin: What brought your brothers out here?
Lyon: Well, my older brother, he kind of worked in the fruit and stuff. But my younger brother, he’s nine years older than me, I come from a family of 13 and I’m the last boy. I have two sisters.
Franklin: Wow.
Lyon: But he was a tanker driver. I think he logged something like 2 million miles or whatever.
Franklin: And did either of your brothers work out at Hanford?
Lyon: No.
Franklin: Oh, okay. And do you remember what year you came out here?
Lyon: That was in ‘54. I come to work out at Hanford in ‘55 in March.
Franklin: did you move out to Richland when you came to work at Hanford?
Lyon: I did eventually, but at the time I got here, I think--anyway, I lived in my brother’s garage until I got a house. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: What year did you move into Richland?
Lyon: Well, it had to have been in ‘55, I guess.
Franklin: Okay. So Richland was still a government-owned--
Lyon: Yes, right.
Franklin: -town when you lived here.
Lyon: Yes. I was patrol, and we patrolled Richland somewhat, too, you know.
Franklin: And who did you come to work for?
Lyon: GE.
Franklin: What was it like living in--I wonder if you could describe living in Richland when it was managed by General Electric.
Lyon: Well, I was impressed by the water running down the street. Didn’t seem to have any control, as far as watering your lawn or something like that. And then I think we had to pay for our electricity, but that was about the size of it, until they sold out the town. I could’ve went police force or stayed in the Area as a patrolman, which I did. I spent most of the time that I was with GE, I was a patrolman. And about ‘62, I think it was, I got the chance to get on as a utility operator. I had to pass just a test with the interviewer. I got experience as far as charge, discharge and everything--
Franklin: Sorry, I want to back up for a minute. What is a utility operator?
Lyon: Utility operator is an understudy for a journeyman operator.
Franklin: And what are you operating?
Lyon: Well, actually, we would make metal for charge/discharge and we would actually charge it into the unit and as you charge in the unit, the exposed metal that they want drops out in the rear face and then into about 20 foot of water.
Franklin: Just to clarify here, we’re talking about--the unit is the reactor?
Lyon: Yeah.
Franklin: And the charge/discharge is loading new fuel in and older fuel is coming out.
Lyon: Right, right.
Franklin: Okay.
Lyon: Yeah, they had metal that they bring in and they make up the charge. The elevator is down on the floor and it goes clear to the top. So anyway you have a machine and you have like a carrier for one tube and you don’t carry it on your back; I forgot just how they did it. But they had them made up on poles, as far as they had a spacer there that they could only go so far back and then they’d shove the metal in and put a spacer on this side and cap it up. But you had a machine that charged it into the--you just--
Franklin: You mean that pushed the fuel and the spacers in?
Lyon: yeah, as I recall, it had a cylinder that would push as you drop it over into it.
Franklin: Okay.
Lyon: Yeah, the charger that they had perfected enough they could use, anyway, at that time. Yeah. And it was a number of charges that when you go down with your unit, why, they would charge/discharge and then I guess they got a time to keep the unit where it’s activated they got to come up, you know, in a certain time. And the physicists, they figured that out, time-wise.
Franklin: Right, they would be doing calculations to figure out which process tube to charge/discharge.
Lyon: Right.
Franklin: And how long did you do that work for?
Lyon: Probably four years. And then I was on the supplemental crew and worked around the clock, you know, A, B, C, D. They were getting close to discharging there before I left. I figured that I better get out if I wanted to stay around. I had a chance to bid on radiation protection and which I got. And I spent 24 years as a radiation protection technologist. I took the national test for that, and passed it in ‘82. I had the book, but I got so rattled here thinking, I’m not going to get over there anyway, I left it in the truck out there.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Lyon: But it does have my name in it. That’s the only book that I’ll probably ever have my name in.
[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So when you were working as a utility operator, which reactors did you work at?
Lyon: I worked in most all of them. Because they would come--we were a crew that was coming in and helped the home team, if you will, for that particular reactor. We would do the work that they would normally have to do, I guess. But they always had help for charge/discharge, extra help.
Franklin: How many men would it take to do a charge/discharge?
Lyon: Well, I suppose two or three could do it. It would have to go in at different times and say--if they were going on charge/discharge, they would have to open the rear face, and they would have to take a monitor and probably three or four utility operators to actually do the work. And you had to suit up in rubber in the rear face. The dose rate was, most of the time, pretty high. You couldn’t--they’d burn you out before you got your job done, and they’d have to send somebody in to replace you.
Franklin: How did they--what types of equipment did they use to monitor in the dose rate in the rear face?
Lyon: Cutie pie.
Franklin: Cutie pie. Did you wear personal dosimetry equipment as well?
Lyon: yes, yes.
Franklin: What kinds--
Lyon: Oh, it was your badge, and then they had, it’s a little piece of--I can’t describe it right now, but anyway they would run it through where they could expose it and tell about what I’d get. They’d have a source there that exposed, and then you would wear one on you when it was out here all the time, and you took it in the rear face, you just had it covered up so you wouldn’t get it contaminated, you know.
Franklin: Yeah. So you said when you were in the rear face, you had to dress up, right?
Lyon: Yeah, you had two pairs of whites and one rubber.
Franklin: Wow. Could you describe the types of the whites and the rubbers? What types of clothing--
Lyon: Well, you’d put on kind of a white coverall, and they would tape your first pair of gloves on. Then you would put leggings over and tape them to the legs. But you had two pair of those. And your second pair, you’d have to tape your gloves and then you had a glove that was insoluble, if you will. Your first glove was kind of like a doctor’s glove or something, where you’d put them up and tape them. The main thing is you don’t want to come out of there all contaminated. So you’d put on about three pair and then you come out of the rear face and there’s a hamper there where you’d take your raingear off and drop it in there in the step-off pad. Then you’d take your first pair of whites off, and by the time you got the third step-off pad, well, you was pretty well down to your shorts and shirt.
Franklin: I imagine all that clothing would be pretty uncomfortable to work in.
Lyon: Well, the rear face, as I recall, there’s enough water there that it wasn’t too hot thermally.
Franklin: Oh.
Lyon: But you had to watch out if one of those slugs would accidentally hit the discharge and hit on the elevator, you’d have a few seconds to get out of there. Otherwise, you’d get a lethal dose.
Franklin: Right, because those slugs would be screaming hot.
Lyon: Yeah, maybe.
Franklin: Radioactively like really, really hot.
Lyon: Yeah.
Franklin: And I imagine that all of that clothing would kind of hurt your dexterity, too, right? Was it hard to move--
Lyon: I don’t remember being--we had wrenches that we had to open the back cap, if you will, and loose them, then you’d pull it out. And they would take the elevator up top before they discharged, of course, and let you out at the top, I believe. I’m not sure now. They may have let you out at the same level, but you had to get the elevator at the top before you started the process. You don’t want a whole lot of hot metal on the elevator.
Franklin: Right, right. Yeah. Wow.
Lyon: So they’d just drop over into the basin.
Franklin: When they got pushed out.
Lyon: When they got discharged, yes.
Frankin: Was there ever a time where a slug got--you mentioned earlier--when it hit and got on the elevator, you’d only have a few seconds. Did that ever happen?
Lyon: Not to my knowledge.
Franklin: Okay. Were there any incidences that stand out, accidents or funny things or interesting things, when you were a utility operator?
Lyon: Well, I remember the specialist, he would find maybe a spot that he would want to go in. I don’t quite understand why he would stop more or less just for one, but they called it a spline, and on the front, you could do that without your clothing, on the front face. They would run this spline, and as I understand, it was kind of an absorber if you will. I can’t think of the name right now. It would cool that spot that he wanted to. Boron, I think it was. But he would go in that rear face. I’m not clear, really, right now, how come he’d open that up. But it had to be done down where it wouldn’t come out. But I think we’d done that a few times. I remember going in there with him and he was kind of a character. When he went in the rear face--you’d have to wear a mask of course--and he’d have a cigar that he’d cut and put it in his mouth and chew that while he was in.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] What, so smoking a cigar while being in the--
Lyon: You don’t smoke it. He was chewing it.
Franklin: Just chewing the cigar.
Lyon: Mm-hmm. But he had a full mask and then he was all taped up and your mask is taped, too, so you won’t get any contamination. You have a hood over it.
Franklin: Right.
Lyon: Yeah.
Franklin: But he had a spot for the cigar.
Lyon: No, he had it in his mouth chewing it. Just chewed it, yeah.
Franklin: Interesting.
Lyon: I can imagine me trying to chew a cigar for maybe a few minutes or whatever and swallow it.
[LAUGHTER]
Lyon: Oh, it was--anyway--
Franklin: That doesn’t sound like fun.
Lyon: No.
Franklin: Backing up a little bit, when you were a patrolman, what areas did you patrol?
Lyon: I patrolled in all of them. I started out in B/C, but I was younger on the totem pole, and sometimes I would have to go into another area to relieve a man on vacation or something like that. But like I worked in K-E and K-W, H and F and D and DR, and B/C. I worked in all of them.
Franklin: So you really got to go around the whole Site.
Lyon: yeah.
Franklin: Was there an area that was more difficult or better to patrol than the others?
Lyon: I don’t think so. You had about the same routines. You had to patrol from the water facility--there was a tunnel there that goes from there underground over to the unit. One thing, there, in K area that was kind of amusing, especially for new men, they had a coffin and a dummy in it. But first time you seen it, you’re going through there with your flashlight and stuff, and there’s a coffin and stuff. You open it up and they get a good laugh when you get out of there.
Franklin: Why was there a coffin?
Lyon: I don’t’ know. It’s a prank, I guess.
Franklin: Wow.
Lyon: That was in K-E, I think it was, or K-W.
Franklin: Wow. What was your uniform like as a patrolman?
Lyon: Well, they were mainly like you would be on a civilian police force. I wore khakis in the summer, and it was kind of a Woolrich’s part in the winter. And you had a coat, of course, you know, for it. And a hat.
Franklin: What kind of weapon did you carry?
Lyon: A .38. .38 special, probably.
Franklin: Any other interesting incidents that happened while you were on Patrol?
Lyon: Well, in our cars, if I was on patrol on traffic or even on your fence car, you had a submachine gun and an M1 rifle in the trunk. And I had a shotgun right beside you there that would--you could unlock it as far as that, take it out. We’d get calls, mainly just for training. A captain would go out and give a location, and you had to see how quick--they clocked you and stuff when you answered to get to the stop that they wanted you to be there.
Franklin: Cool. Let me go back to my questions here. And then after the reactors were shut down and you went--
Lyon: radiation protection.
Franklin: Yeah, as an RPT, where did you work?
Lyon: Well, I worked at D and DR, most of the time, probably.
Franklin: Even after it shut down?
Lyon: Yeah, you can--well, after it shut down, but--that was before it was shut down, particular--I don’t know, they hauled metal and of course kept security as far as that’s concerned.
Franklin: Okay.
Lyon: I can’t think of any incidents that happened there, really big, exciting, or anything.
Franklin: Where else did you work as a radiation protection technician besides D and DR?
Lyon: I worked over in 200 Area. They had kind of a decon thing going there and that was C Farm, I believe, in 200 West. We had pumps there--they had evaporators of course, that was trying to pump off the hotter tanks in the Tank Farm. And they would pump them out and then at a certain level they’d decide that that particular pump had to go. And they would physically go in there and they had to stretch out and they would put down paper and stuff to load that physically on that little boy. And they would kind of tape it up and everything to keep it from dripping. I know one particular one when I think it was B Farm, I’m not sure, but anyway you could track it with a GM from the time you left the gate clear down to the burial ground. We had some interesting work there to get that up and you know went in the burial ground. They tried to use road graders and stuff to get rid of it at first. They done stuff there that they had to go in, maybe, by men just to pick it up. You’d have to suit up to do that, of course. They maybe had to chip the asphalt where it would go down on the road from the evaporator to the burial grounds.
Franklin: Oh, wow. Could you describe a typical work day?
Lyon: Well, usually if you had a farm, why, you would suit up or you could--in one pair of whites, anyway, to go to the farm. You checked people out and you might have a crane come in to pull the cover off for, maybe PUREX was pumping stuff through there. And you’d have a crew there that would--operators and they would take care of whatever they was maybe wanting to flush or they could get back in operations and cover up the pit. I had one experience, I was at A Farm and we had a crew coming in to take filters from your stack, change them out, your HEPA filters. We would have a greenhouse there to get the people in there, and you had to wear a certain type of mask. Anyway, it was good for where you didn’t have air, fresh air. And you’d have it in a plastic kind of room, if you will. They would take the filter out and box it up and take it off and they’d put a new filter in. I remember getting--I didn’t have the masks with the chemical filter on it. And I tried to go in there and set the men up first. And what I remember, I got a real strong kind of a--anyway. Didn’t take your breath, but you were conscious of it, anyway. I asked the engineer about it, and he said, well, if you can stand it, it wouldn’t hurt you. So I don’t know.
[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: If you can stand it, it won’t hurt you?
Lyon: Well, I mean, without the mask, I got--it was like you’d maybe inhaled vinegar or something like that, you know? But that’s the only thing that I can remember that I was a little uneasy about, because I thought I probably got a good shot of contamination or--I do have asbestosis in my right lung. And I don’t know exactly where I got that, as far as that’s concerned. But down through the years, why, I helped to decon 222-S lab and we’d just go in there with a crew, like construction. They’d go in and take so much of a dose to clean up whatever they were trying to clean, and we would check them. We’d set dose rates for them to work and keep time. Usually they’d go in and maybe 50 was all they could take at the time.
Franklin: 50--?
Lyon: Mrem. Anyway, they had gamma pencils they would wear. And plus the badge. There was another badge that you could get, just for the job. We could read that ourselves rather than have to send it down to get it read. We used to ship out metal there that we’d load metal there from the pickup chutes to the storage area. They would out a bucket, say, of metal. They would have a railroad car come in, and you’d take them underwater back to where you could get it in there where you could put the lid on it, the lid was on the container under the water. Anyway, they had a crane there where you could lift it up and they would remove the lead from the train carrier and you’d use your hoist and go over and put it down in there, and they’d put lead on it and you’d have to smear it out after it got--well, when it was covered up, the radiation was pretty well stopped. But you didn’t want to send anything out that was contaminated, you know, going down the road, spreading your contamination where you went, railroad.
Franklin: So you’re talking there about taking the fuel out of from underwater and loading them into the train car?
Lyon: No, you’d take them out of the water, load them into a bucket--
Franklin: The cask?
Lyon: Yeah, a cask, bucket. It’s approximately like this. It held, I think, 350 of the enriched, that’s slugs. And then your U-238, it’s a slug probably about like that. And the number was less because of space. But they shipped both of them. You didn’t pass anything over the enrichment with something that might react. Yeah. They had that pretty well figured out. We had pretty good supervision as far as that was concerned. The radiation protection was, well, you had authority to stop the job if you thought it was getting out of hand.
Franklin: Did you ever have to do that?
Lyon: I don’t remember any particular time, but we had, sometimes, especially with construction, they wanted to get the job done, sometimes they were reluctant to come out when their time was up.
Franklin: Oh, you mean come out of a zone where they would be getting dose.
Lyon: Yeah. As far as when you shipped those cans in the railroad car, well, they have enough metal or stuff that would stop anything from coming through the side to speak of anyway. And the lead would be--I think they had kind of a pressure--I mean, wrench that you could tighten up a bolt to the caps to hold them down. I don’t know how far those railroad cars went, as far as that’s concerned. I just--I personally loaded them and I don’t remember bringing them in. Most of their metal that they charged in was U-238, which you could handle with your hands, you know, before they put it into the unit. You had your enrichment in the core that would fission and start the process.
Franklin: What were the most challenging and rewarding aspects of your work at Hanford?
Lyon: Well, I worked at 233, and it was contaminated with alpha. We had to dress maybe two or three pair and come out the same way. You had to be careful, because it seemed like I had the pam, you know about that, that’s kind of just for an instrument--for alpha? And you’d have to check over them physically, you know, before they could come out and remove any clothing that was contaminated. If they were contaminated, you had to decon them.
Franklin: What was the decon process like?
Lyon: Well, they would send you to the shower, and if you could wash it off where it was nothing detectable with the pam, and your beta gamma, your GM, if those two contaminants, you didn’t detect on the person, well, you call them clean. If you couldn’t clean them, well, you send them downtown and they went through a process down there.
Franklin: What about rewarding? What was the most rewarding aspect of your time at Hanford?
Lyon: Well, I kind of liked it when I completed a job that was satisfactory. Believe it or not, I have had a few compliments anyway in my history of being a radiation monitor. I was a lead operator--lead monitor, rather--for probably about 12 years of my last years of service. I have relieved my supervisor when he went on vacation. That was in C Area. They were deconing kind of a silo, but it went down. We worked off of two-by-twelve, and they would try and decon the walls of the stuff there. I had a makeshift elevator that was like a two-by-twelve and they’d let you down, and you had a rope with a suit on in case you fell off of it, why, it wouldn’t let you go to the bottom.
Franklin: Wow. Sorry. The bottom of what?
Lyon: Well, it was kind of an inverted silo. Instead of going up, it was down.
Franklin: Okay, got you. What are some of your memories of major events in the Tri-Cities’ history, such as plants shutting down or starting up?
Lyon: I can’t remember any real problems. They had that pretty well--physicists figured out the time that they were coming up. When they were shutting down, they dropped the verticals and it would pull out part of your control rods. And when they’d put them in, rather, to shut down.
Franklin: I guess the question is more orientated towards not the physical act of reactor shut down or startup, but when, in the late ‘60s, when the decision was made to actually permanently shut down and deactivate the reactors. I imagine, was that of concern in Richland and the community? Was there a worry about jobs?
Lyon: I don’t think so. It seemed like they would lay off and then they would hire. I don’t know, it seemed like it was kind of up and down.
Franklin: Yeah. When did you retire from Hanford?
Lyon: I retired in ‘89 at 58. 58 years. I mean, I was 58 years old.
Franklin: Years old, oh okay. So you retired, really, right when the production mission ended.
Lyon: Yeah. Well, N Area was still running, and I think, maybe one of the Ks or both Ks ran for a while. But, like, B and C and D and DR and F, H, most of those were shut down.
Franklin: Was there a big worry about when the Cold War ended about what would happen to Richland and Hanford?
Lyon: I don’t know. I was looking for another job. And I found--I got on with radiation protection. So I had it there as long as I--had I wanted to stay, I could’ve stayed. But, in fact, I got called back when I was 80 years old to go out to HAMMER. I was changing irrigation, believe it or not, in the field, and the phone rang. The guy was on the phone, said he wanted to work out a salary or a number, anyway. And I’d checked with construction to see what they were paying. Anyway, I told him what I could get for construction, and it was more or less $33 an hour, with $3 going towards your insurance. And he said, well, how about $35? And I said, okay. But I got to thinking later, I could’ve probably got $40. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: And what did you do at HAMMER?
Lyon: In what? HAMMER?
Franklin: What did you do at HAMMER?
Lyon: Well, they have a mockup, you know, of like your hoods. It’s the next thing to being the actual thing, if you will. They got rooms there like where they have supposedly hot trash and hoods where they work in, too, in the labs. These are all clean, as far as that’s concerned. And you take people in there, make them dress up to a code, like they were actually going in and doing the job. And you go in and you give them a false reading, maybe. You know, because it’s clean. But you take your cutie pie in there and measure it and tell them like, it’s reading four or five rad or something like that. Anyway, you give them a talk-to first, and you try and impress them with the way they dress and the job that they’re doing. And then you take them through and let them do the job. And then you grade them. You can flunk them, or you can pass them.
Franklin: So you were doing RPT training?
Lyon: Yeah. Well, I was an RPT then. And I would just evaluate the people that come in. They have to pass a test, radiation, like a test for--to work out there. If they can’t pass that test, why, they have to give it another hitch, or else they probably have to move from their job.
Franklin: What events or incidents happened at Hanford while you were working there that stand out to you?
Lyon: Well, Dash-5 had their problem while I was out there. And they had a problem there at 222-S. They had contaminant in their pipe, their fresh air pipe became contaminated and some people got a dose there that they shouldn’t have.
Franklin: Wow.
Lyon: You can see the man on TV, I think, still show him. He could probably sit down and breathe on a GM or a pam or whatever and see the needle move by what he exhaled or whatever.
Franklin: Do you remember the McCluskey incident?
Lyon: That’s what I was talking about.
Franklin: The Dash-5?
Lyon: Yeah.
Franklin: Yeah.
Lyon: Yeah.
Franklin: Were you near there when that happened?
Lyon: No. What I heard is there was a burial there and it had a drip, drip, and it got so much, why, it would go critical. I think he was right there when it did.
Franklin: What about when--did you go to see JFK when he came to visit in 1963?
Lyon: I did not. I don’t know whether I was on shift at the time. I worked around the clock a lot of the times. I’d be on graveyard for seven days and then I would have--well, from Friday morning until Wednesday afternoon off. And then I would work swing for seven days. And then I would have two days off, and go on graveyard. That’s the way it went.
Franklin: Wow. What was it like living in Richland in the 1950s when it was still a government town?
Lyon: Well, I didn’t have any problems. I was a patrolman as far as that’s concerned. I done my job. We would patrol Richland, as far as that’s concerned. I could’ve stayed, had I wanted to become a policeman. But--
Franklin: What type of housing did you live in?
Lyon: I lived in a prefab, two-bedroom prefab on 1613 Mahan.
Franklin: Okay. Do you remember any particular community events?
Lyon: Any ex-what?
Franklin: Any particular community events?
Lyon: Well, the thing that I remember is the pump that they pulled from the evaporator, they didn’t have it wrapped up good so it contaminated quite a bit of area there that we ended up digging up a little bit of blacktop before we could get it all cleared.
Franklin: Okay.
Lyon: But I think mainly it was fairly quiet.
Franklin: Sure. [COUGH] Oh, excuse me. Could you describe the ways in which secrecy and security at Hanford impacted your work?
Lyon: Well, when I was on patrol, you was always looking for something that, maybe they had left out on their desk. You went through the offices and if you found something that should’ve been secured, why, you called them and they either come out and took care of it or else we took it up to headquarters and they wrote it up. That’s about all I know about security, as far as that’s concerned. People were responsible for what they were working with, and they weren’t supposed to leave it laying out so somebody could just come along and look at it. And I wouldn’t have any idea what a lot of that was about, as far as that’s concerned. Just maybe concerned with the work or, I don’t kind of a secret that they had there. You just had to be careful what you talked about.
Franklin: Did people talk about what they did? When you’d meet them, and you knew they worked at Hanford? Or were people secretive about their jobs, or were you secretive about your job?
Lyon: Yeah, physically, I’d talk to, especially people that I worked with, you know. Most people in Richland were connected some way there, first off, anyway.
Franklin: Did you ever talk about your job to your family?
Lyon: Huh?
Franklin: Did you ever talk about your job to your family or friends?
Lyon: Oh, probably to my wife, yeah. But I don’t think I divulged any classified material--
Franklin: Sure, sure. I wasn’t implying that.
Lyon: Oh.
Franklin: So you recently took a B Reactor tour, right?
Lyon: Yes.
Franklin: What was it like to take a tour to B Reactor now that it’s a museum?
Lyon: Well, I sat down in the chair and got my picture taken by--I had some people out here, relatives. I think I may have sat in that chair once. I was by no means a reactor operator, but I have sat at the board a little bit. But under supervision. Because you don’t go in there and just start operating; you have to take it slow and--same way with charge/discharge. You have to get the knack, otherwise you won’t drop that metal in, you’ll be doing more damage to the metal than you should.
Franklin: What does it mean to you that B Reactor is now a national park?
Lyon: I think it’s nice. They got it all cleaned up and they can see. As far as the lecture, they could be a little bit more amplified sound or something in there where you could hear better. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s a--
Lyon: I’m a little hard of hearing anyway.
Franklin: That’s a common piece of feedback we get. We’re still working on it.
Lyon: Yeah.
Franklin: So my last question is, what would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War?
Lyon: Well, it was some of the best money that I made, so I really looked at it as a good deal for me. The only thing I was trying to keep myself clean and not get polluted, you know? That’s about the size of it. I enjoyed the money. As far as that’s concerned, it was a decent place to work, I thought. I have two boys, and my youngest boy is going to retire the 20th of next month. He has 40 years as an electrician out there. He’s going to go to HAMMER, if you will, and teach electrical, maybe three to five days a week, when he retires. He’s talking about just--he gets a wage for that, and then they don’t--well, I guess they can give him insurance, too, if they want him bad enough. But he went through a training there in Yakima where they have the training for electricians and stuff. Then he come out here and--it’s Garry Lyon, and he’s 60.
Franklin: Oh, wow. How do you--sorry, I guess I have one more question that I just kind of thought of. How do you feel about your work contributing to the growth of nuclear weapons and proliferation of nuclear weapons of the Cold War?
Lyon: Well, I think we had to do it. I still think we’re--well, politics there--but one of them sold Russia some of our stockpile of whatever, you know, uranium, whatever. And they need that, I guess, if they’re going to make bombs. I don’t know whether they’re so advanced now that--it was bombs that we dropped. By the way, did they have--I thought that was a Fat Man and a thin man, but there was a woman here the other day, said it was a Fat Man and a Little Boy.
Franklin: That--yes, there was, apparently--it’s Fat Man and Little Boy. There was a Thin Man, which was a developmental plutonium gun weapon, but it didn’t work.
Lyon: Oh, I see.
Franklin: So they went with--because the uranium was a gun-type bomb. Adn then Fat Man was the plutonium implosion bomb. So there was a little bit--but it was just a development, and it never saw the light of day.
Lyon: I see. Well, I disputed her a little bit. I said, I thought it was a Fat Man and a Thin Man, and I’d never heard about the Little Boy. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: They’re all kind of funny names for the weapons. Well, Garrold, thank you so much for taking the time to come and interview with us today.
Lyon: Okay. I have one more boy out there that, he’s an engineer for, well, trying to do the solidification, you know?
Franklin: The vitrification.
Lyon: Yeah. And he’s 62.
Franklin: Wow. You’re kind of a Hanford family.
Lyon: Yeah.
Franklin: Yeah. Well, that’s great. Well, Garrold, thank you for taking the time to come in and interview with us.
Lyon: You bet.
Franklin: Okay.
Duration
Bit Rate/Frequency
Hanford Sites
A Farm
D
DR
K-E
K-W
C Farm
B Farm
200 Area
200 West
222-S lab
HAMMER
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Years on Hanford Site
Files
