European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 01, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse I wrestling meets and jazz concerts scientists to stay. Enough did. So by Security. A Fence closed off the outside. Passes were required to come and permanent housing was going up gov it Issue four family units or but the army s profile went. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves Boss of the i billion Manhattan project that built the i was gone. The army s Job As caretaker an landlord was taken Over under con tract by the Zia corporation a private firm that had done contracting at los Alamos. It was pure paternalism says Wen jell Miller now Zia manager at last. Your toilet was stopped up you called Zia. R a plumber. No Zia mowed the Awn. Zia hired the school superintendent i was Power and Gas. Zia everybody s " 1 because no one could own Federal try held tenant of the month con. To encourage people to Spruce up Homes. Zia is the name for the Indian 1 for Sun god. That was about some people got spoiled says Miller people being highly educated also 1 they could build their lives better a construction company. Such town wavelets did not always make for the there was no sense of Community. Of Alamos was a place to come because a Job. A dreaded rip by the government t you left. There was no other Job but. Gradually though Miller says los Jamos was quote going Normal Enqu vary As to just when or How this Ipp ened. Perhaps a hint came when thei Tomic Energy commission manager at is Alamos said in exasperation behave three products Here children bombs hid he wanted Congress to build Aleter Inary Hospital. Maybe it was when Ami ties stayed Long enough to put their ids in los Alamos schools not the All in elusive wartime obscurantism Public no. 7." maybe when los Alamos 144 Square Miles became a county inf 1m9, or when the Gates came Down in 1957 the Gatehouse redecorated with Glass an tables is now Philomena s mexican style. But certainly1966 when the government put up its Ising and land for private los Alamos is still different. Ask a new mexican such As the Goodboy legislator who wanted to retain Fence to keep the scientists in Rathe the rest of the world out. To some those Are martians up on the Hill a state official. Not that new Mexico which had exact one army installation an ammo depot before the War in t used to the military now. We be had missiles flying Over our 1 from Utah to the White Sands Range Lovely sunsets Are really Bombe but when los Alamos went their first charter proposal read they wanted to set up a if As some will concede the University iks have been arrogant at times they Ive also been Good citizens. Last Scien armed with detailed studies have prominent in protecting the state sent. Its doctors visit clinics. The give Craft fairs on the Hill. Lasts built a solar heated addition for Pueblo Eva or meeting , almost All of the scientists raised and educated out of the them still talk of Back a Well paid in an area of very Lowland High unemployment. The local slope built by los Al mosites does Nota Public Snow report. The town rely lost a fight in the supreme not to have its state school funds and downward because it also gets fed a Aid. Is John Rogers now a state senator los Alamos a Are not recognized everyday part of the state of new us nun who regularly grapple with the problem Peculiar and otherwise of los Alamos u Delbert. Sundberg. He beads the lab s info1978 chamber where scientists Hope to harness a bomb s Energy. Matton services and also the count Council. Can you think of any other town of20,000 people that does t have a car Agency he asked dealers have tried and did t make it. As a result car buyers kick tire sat methodist motors a parking lot next to one of the town s 17 churches where hopeful Sellers leave their used autos with terms of Sale and phone numbers pasted on the windshields. New car buyers have to travel to Santa be or Albuquerque with resultant loss in sales tax Revenue to los s budgetary problems Are fur ther complicated because the Only Indus try in town the lab is tax exempt. Congress appropriates annual funds to it scientific stepchild but Sundburg finds it pure bloody hell to draw up a budget every year when new Mexico limits the sales tax rate on the one hand and con Gress can be seized by a wave of Belt tight ening at any moment on the other. Ai t the sometime Sundburg & co. Have to provide municipal services to people who by their training think that everything can be reduced to a the scientists som of whom recall the free ride Days of Zia also have been trained to ask pointed questions about garbage pickups and Utility rates As Well As atoms All of which keep the Council constantly embroiled says Sundburg. Who actually does what for who mat los Alamos it a Chain of command of Kent Trinkun complexity. The University of California runs the lab As it has always done but at a distance for the department of Energy. The bombs less than half of last s Effort right now. Get to the Pentagon through a Debranch. The fusion medical solar super conductivity geothermal and other re search the lab does is the responsibility of various other arms of Doe. Zia is still around As a highly versatile Handyman building and maintaining for the lab Bueno longer the town except for Selling it Power and county maintains and owns the roads but Doe owns the Bridge Over los Alamos Canyon leading up to lab head quarters. Its ownership is a Security pre caution in Case ban the bomb groups should decide to March on the Haven t yet. But last has its own 300-Man Security Force if they is almost exclusively Petty and Are expected to go to College and about 75 percent do. The few who Don to pump Gas Man checkout counters worry their College bred parents or com prise about the Only unemployment. The difference with kids Here is that they Are All wanted says Nan Mcnally wife of a physicist who notes this eve among the pre school 3-year-Olds she Tea father at least thinks it so idyllic a protective society that he says what los Alamos needs most is a Good slum so kids could see something of what the themselves Call the world so the kids go off with some Relief an anticipation to College where a Large number do not take science. But More and More you re finding that they miss the backpacking and skiing and fishing an clean air says Bill Jack Rogers last photographer who shoots a sums Andis a county councilman. They say Home was t so bad after All. Let s go back.1 " but if they Don t want to be a scientist Ora shopkeeper there in t much los Alamos can offer them. Meanwhile the lab people get average age is 45 up from 25 during the War. Nearly 800 last employees Are within five years o retire ment. In a town that has no nursing Home no funeral parlor and a Ceme Tery Only since recently. Formerly retirees left. Now increasingly they Are staying. Many spent their working lives at the lab. This aggravate san always chronic housing shortage. But this is their Home says former Asl director Bradbury himself a Retiree since 1970 who scoots about town in pickup to school Board Bank and other meetings. The tragic cases Are old women widowed mothers in Law and mothers who come to live with the kids an then the family Breaks up leaving them Homes. This is one of the Darker legacies of atom City. Science is a jealous mistress a demanding one. A company town nay a company county puts f Urther strains on a can teach or become clerks and secretaries and do. Beyond that opportunities Are slender. There s an awful lot of secret drinking in this town says member of alcoholics Anonymous. A number of wives take one look at this town and leave with or without their Hus bands said one wife. If she s not happily married she s in a woman who s been self sufficient i keeping herself Busy can find plenty to do Here said Nan Mcnally. There Are over200 organizations and los Alamos is a joining town. But if she is from a City Andis used to being entertained vicariously theater museums it can be can get trapped too says Bill Jack Rogers. A scientist works himself into a Niche and then finds he can t get the same Niche outside. Are other barriers some people feel. They Are social intended by no on but a result of the curious Way los Alamos grew. When the government sold off the quads and its land in 1966, purchasers bid on a Point system determined by seniority and salary. In enough cases the higher paid got the better locations so some stratification has occurred. Many deny it but some say the result is a bostonian Lowell Cabot Hierarchy where speak Only to and speak Only to god. If so it has not affected the easy first name familiarity of the lab Alamos is a Friendly place whatever else it is. Its been 60 years since Lancelot Inglesby Pelly son of a British Diplo mat became the first student to enrol atthe old boy s school. Should he return today he would find three liquor stores shopping centers Rush hour traffic a Golf course even an Airport. Down in one of the labs Lancelot Pelly could talk to Joe Mckibben whose steady fingers at Alamogordo threw the final switches that blasted Mankind into a new world and to Harold Agnew now last s director who filmed the Hiroshima holocaust from the great artiste an escort b-29. Perhaps what los Alamos could Tell Lancelot Pelly is that we have done these things and survived and made a life of that survival As mail h surely As the some times Peculiar life of the bomb s birth place. There is. A physicist at los Alamo named Mike Moore. He is also an Episco palean bomb in t evil he says. But men May a japanese girl came Here once with a television Crew. They visited Asl s Small museum where casings Simi Lar to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs painted White Are on display. Thank you no she said. She did t Pareto go in there. The Cloud does not blow away. Tomorrow los Alamos z toss ing the atomic Coin town does t have a car dealer uses Church parking lot for sales. The stars and stripes Page is
