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My dad's office was on the second floor of one of the temporary War Department buildings, I believe it was Building Q. I think it was located close to where L'Enfant Plaza and U. S. Postal Service Headquarters now stands. I used to get to go into D. C. with my dad occasionally, and would spend the day at the adjacent Smithsonian Institution. I would walk to his office at the end of the day and he would keep me occupied by giving me a notebook filled with reconnaissance photos of Italy taken after the invasion. They were black and white, not very interesting to me then, but they kept me occupied until time to go. After the war, my dad told about running into his old commanding officer from Fort Logan, formerly Captain Leslie Groves, then Brigadier General Leslie Groves. General Groves invited my dad to a Washington Senators baseball game. During the game and small talk, my dad asked him if he was doing anything interesting and was told, "No, nothing interesting, they've got me pounding a desk out in New Mexico. General Groves was the military commander of the Manhattan Project and probably was scouting my dad's stash of supplies at the various Army Depots across the country. My dad would constantly be plagued with supplies that would be gone when he'd call for them. He'd ask what happened to them and be told only that a high priority order under code name 'Blue Plate Special' had taken whatever it was that was missing. He was constantly making trips to the depots at Granite City, Ill., St. Louis, Mo., and Pueblo, Co.. I don't know whether he ever went to Tooele, Utah or not, but he was constantly plagued by these midnight raids. Aunt Myrtle was surely aware of where a lot of the copper wire and other supplies were coming from. She visited once in Landover Hills and was wearing a strange division patch that my dad couldn't identify, he was intrigued enough with it to take a picture of her in uniform with the patch, a cloud in the form of a question mark, showing. After the bomb was dropped every thing became clear. I'm sure that the sample of fused earth, later dubbed atomicite, was partially a peace offering for his headaches. At times my dad wouldn't say anything just be a silent observer. One such incident was when Dickey Gaines and I got into a disagreement at our neighbor's house. We had a pretty good fist fight going when I felt someone watching. I looked towards my house and my father was standing there watching the fight. After the fight when I got home, nothing was said. My jaw ached for a couple of days afterward, but because of the way my dad handled it, I learned that I was responsible for my actions. No one besides myself had gotten me in that fight, therefore no one but me could listen to any complaints I had about it. There was one other fight in my life that my dad got involved with. It was in my junior year at Colorado Springs High School when one of the kids, Gary Finch, in Mr. Osterfoss's shop class called me an s.o.b.. I invited him to meet out side after class. He ripped up my shirt pretty well and I raised a good enough lump on his head, that he missed considerable school afterward. My dad asked what had happened to my shirt. I told him. Then he asked about my swollen right hand. I told him I thought I had jammed a couple knuckles hitting Gary's hard head. The end result was a trip to Dr. Crouch to assure that I hadn't broken it. It was only dislocated knuckles, I came home sore but well on the mend. It was in Greenbelt when I first started learning to drive a car. The first task learned was steering while sitting on my father's lap. The roads I was learning on had high crowns and didn't allow for inattention. Next I was allowed to sit next to him and use the accelerator along with steering. By the time I was 14, I pretty well new the rules of the road and was driving cross country with my father at my side. -20-