Interview with Marguerite Sykes

LB: Well, today is Tuesday July 22, my name is Lauren Benditt and I'm here with Marguerite Sykes and she is going to tell us about her experiences at the Forest Products Lab. I guess to start us off, if you don't mind telling us a bit about your background. What made you interested in forest products and how you ended up here.

MS: Okay. Well I have always been interested in chemistry, I think it was prompted by my high school physics teacher actually who kind of said I should look into science more seriously and I really did like it. So I went to Denison University in Ohio, Granville, Ohio and got a bachelor's degree in chemistry. The first year I was married and soon after I graduated--I guess there was a one year interval--we, my husband and I both taught in a small town in New York 00:01:00state. I taught all of the sciences [laughs] in their high school, which was quite a challenge and I was usually a couple of lessons ahead of the kids in advanced physics, but I really enjoyed the chemistry and the labs and this. And then when we moved to Madison I--we have three--we had two children at that time and I went to work for Hector Deluca in biochem department on campus and that was part-time because our children were young. And I really enjoyed that lab work until I got very allergic to the rats that we had to deal with. But it was an exciting time too because it was when they discovered the active metabolite for vitamin D, which now has hope for osteoporosis and lots of other things so that was a very exciting time. After my--I guess I was there almost seven years, 00:02:00six and a half years or so--I went over to, tried to get into the Forest Products Lab because it had always been very exciting to me to look into this place, but they didn't have any openings so I went over to the V.A. hospital and worked there for about a year and a half or two. When I wanted to scale down to part-time work just because of our children, we had three at that time, they weren't interested in somebody part-time so I came over to Forest Products and I did get a job here and that was in 1971, that's when I started. So I guess that's the background I have had.

LB: You said that you were always really excited about the Forest Products Lab or you found it interesting?

MS: Yeah, well I guess the out of doors, and trees, and forests and all this. I 00:03:00was also taking some guide training at the U.W. Arboretum and it was kind of a toss up, do I try to make a profession out of that or work in the laboratory, which I dearly loved. I think it was the lab work part of chemistry that I really liked. So this seemed to be more year-round and permanent so that is the choice I made, so I was delighted to get in. I guess I had always heard really good things about the Lab and type of work they were doing.

LB: Great. So I take it you had heard about the Forest Products Lab before you came here. Do you remember when you first heard about it?

MS: I don't. I guess there was a graduate student who was in the chemistry department who we got to know very well and he had visited here at the Lab when they gave daily tours and came back very excited about it and kind of said yeah 00:04:00it's kind of a feeling that I've had without having seen it. Then we did take a tour and it was confirmed, there was a lot of exciting things going on.

LB: I guess was there anything in particular going on at that time here that you found exciting?

MS: Well let's see. I guess the botany area, having the cultures of all the fungi, and I guess the micro work, the electron microscope, those kinds of things is what I remember best. Impressed by the pilot plant, which was huge [and had those incredible wood arches].

LB: So generally your impressions of the Lab were pretty good?

MS: Yeah very positive, yes so I was delighted to get a chance to work here.

LB: And same with your impressions of the Forest Service and the University as well or did you connect those with the Lab at all?

MS: I did not connect the University with the Lab but I guess I didn't know that much about the Forest Service and I guess I think of the national forests and this sort of thing so there was nothing at all negative about it. Neutral to positive I guess.

LB: Right. So you started working at the Lab in 1971. Do you have any memories of your first day?

MS: I guess I do have one just because of the weather. I started in January and it was--oh just a really frigid day. We live about a mile from here and well for I don't know about twenty years I walked back and forth to the Lab. It was very 00:06:00snowy and probably close to zero and I mean I was absolutely frozen when I got here. So that's the most vivid memory. I started working with Dan Caulfield and he was the world's best first boss here at the Lab, he was just extremely nice and made everything very, very easy so it was a very positive time.

LB: And could you describe a typical day? What did you do here? Or did you have a typical day?

MS: I guess that's the better question. I think I had basically two lives here, I had about I don't know twelve years or so or fifteen years of part-time work. That was just a, maybe was more routine, I did basic testing, everything from 00:07:00working with Dan it was [on] x-ray fluorescence, making little pellets and putting them through the x-ray. One interesting project there was when they were restoring the U.S. Constitution we did some [wood] samples on that, [doing fiber saturation points, formaldehyde analyses, etc].

The second life that I had here was when I worked full-time and really got into some exciting projects, and that was, every day was very, very different and that was what made it exciting I think. Went from the routine to the many things happening at once.

LB: Was that still in the same area or division?

MS: I stayed in the same unit but its name changed many, many times but basically it was the pulp and paper division and I guess I still think back at it as being the pulp and paper division.

LB: I guess do you have any particular projects that you worked on that you 00:08:00found really exciting?

MS: I think everything I worked on the last fifteen years were extraordinarily exciting and I think they were kind of breakthrough topics like more environmentally inclined, it was to replace the chemicals for pulping and bleaching and recycling with more environmentally sound methods like enzymes or hydrogen peroxide for bleaching. And so everything was new and although some people had been doing it, none of these techniques were being used commercially so it was just kind of ground work on some of these things that made it very 00:09:00exciting. I would take journals home and I did a lot of work at home just because I was so enthusiastic about what was happening. Fiber loading was another project that I worked on and that too was innovative and part of the team that got a patent on that work that we did. I think that was the start of working on teams and the whole thing was more interdisciplinary, which was a nice experience that I hadn't had before. I worked on, from the beginning of biopulping, for instance and that was a very exciting time working with both the economists and the engineers and the biochemists, [industrial partners] and obviously we all had to translate [the special expertise] to the application and the wood chips and the screening of the fungi. So that was very exciting and I 00:10:00think that was a real opportunity when I guess Kent Kirk and John Koning invited me to join the team. And at different times I did many different things for that group and that was probably exponential learning for me and that was very, very nice. Same thing with the bleach work, I--actually that's what prompted the bleach work. The bio pulping project darkened the woodchips and so they had to be bleached and so that's when I learned how to bleach [mechanical] wood pulp. We wanted to do it to preserve the lignin and do it environmentally sound so 00:11:00that's where hydrogen peroxide primarily came in, [no harmful byproducts].

LB: It sounds like a whole array.

MS: Definitely.

LB: And what time period generally was this?

MS: This was in the '80s, late '80s, mid to late '80s and going all through the '90s. About that same time recycling became big just because landfills were being filled so rapidly the amount of paper that everybody used was much too much. I just felt well since it was too expensive to throw away pulp and to throw away paper, which could definitely be reused and recycling was obviously 00:12:00was the best way to do this and the [existing recycling] techniques they were using on it was recycled, tossed in so many chemicals that again were very harmful to the [effluent] waters that came out of the mill and it was kind of defeating some of the environmental impact by doing this is why we started using enzymes for de-inking and that too is an innovative idea, Tom Jeffries and [John Klungness were] the ones who introduced [this technology], his pet phanarochaete crysosporism, you've probably heard that many, many times. That was what they started with and oh then screened many other fungi to see which was the best.

LB: So what--

MS: I digress. This was really back from bio pulping but also this was the same contact that I used for, that we started some enzymatic work for de-inking. 00:13:00Mistake, sorry.

LB: No that's fine. I guess conversely, did you encounter any projects that you found particularly challenging?

MS: They all were [laughs] just because we really didn't know what would work. I guess the bleaching probably was pretty straightforward and yet it was a little different. In the fiber loading I did some bleach work with that too and the fiber loading process. The calcium carbonate that's formed "in situ," which is a papermaking product to smooth out the paper [surface], it's a filler of sorts, is highly alkaline and so when they tried this on lignin-containing papers it would darken it [the pulp] and so it had to be bleached and so this was another 00:14:00need for bleaching. But, as I say, everything [initially] was kind of trial and error what we were working on.

LB: Yeah. So then did you spend most of your days in the lab just working on different tests then?

MS: Sure. Actually I--that's when I went into the pilot plant a lot and, actually, I spent a lot of time out in the bio plant for all these things. But a lot of things were small scale first and then had to be scaled up. The bio-pulping was the first thing that took me into the pilot plant because the woodchips then had to be refined and I was running a disc refiner for a short time. And some of the bleaching work too, we always scaled up to a batch that was big enough to--you know not more than--we started with ten grams in the lab 00:15:00but you had to test it on something larger and so always, everything had to eventually be scaled up so it went from that to the pilot plant. Part of it too was making handsheets--you've probably seen the test lab where you slurry the pulp and there is a special instrument of sheet mold that you make a hand sheet and all the tests are brightness, how white it is, how strong it is, how easy it tears go back to the basic hand sheet, we did a lot of those too. So, it was a big variety of things that we did and as I say every day was different, and many things [projects] were being done [worked on] simultaneously. So one day I'd work part-time on fiber loading and another part of the day on bleaching or the 00:16:00biopulping. So, a lot of variety.

LB: Yeah. I guess did you work on any publications around any of this?

MS: Yes. I guess this was a wonderful opportunity once I joined all these teams, with the de-inking team, the fiber loading team, and the recycling--I guess we weren't legally a team but we worked together with a lot of disciplines there too. We had the opportunity then to write papers and give presentations at conferences and so it opened up the world of not just staying here in the laboratory.

LB: So did your job then take you away from here?

MS: For conferences, yes, and there were quite a few that I was able to go to and usually to make a presentation, but not always. Also, we had a lot of 00:17:00opportunities for training here at the Lab. We went from--I guess this is one thing that was very dramatically different--at one point in my early years here the computer meant key punch and then the cards were read on campus for the computer system they had there. And then we got to the point of everybody doing their own typing and eventually had their own computer. We had very good training courses to teach you how to use the computer for which I am very thankful now because I still use it a lot and so many people my age don't know how to operate a computer and are very happily anyway. This was a real plus.

LB: So what sort of places did you end up traveling to, and what were the conferences that you went to?

MS: They all were really pulp and paper kinds, well I guess one was 00:18:00environmental, but they were all sponsored by TAPPI, the Technical Association for Pulp and Paper Industry. We had them in different places different years so it was Atlanta several times, New Orleans, San Diego, Boston. I guess I had a course at North Carolina State and went to Canada one time for a presentation, those are the ones I can remember right now--Chicago.

LB: Did you ever have the opportunity to, I guess, maybe work with scientists from other Forest Service research stations or from industry or do some cooperative research?

MS: We did with--yes--we did with Voith for the fiber loading especially, they had an industrial or semi-industrial sized pilot plant there. So, after we did 00:19:00some basic work here at the Lab we went up there to their scale up and that was very interesting. Oh, also that's where we took our enzymatic de-inking, which was a very exciting time because they do it big time there was very nice and they had a very successful run for the first time. And then presenting that paper on it was very fun. So that was good.

LB: Was there one project that you worked on that gave you the most personal satisfaction in the end or did you enjoy all of then equally?

MS: That's a tough question because for different reasons different things stand 00:20:00out. Perhaps the bio pulping maybe because it was my first big opportunity here at the Lab, I think. I guess this maybe goes back to maybe the status of women. There had only been one other woman who worked in the pilot plant before I started there and now of course there are many. I think there are many, I guess I haven't been back there to look. But I think when I was asked if I would be willing to work in the pilot plant I think they expected the answer to be "no," and when I said "yes" I guess that was a surprise as well as an opportunity for me. I think that I would not have had the experiences I had if that had not been opened. There weren't very many women scientists here at the Lab and I was a 00:21:00technician and a lot of it was kind of a struggle to publish because you couldn't publish unless you were a scientist. [I was told I had to publish two papers as a sole author to be promoted.] And I think there were different criteria used at different times for what was expected of me versus--and I'm sure all, many other women here at the Lab. But I did finally get to be a scientist, which was very exciting after well not too long before I retired actually but it was a long battle. And yeah, and I think maybe I hopefully made it a little easier for some other women coming along because I think a lot of men who had been here for a very long time had definitely the feeling of women's place--you couldn't take women seriously, basically that's it. Anyway, you may 00:22:00not like to include that but I think it was accurate.

LB: I guess did you really get to see the status of women change here?

MS: Definitely. I think part of this was legislation, civil rights legislation and also we had a very gutsy young chemical engineer--well two of them actually--Marcia Patton Mallory who now is I think [a regional] director or certainly a high office in the Forest Service in Colorado the last I heard anyway. And the other was Teresa Young who worked in our unit and she was the first one who had a job in the pilot plant. And those people plus the 00:23:00legislation, plus Forest Service had a class action suit against them in California, because of women not getting promoted and getting a lot of harassment and I think it made the Forest Service across the board more amenable to change.

LB: Do you remember what year that was?

MS: I suppose it was in the--oh dear that's hard to remember--'70s maybe [mid or early '80s], before it hit here. I think we were [the Lab was] always kind of behind the time. I remember very dramatically there was a meeting here at the Lab and for the first time anybody who wanted to attend could instead of just 00:24:00the scientists. And one of the speakers from the Lab made a very sexist comment and then there was a very sexist joke a little later in the meeting. And somebody from another company [industry] who was also here made the comment when we out to lunch with a bunch of us, he didn't think this kind of feeling was alive and well in the current day and age. I think some of the young of women [engineers] who attended felt very, very offended by this. I guess it wasn't that new to those of us who had been around. That definitely has changed before I left [retired].

LB: And when was that? In the '70s as well?

MS: Well let's see, that was probably later, I think probably in the [late] '80s 00:25:00that that happened.

LB: I sort of assume with it being part of the government that it would change with--

MS: Yeah but I think at that time all the project leaders and division heads and whatever were male and I guess it's easy to protect your own turf. That's maybe not what you brought me in to talk about but it was part of my life here and I think I could have been much more productive sooner, let's put it this way. I ended up, I think, having my name on [and contributing significantly to], I don't know, eighty some publications in those last ten years or fifteen years maximum--and there were a lot of years before then that I could have been used 00:26:00more efficiently, but no.

LB: Well maybe we could move on a little bit. How did you feel working for an agency that was part of the Forest Service or part of the federal government?

MS: Yeah, I was very neutral about that I think until the issue of the environmentalists against the Forest Service when the spotted owl issue came up and then cutting down some virgin forests in Alaska initially and other places certainly gave the Forest Service a black eye. And so that was a little embarrassing to be part of that organization but I think--well I don't. Different administrations deal with some of these problems differently, and so 00:27:00depending on who is in charge [in Washington alters policy].

LB: Were you more attuned to the different administrations because you worked here?

MS: I think so. Primarily it made a difference in the funding that the Lab got. And that was I think a direct influence of administration and leadership in the country.

LB: You've already sort of touched on changes in perceptions of the Forest Service over your time here. Do you have any more to say about that or maybe expand it a little bit to up until the time you retired? I guess you just spoke 00:28:00about the spotted owl and the cutting the forests in Alaska.

MS: It was the Tongass forest maybe, yeah.

LB: Did you see perceptions of the Forest Service change for other people?

MS: Yes, I think it was certainly--I think the average person maybe didn't care on way or another and a lot of them pooh-poohed the whole thing but I think it did change the image of Smokey the Bear and the good things the forests had to offer. But I don't know, you know, everybody wants something different from the national forests, it isn't a very clear cut issue actually. So I can sympathize with the clear cutters and the many other problems. I don't know I haven't 00:29:00thought that much about it [recently], but I know the image has changed.

LB: I guess my next question was going to be do you see it changing currently?

MS: You know I'm not watching it that carefully but I guess the one thing that did hit Wisconsin in last week's State Journal, I mean the big issue was the closing of more paper mills. It had gone from a time that they were on top of the world [in the '90s] [laughs] to--it's just so sad to see with all those jobs lost and having to close down [the mills]. But I guess this was built in obsolescence of their equipment and it just would be so expensive to change, that was one thing. Secondly, the cheaper pulp that they are growing on plantations in Brazil, Australia, the far east so it's not an easy problem and 00:30:00certainly with environmental constraints, which should be there and have been very lax in being enforced in the mills, I guess it was inevitable that they'd collapse.

LB: I guess completely different, while you were working here did you feel any connection to the University? While working here, having worked in the lab there previously?

MS: Well, we took a forestry course--or I guess I did that on my own--there was a forest chem, chemistry of wood that several of us from the Lab walked over there to campus to take a class. But occasionally we had something to do with the forestry department. Yes, I guess the most direct link with the University 00:31:00was some of the graduate students who did some of their research here and that was always fun to hear their projects and to work with them. I think there maybe was only one that I can remember in our unit. But, I think the other thing was international researchers who were here that I think added an awful lot to the whole climate here at the Lab. And summer students, of course, they were often university students and even some high school minorities were given summer jobs that were paid for, like, by other institutions like Centro Hispano and those to give these kids a chance and we had just a marvelous young Hispanic woman one 00:32:00summer who I think did college-age [level] work with me that was just super.

LB: So you mentioned taking at least one class at the university, did you take more than one or pursue any graduate classes?

MS: I didn't. I guess that was the other thing, we were always encouraged to take engineering courses and get a degree, advanced degree in engineering and that was kind of a low priority in my life. Had it been something else they were pushing I think I would have been much more amenable. But I guess when I could have you know the opportunity to spend some time on my own, I got so involved with the research I was doing here that I spent my free time doing that or 00:33:00learning--I guess it was a lot of on the job learning that I was doing and it was informal. But we had a lot of good people here who shared their expertise very nicely [willingly].

LB: So are there colleagues about whom you have particularly strong memories and do you have any stories about them?

MS: Well this probably the nicest one is--oh, it's from day one. There was a coffee group that met down in the ground floor of where my office was initially in this building--no in building thirty-three--and there were probably ten people, maybe twelve and at any one day probably eight of them I would see twice 00:34:00a day, just come together for coffee and often it became a real problem solving, you know, kind of what do you do about if this happens [or how you do whatever]. And you know you also get to not only solve problems about what you are research on, but I guess we got to know each others families [vicariously] and this sort of thing just vicariously talking. Some of these men, and I guess I have to say I was one of the few women in the group, we had a secretary at one time and Suki Croan was another woman who came over, but the rest were all men. It just was a very cordial group and I think that was maybe one of the nicest memories I have at the Lab and I guess I still see Ed Springer [my bleaching guru] occasionally, informally in a University league setting, and Dan Caulfield has remained a 00:35:00really good friend, not that we see each other often but we run into each other occasionally. Yeah, some of the people are no longer living who were in that group, [Irv Sachs, George Hajney, Suki,] and young people came in that who are still here. So it was a very interesting group and I guess I have the strongest memories of them.

LB: Were you involved in any other social activities associated with the Lab?

MS: Not very much at all. I think it was a group called the Forestettes and I felt I really didn't have that much in common with them but I went occasionally, not very often. I guess occasionally the Lab had picnics and I would go 00:36:00occasionally to that. No I didn't, I wasn't a socialite. And I guess maybe I'm a more reserved person, I don't seek out those kind of activities. Other people from the Lab though who were meaningful, I think we had such wonderful support from editing, the women there, and from photography and from statistics and there were just key people all across the Lab who I think about very often because they were just so super to support what you were doing and that was very nice. [I worked closely with John Klungness and Freya Tan on several projects in recycling and fiber loading.] One thing I had jotted down about some little story about the Lab--at one time--this was in the recycling period and so I 00:37:00guess we're talking about the late '80s, early '90s maybe--the pilot plant did some contract work. They didn't call it contract work it was ["co-op" work] something like that but it was trying to solve industry's specific problems and so industry would come with some product that they were trying to evaluate on a pilot plant scale. This was, this specific event, was the first weekend I think it was in December and there was, well it turned out to be a blizzard, but I knew because of the storm that was coming, not many people would make it in to the Lab, I knew these people had come from New York and it was a very simple thing for me to walk in. There probably were five people out in the pilot plant 00:38:00to staff, you know, the group coming. And when the guys came here from the visiting group it was like you know what is this? Oh the Lab was closed because of the bad weather and the University closed down that time too and they said [thought] what are these wimps in this town, you're closing everything down just because of a little snow. Well this was the, what seven o'clock in the morning and by noon when we all were going out to lunch we couldn't get the cars out of the parking lot, so we had decided to walk just down a little ways on University Avenue. It took forever to plod through the snow and the wind blowing. And we got to a restaurant, which was only two [three] blocks away, their help hadn't come in, their supplies hadn't come in. We ended up with having a bowl of soup essentially served by the same person, and it was kind of wild but we got the 00:39:00project done and I don't know how long it took to get those guys out of town. But that was one fun event that I kind of remember.

LB: Well you have your notes in front of you. Do you have any other stories that you remember?

MS: Well I just have a very kind of funny one. We had an electron microscopist, Irv Sachs was his name, and he was always trying to lose weight--I mean who isn't? But he was especially always trying to loose weight. Dan Caulfied had a lead vest that he used in the x-ray room. And so Dan said one day to Irv let's go on this diet together and we will have weigh in at the beginning, a weigh in, I don't know, three weeks later. So Dan put on this lead shield on himself with 00:40:00a sweater over it and no one would know he had the lead shield on. Both of them weighed and they wrote down the amount. And every day at coffee, these were two of the coffee group guys, Dan would eat all this junk food, stuffing it in, stuffing it in and Irv was so good he said, you're not going to lose any weight and then at the end of the time Dan took off his shield when they did the reweighing and Dan had lost something like twelve pounds or something like this and Irv had maybe even gained a little and he said life was just not fair. And then we finally told him and that was a really, really funny event for everybody involved.

You know there are a zillion things but maybe those were the two standout ones 00:41:00that I can recall. I think a lot of people here have a very nice sense of humor and so it was used to its fullest.

LB: Well then maybe we will move on to why you decided to retire. Was it just time?

MS: Well, I guess so, my husband had retired I don't know five years before me and was always saying oh, you should retire, you should retire. You know his life hadn't changed really, he did a lot of traveling and he still had his work [on national boards, etc.]. Well I had a pretty serious back problem and when I couldn't--I started to get to the point where I couldn't stand all day any more and work. And I definitely was a hands-on researcher and I said you know this 00:42:00isn't really fair, I can't do anything if I can't do the research. And I was sixty-six and so I thought, well, toss in the sponge. But I have to say it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I, It took a couple of years to not feel lost, I think, to readjust to not working because I had worked all my life. I guess it was a combination of things, yeah.

LB: What year did you retire?

MS: 2002. January 7th.

LB: Do you feel like your work left a mark on the Lab or on the Forest Service?

MS: You'd like to hope so. I guess I hope I maybe served a little bit of a role 00:43:00model for some of the [young] women who, I was always encouraging them to go back to school, to keep going at it. Yeah, and maybe to keep trying even though things look like they are against you. As far as the research? Yeah, I sure hope all these things are put to use some day.

LB: Are any of them being used now?

MS: Well, I think our patent on fiber loading had been licensed and hopefully it will fly but that maybe has the most possibility. Enzymatic de-inking has been used in other countries but, you know, here--I mentioned the problem of converting your lab [the mills] and a lot of them are geared to delignification 00:44:00[with chemicals], the sulfite to get craft kind of pulp and I guess that's a whole different process than the bio pulping was driving at. But it should--you know you get much more pulp from maintaining the lignin and whatever. Yeah, and I don't know about recycling, if that will ever make it but again I think other countries are doing it and they are not so specific about, not so picky about having to have the whitest of the white everything. So it should go too. Anyway, I think they are all good things ["green" processes].

LB: Are there things that you wish you could have done while you were here that you didn't get to do?

MS: Good question. Sure, I guess I wish I would have gone back to school a lot 00:45:00earlier than I was encouraged to, and not to be an engineer but to do something else. Maybe botany, I don't know. Yeah I guess I really liked it when I could do research and write and present. So, I guess I wish that would have happened sooner. I don't have [many] real regrets really at all.

LB: That's great.

MS: Yeah.

LB: I guess then did your career meet your expectations?

MS: I think so, yeah. I never thought I would be working that long. I think everyone my age when we graduated from college you know it was finding a job 00:46:00until you had a family and that sort of thing, but then it became necessary to work. Then it became really fun to work, so I guess that was the evolution. One comment about retirement, I still dream about people from the Lab and it was every day for a couple of years and now it still is [happens]. Not even the people necessarily that I was the closest to here at the Lab, but you know just for some reason I don't why I think about them and there they would be in my dream. So it is something that sticks with you when you are out of this place, I guess it was thirty some years I worked here, so a long time.

LB: Well I think I'm at about the end of my questions if you have anything else that you would like to record?

MS: No I think not, this is good.

LB: Great.

MS: Well it's sexism.

LB: We were just talking about red tape and the forms.

MS: That was one of the really bad things about working here was the, you know, just getting around the red tape of everything and then when they had us start contracting out for things and you had to go through their travel agency, which was sitting--in most cases--in India. So you'd call and say you are in Madison, Wisconsin--where is that? Would be the answer. What it is near? And then you want to go to where and what part of the country is this. I mean it took so much time and usually the cost that came through was a lot more than you could get if you went locally and somebody who could, you know, give you a comparative prices. So that was part of it.

Let's see what else, what's the other thing on this. The red tape and the--oh we 00:48:00had safety training, we had all these required things. We had a film that was given by, I don't know, some fireman from someplace else and in it you know everything had this woman in a bikini, you know showing this is the fire extinguisher and this is the--you know just all through it. Some young woman who was in editing at that time said at the end, she said I don't mean to be rude but she said I find that extremely offensive and even some women in the room just booed at her and said, you know, why did you have the nerve to get up an embarrass the whole Lab by saying that. I mean she was one hundred percent right in saying this and she did not last very long here. And I don't know if that was 00:49:00the motive for it but I mean [obviously] it wasn't even permitted to talk about. I guess that's it.

Funny things that happened at the Lab and this Teresa Young who I talked about she was a very bright young woman and all the men in the pilot plant had pinup pictures in their lockers--or many of them did--and many, many things that she was faced with and I'm sure because she was the first woman there they gave her a lot more grief than anybody else would have been given. Well she was very effective in getting them [the photos] removed and she was also very effective in all the engineering journals and writing letters to the editor saying you know in this day in age--I mean this was in the '80s too and it was still alive and well. When women from our--and mostly the secretaries because they were the only ones who dressed up, the rest of us were slouches--but walked past the 00:50:00shops which was from building thirty-three, the small building in between, the men would be lined up there sitting and watching the women go by and whistle or make comments like this. And that too was going on for quite a while, but that too [eventually] was clamped down. So there were some dramatic changes but long after they were--they were doing it long after anyone else, anywhere in the world in this country were doing them. So a very bizarre climate. I guess that's all I have to say about that.

[End of interview]