I’ll try to make this interesting, but I’m not making any promises. These pictures were taken in June of 2007 at a restaurant called Asparro’s in Portland. My parents drove up from California to attend Lisa’s college graduation ceremony. Later that night, we got together with my friends Kurt (in the yellow shirt), his wife Sharon (white blazer) and my dear friends Peggy and Andrew. Kurt was my closest friend and personal lawyer. Sadly, he was killed in a car crash on the Ross Island Bridge in 2011. I still miss him.
Just to give this some context, my dad was utterly tight-lipped about his involvement in the Manhattan Project at that time. We all knew he was involved, but no one, not even my mom, knew the nitty-gritty. For all of his career, they had it beat into them: There are Nazi (then Soviet) spies EVERYWHERE, as well as FBI agents tracking them, so if you spill the beans, you and your family will be ruined.
So we’re all sitting around that night having coffee and dessert, and Kurt asks my dad; “Manny, what exactly was your role on the project?”
“Oh, nothing really. Just boring chemistry stuff.” (I could tell he was caught off guard by it: humminah-humminah).
Kurt pressed him some more. He clammed up. Finally, I said; “C’mon dad, the Cold War is over. Brezhnev, LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover are all dead. No one cares anymore. You were a part of history, and if you don’t tell it, it might never be told.” He just looked at me, smiling.
The next morning, Lisa and I met my parents at their hotel for brunch. My dad was pensive. Finally, he asked me; “You have contacts with the media, right? Do you still serve the Portland PBS network?
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about what you said. I think I’d like to tell my story now.”
And just like that, 62 years of absolute secrecy was about to give way.
I introduced him first to one of the main producers at OPB, a wonderful guy named Milt. They went through the preliminary stages together, but that project was stillborn. As I recall, it was over a lack of funding. Then a few months later, another of my OPB customers, a producer named Nadine, came out to the Javamobile:
“Hey, is your dad still alive?”
“He is. He’s eighty-eight years old.”
“Do you think he could come in for an interview?”
“Well, I suppose so, except he lives 630 miles from here in the Bay Area.”
Nadine put together a camera crew from the OPB studio, they flew down to San Francisco, recruited a sound crew from KQED, the San Francisco PBS affiliate, and they all piled into two vans and drove out to Danville. Nadine conducted the interview in my parent’s living room.
For those of you who are new to my page, that interview became part of a documentary on the Manhattan Project; specifically, Hanford, where the plutonium was produced. I’ve posted it umpteen times before, so I’ll spare you the redundancy here—but I’ll post the link at the top of this thread for any newbies.
Nadine won an Emmy for Best Documentary. Other Emmys were awarded too, but I can’t recall who won what.
But just sitting here this morning, thinking about that conversation 17 years ago… I’m SO GLAD he acquiesced and agreed to participate in Nadine’s project.
Now here it is, 2024, and his story has been told, retold, and translated into seven languages. Both of my parents are gone now, their house is gone, Kurt’s gone, even that restaurant, Asparro’s is gone, though Peg’ and Andrew are still my good buds.
His shift towards transparency revealed a lot of history. Some stuff I always assumed, some of it bowled me over. Of all the things I ever did for him as his son, hooking him up with my media friends is the one I’m most proud of. And it was nothing short of cathartic for him. 💙
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