Well to move on to something completely different, we've heard that there were different social activities and social groups associated with the Lab?

Yeah.

Were you involved in any of them?

Yeah. Early on they had a very strong Men's Club, that since has changed, it's no longer the Men's Club, it's called the Forest Products Club I believe, so both sexes can participate. But early on it was called the Men's Club and they sponsored quite a few activities and I participated in a lot of those athletically involved like they sponsored softball and volleyball and golf, and I bowled in the bowling league for the whole tenure at the Laboratory, 30 years, 31 years. They had a couple of meetings a year which I participated in and I served as an officer in the men's club and they had steak fries and picnics and I participated in all of those. The Laboratory had their Christmas parties and I went to practically all those. So they had quite a few activities and I participated in the blood drive, I don't know if you call that a social activity or not, but had a one a week club and I ended up giving up 17 or 18 gallons of blood while I was there. Yeah I participated in most of the social activities that went on.

Did those change over the years?

I think they became less as the years went on. It just seemed like people interest in these things---like just taking the Christmas party as an example, as the years went by, when I first came to the Laboratory they were very well attended but it just seemed as the years went on---and actually I stopped going myself---they became poorly attended and I think they even had to discontinue them for a while. The Men's Club became less and less prominent. The bowling league for example, I had to wait almost for somebody die before I could get into the bowling league, now they can't even get anybody to come out and join the bowling league. So yeah the flush of activities have gone down, I don't know if just people's lives have changed or what it is, but yeah from the beginning and to when I left the Laboratory it changed quite a bit.

Do you have any theories about why?

I don't know exactly why that would be, I think maybe some of it had to do---and you know when I first came to the Laboratory, as I said before, it was mostly older people and their kids were all gone so they had a lot of time for social activities. Then these people started leaving the Laboratory and when they started leaving the Laboratory we hired a whole younger bunch of people and they had children to raise. And I think they had more family duties because their children were at home and they had their activities to go to. I found that too myself as time went on, I had my kids' activities to go to and I gave up some of my own social activities to go to their activities. So I think maybe the Lab getting younger had a lot to do with it.