OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — Thursday was a special day in Oak Ridge as the community helped celebrate the 101st birthday of a woman who played a key role in the Manhattan Project.
Opal Talbott returned to Oak Ridge Thursday after moving back to her home in Albany, Kentucky more than seven decades ago. The American Museum of Science and Energy hosted a special celebration for her.
Opal is part of a famous group of women known as the "Calutron Girls" who worked behind the scenes in secret at Y-12 during World War II in support of the Manhattan Project. The women were in charge of monitoring and regulating calutrons used in the process of developing uranium for nuclear weapons, but were kept in the dark about their actual role in the top-secret project.
After more than 70 years away from the Secret City, Opal said things look a lot different than she remembered, but she cherished the experiences she had in East Tennessee.
"It was a rainy spring and it rained and it was wet and muddy as it could be. We had walks made out of wood to walk on to keep out of that. They furnished dormitories for all of us women and we had a house mother. It was nice, it really was," she recalled.