Do Our Part: The Tragic Story of the Weldon Spring Ordnance Works - Tim Scherrer

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Digital 410 Media proudly presents the What's the Scuttle Butt Podcast with your hosts, Don Abernathy, Jeff Copsetta, and Dennis Blocker.
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Welcome everybody to another episode of the What's the Scuttle Butt Podcast.
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Your favorite World War II based podcast, and we're back here with another exciting episode.
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Dennis is here with us as well.
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Tonight I'd like to introduce our guest, Lieutenant Tim Scheer, retired as a historian, author, educator, and a retired U.S.
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Army military intelligence officer, a native of Quincy, Illinois.
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Schear earned both his bachelor's and master's degree in history from Truman State University, where he was also a distinguished military cadet in the Army ROTC program.
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Shear served 28 years in U.S.
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Army Reserve, retiring as Lieutenant Colonel.
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During his military career, he served as military intelligence, including as an intelligence briefer to the Commander-in-Chief of U.S.
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Transportation Command during Operation Desert Storm.
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He later taught at the Army Reserve Command and General Staff College before retiring in military service in 2015.
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Sam, welcome to the show.
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Hey, thanks for having me.
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It's great to be here.
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And uh I I just want to say right off the bat, I love the topic of your book that you got here that you're here to promote.
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Um, we we've we've discussed quite a bit here.
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Um, when it comes to River War 2 content, a lot of it's done and done and done again.
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And one of the things we're about to do is find content that people don't talk about a lot.
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Uh we've we've done stories about something as minute as canteens and uh the recreation of the uh jungle sweater that the fellows had Bronson do.
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And you have a great home front story, which is very interesting because it actually takes place before we're technically actively in the war, which we'll get to, but kind of makes me questionable somebody in intelligence saw what was coming in the wind and wanted to get a jump on it.
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But um for the sake of our audience, with the exception of the uh bio I I read, give us a brief um rundown of you, including your uh enacting history.
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Yeah, well, um I I actually started uh going to the Weldon Spring site in the fall of 1983, and it was the it's the birthplace of World War II reenacting in the United States.
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First event was in 1975.
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So I was actually out there with the original guys who started the hobby.
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Uh, you know, Fred Potta, Carrie Johns, you know, folks like that, Del Miller, things like that.
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So and generally they held three events out there and at the Army Reserve training site there.
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And uh I actually uh celebrated my 21st birthday out there.
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And well, my birthday was on Thursday, and then we had we had an Eastern Front event that weekend, so I was actually out there uh and we we celebrated on Saturday night out there.
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But um, so uh and then I joined a um uh an Army Reserve unit the 45th of May, and we used to go out there and train.
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And then I noticed over the time that eventually areas that we had stayed in were eventually fenced off and said they were contaminated and we couldn't stay there anymore.
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So that was kind of like the handwriting on the wall.
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And eventually it was closed down, and I went on to some other assignments and we and it where I didn't train actually out there, and then me and uh a couple guys brought back uh Weldon Spring as a tactical site with the Welden Krieg event, which we ran from 2014 to 2019.
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Now, in the process of that uh bringing that event back, 88mm productions and Chris Grega made a documentary called Weldon Krieg.
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And uh we had worked with Chris on the mediocre World War II movie uh Rhineland.
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Um sorry, Chris, but it's real.
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And um so and in that it actually told the story of the three villages that were wiped out, and I had no idea any of that had happened.
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And in some cases, like the village of Howe, I know exactly where like Francis Howe High School was, and no idea it was even there for you know years, but I know exactly the location of Howe, and there's nothing there.
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So uh it was really a bit shocking and surprising.
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So uh I had written three books in three years, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take 2026 off.
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I'm just gonna, you know, chill for a year.
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And then I ran into uh this website called the TNT Story.
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Uh it's put together by a retired English teacher from Francis Howell High School, and Francis Howell High School is gonna be, you know, part of the story pretty significantly, uh, where he goes through and he documents this entire story about what happened to the people there and the three villages.
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And I saw this, and there was a scrapbook in there that had 120 pages of newspaper articles that were scanned and textualized.
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And I'm like, it's right there.
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I read I read the 120 pages.
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I'm like, well, there's the thesis and there's the sources.
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And I'm like, this is this is like shooting fish in a barrel for me.
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Uh, you know, and and I had a pretty good, pretty good idea of what I wanted to say in the book.
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So it came together really, really quickly.
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Now, some of you may have seen some video from the site with uh the history underground, J.D.
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Hewitt.
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Uh, he was actually out there uh a couple years ago and he shot the museum and he shot some of the bunkers that still exist up there.
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But um so and I actually had never been to the museum or actually seen the bunkers or in uh a lot of the areas, except for the training area, until you know, since uh uh other than those, I didn't know anything about it.
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So it was a real fun journey, an interesting journey for me, and also a really good historical project for me.
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So let me go ahead and go to my slides.
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So let me see, is this working?
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Okay.
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So uh there's the cover of my book.
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Uh the book is titled Do our Do Our Part: The Tragic Tale of the Weldon Spring Ordinance Works.
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The title comes from uh the last book that was written on this was in 1978.
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And uh the book was by Donald Muschani, whose family was involved with this, and it's called The Rape of Hamburgen How.
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So you can kind of guess how what his perspective is on this.
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Yeah.
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But in there, he quotes his dad's reaction when he received the letter from uh the Department of War saying that uh they were going to build the ordinance works there.
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And he said, Well, I guess if the government needs this, I'll do my part.
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And so what I did is I expanded that to our part to include, you know, not just him, but all the other people as well as all the workers that were involved with it.
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So, and it's very much a tragic tale of of what occurred there.
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So um, and just for the record, a TNT plant doesn't look like the cover photo, that's just more of a marketing thing.
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Uh, TNT plants are really unsexy.
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Um, there the buildings are you know 500 feet, thousand feet apart, two-story buildings, uh, look more like shacks than anything else.
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There really isn't a whole lot that was photogenic about it.
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So, again, this is just a marketing tool that I had.
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And there's a QR code if you're interested in it.
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Uh, you can get it from my publisher Lulu.com, and I have it on eBay as well.
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So you know, it makes sense that you say that these buildings were spread far apart because looking into this briefly, you know, I saw that there was three townships, and my first question is three townships worth of property.
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How big was this was this plant?
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And now that you mentioned the fact that you had so many buildings, obviously, due to exposion prevention or exposion isolation.
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Was it true this compound was roughly 17,232 acres?
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Yeah, yeah, it was massive.
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Uh, it was a huge area.
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And uh over a thousand buildings, 13 miles of rail lines were built.
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Um, it's it was huge.
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It had 18 production lines and produced roughly a million pounds of TNT and DNT a day.
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And it could have produced uh uh a million pounds of TNT alone and uh uh 250,000 pounds of DNT a day.
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And then of course they they would combine that may smokeless powder out of it, but yeah, it was a massive operation.
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If you think that you know you're you're shipping out a million pounds a day, you're shipping in probably a million and a half pounds of stuff a day.
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So it was it was it was a it was it was very much a big thing when it was going on.
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So uh so this is just kind of a summary slide.
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Uh, we're gonna talk about the TNT plant.
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Um, and 727 people were forced to leave their land, and this all happens in October of 1940.
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And you would have asked those people about you know Pearl Harbor, they would have said, Who is she?
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They would have had no idea what Pearl Harbor is.
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They thought probably thought it was a woman.
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Uh, and there's a school district that actually gets kind of decimated in the process, and that's part of the story.
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Um, and then halfway through paying paying for the land, the army ends up reneging on the uh land contracts, and uh a bunch of the people end up really getting screwed, getting about 30 to 40 percent of their contract prices, and it actually goes to the U.S.
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Supreme Court in 1944.
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Um this almost sounds like people's nightmare of imminent domain coming to reality.
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You know, growing up in the 70s and 80s, you heard a lot about imminent domain, especially I'm from Kentucky and Ohio, and a lot of my relatives who live in rural areas, they would always constantly be concerned that the state or the city is going to come take their land so they can run a freeway or something that um benefits the city andor state over them.
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And that was that growing up, I always heard that word imminent domain, and it seems like this is kind of like one of the first big big cases of that.
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Yeah, they they actually used the term condemnation.
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That was what was in all the primary source documents, but yeah, that that's basically it.
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And uh although the they they started with the the government started with the best of intentions and ended up being the worst of execution.
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Um, so there's really three different intertwined stories here.
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The first one is of the people and the court cases and what happens to them and how they leave their land, and you know, how this how this this whole land purchase goes awry.
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The second part of the story is the plan itself.
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And the third part of the story is really what happens to the school district um that goes through some incredible, incredibly difficult difficult situations.
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And uh if there is a hero of the book, it's uh this the superintendent of schools for the Francis Howe School District, Fred Hallenbach.
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So okay, so where is Weldon Spring?
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And again, there's only one.
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Uh, and I've actually been to the spring.
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It's actually a rather unimpressive site right now.
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It used to be kind of a thing, and it's kind of overgrown right now.
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Um but uh so it's located in eastern Missouri, and that map in the lower right shows you uh where St.
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Louis is located.
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Now, Chesterfield is located right across the river from St.
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Charles County there.
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And that curvy line below the colored section, that's the Missouri River.
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So that's the southern boundary of St.
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Charles County, and on the eastern boundary of St.
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Charles County is the Mississippi River.
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So the confluence of those two rivers are located just there to the right, near that red section.
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And then I've circled exactly where Weldon Spring, uh where where all this takes place.
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Uh, and you can kind of see on the map there where the village of Weldon Spring was located, Chesterfield, St.
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Louis County, Weldon Spring Ordinance Works is kind of there to the left.
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And uh the the bridge there is an important player in this because that's one of the things that facilitates all of this occurring.
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So just a little bit of short history, the three communities that were involved, or how Hamburg and Toonerville.
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Um really the original one was Hamburg, which was founded in the 1830s by Germans, and it was located down on the river, and eventually they figured out wow, if we built right on the river, it floods.
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So they actually moved most of the homes up onto the bluffs a little bit higher.
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But the railroad came through in 1894, and it was a little bit of you know a raucous village uh in that they had a dance hall, they had what they called the confectionery, which I'm pretty sure they sold other things out the back door during the Depression.
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And the more respectable village would be Howe, which was a little bit further inland, and it was originally named Mechanicsville, and it was named after Francis Howe, and that's a name that's significant in this area because the school district still carries its name.
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It's one of the few school districts in the country that actually has a carries a person's name.
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Um, although it wasn't always named that.
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That name changed after after World War II.
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But uh, and then the third village involved is one called Toonerville, and it was actually nicknamed after a sign that hung on that station that's there on the lower right corner, and it looked like uh the 1930s cartoon, The Tunerville Kids.
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So it was just kind of a name that stuck, and this really shows how names of towns in Missouri existed.
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And sometimes it was a family name, sometimes it was a name from different uh European communities that stuck.
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You know, we have a Versailles, Missouri.
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It isn't Versailles, it's for sales.
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Um, and then Toonerville is just you know uh an odd name that's stuck.
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Missouri has a peculiar Missouri.
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Also, it's sort of the same thing, just something just stuck, and that's what they went with.
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So, and this is a map that shows them.
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Uh, you can see Highway 61, the dark line that kind of runs from the top middle over to the far right.
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That's Highway 61, which is today Highway 40 and I-64.
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And you see the village of Weldon Spring, which is really on the east side of Weldon Spring.
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Now, if you continue down, now you see Highway 94, which runs through this.
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Uh, you can see that the red dot is where the Weldon Spring itself actually is.
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But uh so Highway 94 is a key player in here.
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And actually, if you continue to the right uh on Highway 94, you'll end up in St.
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Charles, Missouri.
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If you go north on 61, you'll end up in uh Wentzville, Missouri.
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Uh, but you can see the three villages.
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Toonerville was mostly just a road intersection with uh you know a few items there, a few things that have kind of popped up.
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Hamburg was down by the river.
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You can see the MKT railroad tracks.
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See Kansas and Texas there.
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Um and then Powell is in the upper left there.
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Okay, some of the key events that happened, if you would have asked the people that lived in these communities, you know, what's gonna bring what's gonna come forward from the 1940s, they're probably gonna say, you know, that that bridge that was built is probably gonna bring some more people out here and you know, there may be some bigger estates and some camps and things, but they had no idea what was coming their way.
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So the Daniel Brun Bridge uh for Highway 61 uh gives an immediate passage into St.
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Charles County.
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So um I was in downtown St.
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Louis last Wednesday night, and I made it out to Weldon Spring in about 35 minutes using that.
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Now, if before that bridge, you'd have to go up to St.
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Charles and then down some gravel roads.
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Um, and it would take you probably an hour, hour and a half to get down there.
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So it really changes the accessibility of this.
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Now, Consolidated School District number two, which is known today as the Francis Howe District, is in the middle of making a lot of changes.
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And there's a 30-year-old superintendent named Fred Hollenbeck, he's the superintendent.
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And this is the era where they're trying to modernize schools by going from one-room schoolhouses into centralized buildings.
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And the key to doing all that would be having transportation because one room schoolhouses were always in walking distance for people.
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So if you're going to a centralized school, you're gonna need to get the students there.
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Now, Francis Howe High School was centralized, but all the all the other schools in the district were were one-room schoolhouses, although on the lower right, you can see the Miller Grammar School, which was getting ready to open for the fall of 1941.
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So it was actually already nearly completed for construction.
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Uh, and the other thing that you're gonna find out uh uh they they fit that was happening in this area is uh more wealthy people were starting to build estates out there.
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Uh the the Kraut K-R-A-U-T house that's that's shown there on the left.
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That was uh a wealthy uh superintendent of a shoe factory in the largest business in St.
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Louis uh during this time frame was shoe manufacturing, by the way.
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Uh there was a boy summer camp and hunting cabins were starting to pop up.
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By the way, that house there was actually generally used by the uh ordinance works commander, the military officer, to live.
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So uh larger picture stuff, uh the the haphazard way that World War I came about in terms of the industrial mobilization.
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Again, these are wars of uh GDP, you know.
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Um come as you are, you've got to have plants, you've got to have the ability to make these things.
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Um so the Army Industrial College was founded in 1924 to study these problems.
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And uh they were graduating about 40 to 50 officers a year.
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Uh, General Eisenhower, after he helped clear out the uh bonus marchers with General MacArthur, actually, then his next assignment was to go go to the uh go to the uh Army Industrial College uh to study how to mobilize for war.
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And uh so they really had two different approaches.
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One would be conversion of existing industries.
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Again, I list the Rockola Company, which is a um jukebox company making 4.1% of M1 carbenes.
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And there's also the construction of new plants, and that's where welding comes into play.
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So they created the they they desired an a uh uh 60 plus plants for munitions.
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Uh some would produce powder, some would produce metal, some would actually construct the the uh the the final explosives together.
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In fact, they they had so many plants under construction, some of them just never opened.
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They just never got to the point that they were finished and and opened.
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So um, so and also you need all these precursor chemicals and things for the items that you're gonna build.
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In this case, you need aline and nitric acid, the the two main ingredients for TNT.
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And generally that's gonna be shipped in in rail tank or cars, and you also need the infrastructure to connect all those facilities.
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And those uh materials were they're available domestically, we didn't have to worry about cutoffs from imports.
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No, um the toweling generally is an oil product, it smells a lot like kerosene, and the biggest producer of that was actually in Texas and the uh Missouri, Kansas, Texas Railroad had lots of good connections down there.
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And nitric acid was also produced domestically, so this wasn't really an issue at all uh for producing all this.
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So, what does it take to make TNT?
00:19:39.519 --> 00:19:50.720
Well, it takes uh number one, you got to have lots and lots of water because you're mixing chemicals and then you're washing them to purify them, and then you go to a next purification step and then you wash it.
00:19:50.880 --> 00:19:56.079
And then um, so it takes a ton of water uh coming in and then also coming out.
00:19:56.240 --> 00:20:00.799
You need lots and lots of land uh just because it needs to be all spread out.
00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:03.839
And you can see there's one of the production buildings there on the lower right.
00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:10.319
Again, that would have looked so great on my cover, but you know, it looks like their resolution.
00:20:11.039 --> 00:20:12.880
Yeah, tin roof rusted.
00:20:13.599 --> 00:20:19.200
Um so you know, one thing I want to point out since it's so clear in this picture, you can see there's stairs on the side.
00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:32.319
A lot a lot of these buildings were big vats on the first story, and then and then the work worker level was on the upper floors, and you can see these chutes that are all on the side.
00:20:32.400 --> 00:20:34.559
Those are escape chutes.
00:20:35.279 --> 00:20:40.079
Similar to the beginning of dazed and confused when you call them down the fire escape to get out of the school.
00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:42.559
So it's so if things go all right.
00:20:42.799 --> 00:20:51.599
This is this is their this is their uh their uh risk mitigation plan is you step out the door, you ride the chute, and then you run like hell.
00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:54.799
And also in front of there you can see the tram system.
00:20:54.960 --> 00:21:00.319
So a lot of the chemicals were transported in in big vats on this overhead tram system.
00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:06.240
A lot of the pipes in a TNT plant are made of wood because metal, it will eat them all up.
00:21:06.319 --> 00:21:10.640
And they're actually in the museum, some of the pipes are preserved down there.
00:21:10.960 --> 00:21:22.559
So um, okay, so you need lots and lots of land, you need access to a railroad because you're bringing in you know tons and tons of chemicals and you're shipping out tons and tons of TNT.
00:21:23.039 --> 00:21:25.519
And then also you need lots and lots of employers.
00:21:25.599 --> 00:21:34.240
This is a very labor-intensive uh process, especially considering they had 18 different production lines, plus all the support people.
00:21:34.319 --> 00:21:42.319
And roughly about 60% of the people worked in production, the other half in all the different support areas, like building boxes and keeping track.
00:21:42.559 --> 00:21:47.519
It was a government owned contractor operated facility, 5% above cost.
00:21:47.599 --> 00:21:50.160
So they had to know exactly what that cost was.
00:21:50.880 --> 00:21:58.000
Um let's see, and then good railroad network, and really the Daniel Boone Bridge is one of their undoings because that really helped with.
00:21:58.240 --> 00:22:01.839
And there was also a perception that the Land was cheap out there.
00:22:02.160 --> 00:22:17.680
Um, and that comes from the era when they actually built the bridge and they used uh they cited some of the uh prices they got for land, but that was in 1936, and that was also during the time before the bridge was there and there was less access.
00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:22.160
So why did they choose this exact area?
00:22:22.559 --> 00:22:27.920
Um, well, there's a uh MKT uh railroad rep by the name of JD Kerr.
00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:34.880
He he he he he appears in the story twice, um 1940 and 1945.
00:22:35.119 --> 00:22:38.160
Um so he he really wanted to develop this area.
00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:51.519
He thought it'd be good to put a large industry out there, and he thought he, based upon the uh the Highway 40 61 prices, he thought they could get land out there for$15,$50 an acre.
00:22:51.680 --> 00:22:52.319
And then the St.
00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:53.119
Louis St.
00:22:53.279 --> 00:22:59.680
Charles Community Businesses, you know, the Chamber of Commerce organizations like that were always trying to develop plants and things like that.
00:22:59.759 --> 00:23:01.119
So that was another part of it.
00:23:01.279 --> 00:23:08.319
And then the Ornus Department, you know, at this point in time had 104 plant projects and land acquisitions going in the fall of 41.
00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:11.519
That's one of the reasons why this all goes off the rails.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:15.359
Well, and let's keep in mind this is right on the heels of the Great Depression.
00:23:15.440 --> 00:23:28.079
And if you're a city council trying to sell an idea on your citizens about land development jobs to uh a ton of people who had a hard time finding one for the last 10 years, probably makes that pill go down a little bit smoother.
00:23:28.400 --> 00:23:29.119
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:33.680
And and and these these are not just jobs, these are well-paying jobs.
00:23:33.920 --> 00:23:44.559
Um, and there were actually mobs of people who showed up like during the construction trying to get jobs, and they created traffic jams and things like that, like when all this was just getting underway.
00:23:44.799 --> 00:23:56.880
So this ends up getting pitched to Atlas Powder Company, and then they kind of go out and check out the site in 1940, summer of 1940, and say, okay, yeah, this is gonna work for us.
00:23:56.960 --> 00:23:59.359
And Atlas was a spinoff of DuPont.
00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:08.480
Uh several different explosives companies and chemical companies spun off of DuPont during the Sherman antitrust era.
00:24:09.039 --> 00:24:14.880
So, um, and Hercules was another large company that that made powder as well.
00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:19.200
So this all comes together on the 23rd of October, 1940.
00:24:19.359 --> 00:24:21.839
These are the different headlines of different things.
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:27.359
So it's gonna cost they're estimating$15 million to build the plant,$1.8 million to get the land.
00:24:27.759 --> 00:24:30.880
And then uh you can just kind of see these things.
00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:34.640
Um uh some of the uh uh the the St.
00:24:34.880 --> 00:24:36.720
Charles TNT plan hit snag.
00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:39.680
That's like people being skeptical, this is really gonna happen.
00:24:39.920 --> 00:24:44.480
And then that story that's over there on the left, the TNT wrecks plans for estates.
00:24:44.559 --> 00:24:54.720
Birchie Mahaffey, he's a guy who's gonna reappear later in the story, but he's actually the largest landowner in this area, but I won't get it and get ahead of my myself here.
00:24:54.880 --> 00:24:57.680
But this came out of uh like a bolt out of the blue.
00:24:57.839 --> 00:25:01.759
A few people knew about it, but uh generally no one in St.
00:25:01.920 --> 00:25:08.559
Charles County had any serious inkling that this was about to strike and it and it it hit like a ton of bricks.
00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:12.880
So the the plan to actually build the plant itself.
00:25:13.119 --> 00:25:19.599
Now, during this time frame, the quartermaster department handles contracts and they handle all land contracts.
00:25:19.759 --> 00:25:27.440
Now it's the Corps of Engineers, and there's a there's a good reason why it's not handled by the Corps of Engineers, and that's because of the Weldon Spring Ordnance Works project.
00:25:27.599 --> 00:25:31.440
This is what actually causes it to go everything to go over the Corps of Engineers.
00:25:31.519 --> 00:25:43.039
Now, the Quartermaster Corps had engineering officers that were assigned to it to manage construction contracts, and one of them was a guy by the name of Leslie Groves.
00:25:43.119 --> 00:25:48.960
He had he was one of the guys that actually worked for quartermaster department for a while uh early on.
00:25:49.200 --> 00:25:58.640
So um, but the quartermaster real estate division is fairly small, about 40 folks are in there, and they're trying to get other they've got over 100 projects they're trying to do.
00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:08.319
And it's not just a hundred projects, it's a hundred projects of a hundred, you know, 150 land parcels that you have to acquire.
00:26:08.559 --> 00:26:11.359
So, and each of those is a separate deal that you have to work.
00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:19.759
So they they tried to use different uh, you know, department of uh like department of agriculture, land acquisition folks.
00:26:19.839 --> 00:26:25.599
They tried to get people from all these different people from different agencies in the government to help, but it was just overwhelming.
00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:28.960
So they eventually decided to use local real estate agents.
00:26:29.200 --> 00:26:32.240
Um Frasier Brace Engineering built the plant.
00:26:32.319 --> 00:26:37.680
Uh it was initially going to be six production lines, and then it was expanded to 12 and then to 18.
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:41.920
So, and then Fraser Brace was given about a year to complete it.
00:26:42.079 --> 00:26:50.559
Now, the Ornus Department is really in charge of this plant, and they're the ones that are there kind of calling the shots in terms of how the plant's going to be.
00:26:50.640 --> 00:26:56.400
And they're working with Atlas trying to figure out exactly the way that this should be built and then function.
00:26:56.559 --> 00:27:07.680
So it's really the Ornus Department is saying what they need, and then Quartermaster Corps and their engineering officer in charge is the one that's kind of working with Frazier Brace to get it all done.
00:27:08.720 --> 00:27:11.359
So um, let's see here.
00:27:11.519 --> 00:27:17.759
And the plant actually is starting to produce TNT while it's still being built, at least for a couple of months.
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:22.559
Um okay, so let's so let's meet some of the players in here.
00:27:22.640 --> 00:27:27.039
And this is the guy who really gets a raw deal, Colonel Rigby Valiant, Chief Real Estate Division.
00:27:27.119 --> 00:27:29.359
So he was in West Point class of 1902.
00:27:29.440 --> 00:27:42.000
He's uh he's in Arkansan before he goes there, and he's in the the class before uh Douglas MacArthur, and there's a hazing scandal that hits West Point in 1900.
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:53.920
Um, and uh actually one of Rigby's classmates uh gets significant injuries from the hazing and ends up dying after he leaves West Point.
00:27:54.400 --> 00:28:03.920
So um, and Valiant and MacArthur both testify uh during the investigation uh about this hazing scandal.
00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:07.519
And it actually makes West Point super jumpy about anything that's going on.
00:28:07.759 --> 00:28:10.400
They don't want any kind of outside scrutiny after that happens.
00:28:10.559 --> 00:28:22.160
So he becomes a quartermaster officer and he has a bunch of different assignments in the quartermaster corps, and he served quite a bit of time in Asia and the Far East, and he was assigned to a place called Nagasaki, Japan.
00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:28.480
You probably have to look it up on a map to hear about it in the 1920s, but he was actually like a vice president of a U.S.
00:28:28.640 --> 00:28:33.759
Japanese alliance group, and then he had a bunch of uh experience in China as well.
00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:37.359
So this was his second tour in charge of the real estate division.
00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:49.359
He had 38 years of service when all this happened, and he's a guy who's probably never gonna become a general, but the army always has places for those like senior experts who've been around doing stuff.
00:28:49.599 --> 00:28:53.839
Um it never occurred to me that the army had a real estate division.
00:28:54.079 --> 00:28:54.720
Don't know why.
00:28:54.880 --> 00:28:55.680
It makes perfect sense.
00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:58.160
They gotta have property, just never occurred to me.
00:28:58.559 --> 00:28:59.200
Yeah, yeah.
00:28:59.359 --> 00:29:05.759
And again, it's all handled by the Corps of Engineers right now, but uh then it was Quartermaster Corps because quartermasters handle contracts.
00:29:06.160 --> 00:29:06.880
I gotcha.
00:29:07.039 --> 00:29:08.480
That's why it was there.
00:29:08.799 --> 00:29:10.160
So next player, R.
00:29:10.319 --> 00:29:11.359
Newton McDowell.
00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:13.599
He he's a bit of an enigma.
00:29:13.759 --> 00:29:16.079
I think he's generally a good guy.
00:29:16.160 --> 00:29:23.119
He's a bit of a curmudgeon, and he's very much kind of done playing games with the government at this point.
00:29:23.200 --> 00:29:28.880
So he's a native Marshall, Missouri, which is um probably about two-thirds of the way from between Kansas C and St.
00:29:29.039 --> 00:29:29.759
Louis.
00:29:30.079 --> 00:29:50.720
Bases his office out of Kansas City, and he's a uh Democratic Party donor, which, if you're in Kansas City and you're a Democrat, that means you're part of the Pendergas machine there, which Harry Truman was known as the senator from Pendergast, at least when he first got there, before they just assumed he was just going to be a rubber stamp for Tom Pendergast.
00:29:50.880 --> 00:29:57.119
That wasn't necessarily the case, but uh and and so this kind of paints him in a certain way in the rest of Missouri.
00:29:57.200 --> 00:30:00.480
Now, Missouri politics during this time were very parochial.
00:30:00.960 --> 00:30:15.680
And um and the the Pendergast regime was viewed with a lot of issues from the rest of the state, uh, and they wanted to limit the influence of that, and that kind of comes into play here in just a second.
00:30:15.839 --> 00:30:20.079
So he started a uh quarry and crushed rock business in the 1920s.
00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:22.720
He had about 12 quarries throughout the state.
00:30:22.799 --> 00:30:25.440
His biggest one was in Blackwater, Missouri, but he had one in St.
00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:26.960
Charles County also.
00:30:27.200 --> 00:30:40.960
And he got a ton of work from the WPA New Deal contracts and actually included a letter of him bitching about uh those contracts and how they were handled in 1936, I think is the date of the letter.
00:30:41.039 --> 00:30:42.799
He's writing a congressman about it.
00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:46.640
But uh he's a little bit of a he's a controversial character.
00:30:46.799 --> 00:31:01.200
So he he gets a uh a job building the Highway 54 cutoff uh through Jefferson City, Missouri, and he receives a tax lien uh on it with some charges of corruption.
00:31:01.359 --> 00:31:09.200
Now, you have to understand that the governor of Missouri, Governor Stark, was running against Harry Truman for the Senate in nine in uh 1940.
00:31:09.759 --> 00:31:17.200
And uh and he was arguing that the Pendergrass regime was corrupt, and Truman was corrupt because of it.
00:31:17.279 --> 00:31:21.920
And this was just another way to kind of uh stir up trouble regarding this.
00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:30.720
Uh he ends up losing the election, but but this actually, this this tax lien happens in 19 in September of 1940, and the election that would be in November.
00:31:30.960 --> 00:31:42.000
So and and this this this lien puts McDowell in a bit of a world of hurt because he loses his line of credit uh with the government to get materials and things.
00:31:42.079 --> 00:31:46.160
And he actually leaves when he actually picks up the Weldon Project.
00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:52.480
He leaves a single secretary in his office in Kansas City, who just fends off his creditors uh until he gets his Weldon payday.
00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:59.440
So somehow our Newton McDowell figures out that this Weldon project is going to go on.
00:31:59.599 --> 00:32:02.880
Understand he's Kansas City and this is more St.
00:32:03.039 --> 00:32:04.240
Louis-based.
00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:10.720
Um, but the contract was signed on the same day, all those headlines that I posted occur.
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:14.079
So somehow he knew this was happening way, way before them.
00:32:14.160 --> 00:32:18.160
He didn't just show up on that day and say, Hey, I would like to buy all this land for you.
00:32:18.400 --> 00:32:25.440
So somehow my guess is he probably heard about it through one of his connections and then went to DC and worked it out.
00:32:25.680 --> 00:32:37.359
So in his terms of the agreement are five percent of the total sale prices, really for his expenses, real estate fees, and uh additional one and a half percent for abstracts and title work.
00:32:37.519 --> 00:32:39.680
And that's not unreasonable today.
00:32:39.839 --> 00:32:48.720
I mean, and even then it was it was a little bit higher, like during the depression, real estate fees went from like two to five percent, but it's not outrageous.
00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:59.200
What he was asking for was not outrageous, other than the total amount when you actually you know looked at$1.8 million or$2.5 million of land that gets acquired.
00:32:59.359 --> 00:33:01.680
So he opens an office in Old Town St.
00:33:01.839 --> 00:33:05.759
Charles across from the post office, and that you can see that picture there on the lower right.
00:33:05.920 --> 00:33:12.000
That's actually a photo from the 1970s that I used AI to backdate to the World War II era.
00:33:12.079 --> 00:33:14.799
So, but I know for sure the building looks like that.
00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:21.839
Um, because I actually talked to a guy who remodeled it in the 90s, but he said it had like an adobe finish and stuff on it.
00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:40.400
So uh so the way that this is supposed to work is McDowell has about a dozen dudes who goes out and they talk to the property owners and try and get them to sign deals, and then they negotiate the land prices and prepare the paperwork, and then they send it to the army, the army signs off on it, and then he gets his percentage.
00:33:40.559 --> 00:33:48.480
Uh the county collector's office want the property taxes before they pay anybody, so that's a part of it because it was it was near the end of the year.
00:33:48.960 --> 00:33:49.200
Okay.
00:33:49.599 --> 00:33:56.960
So the army needed 18,000 acres and they estimated about a hundred bucks an acre, which is not gonna be enough.
00:33:57.279 --> 00:34:02.640
Okay, the next guy, the next player in this is Birchie Mahaffey, Captain Birchy Mahaffey.
00:34:02.880 --> 00:34:04.079
I love this guy.
00:34:04.319 --> 00:34:07.440
Like, if you read up on this guy, he seems like a great dude.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:10.000
So, West Point class in 1902.
00:34:10.079 --> 00:34:11.440
He was voted class president.
00:34:11.519 --> 00:34:17.840
Him and Rigby Valiant were in the Society of Born Aristocrats together.
00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:19.599
It's in the West Point year bag.
00:34:19.840 --> 00:34:28.320
Although it was actually a tongue-in-cheek organization, they were actually making fun of the aristocrat characters like Douglas MacArthur and people like that who came in there.
00:34:28.480 --> 00:34:37.280
But so in May of 1901, he's a junior getting ready to graduate, and he becomes a member of the famous five.
00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:52.159
It was a situation, and this happens right after the the hazing scandal, where some people point a cannon at the superintendent's house and they freak out about it, and they expel the famous five.
00:34:52.400 --> 00:35:05.199
And after this happens, after this is going down, you know, some of the people who actually did it write a letter saying, hey, Rigby was not, or I'm sorry, Birchie was not involved with this, but he still gets kicked out anyway.
00:35:05.599 --> 00:35:17.119
And they loved they loved him so much that after he was kicked out, they voted for him to be the permanent class president of the class of 1902, West Point, even though he never graduated from there.
00:35:17.199 --> 00:35:29.760
And it was in his obituary, by the way, but so he goes off, uh University of Michigan, becomes a civil engineer, uh, mostly works in the oil industries, kind of focuses on that kind of stuff.
00:35:29.920 --> 00:35:38.239
And then a law gets passed by his congressman and signed by Teddy Roosevelt that absolves the famous five, and now he can get his commission back.
00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:39.679
So that's what he does.
00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:45.199
And he in 1907, he's a coastal artillery guy, but he goes to work mostly for ordinance branch.
00:35:45.440 --> 00:35:50.559
But he gets out in 1915 as a captain because he marries very well.
00:35:50.719 --> 00:36:02.159
He marries Laura McBride, whose father is the president of the McBride Oil Company, which uh Illinois was in the 1920s and 30s was the third largest producer of oil.
00:36:02.480 --> 00:36:08.400
If you're in southern Illinois, you'll see still see lots and lots of oil wells around there.
00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:10.239
And that's that that's where it's coming from.
00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:12.159
So he he married very, very well.
00:36:12.239 --> 00:36:18.480
And of course, her Laura's dad is out of the business, so by the 1920s and 30s, he's running he's running the business.
00:36:18.639 --> 00:36:31.920
So and he actually bought uh 800 acres up um near uh Hamburg as just an investment property where he's gonna develop them into larger estates for people after the bridge gets built.
00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:37.519
And during the meantime, he lets them use the land for like a Catholic summer camp for boys.
00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:40.400
And he uh his wife dies in 1932.
00:36:40.480 --> 00:36:46.880
He has four daughters, and uh he lives in Portland Place, and that probably won't ring a bell to anyone outside of St.
00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:50.880
Louis, but I can tell you something that will make it ring a bell.
00:36:51.119 --> 00:36:53.920
Remember the couple that came out of their house with the guns in St.
00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:54.400
Louis?
00:36:54.719 --> 00:36:57.280
Yeah, that was like two doors down from where Bershey lived.
00:36:57.519 --> 00:36:58.000
Gotcha.
00:36:58.400 --> 00:37:00.719
So that's it's old school St.
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:03.280
Louis FU Money, is where he lived.
00:37:03.519 --> 00:37:09.519
So in fact, the Chase Park Hotel, which comes into play a little bit later, is like two blocks from where he lives.
00:37:09.599 --> 00:37:11.760
He could actually walk there if he wanted to.
00:37:12.159 --> 00:37:24.239
So uh, and for those of you that are you know big into beer, his daughter, uh Adelaide, marries a guy named Daniel Shaffley, and that's the Shaffley Beer Company out of St.
00:37:24.320 --> 00:37:24.960
Louis today.
00:37:25.039 --> 00:37:29.440
That's sort of the existing version of the Mahaffey family.
00:37:29.679 --> 00:37:34.960
And random factoid, he's buried in the same cemetery as William Tecumseh and Sherman.
00:37:35.119 --> 00:37:36.159
Oh, oh wow.
00:37:36.480 --> 00:37:39.519
Which is in uh Calvary Cemetery in North City, St.
00:37:39.599 --> 00:37:40.079
Louis.
00:37:40.320 --> 00:37:41.679
Although if you've been to North City, St.
00:37:41.760 --> 00:37:44.400
Louis, it looks like Sherman has spent about a hundred years there.
00:37:44.559 --> 00:37:48.079
It's pretty devastated up there, but okay.
00:37:48.960 --> 00:37:53.119
So this announcement happens, and a lot of the people are like, this is not real.
00:37:54.400 --> 00:37:56.320
This has to be some sort of a mistake.
00:37:56.480 --> 00:38:09.599
And a bunch of uh meetings occur from the residents, and some so the state of Missouri sends some uh like agricultural department people out there and some other agency to try and help these people, but they were it was really too many all at once.
00:38:09.840 --> 00:38:12.639
727 people trying to move, right?
00:38:13.360 --> 00:38:19.679
Uh so they actually send a telegram to the Secretary of War Stimson, like, hey, is this for real?
00:38:19.840 --> 00:38:24.880
And he writes back, yes, this is real, this is gonna happen, and you need to work with Arnold McDowell.
00:38:25.119 --> 00:38:29.280
So at that point, people are like, okay, this is real, and we have to deal with this.
00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:31.840
And so people actually start optioning their land.
00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:34.719
Now, the congressman of that area is Clarence Cannon.
00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:37.920
He was a congressman from 23 until 64.
00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:39.920
He dies in office.
00:38:40.400 --> 00:38:46.800
And um he's generally I I I'm pretty favorable of uh Clarence Cannon.
00:38:46.880 --> 00:38:50.880
And people in Missouri probably heard of Mark Twain Lake and Clarence Cannon Dam.
00:38:51.039 --> 00:38:51.679
That's him.
00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:53.599
That's where the name comes from.
00:38:53.840 --> 00:39:08.239
So uh people uh McDowell staff says, hey, if you need$150 an acre for your property, well, let's just add 5% on top of it and uh add the 1.5 uh abstract fees on top of that.
00:39:08.320 --> 00:39:11.280
So people look at that and they go, okay, this is this is okay.
00:39:11.519 --> 00:39:12.800
He he's he's being fair.
00:39:12.880 --> 00:39:28.719
And generally he was perceived as being uh you know a good businessman, and he had to make deals for there's some stores involved, and he pays them like two years of profits for them, you know, for them to close their stores, things like that.
00:39:28.960 --> 00:39:36.079
So McDowell's making good progress, and by January of 1941, he's got all but 200 acres under contract.
00:39:37.599 --> 00:39:42.159
So the school district itself, uh that's Fred Hollenbach there on the left.
00:39:42.320 --> 00:39:45.920
He is all of 30 years old when all this happens.
00:39:46.159 --> 00:39:52.880
So, you know, small school, he was the math science teacher, the superintendent, and he probably helped out in the kitchen, is my guess.
00:39:53.119 --> 00:39:58.000
So five of his seven schools are are gonna be lost in all of this.
00:39:58.239 --> 00:40:04.079
Three one-room schoolhouses, Francis Howe High School, and in this new grammar school that he just built.
00:40:04.320 --> 00:40:16.400
In fact, he goes over there to check on it in November of 1940 to see what's going on with the installation of the lockers, and there are guards there who say, sorry, this isn't your building anymore.
00:40:16.480 --> 00:40:17.840
This is the government's building.
00:40:18.079 --> 00:40:19.440
Wow, that's so crazy.
00:40:19.679 --> 00:40:21.039
It's totally crazy.
00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:25.360
He's like, I might I just built this building for school kids.
00:40:25.599 --> 00:40:30.639
So he does get it back in 1947, but that's a that's getting ahead of ourselves.
00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:39.599
So he works a deal with the uh the army because Francis Howe High School is smack in the middle of the uh the area where they're gonna build the plant.
00:40:39.679 --> 00:40:47.280
So he says, Okay, if we can stay till the first of May, we can do Saturday school, let us finish the school year.
00:40:47.360 --> 00:40:48.880
And the army's like, okay, that's fair.
00:40:49.039 --> 00:40:50.320
So they let them do that.
00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:56.239
Now, what happens with the one-room schoolhouse is all their families are moving out and they end up combining all those schools.
00:40:56.320 --> 00:41:08.559
And I have a photo of like 22 kids that are remaining uh when they finally close, they close the uh district, and that's K through eight, or I guess maybe one through eight uh for three different schools.
00:41:08.800 --> 00:41:13.280
Um, they had to cancel all their sports seasons, they lost their gymnasium.
00:41:13.519 --> 00:41:22.239
Uh, the people that work at the uh the engineering building are coming over and using their cafeteria, things like that.
00:41:22.400 --> 00:41:30.559
So, and he works a deal with the Atlanta option to get 75 grand for all of his buildings, which is gonna help him at least you know redo the district.
00:41:30.719 --> 00:41:33.599
But he's got a lot of he's got a lot on his plate here.
00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:36.719
So the construction starts in November on the left.
00:41:36.800 --> 00:41:45.519
There's Francis Howe High School, and you can see that building there that the Fraser Brace folks are working out of right next to it.
00:41:45.679 --> 00:41:47.039
And you see all their cars there.
00:41:47.119 --> 00:41:49.679
That's how close they were associated with each other.
00:41:49.840 --> 00:41:54.880
So the picture on the right, you can see the plus size, the plus shape building there on the upper left.
00:41:55.039 --> 00:42:02.719
Francis Howe High School is immediately to the right, and you can see all the different engineering buildings that were thrown up around it.
00:42:02.880 --> 00:42:08.000
So um, and this and all those buildings are put up in a literally a couple months.
00:42:08.320 --> 00:42:16.320
So uh they have this sort of weird relationship with the engineering company between the schools, and of course they're there on Saturdays, too.
00:42:16.559 --> 00:42:26.400
So um, so one of the one of the ways that they try and help clear out the people is the Muschani brothers uh who own the style, the the Howell store.
00:42:26.480 --> 00:42:31.199
They own the store, they own the gas station, and the funeral home.
00:42:31.679 --> 00:42:34.480
Um, so they can kind of get you coming and going.
00:42:34.800 --> 00:42:42.480
So they organize two large city auctions, one in Howell on the 30th of November, one in Hamburg on the 4th of December.
00:42:42.559 --> 00:42:51.679
So people just drag their stuff to the street, and there's auctioneers walking up and down the street selling their goods right from their yards.
00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:55.039
Was there an official time frame they had to get out?
00:42:55.920 --> 00:43:00.000
Well, uh generally they talked about 45 days.
00:43:00.400 --> 00:43:17.679
Um, although there was some dispensation given to some people that weren't immediately in the area, but around the first of December, a letter uh in the how went to the people in the Howell area, which is kind of where Francis Howe High School is, say you got to get out of here pretty quick.
00:43:17.840 --> 00:43:22.559
Uh, they let some other people stay a little bit longer, like people more down in Hamburg.
00:43:22.639 --> 00:43:28.079
And some, you know, in some some of the areas, they didn't even need to dissolve to destroy all these homes.
00:43:28.800 --> 00:43:32.159
There it wasn't even in the production area.
00:43:33.360 --> 00:43:41.039
I'm just trying to think of the logistics of 1940s, you're a regular person, your soldier property gotta move.
00:43:41.199 --> 00:43:48.320
Transportation was not anywhere remotely as um reliable as it is today, let alone U-Haul wasn't a thing.
00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:52.639
And even if U-Haul was a thing, there's too many people moving at the same time, the all the U Hauls would be gone.
00:43:52.719 --> 00:43:58.159
So just the amount of stuff you have to clear out in order to make that move is just insane.
00:43:58.480 --> 00:43:59.840
And these are generational homes.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:02.559
That have been there for you know 50 years.
00:44:02.800 --> 00:44:11.519
Um now people didn't have enough stuff, you know, they didn't even need to move their flat screen and things like that, but but they they had farm equipment and stuff like that.
00:44:11.679 --> 00:44:14.960
But like thousands of people showed up to these auctions.
00:44:15.199 --> 00:44:21.519
And there was some rumors that all the good stuff had already been sold off, and people are selling farm animals.
00:44:21.760 --> 00:44:26.960
And that picture there on the right is uh let me find the name.
00:44:27.199 --> 00:44:32.159
Bobby and Dick Delaloy walked around the town selling their pet goat.
00:44:32.400 --> 00:44:35.039
And there's actually a really great picture that was in the uh St.
00:44:35.199 --> 00:44:38.400
Louis Post dispatch that they wanted$175 for me to use.
00:44:38.480 --> 00:44:40.480
And I said, no, I'm gonna use this one.
00:44:40.719 --> 00:44:41.039
Yeah.
00:44:41.440 --> 00:44:47.440
So uh yeah, they walked around with the sign saying, you know, buy our pet goat for$350 and they eventually sold it.
00:44:47.519 --> 00:44:50.320
Those guys actually I I actually found their obituaries.
00:44:50.400 --> 00:44:54.400
One died in like 2009, the other one like two or three years ago.
00:44:54.639 --> 00:44:55.199
Wow.
00:44:55.440 --> 00:44:59.519
Um, and a lot of the a lot of these people they they don't go very far.
00:44:59.840 --> 00:45:09.840
Uh the most likely place that if you if you move from Hamburg Howe or Toonerville or Howe Prairie area, you ended up was in Weldon Spring, which is just right across the road.
00:45:10.159 --> 00:45:14.800
But they they generally would go, you know, one or two townships over.
00:45:15.119 --> 00:45:17.760
Like only one person left the state, I think.
00:45:18.079 --> 00:45:22.320
Um, and if they moved to another county, it was usually an adjoining county.
00:45:24.000 --> 00:45:34.000
So um, yeah, so there's these two big auctions that occur, and some people start to get notification that they've got to be out um by the first week in December.
00:45:34.480 --> 00:45:37.679
So it's not a pretty story.
00:45:38.159 --> 00:45:41.920
So eventually these communities become ghost towns as people move out.
00:45:42.159 --> 00:45:46.960
So on the upper right photo and lower left photo, those are Hamburg.
00:45:47.440 --> 00:45:53.519
Um, and you can see just there's two there's two cars on the road, and that's that's totally desolate.
00:45:53.599 --> 00:45:56.400
Those are like the only two cars you would see for a while.
00:45:56.639 --> 00:45:59.519
Lower right, that's what uh howell actually looked like.
00:45:59.599 --> 00:46:03.039
The Mashani Brothers Garage is there on the right.
00:46:03.519 --> 00:46:09.519
Um so I believe it's the yeah, it's it's the building there on the right.
00:46:09.679 --> 00:46:12.079
I believe that's the store on the left.
00:46:12.239 --> 00:46:14.639
The store was also a Masonic Hall.
00:46:14.960 --> 00:46:25.760
Um, and so so what ends up happening is then the Frasier Brace, if they can reuse a building, like one of the one of the former homes became like the time clock building.
00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:33.119
Uh, or if maybe somebody needed to live in it, they and they didn't need it immediately, they didn't need to tear it down, they would let the people live in it.
00:46:33.280 --> 00:46:40.960
There's a document that lists uh some of the surviving homes from like April 1941 and who was actually living in them.
00:46:41.360 --> 00:46:43.840
Um, not the original owners, of course.
00:46:44.079 --> 00:46:54.800
And their their way of getting rid of the homes, generally they would torch them, or maybe they would just demolish them, just depending upon how how it uh you know what was best at the time.
00:46:55.119 --> 00:46:58.239
So literally you're did a General Sherman on the place.
00:46:58.880 --> 00:46:59.920
Yeah, pretty much.
00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:07.679
And understand these people, you know, once in a fence goes up around this area and there's guards and highway 94 gets cut off.
00:47:07.760 --> 00:47:17.280
So the plant entrance is right there at 61 and 94, and then the other area down towards ham past Hamburg is gets fenced off and you can't go there.
00:47:17.599 --> 00:47:22.320
So let's say you move to Defiance, Missouri, which is just beyond Hamburg on that on Highway 94.
00:47:22.480 --> 00:47:30.159
Now you got to go all the way around the the uh plant to get into it, and there's no highway along the river either.
00:47:30.320 --> 00:47:37.280
They wanted there's actually discussion about wanting to build a road to get to the bridge, and the army said, no, you're not doing that.
00:47:38.079 --> 00:47:45.280
So construction goes into high gear, uh, and all these men start showing up trying to find jobs, and there's like a traffic jam.
00:47:45.440 --> 00:47:59.920
And the local sheriffs all worried about these people, where are they coming from and who are they, and will they bring, will they bring, will they be women of ill repute that join them to you know capture some of that best money?
00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:02.400
Riff raffin undesirables.
00:48:02.880 --> 00:48:16.960
Yeah, so uh the major ordinance official on it is Captain Soon-to-be Major, soon to be Colonel Dutton, Carl Dutton, and he moves in the Kraut House, and he's actually managing uh project, I believe, in Kentucky as well as Walden.
00:48:17.280 --> 00:48:24.559
Now, Dutton is an interesting figure in that we've already mentioned the guy who actually ends up with the command, and that was Leslie Groves.
00:48:24.719 --> 00:48:30.239
But Dutton was one of the names that was initially supposed to command the Manhattan Project.
00:48:30.480 --> 00:48:34.400
And because it was delayed, he ended up with these two ordnance plants to build.
00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:41.360
And he ends up uh after all of this on the ordinance board, he comes back as a colonel to award the Army Navy E.
00:48:41.679 --> 00:48:47.039
And then he ends up in China, Burma, India as one of the senior officers and retires out of the 50s.
00:48:47.599 --> 00:48:51.599
So uh they build the railroad spur from the MKT rail line.
00:48:51.760 --> 00:48:59.039
They actually open a rock quarry because they need that much crushed rock uh and aggregate for the different facilities.
00:48:59.119 --> 00:49:05.519
There's a cement plant that they build, they contract with a company out of uh out of the Quad Cities that makes that.
00:49:05.599 --> 00:49:07.519
And eventually this becomes an A1A.
00:49:07.599 --> 00:49:09.360
So they the A1A priority.
00:49:09.440 --> 00:49:12.639
So they work on this 24 by 7 until it's complete.
00:49:12.800 --> 00:49:19.360
You can see in the upper left picture, you know, that people are working under under different lights.
00:49:19.440 --> 00:49:23.519
And what's curious is the army actually rented all the equipment to Fraser Brace.
00:49:23.599 --> 00:49:28.079
I guess the Army could get it cheaper, and then Fraser Brace just used it.
00:49:28.239 --> 00:49:35.280
So everything's going onky dory, minus you know, 727 people get kicked off their land.
00:49:35.519 --> 00:49:40.639
But the plant destruction is going well, families are moving out, the people are starting to get paid.
00:49:40.960 --> 00:49:43.519
McDowell's got most of the land option.
00:49:43.679 --> 00:49:50.559
He's wrapping up his business there and waiting for his payday to get out from under that lien and head back to Kansas City.
00:49:52.000 --> 00:49:56.719
And uh, so Fred Hollenbeck, the superintendent, actually makes a master move.
00:49:56.800 --> 00:50:02.880
Like his school district was about to go under because he lost most of his schools, almost all of his tax base.
00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:09.440
Um, so he goes to a bunch of small one-room school districts between Weldon Spring and St.
00:50:09.599 --> 00:50:13.840
Charles and says, Hey, why don't we form one school district, form a new school district?
00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:16.880
And he may have already been talking to them at this point, I don't know.
00:50:17.039 --> 00:50:20.239
But and uh all eight districts agree.
00:50:20.320 --> 00:50:28.880
So on the uh in early January, he he announces a new consolidated school district number two, which would be located further to the east.
00:50:29.119 --> 00:50:30.320
And actually the the St.
00:50:30.400 --> 00:50:37.519
Francis, I'm sorry, the Francis How School District um covers quite a bit of area really from west of St.
00:50:37.679 --> 00:50:43.440
Charles all the way out to the where the plant was located nowadays.
00:50:43.599 --> 00:50:46.719
So it's like 17,000 students right now, something like that.
00:50:46.880 --> 00:50:54.960
But so uh so they're gonna continue with the one-room schoolhouses, at least for the minute, and and he's got a he's got a problem.
00:50:55.039 --> 00:50:58.000
He doesn't have a high school because he's losing this high school.
00:50:58.159 --> 00:51:04.079
But you know, this guy has already built a school, he knows how to build schools, he doesn't know how to open them, but he knows how to build them.
00:51:04.639 --> 00:51:07.119
So, you know, we'll sort that out.
00:51:07.280 --> 00:51:09.360
And he's getting a payday from the army, right?
00:51:09.519 --> 00:51:10.159
Yeah.
00:51:10.639 --> 00:51:14.159
So but there's some trouble of burning here.
00:51:14.880 --> 00:51:24.719
So uh the Edwards family that's there in the upper right, they they don't immediately go and pick up their check, and they go, they they finally make it to St.
00:51:24.880 --> 00:51:30.800
Charles to get their their check for their land, and they find out the check has been canceled.
00:51:31.119 --> 00:51:46.239
So in mid to late January 1941, it became very apparent that the$1.8 million figure was inadequate, and they're gonna meet at least another million dollars to do this, and and take that number times 23 to get it into modern terms.
00:51:46.559 --> 00:51:51.440
So I was the land was coming in about average$156 an acre.
00:51:51.840 --> 00:51:59.360
Um and so there's a lot of media stories that are saying R.
00:51:59.519 --> 00:52:03.119
Dude, McDowell's fees are too high, trying to get them to lower their numbers.
00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:05.360
There's threats of going to condemnation.
00:52:05.519 --> 00:52:10.800
And at this point, the people are truly at the mercy of the government, they've already been kicked off their land.
00:52:11.440 --> 00:52:14.000
Um they can't get back to it.
00:52:14.159 --> 00:52:17.519
Their families are buried in cemeteries they can't even get to.
00:52:17.920 --> 00:52:20.639
Right now, the army agreed to maintain the cemetery.
00:52:20.880 --> 00:52:26.159
Well, originally they're gonna move all the bodies, and then they said, no, we'll just maintain the cemeteries, and then they just abandoned them.
00:52:26.320 --> 00:52:28.079
The military didn't take care of them.
00:52:28.400 --> 00:52:35.760
So ever all these people have moved ahead with their lives expecting a payday, but they don't know when it's gonna come.
00:52:36.400 --> 00:52:40.239
Um, and it didn't happen for about half the people.
00:52:40.320 --> 00:52:46.639
Now, 40% of the people that were in this area were renters, and they actually fared a little bit better than the homeowner, the property owners.
00:52:46.960 --> 00:52:54.079
But um, because they could just, you know, they probably don't have as much capital to move, but when they do move, they get resettled, they're probably okay.
00:52:54.320 --> 00:52:58.719
But the landowners, about half of landowners are the ones who really get screwed in all this.
00:53:00.320 --> 00:53:04.000
Introduce Senator Bennett Champ Clark.
00:53:04.480 --> 00:53:10.559
Um on the uh on World War II TV, I called him a dick.
00:53:11.360 --> 00:53:15.679
Um I would say he's definitely a jerk and he's a slimy politician.
00:53:15.840 --> 00:53:20.880
Now, some people said he did have some redeeming qualities, but I can't find him in this case at all.
00:53:21.199 --> 00:53:23.039
So he was in his second term.
00:53:23.199 --> 00:53:27.840
His dad was the uh former uh uh Speaker of the U.S.
00:53:28.079 --> 00:53:32.159
House for many years, and he was an isolationist, very much so.
00:53:32.239 --> 00:53:41.760
And anytime he had an opportunity to poke a stick in the eye of the Roosevelt regime regarding uh, you know, not being isolationist, he would do that.
00:53:42.079 --> 00:53:46.880
And actually, he's in the 1940s Woody Guthrie song, Mr.
00:53:46.960 --> 00:53:47.920
Charlie Lindbergh.
00:53:48.000 --> 00:53:52.960
He gets mentioned by name in there, the last name of Clark.
00:53:53.199 --> 00:54:01.519
He's one of maybe about five or six people whose names are in there mentioned besides Hitler, but and Charlie Lindbergh for the American First Committee.
00:54:01.679 --> 00:54:02.719
So he stirs up the St.
00:54:02.880 --> 00:54:06.079
Louis newspapers to kind of look and see what's going on here.
00:54:06.239 --> 00:54:09.119
He starts haranguing the War Department about land values.
00:54:09.280 --> 00:54:11.039
Why did they use this guy from Kansas City?
00:54:11.119 --> 00:54:13.360
Again, Missouri politics are very parochial.
00:54:13.599 --> 00:54:18.559
He's the senator from eastern Missouri, the senator from western Missouri is Harry Truman.
00:54:18.719 --> 00:54:23.199
Harry Truman stays relatively quiet on this until the Truman Committee looks into this.
00:54:23.280 --> 00:54:25.760
But he did Truman isn't really involved with this at all.
00:54:25.840 --> 00:54:33.840
And that may have to do with that perception of being in cahoots with uh McDowell, you know, with the Pendergash regime.
00:54:33.920 --> 00:54:34.559
I'm not sure.
00:54:34.719 --> 00:54:37.599
But uh why is this project over budget?
00:54:37.760 --> 00:54:42.159
This land is significantly overvalued, which is sign which is absolutely not true.
00:54:42.400 --> 00:54:48.079
But, you know, don't let the truth get in the way of a good political argument.
00:54:49.840 --> 00:54:52.639
He actually served with Truman in the 35th ID.
00:54:52.719 --> 00:55:01.280
He was the lieutenant colonel uh during that time, and he was the first chairman, I think, of the American Legion or the VFW, I think.
00:55:01.840 --> 00:55:04.960
Um just random factoids about him.
00:55:05.119 --> 00:55:13.440
So uh he actually nominates Truman for president or for vice president in 1944 at the Democratic National Convention.
00:55:13.519 --> 00:55:15.519
But and and they're they're long friends.
00:55:15.679 --> 00:55:21.039
Truman and him are long friends, old friends, but so so now there's some blood in the water.
00:55:21.199 --> 00:55:22.400
So Rig v.
00:55:22.480 --> 00:55:25.360
Valiant gets relieved of duties at the real estate division.
00:55:25.519 --> 00:55:27.360
38th years of service.
00:55:27.599 --> 00:55:32.639
Uh, there's all sorts of newspaper articles and stories of that.
00:55:32.800 --> 00:55:36.719
He overpaid fees at the Weldon Spring Orients works in Burlington, Iowa.
00:55:37.280 --> 00:55:41.599
Um, and then they start digging into this relationship with Birchie Mahaffey.
00:55:41.679 --> 00:55:43.920
They were both in the West Point class in 1902.
00:55:44.000 --> 00:55:46.639
Now they really didn't serve together anywhere.
00:55:46.880 --> 00:55:56.000
Um Valiant actually did work a land deal with Mahaffey for some property in Florida in like 1932 or 34, something like that.
00:55:56.239 --> 00:56:04.880
But and Mahaffey did have the largest payments for the land, but he also had the best land, it was all overlooking the Missouri River.
00:56:05.679 --> 00:56:13.760
So um, so there's this just this perception, and perception is reality for those who believe it.
00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:23.039
So this guy by the name of Colonel John O'Brien takes over, and O'Brien's actually the guy who ends up moving the real estate division into the engineer corps.
00:56:23.199 --> 00:56:30.000
So, and that's something he does uh by by the end of 1942, but we're not quite there yet.
00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:42.079
So uh McDowell is assumed to be corrupt, and they try so there's a meeting between O'Brien and McDowell in DC, and they try to get him to reduce fees, and he's like, Screw you, you guys signed a contract with me.
00:56:42.159 --> 00:56:43.760
I did exactly what I was supposed to do.
00:56:43.920 --> 00:56:50.639
I hired a dozen people, I paid$20 some thousand dollars to get a new survey map made, and now you guys are wanting me to make less.
00:56:50.880 --> 00:56:56.559
And he's also got this pressure that's going on with this tax lien.
00:56:56.719 --> 00:56:58.480
So he's like, No, you guys agreed to this.
00:56:58.559 --> 00:57:01.760
If you didn't want to agree to this, then then don't agree to it.
00:57:02.239 --> 00:57:07.280
Um and so there's there's rumors in the St.
00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:19.119
Louis papers about a Department of Justice investigation that they're doing into McDowell, uh, things like that, just creating this perception of of trouble with him.
00:57:19.599 --> 00:57:29.119
And there and in terms of O'Brien, he is truly, I think he's coming from I I think his his motives were genuine.
00:57:29.280 --> 00:57:34.239
I think he truly thought all of this, but none of this really proved to be true.
00:57:34.480 --> 00:57:45.440
Like if there was a connection between Mahathy and Valiant, like why didn't Val why didn't uh why didn't Mahathy get his money?
00:57:47.199 --> 00:57:50.239
He was like everyone else, he's holding the bag for a bunch of property.
00:57:50.400 --> 00:57:51.519
Now he's very wealthy.
00:57:51.599 --> 00:57:57.679
In fact, you know, 800 acres to to uh Birchie Mahathy is not a big deal.
00:57:57.920 --> 00:57:59.760
Because he's running an oil company.
00:58:00.480 --> 00:58:06.960
You know, it's a rounding error for him, but the perception from everyone else is this is a problem, right?
00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:16.800
Look, one thing we can all agree on is things are not getting cheaper, life's getting more expensive, life's getting more frustrating, and we're all worried about every little cent we spend.
00:58:16.960 --> 00:58:23.840
Right now, here in Florida, for example, gas near me within 0.7 of a mile is$4 a gallon.
00:58:24.000 --> 00:58:28.559
But one of the things I've been doing to try to save money and to get money back is using the upside app.
00:58:28.639 --> 00:58:35.039
At that same gas station right now, if if I were simply claiming this deal on the upside app, I would pay$3.88 a gallon.
00:58:35.199 --> 00:58:43.360
Not only saving 12 cents a gallon, but actually getting 12 cents a gallon cash back into my bank account by simply claiming this deal on the upside app.
00:58:43.519 --> 00:58:44.000
Check it out.
00:58:44.159 --> 00:58:45.119
Nothing to lose, you guys.
00:58:45.199 --> 00:58:47.679
There's nothing to install that's going to give any weird advertisements.
00:58:47.760 --> 00:58:48.880
It's a legitimate app.
00:58:49.039 --> 00:58:53.119
Go to your Google App Store, go to your iPhone app store, download the upside app.
00:58:53.199 --> 00:58:57.519
Do me a huge favor, use the invite code of digital9684.
00:58:57.599 --> 00:59:01.119
That's D-I-G-I-T-A-L 9684.
00:59:01.280 --> 00:59:05.280
And by using that promo code, you too will get additional cash back on your first fill-up.
00:59:05.519 --> 00:59:15.039
How it works, you simply pull out the app, hit gas, it'll show you gas stations in the area, show the deal, you hit claim, pump the gas, upload your receipt.
00:59:15.199 --> 00:59:17.599
Within a few days, you'll get the money back into your account.
00:59:17.679 --> 00:59:26.159
Once your account gets to the balance of$10, you can choose to send that$10 or more if you wait into your bank account, or you can choose gift cards or deals other places.
00:59:26.320 --> 00:59:31.519
Not only does Upside save you money on gas, but they now incorporate restaurants, convenience stores, and others.
00:59:31.599 --> 00:59:34.079
For example, right now, as I'm recording this, I hit restaurant.
00:59:34.239 --> 00:59:39.360
If I go to Sonic, I get 23% cash back and I only have to go 2.8 miles away.
00:59:39.519 --> 00:59:44.400
That's 23% cash back on the total balance of the food you buy from Sonic right now.
00:59:44.559 --> 00:59:47.039
Within a few days, that money will be available to you.
00:59:47.119 --> 00:59:48.079
So you have nothing to lose.
00:59:48.239 --> 00:59:52.079
Download the upside app, use the code digital9684.
00:59:52.239 --> 00:59:54.480
It'll help us out, it'll help you out.
00:59:54.639 --> 00:59:58.159
We all know we got to save and get money back anywhere we can.
00:59:58.400 --> 00:59:58.880
Good luck.
00:59:59.039 --> 01:00:00.000
Keep your heads up.
01:00:00.159 --> 01:00:01.599
Fill up that gas tank.
01:00:01.920 --> 01:00:08.400
So Stimson, uh Secretary Stimson and O'Brien, they got together and decided it was time to start condemning property.
01:00:08.559 --> 01:00:09.760
And that's what they do.
01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:12.239
Uh in March, they start doing this.
01:00:12.400 --> 01:00:16.159
And he works with Missouri Assistant Attorney General Blanton.
01:00:16.320 --> 01:00:20.400
They cancel all the checks and they start condemning about 12 properties a day.
01:00:20.719 --> 01:00:23.440
And people are given a 10-day appeal process.
01:00:23.599 --> 01:00:24.639
The money goes in the bank.
01:00:24.719 --> 01:00:28.559
They're getting about 30 to 40% of their contract price.
01:00:29.519 --> 01:00:33.599
Again, the Frank Edwards family, they contracted for$1665.
01:00:33.920 --> 01:00:38.000
They received$780 all because they didn't pick up the check.
01:00:38.559 --> 01:00:47.119
Let me just read to you this section about uh Alton Pickman Pittman, who's in the painting there on the right there.
01:00:47.840 --> 01:00:51.920
So that that painting was commissioned by his daughter, Penny Pittman.
01:00:52.000 --> 01:00:56.079
She gave me permission to use it, but uh he actually went by the name of Buck.
01:00:56.400 --> 01:01:00.639
But so he wrote uh Champ Clark this.
01:01:00.800 --> 01:01:12.880
It has me puzzled, it just don't look like our government at all to come in, put our people out, take away our schools and churches, and then refuse to pay us the agreed price for them.
01:01:13.039 --> 01:01:14.159
We're in bad shape.
01:01:14.320 --> 01:01:20.639
We can't borrow money on the land, and the banks won't recognize the options as collateral.
01:01:21.039 --> 01:01:24.800
So people were really just in a in a significant bind here.
01:01:24.960 --> 01:01:29.119
They, you know, they floated loans for new property and now they're not getting paid.
01:01:29.360 --> 01:01:32.320
And it was just a disaster for these people.
01:01:32.480 --> 01:01:36.880
So this meet so um the citizens committee forms, and this is actually in the Emanual Church.
01:01:36.960 --> 01:01:44.800
I actually got an email tonight from the uh the reverend of the Emanuel Church and one of my friends there, uh Tim, was there violence?
01:01:45.360 --> 01:01:45.679
No.
01:01:46.000 --> 01:01:47.039
No, there's violence.
01:01:47.760 --> 01:01:50.639
Well, I mean, who are they gonna fight?
01:01:51.280 --> 01:01:52.960
I mean, they could have already got a protest.
01:01:53.519 --> 01:01:56.800
They're just through the depression, and now you're taking the very last thing.
01:01:57.039 --> 01:01:58.559
That's that's wow.
01:01:58.960 --> 01:02:00.320
Yeah, it's pretty tough.
01:02:00.639 --> 01:02:04.239
Did banks hold did banks um enforce liens back then?
01:02:04.320 --> 01:02:08.559
Because what I'm thinking is like some of these people probably behind on taxes, what happens?
01:02:08.800 --> 01:02:11.760
This opportunity arises, they reluctantly sell out.
01:02:11.840 --> 01:02:14.000
Now they're not even getting the money they were promised.
01:02:14.159 --> 01:02:23.599
And then on top of that, if a bank were to take what money they did get in liens on, or even the government on liens on back property taxes, some of these guys might be walking away with absolutely nothing.
01:02:23.760 --> 01:02:24.239
Yeah.
01:02:24.480 --> 01:02:24.719
Yeah.
01:02:24.800 --> 01:02:41.119
Well, I mean, the way the whole thing was structured is that when the government like before they before all of this happened, the half of the people that actually got paid, they would the money would actually go to the county collector and they'd take out the taxes first, and then they would get paid.
01:02:41.360 --> 01:02:45.119
So, and of course, the uh so a lot of people didn't walk away with nothing.
01:02:45.599 --> 01:02:50.559
So the McDowell fees would also be taken out of there as well before it went to them.
01:02:50.960 --> 01:02:55.920
So um, so uh this this photo is actually kind of fascinating.
01:02:56.000 --> 01:03:08.320
This was a newspaper photo that I enhanced, and uh in June I went to the TNT reunion, uh, which the families that got kicked off the land they have met since the 1960s.
01:03:09.440 --> 01:03:17.840
And I showed this photo, and people started walking up to the screen because they'd only ever seen it as a newspaper photo, and they start picking out the relatives.
01:03:18.159 --> 01:03:20.079
So, and you can just look on their faces.
01:03:20.159 --> 01:03:26.000
I mean, they're all wearing their Sunday best, but that's in the Emmanuel Church, uh, which still exists today.
01:03:26.079 --> 01:03:28.239
It's right next to the Weldon Spring.
01:03:28.559 --> 01:03:32.960
And uh it becomes kind of the meeting place for a lot of this, these things.
01:03:33.039 --> 01:03:37.039
And I mean, they even they even foreclosed on the kids.
01:03:37.280 --> 01:03:45.519
Uh consolidated school district number two's buildings get condemned, and uh they're gonna give them about 40% of the value.
01:03:45.760 --> 01:03:53.920
And they never know when they're gonna get paid because school districts get paid from property taxes, and all this is all tied up.
01:03:54.559 --> 01:03:56.000
So he is an air.
01:03:56.400 --> 01:03:57.840
Is there an is there?
01:03:58.320 --> 01:04:00.079
I feel like I need a Xanax.
01:04:01.360 --> 01:04:01.679
Yeah.
01:04:01.920 --> 01:04:11.280
I'm just looking at the the gentleman in the front with his arms crossed, looks like he wants to stand up so bad, and you know his wife just keeps nope, it's not the timer place, but he looks like he's had enough.
01:04:11.599 --> 01:04:13.840
I like the guy on the right with the hat.
01:04:14.159 --> 01:04:15.280
Yeah, he's in all the place.
01:04:15.360 --> 01:04:17.360
He's only like he's missing the propeller.
01:04:17.679 --> 01:04:19.039
He's he's kind of fun.
01:04:19.119 --> 01:04:27.519
Uh the Mus Muschani brothers, I believe, are sitting right behind him, the two gentlemen in the suits right there.
01:04:27.679 --> 01:04:31.920
Uh, there's the guy with the mustache and then the lady, and I think those are the Muschani brothers.
01:04:32.000 --> 01:04:38.800
And that's they're actually the family, the family name that's involved with the case that goes to the Supreme Court.
01:04:39.119 --> 01:04:48.400
But um uh so anyway, this this photo really really resonated with the families, none of which were probably even alive back then.
01:04:48.480 --> 01:04:50.480
They'd have to be at least 86 years old.
01:04:50.639 --> 01:04:57.280
So um so again, this is why I called Champ Clark a dick.
01:04:57.440 --> 01:05:09.119
Um so the people are already off their land, things are things are getting uh foreclosed on, and Clarence Cannon Congressman is actually sympathetic but realistic.
01:05:09.199 --> 01:05:12.880
He's like, hey, you know, this sucks, and he's trying to fight for the people.
01:05:13.199 --> 01:05:23.119
Uh Champ Clark is supposed to actually go out to the Emanuel Church and meet the people, but suddenly he has a sore throat and he just can't go.
01:05:24.079 --> 01:05:30.320
And then next thing you know, his son has an appendicitis at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and now he can't attend.
01:05:30.400 --> 01:05:34.480
And then there's a fire and a flood and a massive storm and a locust infestation.
01:05:34.880 --> 01:05:39.280
So, and people are waiting for him, and as I say, he gave them the Missouri Waltz.
01:05:39.599 --> 01:05:47.679
So uh, and eventually a bunch of people actually showed up at his hotel room the next day, but people stayed late in the night waiting for him, and he never showed up.
01:05:48.000 --> 01:05:56.559
So, uh, and he actually cut the meeting short with the people that actually went to his hotel the next day because he had to go back to DC, of course.
01:05:56.800 --> 01:05:59.760
So, now unfortunately for the government.
01:06:00.159 --> 01:06:04.239
Government, uh, they foreclosed on an attorney by the name of Sam Watson.
01:06:04.320 --> 01:06:05.280
Now he was a City of St.
01:06:05.440 --> 01:06:09.119
Louis attorney who actually happened to be their condemnation person.
01:06:09.920 --> 01:06:18.320
So he goes to the meetings with um at the Emmanuel Church and he has a team of uh attorneys he's put together.
01:06:18.880 --> 01:06:24.079
And um he's like, okay, uh, you know, if you guys want me to take this up, I will.
01:06:24.159 --> 01:06:32.800
Uh I'll take four percent off the top if we can resolve it through threats, seven percent if it goes to district court, and ten percent if it goes beyond that to the Supreme Court.
01:06:33.119 --> 01:06:35.440
And of course, he's got skin in the game.
01:06:35.519 --> 01:06:37.599
He his home is there on the lower left.
01:06:37.760 --> 01:06:42.960
And the TNT site has all these pictures of these properties, and many times pictures of the people involved.
01:06:43.039 --> 01:06:45.199
It's actually amazing what Bob Braille did.
01:06:45.280 --> 01:06:51.440
But so, yeah, he had$10,500 contracted, and he actually got$2,560.
01:06:51.760 --> 01:06:54.079
So this guy has got skin in the game.
01:06:54.719 --> 01:06:59.280
So let me read you a section about the Orthaniel Bacon story.
01:06:59.679 --> 01:07:13.280
So uh Orthaniel Bacon, 82-year-old Al Missouri man who officers his home to the government for inclusion the TNT plant site and later was forced off his property to live in a one-room basement, died Monday.
01:07:13.440 --> 01:07:16.800
This is 1942, summer forty-two.
01:07:17.599 --> 01:07:26.800
Died Monday as a result, his widow said, of grief and worry over the War Department's handling holding up payment of the$2,000 sale price.
01:07:27.280 --> 01:07:27.599
Mrs.
01:07:27.679 --> 01:07:32.960
Bacon said yesterday they vacated their home on the signing of the option and were paid fifty dollars down.
01:07:33.199 --> 01:07:35.440
They paid fifty dollars down to buy a new home.
01:07:35.599 --> 01:07:42.960
When the government checks were not forthcoming, she declared they had to move into a basement where he aged years in just a few short months.
01:07:43.119 --> 01:07:44.639
He was bedfast for months.
01:07:44.800 --> 01:07:45.039
Mrs.
01:07:45.199 --> 01:07:50.800
Bacon said many times at night I could hear him crying from worry and disappointment.
01:07:51.119 --> 01:07:59.199
She said forty dollars of the fifty dollars down payment were recovered, but most of it went to the lawyer for obtaining it.
01:07:59.280 --> 01:08:05.039
Bacon throughout his life was a crippled due to a knee injury and suffered when he suffered when he was two years old.
01:08:05.280 --> 01:08:15.280
She said the two thousand dollar option money was paid into court pending condemnation, was paid into court pending condemnation proceedings, she asserted.
01:08:15.440 --> 01:08:20.159
The price was agreeable to us and the government both, but the court wouldn't release it.
01:08:20.880 --> 01:08:35.920
PT officials yesterday granted special permission for Bacon to be buried Thursday in Francis House Cemetery within the plant area, but decreed only relatives could attend and only after obtaining passes.
01:08:36.239 --> 01:08:43.119
An attending physician after Bacon's death said it was due to worry and infirmities.
01:08:44.159 --> 01:08:46.880
So that's what this was doing to people.
01:08:47.039 --> 01:08:52.640
And I think like seven people died before they actually ended up getting paid.
01:08:53.680 --> 01:08:57.680
Meanwhile, up the river, plant construction is actually going pretty well.
01:08:57.920 --> 01:09:02.319
Uh they were employing up to eight, almost 8,700 workers.
01:09:02.720 --> 01:09:13.279
And of course, they have the Rock Quarry concrete plant, they're building over a thousand buildings, and the the plant size gets increased from six to twelve to eighteen production lines, and then there's two DT production lines.
01:09:13.520 --> 01:09:15.039
So it's actually going really well.
01:09:15.199 --> 01:09:19.920
Colonel Dunton is there on the right in that photo.
01:09:20.479 --> 01:09:24.079
And the uh engineering officer whose name escapes me is on the left.
01:09:24.239 --> 01:09:29.039
Um, you see, that's one of the few pictures that actually has a military vehicle in it.
01:09:29.199 --> 01:09:41.039
Um, there's a few pictures of um like some sedans and stuff, but that's the only time I can see a tactical military vehicle, and I think it's a Chevy ton and a half uh that's there right behind him.
01:09:41.439 --> 01:09:43.039
Uh okay.
01:09:43.680 --> 01:09:46.560
So what happens to consolidate school district number two?
01:09:46.960 --> 01:09:54.479
So Hollenbeck has already announced that he's going to reform the district to the east, but they've not gotten their$79,000.
01:09:54.960 --> 01:09:56.479
They've been condemned on.
01:09:56.720 --> 01:10:01.520
So Fred goes to the military and says, Hey, give me$50,000 now and we'll walk away.
01:10:01.760 --> 01:10:02.720
And that's what they did.
01:10:02.800 --> 01:10:04.159
He got his$50,000.
01:10:04.640 --> 01:10:09.920
So they they go ahead and they finish the school year, and you can see that photo there on the left.
01:10:10.000 --> 01:10:13.760
That's Francis Howell High School, and all the kids are outside of it.
01:10:13.920 --> 01:10:16.479
Fred's in the lower left there in the suit.
01:10:16.640 --> 01:10:17.920
That's the last day of school.
01:10:18.000 --> 01:10:22.640
So they all went outside, took a photograph, got on their buses, and they left the site forever.
01:10:22.880 --> 01:10:29.840
Uh, they could not do graduation there because they didn't have a gym and they had to do graduation at the Emanuel Church off-site.
01:10:29.920 --> 01:10:32.880
And that was also, you know, they said they could go to the last day of school.
01:10:33.039 --> 01:10:35.840
School is over, so they can't use the facility.
01:10:36.399 --> 01:10:39.520
So uh over the summer, he works a deal.
01:10:39.680 --> 01:10:46.479
He doesn't have money right now because all the money's tied up for property taxes, and he's only got this 50 grand.
01:10:46.880 --> 01:10:50.479
So he goes to a local lumber yard and says, Hey, can you guys spot me some lumber?
01:10:50.560 --> 01:10:52.079
I got to build a temporary school.
01:10:52.239 --> 01:10:58.239
And he gets a bunch of local laborers, and they build what they call the chicken coop, which is the building in the lower left.
01:10:58.399 --> 01:11:10.239
Those are all the same buses that you see in the upper picture, but it was a five-room building that they built that was basically a plywood, uh, plywood building that the school operated out of for a year.
01:11:10.319 --> 01:11:20.640
And then over the next year, he actually gets some WPA type grants and builds that building there on the right, which becomes Francis Howe High School number three.
01:11:20.800 --> 01:11:24.000
There's actually four by the time he's done with all this.
01:11:24.239 --> 01:11:34.319
So, and he actually saves the Francis Howe School District, which is now the longest continuously operating school district in the country or west of the Mississippi.
01:11:34.479 --> 01:11:36.079
West of the Mississippi.
01:11:36.960 --> 01:11:41.920
So Alice begins to start the plant.
01:11:42.079 --> 01:11:45.840
Uh, so they run a school at their facility in Pennsylvania.
01:11:46.000 --> 01:11:47.920
They they actually run like an academy.
01:11:48.079 --> 01:11:51.359
Uh, the lower left, you can see the guy there in the glasses.
01:11:51.520 --> 01:11:58.560
He's actually one of the managers learning how to uh successfully build TNT without blowing yourself up.
01:11:58.800 --> 01:12:08.079
So that for the technical hires, those are people who are all they're coming from other plants, or they went through this academy, and then most of the manual laborers are just local hires.
01:12:08.159 --> 01:12:15.279
And some of the people, you know, they're working on building the plant, and then as that work starts to slow down, they go over to Atlas and they get hired there.
01:12:15.600 --> 01:12:21.520
So uh Frasier Brace uh is complete by 1 November 42.
01:12:21.840 --> 01:12:27.039
The they start producing TNT on the 11th of October 1941.
01:12:27.359 --> 01:12:34.079
Uh they have six production shifts, they're making about a buck an hour, and people are coming from as far away as south of St.
01:12:34.159 --> 01:12:39.039
Louis, so 60-mile radius for employees, and they're coming in in buses.
01:12:39.520 --> 01:12:47.359
Uh, like uh they would get together and and form like a little bus company, and maybe one of the workers was a driver, things like that.
01:12:47.600 --> 01:13:08.000
So um now I know you said previously to Dennis' question there's no violence, but I would have to assume there's at least a noticeable level of resentment from those people who are forced away, host the checks not clear, and and being in the local town, and then having all these workers come to go work at these plants that are on their properties that they basically got robbed from them.
01:13:08.479 --> 01:13:14.000
Yeah, well, and and some of some of those workers are the people that got kicked off the land because these are good paying jobs.
01:13:14.079 --> 01:13:14.640
Yeah.
01:13:14.880 --> 01:13:17.119
And you know, they gotta do what they gotta do.
01:13:17.279 --> 01:13:23.680
So if you're a farmer and you no longer have a farm, then you gotta you gotta figure it out.
01:13:23.920 --> 01:13:29.199
So uh on Pearl Harbor, they produce 3,500 pounds of TNT.
01:13:29.279 --> 01:13:30.640
They were just getting started.
01:13:30.880 --> 01:13:51.359
And so one of the things that they do, uh, it kind of reminds me of 9-11, is after Pearl Harbor, they the highway department starts pulling security at all the major bridges in Missouri to include the Daniel Boone Bridge, and eventually the Army takes over, and by the end of December 1941, they're like, uh, this is dumb, and we're gonna stop this.
01:13:51.520 --> 01:14:05.359
But you can see the uh guys in the uh uh the early war helmets and springfield saying that's yeah, walking around there uh below the Daniel Boone Bridge in December of 1940, which had to be lovely.
01:14:05.520 --> 01:14:12.399
And those are cars there on the lower left coming from Chesterfield to go across the bridge uh that they inspected.
01:14:12.640 --> 01:14:17.439
Uh they start they create uh uh in this is pretty funny, actually.
01:14:17.600 --> 01:14:27.359
And uh Fall, Missouri, which is just kind of northeast of the plant, maybe about five or six miles, uh does a blackout drill on the 14th of December 1941.
01:14:27.680 --> 01:14:34.880
Now, uh exactly how these bombers are gonna get to Weldon Spring, Missouri, which is seven to nine hundred miles inland.
01:14:35.279 --> 01:14:48.159
And um, I'm sure their blackout drill will, you know, if you're gonna go bomb this plant, you find the you find the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi River, and you just go upstream and you find the bridge, and there it is, right?
01:14:48.560 --> 01:14:50.560
But you know, they're doing their part.
01:14:50.960 --> 01:14:55.039
So there's some housing communities that get set up for the workers.
01:14:55.119 --> 01:14:58.159
Uh Wentzville, Missouri creates what they call Oak Grove.
01:14:58.479 --> 01:15:02.720
And it's actually constructed in two two two different methods.
01:15:02.880 --> 01:15:14.399
They have all these airstream trailers looking things that they bring in, temporary housing, and then there's some prefab housing that's constructed by the uh CIO, the labor union.
01:15:14.560 --> 01:15:21.119
And the AFL is very upset about this, so they actually go up there and start a riot with the CIO workers.
01:15:21.199 --> 01:15:27.520
And about a hundred AFL guys show up, and there's about 10 or 12 CIO guys, and they run them off.
01:15:27.760 --> 01:15:35.920
And actually, the Missouri governor, a different governor than the earlier one, threatens martial law in Wentzville if this continues.
01:15:36.239 --> 01:15:38.560
So these campers are a bit of a problem.
01:15:38.880 --> 01:15:41.680
These come in in like 1941.
01:15:42.079 --> 01:15:55.760
And so as you there's a there's a really bad cold snap early in 1943, uh in like February, and it goes to sub-zero, and they fight figure out that these campers are basically uninhabitable.
01:15:56.399 --> 01:15:57.680
Uh imagine that.
01:15:57.840 --> 01:16:05.199
And one of the things when they opened Oak Grove, they had like a big flag raising and a band and all this kind of stuff.
01:16:05.520 --> 01:16:12.479
And one of the things that they did and to try and save rubber is they sent all the wheels back to the plant.
01:16:12.800 --> 01:16:14.159
No insulation from the ground.
01:16:14.319 --> 01:16:16.159
So like oh no, the wheels.
01:16:16.880 --> 01:16:19.119
Oh, the top, yeah, and the top, I got you.
01:16:19.199 --> 01:16:19.359
Yeah.
01:16:19.600 --> 01:16:28.640
Yeah, they they sent all the wheels, the tires, back to the plant, uh, so they could reuse them on for war or steer austerity, and so they could use them on new ones.
01:16:28.880 --> 01:16:34.560
So then after this cold snap, these things are completely uninhabitable, and they decide they're gonna ship them to Tucson.
01:16:34.960 --> 01:16:38.239
So you see that in the newspaper, but then like two days later, you see another story.
01:16:38.399 --> 01:16:41.760
Well, we're gonna ship them to Tucson after we get wheels for them.
01:16:42.159 --> 01:16:48.159
And then, like a couple weeks later, you see that there was a caravan of airstreams going to Tucson.
01:16:48.399 --> 01:16:52.159
But and there's actually a priest in Codleville, which is kind of between St.
01:16:52.239 --> 01:16:56.319
Charles and Weldon, that actually develops a new subdivision.
01:16:56.399 --> 01:16:57.600
He kind of puts this whole thing together.
01:16:57.760 --> 01:17:10.000
He gets a field that's owned by the bank, and and he actually helps people uh get loans so they can build small homes in this area that's called Village of All Saints, which still still exists today in St.
01:17:10.079 --> 01:17:10.479
Charles.
01:17:10.560 --> 01:17:11.359
You can find it on a map.
01:17:11.680 --> 01:17:14.640
Oh, it's like Collaville, you can find it on a map, though.
01:17:15.840 --> 01:17:18.960
So uh it becomes a city of TNT production.
01:17:19.039 --> 01:17:21.760
There's a port of entry where everyone comes in and out of.
01:17:21.840 --> 01:17:27.279
There's really only one way in and out of it, at least if you're in a vehicle.
01:17:27.600 --> 01:17:29.920
It's a headquarters building that's pretty massive.
01:17:30.000 --> 01:17:31.199
That's there on the left.
01:17:31.359 --> 01:17:34.560
They have a public safety force, 13 miles of railroad tracks.
01:17:34.640 --> 01:17:35.439
They have a hospital.
01:17:35.520 --> 01:17:43.359
And this is one of the, if you heard of the uh Kaiser medical system that where they would take care of the workers' medical needs.
01:17:43.439 --> 01:17:54.000
And that was both, it was really a practical concern because so many doctors and nurses were gone uh during the war, that medical care was hard to get.
01:17:54.239 --> 01:17:57.680
Um, so they actually set up uh a hospital there.
01:17:58.000 --> 01:18:02.399
Um and they also had housing and they built 30 family homes.
01:18:02.640 --> 01:18:06.399
And you can see a picture of one of those on the right there.
01:18:06.560 --> 01:18:10.159
And that area right now is known as Walden Spring Heights.
01:18:10.319 --> 01:18:15.680
So there were six larger homes and then there were 24 smaller ones.
01:18:15.840 --> 01:18:20.960
And actually, uh I a guy reached out to me last week and said, Hey, I live in one of those homes.
01:18:21.119 --> 01:18:22.000
So when I was in St.
01:18:22.159 --> 01:18:26.800
Louis, I I swung by there and he gave me a tour of his house that was built for the plant.
01:18:26.880 --> 01:18:30.720
And these are not cheap homes, these are on like 1.5 acre lots.
01:18:31.600 --> 01:18:41.359
Uh, there's when you go inside the door, there's a set of stairs there, and then to the just below the stairs, there's that little room there where you see that window.
01:18:41.439 --> 01:18:42.880
That's a maid's quarters.
01:18:44.560 --> 01:18:56.720
And um when you go into that neighborhood today, there were 30 original World War II era homes that were built, and there's maybe about 10 additional homes that are built back in there.
01:18:56.960 --> 01:18:58.960
It's like leave it to Beaver back there.
01:18:59.039 --> 01:19:01.840
It's it's the most beautiful subdivision you'll ever see.
01:19:02.000 --> 01:19:04.960
And people are super nice and super friendly and stuff like that.
01:19:05.119 --> 01:19:07.520
And they bought a few of my books, so that's cool.
01:19:07.760 --> 01:19:11.199
But they have a cafeteria and they have the 18 production lines there.
01:19:11.359 --> 01:19:13.279
So they're public safety force.
01:19:13.439 --> 01:19:22.800
They have initially 400 guards, and the uh local VFW tells them you need to hire veterans, World War I veterans, because they know how to handle weapons and follow orders.
01:19:23.039 --> 01:19:30.000
Eventually they downsize that to about 176, but they use force patrols, they have working dogs that are part of it.
01:19:30.079 --> 01:19:38.640
And there's only ever one enlisted soldier assigned to this, and that's an army enlisted uh vet tech who takes care of the dogs and forces, and he's only there about six months.
01:19:38.880 --> 01:19:43.279
Uh, so their main job is to uh enforce the uh the port of entry.
01:19:43.359 --> 01:19:52.399
You can see that picture in the lower left of all the buses and cars coming in, generally people carpooled, uh, because you could get more rationing fuel if you carpooled.
01:19:52.720 --> 01:20:01.600
Um and then they also had to inspect people when they went out to the production lines to make sure they weren't taking uh cigarettes, you know, smoking materials, things like that.
01:20:01.680 --> 01:20:06.960
So they had multiple jobs there, as well as you know, enforcing the fence line.
01:20:07.520 --> 01:20:11.600
Fire department, uh, you know, at a TNT plant, that's got to be a fun job.
01:20:11.840 --> 01:20:18.399
31 firefighters, they had four apparatus or apparatuses, whatever the right plural there is.
01:20:18.560 --> 01:20:20.880
And one of their main concerns were brush fires.
01:20:21.039 --> 01:20:26.000
Now, if a TNT building goes up in flames, well, you know, you jump out the chute and you run like hell.
01:20:26.239 --> 01:20:36.399
But uh because these buildings were built into hillsides as much as they could, that they were more concerned about brush fires that may blow into them.
01:20:36.560 --> 01:20:42.560
So one of the problems they had is people were leaving their properties, they were clearing out all the trees for firewood.
01:20:42.800 --> 01:20:50.479
And they had to put out an order, stop taking the stop cutting down the trees, because we need that for for camouflage purposes.
01:20:50.800 --> 01:20:53.840
So uh and they actually had a pretty good water main system.
01:20:53.920 --> 01:21:01.760
If you're acting out in the army, actually actually out in the army training area, you'll be just driving down a road that seems like you're in the middle of nowhere, and there'll be a fire hydrant sitting there.
01:21:02.399 --> 01:21:05.520
So, what is it like to work in a TNT plant?
01:21:05.600 --> 01:21:18.880
There's actually a really interesting video that was produced out of Canada um about some people working in a TNT plant there, although it was pretty pretty large facility and a little bit different than this one.
01:21:19.039 --> 01:21:22.079
But so it might take you 90 minutes to get to work.
01:21:22.239 --> 01:21:27.600
You go you get checked in through the port of entry, the gate, just like you'd find any military installation.
01:21:27.840 --> 01:21:32.319
It may take you another 20 minutes to get to the production line where you're working.
01:21:32.560 --> 01:21:40.479
And there was actually uh the the labor union, uh, one of the labor unions requested that people start getting paid as soon as they got through the gate.
01:21:40.560 --> 01:21:44.319
And the plant's like, uh no, that's not how this works.
01:21:44.479 --> 01:21:51.439
So they had to go to changing rooms, and you can see the shower room, changing room, those are there on the lower left.
01:21:51.920 --> 01:21:54.319
And each production line had one of those.
01:21:54.479 --> 01:22:08.960
So you go in there, they change their clothes, they would put on explosives coveralls, which are white, plain coveralls, no pockets, and then they had like a two strips of cloth across the back, which would hold like a booklet if you wanted to carry something.
01:22:09.119 --> 01:22:11.600
But generally you couldn't take anything with you.
01:22:12.720 --> 01:22:18.159
And they would walk out to their sites, and you could see that in that lower right, kind of what the buildings looked like.
01:22:18.319 --> 01:22:22.960
And there would be maybe two to four other workers in your building, and you'd do just one task.
01:22:23.119 --> 01:22:41.920
Now, the windows had kind of a weird blue glass that filtered out all heat and natural light, so you didn't get any um thermal buildup inside the buildings, and then also they had uh special lenses over the light bulbs in case one burst, it would not sit off the whole building.
01:22:42.159 --> 01:23:00.239
So when the shift was over, uh you would walk back to your uh your change house, and you're required to take a shower, you drop off your coveralls, which would then go to the laundry department to clean them, and then you would get back in your bus or your car and go back.
01:23:00.479 --> 01:23:03.600
So, and I think we already talked about the escape shoots.
01:23:05.119 --> 01:23:18.399
So the military department that was actually at a plant like this was relatively small, and generally almost all officers, in this case, there's uh only ever one enlisted person at the Weldon Spring Ordnance Works, and that's the vet tech guy.
01:23:18.560 --> 01:23:22.560
So they were mostly there to do contract management and quality control.
01:23:22.800 --> 01:23:29.920
Uh, since it's government-owned, the government owns the facility, so they have to take care of the facility, make sure the contractor is not abusing it.
01:23:30.079 --> 01:23:32.479
So there's a small number of uniformed officers.
01:23:32.560 --> 01:23:37.600
The commander was usually a major lieutenant colonel, and you can see the number, I've got that chart there on the left.
01:23:37.760 --> 01:23:46.960
Uh, the biggest it got was 10 um military officers, and the smallest it was for the remainder of the war was four.
01:23:47.760 --> 01:24:02.319
So uh usually there's a post commander, and then they would work directly with Atlas Powder Company, and then uh there was a person that was an officer that was in charge of the ordinance department, which had all the civilian inspectors that check quality control.
01:24:03.039 --> 01:24:12.399
So um, and then they start shifting a lot of the admin roles to Atlas, like maintaining vehicles, things like that, and that's where the numbers go down.
01:24:12.720 --> 01:24:20.399
As far as the officers that were signed there, I also think a lot of those company grade officers shifted over to PONE units.
01:24:21.199 --> 01:24:39.520
Um, because as divisions were spinning up in 1943, they needed guys to be in ordnance units, needed officers for those, and then you can't, you know, have ten of them sitting around at an ordnance plant in Missouri when they could be in a you know a company commander or platoon leader in an ordinance pair unit.
01:24:40.319 --> 01:24:44.880
Okay, uh there were two racial issues that I did find at the plant.
01:24:45.039 --> 01:24:48.800
Uh this guy, Earl Smith, he's a very eloquent writer.
01:24:48.960 --> 01:24:51.039
He's from Vicksburg, Mississippi.
01:24:51.279 --> 01:25:03.279
He uh got his uh his um undergraduate from University of Iowa in chemistry, and then he went to Howard University and got his master's in chemistry in 1941.
01:25:03.439 --> 01:25:09.359
And he goes out to the plant and tries to get hired, and they give him the runaround.
01:25:10.000 --> 01:25:15.680
And so he so he decides he writes a letter to FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, and shit rolls downhill.
01:25:16.319 --> 01:25:20.880
And uh his letters, that whole file is just amazing.
01:25:21.119 --> 01:25:26.319
Uh, and I'll just read some of this, his letter um after he got the runaround.
01:25:26.479 --> 01:25:34.079
This I feel to be a rank injustice, a violation of the Constitution of the United States and the recent executive order which was issued from your office.
01:25:34.399 --> 01:25:48.399
Paradoxically enough, in a very conspicuous place in the administration building in Weldon Spring was a beautifully engraved copy of this order, which they have never had, have not, and have no intention of complying with.
01:25:49.680 --> 01:25:55.760
So uh it's each of his letters are about two pages, and they're they're a delight to read.
01:25:56.000 --> 01:26:15.920
Um, one one of the AI rabbit holes I almost ran down is I I want to see it had an address on there for where he lived, and I I looked it up, and it said that he lived in the house owned by Tommy Angelou, which was Maya Angelou, the poet's uncle.
01:26:16.239 --> 01:26:17.359
Now, Maya is from St.
01:26:17.520 --> 01:26:24.000
Louis, and Maya did grow up about two blocks from this address, although Maya was already in Oakland, California.
01:26:24.079 --> 01:26:30.239
I actually was in a in the same room with Maya Angelou back in the 90s, although I had no idea who she was at that point.
01:26:30.479 --> 01:26:43.840
But um, and I didn't feel completely confident enough that that story was true, but he he definitely lived in that same neighborhood where her uncle and her lived when she was there.
01:26:44.000 --> 01:26:47.279
So that photograph there on the left, I believe that's him.
01:26:47.439 --> 01:27:09.279
That's from a University of Iowa yearbook, although it would have been his senior year, and his shirt says freshman on it, which I'm not sure why, but there are only about a hundred African American students at the University of Iowa during this era, and he's the only guy named Earl Smith that was there for about 10 years.
01:27:09.520 --> 01:27:15.279
So I can't quite explain why his shirt says freshman, but I feel pretty sure that's probably him.
01:27:15.760 --> 01:27:24.560
Uh, there was another issue, and this was on uh so Earl's trying to get hired on the inspector side of things, and eventually he does.
01:27:24.880 --> 01:27:41.199
And uh there's a document that tracks the number of uh of African American and women employees, and you see the number one appear under African American in the summer of 42, and then it that goes away in early 1943.
01:27:41.279 --> 01:27:43.039
So he moved on at some point.
01:27:43.600 --> 01:27:53.520
Um now Robert Jones and uh about 16 other of his colleagues were working working for Atlas Powder, they're African American men.
01:27:53.680 --> 01:27:59.600
And when the production line slowed, they were transferred over to do janitorial work in the headquarters building.
01:28:00.239 --> 01:28:01.199
The barracks.
01:28:01.600 --> 01:28:03.920
And you know, at least they have a job, right?
01:28:04.079 --> 01:28:10.560
But then when production picked up again, they weren't recalled back to the production area and they actually made more money over there.
01:28:10.880 --> 01:28:13.439
So I have to say, Roberts got some kahunas.
01:28:13.600 --> 01:28:19.680
He picked up the phone and called the the installation commander, which was kind of a kind of a big deal.
01:28:20.239 --> 01:28:25.920
And after the Earl Smith case, like this thing gets handled like right away.
01:28:26.640 --> 01:28:35.600
And uh eventually all 16 ended up moving back to the production line relatively quickly, as soon as they could get them over there based on seniority, things like that.
01:28:35.760 --> 01:28:46.000
But and that quote down there at the bottom is actually from the memorandum of record written by the Army lieutenant who handled this for the post commander.
01:28:47.600 --> 01:28:49.600
ENT work is very dangerous.
01:28:49.760 --> 01:28:51.359
A lot of stuff happens.
01:28:51.520 --> 01:28:57.119
Now, Walden never had a truly catastrophic incident, but it did have some problems.
01:28:57.359 --> 01:29:02.000
Nationwide, 121 explosive workers get killed in about an 18-month window.
01:29:02.159 --> 01:29:07.359
250 killed are injured at different munitions plant issues.
01:29:07.439 --> 01:29:11.359
Now, Frazier Brace had one accident that killed a man.
01:29:11.439 --> 01:29:14.560
He got crushed by a crane bucket in January of 42.
01:29:14.640 --> 01:29:22.720
There's another guy who actually had some significant injuries when some culverts rolled off of a truck and injured him.
01:29:23.279 --> 01:29:26.239
There was one building that exploded in April of 42.
01:29:26.319 --> 01:29:27.359
They had some minor issues.
01:29:27.439 --> 01:29:29.600
The guys were able to use the chutes and get away.
01:29:29.840 --> 01:29:34.239
But one guy gets buried alive in a trench in 1942 and gets killed.
01:29:34.880 --> 01:29:37.439
Three men get burned in a gasoline fire.
01:29:37.520 --> 01:29:40.640
They were cleaning a crane motor and they all got caught.
01:29:40.800 --> 01:29:41.920
They all caught on fire.
01:29:42.079 --> 01:29:43.039
The one guy died.
01:29:43.119 --> 01:29:47.680
There was a pair of twins that both got burned, and they did not die.
01:29:47.920 --> 01:29:49.920
And notice the time frame for all these.
01:29:50.079 --> 01:29:51.520
This is a fairly short window.
01:29:51.680 --> 01:29:54.960
This is when the plants like finally hitting on all cylinders, right?
01:29:55.680 --> 01:30:05.920
Uh two guys, they had they had a uh some sort of a chemical fat boil over, and two guys died of chemical burns, and then they had lots of automobile and bus accidents.
01:30:06.399 --> 01:30:10.880
So um, although they kind of get their act together shortly after that.
01:30:10.960 --> 01:30:13.520
I don't know if they fired who was in charge of safety or whatever.
01:30:13.600 --> 01:30:27.760
And you know, this is the uh the Hoover Dam era where you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, you know, and these are probably acceptable casualties, but uh this could this could go really nasty really quick.
01:30:29.840 --> 01:30:37.359
So the plant earns three Army Navy E's, which you had to have six good months of production to get an Army Navy E.
01:30:37.600 --> 01:30:59.840
They get their first one in uh the fall of 1942, and uh Colonel Dutton comes back and he's the the speaker for that, and then they get two additional ones, and then they get what's they also get a T, which is a Treasury Department award for people, the number of bonds that they buy, percentage of people that bought bonds.
01:31:00.079 --> 01:31:11.840
So in the fall of 1943, if you go in the green books, there's a whole story in there about the ordnance department is starting to think that maybe they're producing, they're overproducing explosives.
01:31:12.720 --> 01:31:17.920
And so they were they're mostly basing it on their usage rates in the North African campaign.
01:31:18.000 --> 01:31:22.880
So they ordered 24 production lines closed, which include all 18 at Weldon Spring.
01:31:23.039 --> 01:31:27.039
So this happens in January of 1940.
01:31:28.560 --> 01:31:39.279
And uh they've released the production staff so they can go get other war jobs, and they start you know putting it into kind of a hot, a warm closing status.
01:31:39.359 --> 01:31:58.079
They could reopen it if they need to, and there's some discussion of you know, sending the equipment to other plants if they need to use it there, and they're leasing the land to graze cattle, and then uh uh Clarence Cannon writes a letter saying how they could reuse the site for other things.
01:31:58.159 --> 01:32:02.159
And this is this is like you know, January, February of 1944.
01:32:03.119 --> 01:32:08.479
Uh and the residents are still not paid, and we'll kind of circle back to that story in just a minute.
01:32:08.640 --> 01:32:17.840
And then after D-Day, really in May of 1944, they're like, oh crap, we need more more ammunition and explosives.
01:32:18.000 --> 01:32:21.039
So they put the plant back into 24 by 7 production.
01:32:21.119 --> 01:32:26.000
So they have to go rehire employees, find new employees, and kind of start the whole thing over.
01:32:26.399 --> 01:32:28.159
And they're back online within a month.
01:32:28.239 --> 01:32:35.680
And actually, they had some of their largest months of production during that time frame up into the through the fall of 1944.
01:32:36.479 --> 01:32:38.720
So, who used Weldon Spring powder?
01:32:39.359 --> 01:32:40.640
A lot of people.
01:32:40.880 --> 01:32:42.159
And this is just one month.
01:32:42.319 --> 01:32:44.640
I just had stats for January of 44.
01:32:44.720 --> 01:32:46.800
They used it in 30 and 50 cal ammo.
01:32:46.880 --> 01:32:50.000
They mixed the TNT and DT and made smokeless powder.
01:32:50.159 --> 01:32:52.880
Uh 20 millimeter and 37 millimeter shells.
01:32:52.960 --> 01:32:54.239
Now, none of this is getting made there.
01:32:54.319 --> 01:32:57.199
It's all getting shipped in 50-pound boxes off to other places.
01:32:57.359 --> 01:33:00.319
The DNT is in uh 55-gallon drums.
01:33:00.399 --> 01:33:01.840
They get shipped to other places.
01:33:02.000 --> 01:33:12.800
105, 155 artillery, 90 and 260-pound frag bombs, uh, 500,000, 2,000, and 12,000 pound bombs.
01:33:12.960 --> 01:33:16.880
Now, when I you know, last time I presented this, I'm like 12,000 pound bombs.
01:33:16.960 --> 01:33:18.239
That seems like a lot.
01:33:18.640 --> 01:33:28.479
Actually, there was a plant that did produce 12,000 pound bombs, but I believe that was something that was in development in 1945 and they produced them in 1946.
01:33:28.560 --> 01:33:31.680
They were used in Korea after the war.
01:33:32.159 --> 01:33:36.239
Um, there were 12,000 pound bombs that the Brits used.
01:33:36.560 --> 01:33:39.840
Um, and they also had a 22,000-pound bomb.
01:33:40.000 --> 01:33:44.720
Uh, it was used in Composition B and RDX, landmines, bazooka charges.
01:33:45.039 --> 01:33:53.439
Uh, they sent powder to a Navy plant that produced a lot of different ordinance, 40 millimeter and 16-inch naval shells.
01:33:53.520 --> 01:34:03.279
So I feel pretty confident that in turret number two, next to the table of the surrender ceremony in Tokyo, there's Walden Spring powder sent in those shells.
01:34:03.920 --> 01:34:09.119
And my guess is that stuff probably persisted up through the 1980s and 90s.
01:34:10.880 --> 01:34:12.319
Um, okay.
01:34:13.039 --> 01:34:17.119
So meanwhile, in court, what happens with those people?
01:34:17.279 --> 01:34:24.720
Uh the people get together and they file a court case using Sam Watson, the guy who lost some of his own property in this.
01:34:24.800 --> 01:34:27.840
And they uh it goes in the Eastern District of Missouri.
01:34:28.000 --> 01:34:30.079
Court case is filed in 42.
01:34:30.399 --> 01:34:39.439
The middle of it, uh, again, they're trying to show that Rigby Valiant was corrupt, and the judge actually admonishes the uh federal prosecutors.
01:34:39.520 --> 01:34:42.560
Now, one of the things the government does is they they kind of play dirty.
01:34:42.640 --> 01:34:44.960
They're trying to show that the land is overvalued.
01:34:45.119 --> 01:34:47.520
And you can see that house there in the lower left.
01:34:47.600 --> 01:34:51.760
That's one of the examples that they used for a piece of property being overvalued.
01:34:51.840 --> 01:34:55.279
Now, they also kind of left out the fact that there's a bunch of land attached to it.
01:34:55.520 --> 01:35:03.279
The Mustiani family, again, they own the store and the undertaker and the garage and homes.
01:35:03.520 --> 01:35:11.920
But actually, the the one that they did their test case on for the federal government, they was actually some bottom land down by Hamburg where nothing was built on it.
01:35:12.000 --> 01:35:14.800
So really the government was trying to stack the deck against the people.
01:35:14.880 --> 01:35:16.640
But it didn't work at district court.
01:35:16.800 --> 01:35:24.960
Now it goes to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, December 43, and actually the appeals court decided uh sides with the government.
01:35:25.279 --> 01:35:30.479
And um basically they thought that the 5% fee structure was excessive.
01:35:30.560 --> 01:35:36.479
Now, something else is going on with our Newton McDowell because he doesn't get paid like he's supposed to.
01:35:36.880 --> 01:35:40.640
He ends up dissolving his corporation in 1942.
01:35:41.359 --> 01:35:46.319
Uh, he's already laid out all this money and hired all these people, and he's not getting paid.
01:35:46.560 --> 01:35:48.880
So his company actually goes under.
01:35:49.199 --> 01:35:57.600
And we and I discovered that because there was a case up in Macon County, Missouri, where one of his vehicles got into a car wreck and they sued.
01:35:58.079 --> 01:36:08.640
And by the time it makes it to appeals court, the the appeal is in 1943, and it's that like, can you sue a defunct company for the car accident injuries?
01:36:08.800 --> 01:36:13.439
And they came back, and that's how I figured out his company was under, had gone under by then.
01:36:14.079 --> 01:36:18.960
So uh so the US Supreme Court actually takes the case.
01:36:19.279 --> 01:36:32.560
So uh Muscani versus United States is argued, it's actually bookended by the Koromatsu versus United States case, which is the one about the uh the internment camps of the the Japanese folks.
01:36:32.800 --> 01:36:44.159
So that case, the the the internment case is actually argued before and released after the arguments for the uh the the Weldon Spring case.
01:36:44.399 --> 01:36:46.880
So they actually side five to three.
01:36:46.960 --> 01:36:51.439
Uh they rebuke the government for not paying a legal contract, they don't like the terms of it.
01:36:51.680 --> 01:36:56.960
Uh so it's argued in 45 and released in uh February of 19.
01:36:58.079 --> 01:37:05.439
Argued in November 44 and released in November of I'm sorry, this February of 1945 is when it actually comes out.
01:37:05.600 --> 01:37:07.359
So orders the paying other residents.
01:37:07.439 --> 01:37:12.880
No, the the the the residents are like, you need to give us interest because we have lost money over the years.
01:37:13.119 --> 01:37:18.000
And there's some charts on there that shows how much how much they actually lost.
01:37:18.720 --> 01:37:25.199
Uh just from inflation, it's about, you know, uh, let's see here.
01:37:26.239 --> 01:37:29.760
Well,$32.55 out of$155.
01:37:30.159 --> 01:37:32.319
And that's based upon the inflation during the war years.
01:37:32.399 --> 01:37:35.359
Plus, then you throw in the attorney fees, the 10% and all that.
01:37:35.520 --> 01:37:39.439
They they got if they if they had optioned for$155, they got$97.
01:37:41.039 --> 01:37:47.199
And you can see the uh in the interest that would have given them on the right.
01:37:47.359 --> 01:37:53.119
Those are the different uh interest rates that were from the Federal Reserve during that time frame.
01:37:53.439 --> 01:37:55.279
So it would have helped them some.
01:37:55.760 --> 01:38:05.359
Um so the government starts paying people in 1945, but immediately they go after Arney McDowell to the lean on any money that he may make on it.
01:38:05.439 --> 01:38:11.520
They are after this guy from start to finish.
01:38:11.680 --> 01:38:14.159
They just do not like him for whatever reason.
01:38:14.479 --> 01:38:17.359
And he he ends up getting nothing out of this.
01:38:20.319 --> 01:38:23.199
So the plant closes in August of 1945.
01:38:23.359 --> 01:38:31.119
They do a production slowdown after VE day, and they they button up everything in uh after VJ Day.
01:38:31.279 --> 01:38:34.720
Um and they've already closed the plant one time, so they know how to do this.
01:38:34.800 --> 01:38:36.239
It's not hard for them.
01:38:36.319 --> 01:38:38.560
They've already done it recently.
01:38:38.720 --> 01:38:51.199
And then Atlas is a responsibility in November 45, and they remove the fences in uh 1946, and people can actually get back to see their family cemeteries, things like that.
01:38:51.439 --> 01:38:59.039
Um, so then there's lots of questions about what's gonna happen to this land, and it's declared excess property in December of 45.
01:38:59.199 --> 01:39:06.960
The property owners have already been paid by this point, so there's really no question that they're gonna get anything back because they're already settled with.
01:39:07.119 --> 01:39:15.920
Uh, there is there are there's one or two letters in the files about veterans who asked for their their property back, but again, it just gets completely ignored.
01:39:16.000 --> 01:39:25.600
Now, our Newton McDowell dies in 1946, and there's actually a court case that doesn't get resolved for his corporation until 1947 that I found.
01:39:25.840 --> 01:39:34.399
So uh I think this really just kind of broke him and definitely broke his business, but he's buried in Marshall, Missouri up there.
01:39:34.560 --> 01:39:36.880
So, what do you do with the TNT plant?
01:39:38.319 --> 01:39:45.920
So, this gentleman from the MKT Rare, JD Kerr, uh, the uh he's actually given a proposal from the St.
01:39:46.079 --> 01:39:48.800
Louis Chamber of Commerce, a flashy proposal.
01:39:48.960 --> 01:39:59.600
He flies to London and presents it to the United Nations headquarters, which is looking for a place to build their new international uh location.
01:39:59.680 --> 01:40:01.760
Where are they gonna operate the UN out of?
01:40:01.840 --> 01:40:04.159
Because at that point it was based out of London.
01:40:04.399 --> 01:40:09.600
So he goes and proposes uh that they build the United Nations headquarters in Weldon Spring, Missouri.
01:40:09.680 --> 01:40:18.239
And I uh had Google Jim and I draw that United Nations headquarters image there with the Daniel Boone Bridge behind it and the Missouri River, everything in it.
01:40:18.319 --> 01:40:20.079
And that flew like a lead zapline.
01:40:20.640 --> 01:40:28.399
And uh they chose the clearly inferior site of New York City to build a UN headquarters, which I'm sure they still regret today.
01:40:28.560 --> 01:40:46.319
And then in 1950, the uh Air Force Academy was looking for a site, and there were a bunch of locations in Missouri that wanted it, so they kind of rebaked this UN headquarters proposal and um uh and then tried to get the Air Force Academy built there.
01:40:46.560 --> 01:40:59.840
Again, I used Google Gemini to put the Air Force Cadet Chapel there on the Missouri River, right by the Daniel Boone Bridge, and they uh F uh you know F-80 student shooting star flying over it and a little satellite in the sky.
01:41:00.000 --> 01:41:06.720
But again, that did not, and they chose the clearly inferior site of Colorado Springs in 1950.
01:41:06.800 --> 01:41:15.760
And they actually used a lot of the bunkers uh for civil defense training that were in the northern end of the property.
01:41:15.920 --> 01:41:23.920
Um, what was really funny is if they would have actually done this, the Francis House School District would have gotten screwed again.
01:41:24.479 --> 01:41:27.199
Uh and I haven't covered why, that's on the next slide.
01:41:27.439 --> 01:41:31.039
So what what do you do with a TNT plant?
01:41:31.279 --> 01:41:43.840
Well, the largest partial that gets sold off of the state of Missouri is the Augustus Busch Wildlife Area, the Bush family, Budweiser family, uh made a large donation, and that's the largest part of it.
01:41:43.920 --> 01:41:45.840
And they still have many storage bunkers.
01:41:45.920 --> 01:41:46.800
If you look at J.D.
01:41:46.880 --> 01:41:54.319
Hewitt's History Underground video, he's got one where he goes up and sees all those bunkers, they are all still there, as far as I know.
01:41:54.479 --> 01:42:10.159
A large person went to the University of Missouri as a research farm in the southern area, and some of that got sold off to become a research um, like a research park, which draws the ire of all the families, even to this day.
01:42:10.319 --> 01:42:12.800
No one got any land back, by the way.
01:42:13.199 --> 01:42:20.479
Um the housing area becomes Walden Spring Heights, uh, which is sold off at an auction in 1949.
01:42:20.560 --> 01:42:23.279
And and there's it's a very hard neighborhood to get in.
01:42:23.439 --> 01:42:30.800
Usually, like maybe one home will come up for sale every couple years, um, because it's so idyllic back there.
01:42:31.039 --> 01:42:37.439
Consolidated school district number two gets its Miller Elementary School back when they actually get to open it as a school.
01:42:37.760 --> 01:42:47.119
And then uh in 1949, the former administrator of the plant is gifted to the school district and becomes Francis Howell High School in 1950.
01:42:47.760 --> 01:42:53.760
And uh again, that's the former plan building there on the lower right that has now become the school.
01:42:53.840 --> 01:42:58.720
And the cafeteria for the plant was used as a cafeteria in some of the housing areas.
01:42:59.039 --> 01:43:06.399
The barracks areas were used as offices or maybe housing for um some of the teachers, things like that.
01:43:06.560 --> 01:43:24.079
And so the training the area where the production area is located still has a lot of the buildings through the 50s, so they go and they uh decontaminate the site by burning the buildings in place, and some of those actually blow up as part of the process.
01:43:24.960 --> 01:43:34.479
Um and in 1960, the Weldon Spring Army Reserve Training Center gets formed, and again, 1975, that becomes the uh birthplace of World War II reenacting.
01:43:34.640 --> 01:43:36.319
So okay.
01:43:37.119 --> 01:43:45.840
And as if things are not bad enough there, they build in 1958 the Weldon Spring Uranium Feed Metal or Materials Plant.
01:43:45.920 --> 01:43:54.800
So this is built on production lines one and two, and they enrich yellow cake uranium uh into nuclear weapons grade uranium.
01:43:54.960 --> 01:44:01.119
So this plant operates for about a roughly about a decade, and it literally closes overnight.
01:44:01.279 --> 01:44:03.680
And there's beakers on tables, things like that.
01:44:03.760 --> 01:44:11.760
And I remember this being there because this wasn't removed until the 90s, and it was creepy AF driving by there.
01:44:12.000 --> 01:44:20.239
Uh, there's some ponds there that are just full of stuff, and they put all this hazardous waste and barrels down at the rock quarry that they used to build the plant.
01:44:20.399 --> 01:44:31.199
Now, Malencraw actually looked into the possibility of building or creating Agent Orange there in 1968, which would complete the trifecta for the site.
01:44:31.520 --> 01:44:39.439
TNT, nuclear weapons, and agent orange, but it was found to be too hot, so they chose not to do it.
01:44:39.680 --> 01:44:58.159
Now, the Francis House high school folks uh claim there's a lot of health issues that they have gained from this because the the plant was not that far, maybe a quarter mile, half a mile at the most from the from where the nuclear plant was located.
01:44:58.800 --> 01:45:00.560
So what happens to it?
01:45:00.800 --> 01:45:05.600
Um it gets closed for about a decade and becomes Missouri's Chernobyl.
01:45:05.760 --> 01:45:13.359
And so they collapse the weapons plant in on itself, and they actually go in the TNT area and they remove a bunch of remaining contaminants as well.
01:45:13.520 --> 01:45:18.800
And they all put it in this large 40-acre, 75-foot-tall containment cell.
01:45:20.000 --> 01:45:21.840
And you can actually go on top of it.
01:45:21.920 --> 01:45:25.840
There's stairwells that you can go up there, and there's a seating area up there.
01:45:26.079 --> 01:45:33.039
And then a few years ago, they built this lovely visitor center, which has the museum in it that JD went and visited.
01:45:33.199 --> 01:45:38.239
There's uh some classrooms, and then they do all sorts of school programs about conservation, wildlife.
01:45:38.319 --> 01:45:43.439
They do some on the TNT era, the families, and also a lot on the Nicoder era as well.
01:45:43.680 --> 01:45:48.560
So it's actually a really, really nice, and they do a lot of school stuff there.
01:45:49.439 --> 01:46:01.199
So um in the 1960s, the families started having reunions, and I went to their reunion back uh in June for the TNT folks.
01:46:01.439 --> 01:46:08.000
Uh they get together every year and uh rekindle their friendships of all of the things that were lost there.
01:46:08.079 --> 01:46:12.159
So it's uh pretty amazing after so many years that they still do this.
01:46:12.479 --> 01:46:16.319
So that's that's kind of the story.
01:46:16.800 --> 01:46:22.239
That's just that's a crazy family legacy to to kind of have for these people who are having these reunions.
01:46:22.399 --> 01:46:28.000
And it's just I the whole thing is just from top to bottom just kind of crazy.
01:46:28.399 --> 01:46:38.079
I mean, we hear all the time, you know, you know, the war helped end the depression, provide jobs, and and yet here people are still getting ripped off on their properties and everything else.
01:46:38.239 --> 01:46:45.199
Just it's not surprising, but it's definitely a a nice, unique look into some of the history that happened here on the home front during the time.
01:46:45.439 --> 01:47:00.479
Yeah, and and some of the crazy things about this, you know, people are getting kicked off the land and then they're working in the TNT plan, or maybe they're going off and joining the military and have all these sort of complicated feelings about what's occurred to them and their families.
01:47:00.880 --> 01:47:08.640
It is amazing they didn't have more fire or explosions, considering 98% of your workforce is probably two packaday smokers.
01:47:09.119 --> 01:47:09.520
Yeah.
01:47:09.760 --> 01:47:11.920
Well, I mean, that's that's why you had the guards.
01:47:12.000 --> 01:47:12.159
Yeah.
01:47:12.319 --> 01:47:17.279
There's there there was a certain line that the guards would check, would really shake people down.
01:47:17.680 --> 01:47:22.479
And I think people understood that you know this could go horribly awry really, really quick.
01:47:22.720 --> 01:47:26.560
Uh, there were some interesting memos in the files.
01:47:26.640 --> 01:47:47.680
I got about 400 pages from National Archives on it, and there's some correspondence going back and forth between the MKT Railroad and the plant about where you can bring in steam engines, and they have to have spark arrestors, and we can only have so many cars sitting, and there's some discussion about where do you build the fire plant, the fire department building.
01:47:47.840 --> 01:47:53.279
Uh, do you build it too close to the rail yard or one of the production lines because it might blow up?
01:47:53.600 --> 01:47:54.479
Things like that.
01:47:54.640 --> 01:47:57.920
So it's there's there's a there's a lot going on here.
01:47:58.159 --> 01:48:03.039
Wasn't it just last year, the year before, that a fireworks plant in Tennessee or something blew up?
01:48:03.199 --> 01:48:06.000
One of their compounds blew up, Texas, maybe something like that.
01:48:06.159 --> 01:48:06.640
Yeah, somewhere.
01:48:06.720 --> 01:48:08.880
I just know the whole building just vanished.
01:48:09.039 --> 01:48:10.960
Like just a footprint.
01:48:11.680 --> 01:48:15.840
Yeah, well, they lost one of their production buildings in April of 1942.
01:48:16.399 --> 01:48:24.720
So, um, but they did get that Army Navy E by uh fall of 42, which meant that they turned it around.
01:48:24.800 --> 01:48:28.880
I don't know if somebody got fired or their safety guy got fired.
01:48:28.960 --> 01:48:31.039
I would hope so after all of that.
01:48:31.680 --> 01:48:33.520
But they they definitely turned it around.
01:48:33.600 --> 01:48:45.840
And this this was consistently one of the largest producers of TNT, and that's one of the reasons why it got shut down during that time frame because you could make the biggest impact by closing one plant.
01:48:46.000 --> 01:48:46.479
Sure.
01:48:46.720 --> 01:48:48.880
And keep all the other ones in operation.
01:48:50.159 --> 01:48:53.840
Well, that's gonna wrap it up for this episode of the What's the Skullbot podcast.
01:48:53.920 --> 01:48:55.439
Before we go, Tim, where can people find you?
01:48:55.520 --> 01:48:58.560
What's your socials, your websites, and all those good links and areas?
01:48:59.039 --> 01:49:03.359
Uh yeah, I'm I'm showing the uh uh QR code.
01:49:03.439 --> 01:49:04.079
You can go there.
01:49:04.159 --> 01:49:08.319
That would be on my author's page on uh lulu.com.
01:49:08.399 --> 01:49:09.279
It's available there.
01:49:09.359 --> 01:49:13.279
I have it for sale on eBay, and it'll eventually go into distribution.
01:49:13.359 --> 01:49:14.640
It's just not quite there yet.
01:49:14.800 --> 01:49:18.720
But there's a soft copy, hard copy, and ebook available.
01:49:18.960 --> 01:49:25.279
And as always, we'll have links and photos and everything available over at WTSPworldwar 2.com.
01:49:25.439 --> 01:49:33.600
This was Do Our Part, the Tragic Tale of the Weldon Spring Ordinance Works by Tim Shearer for myself, Dennis, and Jeff, who's not here this week.
01:49:33.760 --> 01:49:36.800
Thank you guys so much, and we'll talk to you all next week.
01:49:37.039 --> 01:49:40.560
This has been a digital for Tim production.