He built up a paper route for the Minneapolis Star so big that the manager made him give up half of it. He almost froze his feet once while out delivering the paper in the evening. I can remember my mother trying to bring back the circulation in his feet.
Then Fred worked at the Italian Bakery in Virginia, Minnesota and would bring home his lard-soaked aprons every week for my mother to boil. That's the only way you could get the grease
out. He would also get some of the day-old bakery to bring home, but not much, as these were
depression days.
The war came, Fred tried to join up, but he was too thin, so he was rejected. He worked his
way through the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, every bit of way with no help from any source. He made friends with the guy who trucked the Minneapolis Star up to the Range, and would get a free ride home with him quite often. But he hitch-hiked back, I think.
He was selected by the government to work on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago where they were secretly working on plans for developing the first atomic bomb.
Then he went to Tennessee where the work was continued at the National Laboratory in a brand new city named Oak Ridge. You couldn't enter without a pass. The story goes that once he dropped some plutonium on the floor at the lab, so that part of the floor had to be cut out. His shoes were now radio-active, too, so he had to part with them.
Fred worked at the Oak Ridge National Lab for many years where research was done on many projects to help humanity. He eventually went into buying and developing land. He formed the Emory Valley Corporation and built many houses and
office buildings. Fred has been gone now for four or five years, and the company is managed by his family members. For information about that company you can use Google.
He certainly was a brother to be proud of.
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