The Diary of Queen Mothy |
A Story From Oak Ridge written @ 10:27 PM on April 13, 2003 There was once a simple woman named Ellie who happened to be a brilliant commercial artist, i.e graphic designer. In 1939 she was living in rural California with her husband, Hugh, who was a scientist for the U.S. government. When they were first married, they were very happy. Hugh would go to work, he would come home. Sometimes he went on long trips relating to his work, but the longest he would have ever been gone were a few weekends out of the year. As time went on, however, Hugh seemed to go on more and more trips, especially on the weekends. One day there was a knock on the door. Ellie answered it and saw a man dressed in a black suit holding out a letter to her. Without saying a word, the man in the suit handed her the letter and departed. She looked at the letter; it was addressed to both her and her husband. The letter said something like this: You are to leave tomorrow morning at this time, at this airport gate, on this flight and go to New York. When you get there, there will be a car waiting for you, and they will take you to this restuarant at such-and-such an address. You are to walk through this entrance, proceed 100 paces to the back of the restaurant, and sit down with the men at the table. You will be home in California by tomorrow night. Understandably, Ellie was a bit concerned, and after debating the issue with her husband that evening-- he was insisting that she go-- she arrived in New York the next day using the specified directions. She had been a little nervous on the flight, as she hadn't really traveled by airplane before, and she was specifically taken by the motion of the propellor blades. She arrived in the restaurant and followed the directions. At the back table were three men; one was Albert Einstein. They had a meal together, expressed conventional politeness-- "How was your trip?" etc-- and finally, at the very end of their meeting, one of them said, "Now, Ellie. We're working on this big project, and we need a symbol for it. We've heard that you were a brilliant commercial artist. Can you draw it?" Having nothing to work with and being reminded at how fast the airplane propellors were going, she drew the symbol, that crucial image, on a napkin. One of the men snatched it and put it in the pocket of his suit. They thanked Ellie for joining them, that she could go home now. A little more than perplexed, she did go home to California that night. Some time passed; the odd trip passed into memory. Then another letter arrived; this was also addressed to Ellie and Hugh. The orders were brief: They were both to pack enough clothes and necessities as would be necessary. They were to catch this flight at this airport at this time, etc... They would be home in five years. Ellie was very scared, but Hugh assured her they had to do what they were told. And by the next day, they had arrived to Tennessee, some miles from Knoxville. They were being driven out there and met by armed guards in the middle of seemingly no where. And suddenly, out of the backwoods, emerged a metal gate protected by soldiers. Beyond the gate, an entire town that no one knew about was thriving. After passing through various security gates and settling in, they separated Ellie from her husband and brought her to a drafting room. Ellie, you see, was an excellent draftswoman. After waiting for ten minutes, a man came in and said, "Ellie, we need you to design something for us. It has these dimensions... this size... Have this thickness. You have ten minutes to do it. Go." So Ellie designed it within ten minutes. The man looked at it and said thank you, and then he left. And that was Ellie's life for the next five years. Everyday she would come into this room, draw for ten minutes, wait ten minutes, draw ten minutes, wait ten minutes-- over and over for five years. It was said she had drawn over 6,000 designs. Then in 1945, when the bomb over Hiroshima went off, Ellie had reached the horrible epiphany that what she had been drawing, designing, etc, had helped to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people she never knew. Her art killed. Art killed. It was said that she was so taken by the idea that she was the one responsible for the what happened in Japan that over the course of her lifetime she tried to kill herself over twenty times, as if her death would be a redemption for her artful murder. She was known in Oak Ridge as Crazy Ellie by the kids. I met the artist who used to deliver papers to her front door. One time she was walking through an art gallery some years ago, and she saw a simple drawing-- the artist told me he couldn't remember what the subject was-- hanging on the wall. In a sudden rage, she ripped it down, tore it to pieces, and broke down in wept in the middle of the crowded gallery. She died just a few years ago, on the very same night this artist opened an exhibition of his work he named after her. Just another story from Oak Ridge. Sam
A Bit of History ~ And Onward! L'Amour Toujours! - August 08, 2005 |
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