Fermilab founding director Robert Wilson signs the contract with the architectural and engineering company DUSAF in 1967.
In the early 1970s, many of us were working lots of overtime, about 12-hour days. One time, I’d come to work at 6:30 a.m. Thursday morning, worked until 6 or 7 at night, and had just gotten home when I got a phone call: “We need your help.”
It was about DUSAF, the engineering firm that designed the Main Ring, Linac and other conventional facilities.
The DUSAF organization was moving out of their Hinsdale offices, and the mover they’d hired had gone on strike. I was told that DUSAF had to move out by midnight or pay major penalties from the office building they were renting. I was asked if I could grab a vehicle and go to Hinsdale with anybody I could find to help move their stuff out. Others had already been called.
I had a cousin who was working here at the time. I picked him up, and we went to Fermilab and picked up a step van. When we arrived in Hinsdale, a moving van was already loaded, but nobody was doing anything with it. We went into the building where lots of odds and ends were still in the office building. Many people had come to help. It was a madhouse. Everyone just walked in the building, grabbed whatever they could, brought it out, threw it in a truck and drove it to the laboratory. There wasn’t much packing. Whatever you could get in the truck, we moved. I made one trip. Once we got back to Fermilab, I stayed to help sort and unload throughout the night.
We worked all day that Friday, till 5 p.m. We finally got them moved out.
That was probably the most overtime I’d ever gotten in my life.
George Davidson is the head of transportation services at Fermilab.