We moved to a new home in a new town in the spring when I was ten. We kids faced new schools and new friends, never entering Dad’s home office, and did not know who hung up when one of us answered the phone. One Saturday morning, I took the opportunity to play along when the person on the phone didn’t hang up.

“Is your father home?” he asked.

“You’re supposed to hang up if one of us kids answers the phone,” I said.

“Yes, I know, but it’s important to find out if your father is working on the questionnaire.”

“What questionnaire?”

“If you check on his desk and tell me if it’s there, no one will know.”

“We aren’t supposed to go in the office. Who are you?”

“Look, kid, my grade depends on this.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“There are no days off when you’re a graduate student.”

I had a sense of the different types of college students from when we lived near Keene State College and all our babysitters were college students, so I knew that college students could have Saturday classes.

He pleaded with me to check, stressing how important it was for him to get an answer. Phone to my ear, I stood outside the glass-fronted office door, straining to see any pen marks on the document at the center of the desk. Dad grabbed the phone from me as I weighed the pros and cons of going in for an up-close look. He spoke in his quietly angry voice that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I heard him say that the young man had overstepped the rules. The office door closed, and Mom shooed me outside.

The next day, Dad acted like the office hadn’t been off-limits for three months. The door was open, and the desk was clear and paper-free.

Years later, we learned he was being interviewed about his father, the grandfather we never knew, and his father’s work as an engineer on the Manhattan Project. It took a Freedom of Information Act request to find out that Dad had also worked on the Manhattan Project.

This is one of the stories of my family, WWII, and the Manhattan Project.