Job Title: Radiographer, Instructor
Plant: Y-12, X-10
Years Employed: 1954-2008
MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is June the 4th, 2017, and I am at my studio here in Oak Ridge with Mr. Benny Houser. Mr. Houser, thank you for coming by and talking with us.
HOUSER: Thank you very much for the invitation. I appreciate that.
MCDANIEL: Sure. Well, let’s start at the very beginning, your very beginning. Tell me where you were born and raised, something about your family.
HOUSER: Well, I was born November the 18th, 1935, in a little community off of Chapman Highway, between Knoxville and Seymour, called Neubert Springs. My grandfather and grandmother lived there, and several of my immediate relatives. My grandpa had 13 children and a big farm.
MCDANIEL: Yeah.
HOUSER: Grandpa was a truck farmer, came to Knoxville each Saturday and sold produce on Market Square. My dad taught at several schools in that area in the beginning, and then in 1940, he got a job as an accountant with Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America, and we moved there.
MCDANIEL: In 1940?
HOUSER: Yes.
MCDANIEL: Okay.
HOUSER: I went to school in Alcoa at Springbrook Grammar School for eight years. After I’d finished my eighth year, Alcoa was in the process of building a facility in Port Lavaca, Texas, and my dad was transferred out there, so my mom and I moved out there with him, and I went to high school my first two years there in Port Lavaca, Texas.
