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TI: What was Boeing's stance? Why were they so --

HM: Well, that was their policy at that time. And I was really fumed about the whole thing. And I took that whole week off. And then we got through with the funeral, and I went to, back to work on Tuesday. I skipped Monday. I told them I was sick. I was sick emotionally, I guess. So I went back, went back to work on Tuesday. And every one of us used to have one of these security things. And they changed it for mine so I couldn't get in the door. So I had to go through the lobby to the receptionist. And then, by that time this reception center called my group, and said, "Henry's back. Shall we let him in?" He says, "Yeah." So the guy come up to the front area, and he proceeded to bring me back to the work area. And the supervisor was there. And he says, "Wilkinson wants to see you in the project office."

TI: Who was Wilkinson?

HM: He was the head of the program. SRAM program. He was a part-Cherokee. And he felt kind of a kinship to the non-Caucasians. And he kind of favored me, really, on the good side. And when we used to have the staff meetings, we used to have them on, every Thursday. And I was the guy that used to collect all the data and have it documented and prepared for everybody to review. So I would go around, like on Tuesday, I would ask for the information, update information. And Wednesday I would collect it, and I got it reproduced. And then Thursday morning when they had the staff meeting every -- everybody had a copy and everybody was ready to go. Anyway, he knew me from that area. And he used to always have a couple of good words when we used to pass together. But he said, "Well, you know you lost your, your clearances." "What do you mean, lost my clearances?" He says, "Well, obviously you must have rubbed somebody the wrong way because they went to the AFPO office of the, air force personnel and operations office, the plant representative there. And he complained about what you had done. And they knocked off your top-secret and your crypto clearance and your atomic clearance." And, because this vehicle had a warhead on it. Anyway, he says, "You're off the project. We're going to have you go with the security guard and you're going to clean out your desk. And you're history here." And Micklewaite was the guy that did that. So anyway, I cleaned out my desk --

TI: And the project director couldn't do anything?

HM: No. He couldn't do anything. He says, "If you lose your clearance, automatically you can't handle the data because you're doing high-level stuff." And he says, "I'm sorry." And he apologized for it. But that was it. So I asked him, "Where am I supposed to go?" He says, "I don't know." He said, "Why don't you go to personnel and find out?" Anyway, I got really ticked off at that. That was one of the things that really irritated me, the way they treated people that were on assignment that were deceased. So I wrote a nasty letter to Bill Allen and that company.

TI: And Bill Allen was the president at that time?

HM: Yes. He was the president. And I wrote a cc to Micklewaite, saying, "This is not a way to provide necessary functions for their employees that are fatally injured on assignment for Boeing." And I said what, what had happened. And anyway, I was floatin' around for a couple of days. I didn't know what they were going to do with me. And I guess that was another break point in how I felt about the Boeing company. Maybe we got to do something. I mean, you got to correct all these problem areas. And well, six months later they changed the policy on deceased persons. They did cover him regardless of what the accident, the circumstances of the accident, because if he's on assignment for Boeing they will cover him on all insurance, travel, and otherwise. And they will bring the body back. But that was six months later. But, I guess the letter to Allen did take effect, but it took a while to take effect.

TI: Did he ever acknowledge the letter? Did you ever hear anything back from Allen?

HM: No. He, they did send a note at the time I did send a letter to him that, Mr. Allen has received your correspondence and this kind of stuff. This is like a form letter. And so I knew he received the information. But, well, that put me in kind of a problem area because here I had been working on all these military programs, proposals first, and then we become the honcho group for the, for the SRAM program, and Smith was one of my, of my proposal managers, we had kind of migrated to this area. And all the guys I knew that I used to work with were -- a lot of them were in the SRAM program or in the proposal area. Because I got my classification stuff knocked off, well, I had no chance of going back in there. So I lost all kind of communication ability with those guys.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.