Sandia's Golden Jubilee

Queen Victoria was another famous institution that also celebrated a Golden Jubilee, and went on to have a Diamond Jubilee (Sandia's will be in 2009).

     For its part, the Sandia Archives/History team is supporting these 50th anniversary events by providing research and archival materials. To commemorate Sandia's 50th anniversary, Research Historian Rebecca Ullrich compiled a 1999 calendar based on Sandia's history, which was distributed to all active and retired Sandians. Another A&H team effort was its ever-popular table at the 1999 Retiree Picnic at the Coronado Club in May; retirees celebrated Sandia's birthday while perusing small exhibits from the Corporate Archives and helping us identify people and events in old photographs.

     Another significant Sandia anniversary/milestone also occurs this year: The 25th anniversary of Sandia's participation in the WIPP project and the first shipment of radioactive transuranic waste to the site on March 26, 1999. Later this year, the definitive historical account of Sandia's role in this significant and controversial project will be published. Written by Corporate Historian Carl J. Mora, Sandia and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, 1974-1999 (SAND99-1482) is based on primary documents (from the days when people still painstakingly typed letters and memos, and didn't discard them after a few months), interviews with many of the original participants in the project, and newspaper accounts. the principal source and inspiration for this history has been, of course, the Sultan of Salt himself, Wendell Weart, whose long association with WIPP achieved such a well-deserved closure this year.