SANDIA HISTORY/ARCHIVES PROGRAM

NEWSLETTER

Unlimited Distribution
SAND2000-2305

September 2000

Sandia and Albuquerque
It is not easy for younger employees to visualize what Sandia and Albuquerque were like from the late 1940s through the subsequent two decades. But then that's our job here at the Corporate History/Archives Program--to help the Sandians of today look back and try to understand the very different Labs and community of years past. Of course, none of us were here at the time--in 1952, for example, your Corporate Historian Carl Mora was still in a New York City high school and New Mexico was nonexistent in his mind. But over the summer Carl interviewed a number of remarkable Sandians, now retired, who provided a very personal and vivid glimpse of those vanished days. This work forms part of the ongoing research for Volume II of Sandia's administrative and technical history.

Albuquerque, 1959

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear (the mid 1950s) when Albuquerque's eastern and northern limits ended at San Pedro and Lomas. Beyond was barren sun-baked land just waiting to appreciate. In those days, city residents went downtown (specifically, Central Avenue between the railroad tracks and around 9th Street) for shopping, entertainment, and socializing. Between the Wyoming gate and Central Avenue (historic Route 66) there was nothing much besides bare open land occasionally animated by tumbleweeds. Along Route 66 between San Pedro and Tijeras, there were occasional gas stations, motels, and strip businesses to accommodate motorists passing through Albuquerque. Kirtland AFB, Sandia Base, and Sandia itself were quite isolated from the city, and many Sandians still lived on base housing but were starting to buy homes in the rapidly growing new subdivisions in the Northeast Heights.

World War II brought new military and research facilities to what had been a small, rather sleepy, Southwestern city. The great infusion of people associated with these facilities in the postwar years created a water crisis. There were simply not enough wells tapping into the plentiful subterranean Rio Grande aquifer to provide for all the new homes and base buildings. The existing City Commission, controlled by ex-governor Clyde Tingley and his supporters, was generally unresponsive to the utility needs of a growing city. So a number of Sandia employees saw the need to become involved in city government. In 1952 a group of Sandians that included Dick Bice and Ray Powell formed the Citizens Committee and ran a slate, which included Bice, of candidates for the City Commission. The reform group won handily and gained control of the City Commission from the Tingley incumbents. Dick Bice, as City Commissioner, devised a strategy to fund the expansion of the water system. From 1954 to 1958, 190 miles of water pipe were added to the system, and water shortages and rationing faded into the past. Traffic was eased as the result of the paving of 157 miles of streets. The city staff increased dramatically, with some departments more than doubling during these four years. And to pay for such improvements, new taxes were levied, the most significant of which was a one-cent sales tax.

Sandia Vice President Dick Bice was a city commissioner and is a well known supporter of city museums, having served on the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Albuquerque and as president of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History Foundation. In November 1977, Bice removed the first shovel of dirt at the ground breaking of the Albuquerque Museum. Museum Director Suzanne de Borhegyi observed while Mayor Harry Kinney applauded. Kinney himself was a Sandia engineer from 1956 until elected to the Mayor's office in 1973, serving two terms, 1973-1977 and 1981-1985.

After Dick Bice left the City Commission in 1962, Mayor Harry Kinney (an ex-Sandian, he served two terms as mayor, 1973-77 and 1981-1985) asked him to chair a Museum Advisory Committee because he knew of Bice's strong interest in creating a city history museum. The Albuquerque City Museum opened in its temporary quarters in the old airline terminal in 1967, and in 1979 moved to its present location in Old Town. Bice also was instrumental in obtaining funding for the Natural History Museum, which opened in 1986.