Former K-25 workers happy with first reunion

Parish and Pam Toon were the organizers of the event, which was held near the K-25 History Center.

“I was hoping we’d get half this number, so we were very happy and pleased,” Parish said about the turnout.

The people who worked at K-25 were happy with the event as well.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Dave Whitehead said. “We haven’t seen some of these people in 20 years.”

Lloyd and Stacy Jollay said they watched interest in the reunion grow on social media in the weeks leading up to the event.

“I wasn’t shocked,” Lloyd said about the turnout. “A lot of people are nostalgic about it.”

“There’s been so much enthusiasm about it,” Stacy added. “It’s been great to see.”

The Jollays met when they were workers at K-25 and have been married for more than 30 years.

“We’re glad to come back,” Stacy said. “It’s the best job we’ve ever had, our first great adult job. It’s a special place to us.”

K-25 had an important role in U.S. and World history thanks to its uranium enrichment processes during World War II and the Cold War.

“All the people you see here, they were the backbone of this place when it was running,” Whitehead said.

“The country doesn’t realize all the contributions that were made out here because everything was so secret.”

Several former K-25 plant managers spoke during Saturday’s event.

“I want to tell you that for five-and-a-half decades I’ve been all around this country working at these sites,” Harold Conner said. “You won’t find a finer group of people than are here today and that have worked at this K-25 site.”

Those comments drew a round of applause from the crowd.

“We had a vision of this site — why it’s here, why it was so important, not only to us but to the world,” Conner said. “The things that we accomplished in the uranium enrichment business, we worked as a team.”

Conner said workers at the site encouraged each other, no matter what department they worked in.

“Engineering, facility safety, nuclear safety, operations, operations analysis, maintenance, we were all one family,” he told the crowd. “We didn’t distinguish any one from the other. We demonstrated the model that we wanted for this site and I think all of you are examples of how great the site became.”

Parish said uranium enrichment operations ceased at the K-25 building in 1985.

“Then we went into environmental cleanup mode with the last building coming down in 2020 during COVID,” he said. “This is the first celebration since then.”

The next K-25 Reunion has already been scheduled for April 26, 2025.

“I think we can even do better,” Parish said about turnout for the next reunion. “This one was really pulled together in about six to eight weeks.”