About 3,000 prefab homes were brought in for the workers Oak Ridge. Submitted photo

Time and time again, people have proven that no matter how small their beginning, they may make a big impact. In the case of Jennie E. Bean, her impact was far-reaching.

She was born Dec. 29, 1922 in the tiny town of Warsaw, Ill. located on the Mississippi River.

“Sometimes we would see airplanes following the Mississippi River. We later learned that was the way Charles Lindbergh flew his plane filled with mail from St. Louis to Chicago,” she says. “He would follow the Mississippi River to Burlington and then follow the railroad tracks that came from Chicago to Burlington and on west.”

Her father did diversified farming and raised veal calves, even though times were bad for farmers. Young Jennie saw seven or eight years that resembled the plague mentioned in the Bible.

“One year grasshoppers came in clouds and ate the cornstalks down to the ground. Another year we stayed home from church because we heard clinch bugs were coming. You could see how black the ground was as they approached,” she conveyed. “Dad plowed wide, deep furrows and poured buckets of tar-like stuff but the insects just crossed over the tar and ate field crops right down to the ground. Another year there was no rain. It was a genuine drought and nothing grew. Then a dust storm came all the way from western states. We nailed wet sheets over our windows. When one dust storm reached Washington, D.C., the government finally realized how serious the problem was. I also remember the 18-year locusts that ate all of the leaves off our trees.”

Jennie Bean and her children Nancy and David. Submitted photo

“The Depression hit them very hard,” said her daughter, Nancy Callahan.

“My mother came from a wealthy family but she took the Depression very well. She found ways to get through it,” said the 96-year old woman. “She made butter and cottage cheese and dressed chickens to sell. She could take a chicken and wring its neck. She had a garden and canned early when others weren’t canning. We were never without food.”

“Many farmers became angry as banks foreclosed but my parents were always so grateful to Mr. Phillips, President of Warsaw Bank, because he would wait until calves were ready for market and allow them to make their mortgage payment a month late,” she said.

Being the child of a farmer, she milked cows, helped separate cream, made a special feed mix for the pigs and taught the calves to drink from a bucket. She even drove the horse in the fields while preparing the ground for planting.

Living near a rural town with a population of just a few hundred, she was the only student in her grade in the one-room schoolhouse.

C. Thomas Bean II PHd at his desk at Ashland Petroleum Company. Submitted photo

“We all really enjoyed each other and playing together. We had endless games to play,” she reminisces. “We played Run, Sheep, Run and Clap In, Clap Out.”

Her class size grew when she moved up to seventh grade and began traveling to Hamilton, where she joined 34 other classmates.

“My husband always teased that I could brag I was the smartest in the class until seventh grade.”

She tells about her older brother riding a blind horse six miles to the high school. By the time his sister entered Hamilton High School, “things got better.” The families took turns taking the four or five children in her area to school. Some drove cars and one man took them in a truck on which he had built “a little shed.”

She was an honors student and earned a scholarship to Western Illinois University, which covered her entire tuition. During the first year, she cleaned and cooked for a wealthy family in exchange for room and board, but had to walk a mile each way to the university. After that, she was able to live in a small dorm where she could cook her meals which was easy for someone striving to achieve degrees in Home Economics and General Science.

Jennie E. Bean was the first female lab technician hired in the 1940s for the Manhattan Project which led to the creation of the first atomic bomb. Photo by Beverly Kehe-Rowland

Meeting C. Thomas Bean II in the chemistry lab resulted in their eventual marriage, which took place on May 6, 1944, four days before she graduated.

“The neighbors pitched in with wild cherry branches and Aunt Hazel fixed the dinner and the cake. It was very, very nice,” she said referring to their wedding.

After a honeymoon weekend in Chicago, the new groom went to Lawrence, Kansas where he had an assistantship at the University of Kansas. His bride went back to her last four days of school. A letter arrived from her high school principal offering a teaching job, which she declined.

Mr. Bean’s professors encouraged him to go to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to work on the Manhattan Project, the project which developed the atomic bomb. His wife returned to her parents’ home in Warsaw while she awaited clearance from the FBI allowing her to join her husband at the secret military project. Oak Ridge was surrounded by a fence, with armed guards posted at the entrances. The newlyweds lived in separate dormitories while they awaited the production and construction of their home, an early pre-fab house that came in two sections.

“They hauled them in by the hundreds. One day there were no houses and the next day there were many. It grew so fast, there were mud streets and boardwalks.”

The couple saw little of each other due to working opposite shifts, but when they did have time off, they visited the Smoky Mountains or Knoxville. Mrs. Bean was the first female lab technician on the Manhattan Project. She trained other young women to do the mystery job of extracting and purifying uranium.”

“They needed all the girls they could get. The batches were coming in fast and furious,” she explains. “They didn’t know what they were working on. They just called the product tea. It was top-secret. People didn’t realize it was part of the war effort.”

She may not have known what she was working with, but learned there was something very special about the mystery liquid when she was involved in an accident.

“One of the extractors super-heated. I hurried as fast as I could across the room but it sprayed all over me. I washed my hair twice. They checked with the Geiger counter after each time,” she recalled. “They even drilled the spots on the floor where it had spilled (to make use of all of the uranium).

“My boss didn’t even know what would happen with so much uranium in the room.”

The Beans remained with the Project for 18 months, staying until the job was done. They witnessed the uranium leaving in the back of cars when headed for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

“It was sent in powder form. We were one of the first to hear that it worked when they tested it.”

When they received word that the bomb had been dropped in Japan, the scientists and workers involved in the mystery project shed tears, because they didn’t know this was President Truman’s plan.

The couple did not sign a paper releasing their employer of any responsibility should they have health issues later in life, even though they had been encouraged to do so.

“Just as quick as we could, we moved back to Lawrence, Kansas.”

She worked in the University library while her husband continued his education, receiving his doctorate. Dr. Bean took a job in New Jersey, but was terminated when his wife was nine months pregnant. They then moved to Niagara Falls, N.Y., so Bean could work for Hooker Chemical Corp.

Apartments were scarce prompting Dr. Bean to wait at the newspaper office in order to grab a newspaper hot off the press.

“He called and got an upper flat,” said the wife.

They remained in Niagara Falls for many years, with Bean retiring sometime after Occidental Chemical bought Hooker Chemical. He started a second career with Ashland Chemical Corp., causing them to move to Ashland, Ky.

When they were able to travel, they traveled north and south, east and west in the United States and Canada. They enjoyed numerous manmade sites such as the Gateway Arch, Mount Rushmore, the Golden Gate Bridge and the monuments of Washington, D.C., and just as many God-made wonders like the Grand Canyon, Lake Louise, Mammoth Cave and Yellowstone National Park.

“We were like little kids. We wanted to see everything. After one long trip, 9,000 miles in a little Toyota, the car wouldn’t start the morning after we got home.”

Dr. Bean enjoyed photography.

“And he was very good at it,” she proudly stated.

His wife enjoyed collecting special varieties of rocks.

“At the time, geodes were found in three places and Hamilton, Ill. was one of the places.”

She still enjoys pulling out a few boxes of the rocks she chose to save when she moved to her current home.

“She was a wonderful homemaker and a volunteer with Meals on Wheels for 40 years,” said her daughter.

The couple took pleasure in doing mission work. They especially enjoyed their time spent volunteering at a children’s camp. They were also volunteers for Habitat For Humanity. She enjoyed participating in a women’s group. She also taught quilting and made her own wardrobe, as well as her daughter’s clothing and wedding gown.

“She sewed everything I wore growing up and even made a sleeping bag,” says Mrs. Callahan.

At 90, the avid sewer bought a sewing machine, replacing the one she had to retire.

The couple’s son, David Bean, is retired and living in North Carolina. Mrs. Callahan lives in Randolph. They have six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Dr. Bean died on Jan. 21, 2007 at the age of 87. Jennie moved to Lutheran Home’s Hultquist Place where she remains active by participating in an exercise group three times each week and helping where ever she can with the many activities provided.