Five years ago, the Solway Bridge was renamed as a tribute to Herman Postma, longtime director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and at the time someone -- I think it was lab spokesman Billy Stair -- said something to the effect that people would remember Postma and recall his work each time they passed over that bridge. I think I used it in a story at the time. Funny, I remember somebody suggesting that the quote was a bit of hyperbole, artificially constructed, but my experience is that it's proved true.

I've crossed many memorial bridges in my lifetime, as most folks have, and never paid them a moment's thought. If you don't know the person whose name is on the sign, they don't mean much. If you do, however, the sign can spark a memory, and almost every time I cross the Herman Postma bridge I recall something about the man. I guess that's just the way it works.

I've known several lab directors over the past 30 years or so and have respected and admired them all for different things. But, as a newspaper reporter, I'm sure my perspective is a bit unusual. By the nature of the relationship, there has to be a bit of distance. At the same time, as a journalist, I'm able -- indeed, expected -- to ask questions that other folks wouldn't dare. So there can be some remarkable moments.

Postma absolutely bristled at some of the environmental questions being asked in the 1980s, when the entire Dept. of Energy complex was coming under fire for the nasty legacies of Cold War research and production. On one occasion, the ORNL director suggested he would be happy to drink the water from White Oak Lake -- which received the brunt of the lab's discharges and which was characterized at the time as the nation's, if not the world's, most radioactively polluted body of water -- if not for the goose droppings that sullied the water quality.

Further, Postma pointed to my shirt pocket, which carried a pack of cigarettes (yes, I smoked at the time), and impolitely noted that I had a lot of gall reporting about the environmental hazards of Oak Ridge while engaging in a habit of much greater health concerns.

I enjoyed the give and take of those exchanges, and I believe Postma did, too. Over the years, certainly in the years after he left the lab and ultimately after he retired, our relationship changed and became overtly friendly -- but always with a twist of lemon.

He was an enormously intelligent man, uniquely complex and interesting, and I miss him.

Posted by Frank Munger on July 9, 2010 at 8:53 PM |