E
KENTUCKY’S
KING
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
PREVIOUS PAGE: TOBY JORRIN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (MCCONNELL); DHUSS/GETTY IMAGES (CAPITOL)
PADUCAH, KY. —
VER SINCE THE U.S. government’s uranium
enrichment plant started hiring in 1951, there
has been a Buckley helping to run it. Before his
sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandson clocked
in, Fred Buckley, now 86, would travel three
hours a day from his home in West Tennessee to
make $1.46 per hour as a plant security guard.
It felt to Buckley like he was
back in the Army, working with
a close-knit group of men on a
secret mission. He’d served in
World War II — after a few weeks
of basic training, he ended up on
the front lines at the Battle of the
Bulge. He rose quickly from infantryman to staff sergeant to squad
leader. The job at the plant promised the safety of a stable income
and a sense of purpose at the
dawn of the Cold War. One month
before he started, the first of his
two sons was born.
It seemed like Paducah was being reborn too. As new workers
from neighboring Illinois, Ohio
and Tennessee showed up, the
small city in Western Kentucky
faced a housing shortage. “So
many people came in, you know?”
Buckley told The Huffington Post.
“Anything that had a roof on it
— chicken house, any kind of outbuilding, they were in it.”
Room rates tripled until local officials imposed rent control.
Home construction blanketed the
city, while trailer parks rose up on
cinder blocks throughout the surrounding county. More than 1,100
homes were built while Buckley
waited for his chance to move to
the Paducah area. After more than
six years, he found a one-story,
two-bedroom white frame house
on a corner lot off Highway 60,
just three miles from the plant.
He still lives there today.
The flood of well-paid men had