10-1  Jack P. & Diana R. Pierard

Jack completed Business College after his high school days in Bicknell and then was employed as the manager of the Uptown Theater, a popular Vaudeville/Movie establishment in Chicago.  Di held various department store clerk positions.  Coincidentally, they had both lived in the same apartment house where they met and were later married June 4, 1929.  Except for a two-year period in the late 1930s when Jack returned to southern Indiana to assist his recently widowed mother, they lived in Chicago, where they had two sons, Richard, born May 29, 1934, and Burton, born December 12, 1940.

Jack took his first defense job in summer 1943, where he worked on the construction of the Al-Can Highway as an accounting clerk in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.  After the completion of the highway project, Jack returned to Chicago in late November 1943 to spend the holidays with his family.  He then signed on for a second defense job, this time a secret project in the state of Washington.  After New Year’s, he purchased a trailer which he left with his car in Chicago, and boarded a train to the West.  On January 11, 1944 he started work at the Hanford Engineering Works as a Communications and Office Services clerk.  Di and the boys (with a hired driver since she didn’t drive) joined Jack at the Hanford Construction Camp on July 17, 1944 and lived in the huge trailer park.  As the construction phase wound down, Jack transferred to the plant’s operations.  The family then moved to a new “A” house in Richland Village on December 1, 1944. 

Jack performed a variety of tasks in Office Services, including managing the suggestions system, and he had risen to a key supervisory position when he passed away at the age of 59 on January 2, 1965.  From the time of his arrival in Richland he was the consummate community activist.  He headed up War Bond drives and fund-raisers for various charities (principally the Red Cross and Community Chest); served on the first Richland Community Advisory Council (forerunner of what later would be the City Council); was a founder and second president of the Co-Ordinate Club (a popular social club in Richland’s early years); organizer of the Officers Toastmasters Club; president of Villagers, Inc. (the grassroots group that published the Richland Villager newspaper, established the first Public Library, and supported other community activities like athletics); held various positions for The Richland Days celebrations like Parade Organizer and chairman of Ticket Sales; and even had time for membership in the Village Players (later the Richland Players, the community theatrical group that still exists) and the Masonic Lodge. In his later years he was heavily involved in the Columbia Basin Shrine Club.  A front-page article in the March 13, 1947 Richland Villager featured him as “the man who can’t say no.”   

Di also worked at the Project.  Shortly after the end of the war, she started work reading the radiation exposure badges that all employees in the radioactive areas were required to wear.  Later, she worked as a Drawing Records clerk and continued in that position until about 1962.  She was active in the Republican Party and the local astronomy club.  After Jack’s death, she moved to San Diego, California, and eventually moved to Terre Haute, Indiana where she died on October 9, 1998.

I remembered a rather humorous anecdote concerning my dad. When he first started working in Communications, one of his duties was the allocation of residential phones in Richland Village, generally to the Bigwigs. But he took care of himself and his friends. Thus we had one of the first residential phones and one of his friends told me, "Good old Jack took care of me. My supervisor was plenty ticked off when he found out that  I had a phone and he didn't."