page_title: Dorothy McKibbin
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Dorothy McKibbin / Later life
caption_attribution_description: SANTA FE OFFICE For more information or additional images, please contact 202-586-5251.
context_page_description: Dorothy McKibbin worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. She ran the project's office at 109 East Palace in Santa Fe, through which staff moving to the Los Alamos Laboratory passed. She was known as the "first lady of Los Alamos", and was often the first point of contact for new arrivals. She retired when the Santa Fe office closed in 1963.
context_section_description: After the war ended in August 1945, there were doubts as to whether the Los Alamos Laboratory would remain, not to mention the Santa Fe office. Now McKibbin was arranging people's departures. No one was sadder to see Oppenheimer depart on October 16, 1945. His successor, Norris Bradbury, agreed to take over the director's position for six months. He would remain for 25 years. He kept the laboratory open, and retained the Santa Fe office open, with McKibbin as its head.
  On June 7, 1949, McKibbin was in Washington, D.C., for a Smith College reunion, and went to watch Oppenheimer appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, sitting beside Anne Wilson Marks, who had succeeded Priscilla Greene as Oppenheimer's secretary at the Los Alamos Laboratory. In May 1950, Sylvia Crouch alleged that Oppenheimer had conducted secret communist meetings at his home in Berkeley in July 1941. McKibbin conducted a meticulous investigation that produced a detailed paper trail demonstrating that Oppenheimer was in Santa Fe at the time. In April and May 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission conducted the Oppenheimer security hearing, which resulted in the loss of Oppenheimer's security clearance. When Edward Teller, who had testified against Oppenheimer, next appeared at Los Alamos, McKibbin gave him an icy reception.
  The Santa Fe office closed on June 28, 1963, and McKibbin retired. There was a brief ceremony conducted by Bradbury, who presented a memorial plaque. When Oppenheimer was awarded the Atomic Energy Commission's Enrico Fermi Award in 1963, he invited McKibbin to join him at the White House reception. She intended to do so, but the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, whom she had met when he toured Los Alamos on December 7, 1962, cast a pall over the event, and she decided not to attend. Oppenheimer received the award from the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson.
  McKibbin's eyesight began to fail in the 1950s. She had cataract operations in 1952, and thereafter needed to wear thick glasses. She died at her home in Santa Fe on December 17, 1985. She was buried in the Santa Fe Memorial Gardens. Dorothy McKibbin Hall at the Los Alamos Historical Museum is named after her. The entrance to the hall is the actual gate that was at 109 East Palace.
caption: Entrance to the Santa Fe office in the 1950s
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