Meet the St. Paul woman who once staged a play for J. Robert Oppenheimer

Ross Raihala, Pioneer Press
·5 min read
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In the new film “Oppenheimer,” Cillian Murphy portrays the title character, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, as a profoundly complex man who on one hand was an ego-driven womanizer and on the other a deeply troubled genius drowning in self-doubt and regret.

Kathy Hanousek remembers Oppenheimer as the guy in a suit and a hat for whom she once staged a play with the help of her friends in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

“I was just a kid,” Hanousek said with a laugh. “What did I know? But who else can say they did a play for Oppenheimer? It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

Hanousek is a lifelong St. Paul resident save for her three years spent in Oak Ridge, a planned city built as part of the Manhattan Project, the three-year, top-secret U.S. government project that led to the creation of the first nuclear weapon.

She was just 3 when FBI agents approached her father, Dr. Charles Rea. At the time, Rea had three children — Hanousek and two younger siblings — and had just purchased a home and started practicing medicine.

“This was 1942, beginning of ’43,” she said. “One day, the FBI just showed up and said to him, ‘You’re coming with us. It’s a government thing for the war.’ My dad had no idea what it was about. But all of America was in the war. You just obeyed when you were told. And off he went, not knowing where he was going or what he was going to do. He was told it was likely his family could join him in time and that they weren’t telling him where he was going, but that it was in America.”

Once Rea arrived in Tennessee — “It was the boonies,” Hanousek said, “Smoky Mountain country” — he met Gen. Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project director played by Matt Damon in the film. Groves told him the government would provide him all the materials to get a new hospital up and running. In just six weeks.

Hanousek said her father responded with, “Maybe you have the wrong man?” Groves barked back, “You can read, can’t you? You will have all the equipment you need. I want you to staff the hospital.” (Hanousek praised all the main actors in “Oppenheimer,” but added Damon could have been much more gruff to match the real-life Groves.)

Rea turned to his alma mater the University of Minnesota to recruit 10 Minnesota doctors to join him, a list that Hanousek said includes William Bernstein, Burt Mears, Asher White, Joseph Ryan, Gerhardt Knutson, Leonard Kallestad, Frank Bryant, Vernon Lindberg, E. George Olsen and John Eneboe.

“My dad always said the doctors worked tirelessly,” she said. “They all got along. It was a common cause. I’m sure my dad probably knew what was going on (with the Manhattan Project), but he didn’t talk about it that much. I would never ask those questions as a kid.

“They were all friends and all young. Think about how young they were. The dean of the medical school referred to Oak Ridge as the Southern Branch of the University of Minnesota Medical School.”

Hanousek and the rest of the family soon relocated to Oak Ridge, where scientists were focused on trying to process uranium. She said the community grew from about 600 to 76,000 over the three years.

“I remember mud. And boardwalks. Lots of mud,” Hanousek said. “All the little kids, some of whom I’m still friends with, didn’t care about that, though.”

Over that time, Hanousek met many of the major characters in “Oppenheimer” when her parents hosted them. “My dad always had lots of people coming to the house. It was good, old Minnesota hospitality,” she said. “That includes Oppenheimer, who I remembered because he had such a different last name. To me, he was just another adult who always wore a suit and hat. My dad dressed that way, too. They all did.”

Her time in Oak Ridge stuck with Hanousek throughout her life. She went on to marry Richard Hanousek, a real estate developer and CEO, and raise five children. Twenty years ago, she took a trip back there with her now-late husband. “I was amazed at how much I could remember. I said, ‘Turn right here, that’s where I went to school. This is where we swam. That’s the tree where we did the play for Oppenheimer.’”

When she first heard that the film was being shot by blockbuster director Christopher Nolan, she decided to prepare by exploring the library of Manhattan Project books her father left her. In particular, she recommends “The Road to Trinity: A Personal Account of How America’s Nuclear Policies Were Made,” by Maj. Gen. Kenneth Nichols, who led operations at Oak Ridge, and “The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II,” by Denise Kiernan.

Hanousek saw “Oppenheimer” on opening night. She said it was long, but she praised the accuracy of the look and feel of the era. She suggested doing some light reading about the Manhattan Project beforehand, as the first hour can get confusing. She also said, once again, she was surprised at how many of the people portrayed in the film she remembered from her youth.

“It was a time when the whole country was working together,” she said. “Now, you wouldn’t have that. I don’t think you would have that now.”

After spending the last several years immersed in her childhood memories, one final question remains for Hanousek. Did she also see “Barbie”?

“No,” she said with a laugh. “I hope to. Is it any good?”

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