Page 38 - Sample pages "Raymond Henri Dietrich" by Necah S. Furman

Looking very much the man in charge, Ray stands front and center surrounded by employees of his last custom and semi- custom coachbuilding concern “Raymond H. Dietrich, Inc.”
of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Established August 1949, the company faced
many obstacles and, consequently, would be in operation only two years. (DPF)
403 RAYMOND H. DIETRICH, INC., A CUSTOM CONCERN (1949)
In the summer of 1945, at a wilderness site high in the mountains above Santa Fe, New Mexico, accessed by a treacherous winding road rimming a huge volcanic
caldera, the top secret Manhattan Project directed by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer neared the end of its mission. The peaceful beauty of its setting on the Pajarito Plateau amid canyons carved by centuries of rain and snow and adorned with forests of juniper, Ponderosa Pine, pinon, and ash belied the horrific power of the secret
weapon being developed there by a highly skilled group of scientists, physicists, and engineers that included the nations’ best and brightest. General Leslie R. Groves, the military man in charge of the Project, was less effusive, referring to those he had selected as “the finest collection of crackpots the world has ever seen.”1
Some twenty or so years later the beauty of the area and its Southwestern ambiance would entice Ray
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