A secretary in a highly unusual job, Ruth Davis Lane helped direct the course of history during World War II, family members say.
Mrs. Lane was one of five secretaries to a senior official at Oak Ridge, Tenn., for the Manhattan Project, the top-secret effort to develop nuclear weapons.
Mrs. Lane grew up in Tennessee, graduated from Central High School in Chattanooga and attended business school there. Her family was living in Knoxville when the Army came recruiting for civilian workers for Oak Ridge -- a city no one had heard of because it didn't officially exist.
By the end of the war, the place had grown into a community of 75,000, unknown to the outside world except to the President of the United States and a privileged few. Its purpose was to build atomic bombs.
Mrs. Lane’s typing, shorthand and other secretarial skills were needed, and she was hired. She was about 20 at the time.
“They just told her mother they’d be going somewhere and she’d be safe, and they got a car and took her,” said Mrs. Lane’s daughter, Alda Rose Lane of Decatur. “They didn’t even tell her parents where they were going.”
Ruth Davis Lane, 88, of Decatur died of heart failure stemming from complications of pneumonia Feb. 24 at Hospice Atlanta. A funeral service was held Thursday. Arrangements were handled by A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home and Crematory.
Her work at Oak Ridge may have helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands, family members said.
“There were a lot of people who wouldn’t be alive today if the atomic bomb was not dropped” on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said Mrs. Lane’s son, John Davis Lane of Marietta. The bombings killed more than 100,000 people and forced Japan’s surrender in the summer of 1945.
The alternative could have been far worse, Dr. Lane said.
“Both my wife’s dad and my dad were slated to be in the invasion of Japan, so there would have been many Americans and many Japanese who would have been killed if they hadn’t dropped the bomb,” he said. “I know some people consider that controversial, but I think it shortened the war and probably saved many hundreds of thousands of lives.”
Mrs. Lane's duties included arranging for scientists and other officials to travel secretly, under aliases. She also made trips to Washington, D.C., working with project director Army Gen. Leslie Groves and other senior officials.
Mrs. Lane later told her children, “General Groves was the son of a preacher and didn’t tolerate any profanity,” her son said. After the war ended, Mrs. Lane was one of the typists of the Smyth Report, which revealed the atomic bomb project to the general public.
Mrs. Lane married John Paul Lane on June 19, 1948. The couple had three children and lived in Chattanooga, Pensacola, Fla., Asheville, N.C. and finally, the Atlanta area.
Over the years, she held secretarial jobs at the Atomic Energy Commission, Chemstrand, Olin-Mathewson, the Tennessee Valley Authority and, finally, from about 1966 until her retirement in November 1989, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
After her three children graduated from college, Mrs. Lane returned to school, earning an associates degree from DeKalb Perimeter College. “I think she wanted the intellectual challenge,” Dr. Lane said.
Mrs. Lane was a member of Grace United Methodist Church and of The Wesley Companions Sunday School Class.
Ms. Alda Lane said her mother “had a real pleasant personality, always smiling, always very friendly with everybody. … She always had a smile, even at the end.”
Other survivors include Mrs. Lane’s husband John Paul Lane, son Stephen Lane of Decatur, and five grandchildren.
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