In Memory
Edward Teller
1908 - 2003
William Dean
Eddie Teller is Dead
He should have played a heavy, you know. One of those thuggish Middle
European types with a thick accent and eyebrows that seemed to slump
down
his forehead to attack his nose. His eyes were watery, and his smile
turned
upside down the day I met him. The sun was shining that July afternoon,
and
the air was pricked apart by kiddies running and screaming, laughing
and
shouting. I couldn't help wondering how much he'd made that possible,
Eddie Teller, son, father, grandfather, father of the H-bomb.
Well, at ninety-five, I guess the grim reaper is just around anyone's
corner,
hanging out, waiting impatiently. Come on, put a hustle on it! It's funny
thinking Death might not have all day to just stand around, you know,
and maybe flip a coin over and over, catch it in his palm, toss it back up.
He'd given a speech that day -- Eddie, I mean, not Death. Standing
up at a 4th of July gathering like a celebrity. I guess if you've
pretty much invented the father of all bombs, you are a celebrity, of
a sort. Maybe the kind that drove a lot of kids crazy with
drop-and-cover drills in schools that could have been vaporized. Don't you wonder how
many people lived a whole life in terror of the sudden drop of The Big
One, that Hydrogen Bomb ol' Eddie developed? Way, way more powerful than the
measley atomic bomb.
See, the way Eddie figured, once the Communists had the A-bomb we were
toast unless we had a bigger, more spooky bomb, so he put that brilliant
Middle European mind to the task, and voila! That's determination for you.
That's the kind of guy he was; set me a task and I'll do it, and win all the physics
prizes and, simultaneously, scare the bejeezus out of the whole world.
And
you have to hand it to him, he outlived all those naysayers,
like
poor Mr. Oppenheimer and the rest. Oh, you have to credit Eddie with
Oppie's demise without a doubt. I knew a guy, a physicist who was at
Los
Alamos at the time. Poor ol' Oppie looked into the face of the bombs
he
helped make and said, famously, "I am become Death." I think that must
have made Eddie wonder.
Anyway, on this hot July afternoon, there sat the hulking Edward Teller
all
by himself, poised, a little rumpled, and all around us were
joyous
celebrants of freedom and liberty and even more important things, like
homemade potato salad and sack races and watermelon-spitting contests.
Now
I admit I knew he'd be there; I saw it in the newspaper. So I'd come
armed
myself with this historical copy of the first publication by the U.S.
government about the atomic bomb, which Eddie'd been in on, too. It's a
brown-cover little booklet no more than half-an-inch thick dated 1945.
I
got it for five bucks someplace; an old bookstore probably.
I walked up to this solitary father of the H-bomb and said "Excuse me, Dr.
Teller. Would you sign this for me, please?" He took the pen and
signed
his name with a flourish. I don't even think he knew what he was
signing.
I just said thank you and left, but at least I can say that I did indeed meet that
great paragon of the atomic age, now passed away. I think he was
probably the last of the giants who worked on the big bombs to survive.
Oddly enough, I ought to breathe a little easier knowing he's not still
dreaming up bigger and bigger bombs. I guess I ought to, one of these
days.
©2003 by William Dean
