The Tennis Courts

The Tennis Courts. A Place for Sport and Socialization. Outdoor recreation was essential for Oak Ridge residents' morale during the Manhattan Project. Tennis courts, baseball diamond and a pool were built. Tennis courts, however, were used for more than just tennis. Being one of the few places in town that was paved, tennis courts were ideal for dancing on warm summer nights when recreation halls were too hot., The Tennessee Eastman Girls Club requested that William "Bill" Pollock, a Tennessee Eastman engineer, hold a dance at the tennis courts. Bill had previously wired the cafeteria, recreation hall and other buildings throughout town for music in his free time. The first tennis court dance was July 22, 1944, at 8:50 pm. They became a weekly event., Bill would organize mixer dances, where men would hold hands, forming a circle, and women would hold hands forming a circle inside the men. The circles would go in opposite directions and when the music stopped, whoever you were paired up with was who you danced with next. The song "Sleepy Time Gal" marked the end of the dance for the night., When news of the Japanese surrender was released on August 15, 1945, people gathered on the tennis courts and danced in celebration., "Then we danced and had a good time. Then many dates later I realized that - and I wrote to my mother that I believe he's the one that I would like to marry someday So it's just - it was just like that. I met him at the tennis court dances and many of my friends met their husbands at the tennis court dances."--Mary Anne King, [Caption] , Image - Oak Ridge residents folk dancing on a tennis court.