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ORAL HISTORY OF GARY CINDER

Interviewed by Keith McDaniel

December 13, 2016

MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is December 13, 2016. I’m at my

studio here in Oak Ridge with Gary Cinder. Gary is a long-time city employee and so

I’m sure we’ve got lots to talk about. Gary, thank you for coming by and talking with me

today. I appreciate it.

MR. CINDER: My pleasure, Keith.

MR. MCDANIEL: Let us start at the beginning. Why don’t you tell me where you were

born and raised, and something about your family?

MR. CINDER: Okay. My family is originally from Michigan. I was born and raised in the

city of Detroit. I lived there for about 15 years. Then we moved out of the city, away

from the city and to a small town that I like to say, I actually graduated from Yale.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?

MR. CINDER: It was Yale, Michigan High School.

MR. MCDANIEL: Now, where is that?

MR. CINDER: It’s about 60 miles north of the city. My father was the chief engineer on

a new water plant for the City of Detroit on Lake Huron and het got special permission

to not have to live in the city and instead we could move closer to his work. That’s what

precipitated that move.

MR. MCDANIEL: Were you only child? Did you have brothers or sisters?

MR. CINDER: I’ve got one sister. She’s about five years younger than me.

MR. MCDANIEL: My wife grew up in Michigan until she was nine, I think and then she

moved to Florida, but we always go to Michigan. She has lot of relatives there and

Michiganders are a unique bunch, I would say. Did you get that Michigan culture

engrained in you, growing up?

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MR. CINDER: Oh, absolutely. I thought the sun rose and set on the state of Michigan

and I couldn’t fathom anybody, ever leaving.

MR. MCDANIEL: The big question is, University of Michigan or Michigan State?

MR. CINDER: Oh, Michigan State. I saw the M in your window.

MR. MCDANIEL: Like I said, that’s her side of the family.

MR. CINDER: That’s quite all right. My dad went to U of M. I had other family members

who went to Michigan too. I consider myself somewhat bilingual.

MR. MCDANIEL: She has two cousins, brothers and one of them is a huge Michigan

State. One of them is huge University of Michigan so there’s this competition going on

for years. You graduated at Yale, Michigan. When you were in high school, did you

know what you wanted to do with your life?

MR. CINDER: To some degree, or I thought I did. Let’s put it that way.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: I originally thought I wanted to be a doctor and so I pursued that in

college at Michigan State. I went pre-med. My classmates in Yale nominated me in

their yearbook as the most likely one to deliver their own children, because I always

like kids and they said, “You’d be a great pediatrician.” They named me a pediatrician

before I was even anywhere near it. I got through a couple years of pre-med and it

became time to, “You got to pick a career and you got to pick a degree.” I was already

looking forward to two more years and maybe going to get a job or start a career. I

don’t really want eight more years of medical school so I had to shift gears and using

what training I was getting, I got a degree in medical technology. I worked in a medical

lab after graduation. I was the phlebotomist for the lab I was working at. I got all the

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blood drawing assignments and all the analytical work. It was interesting, but it wasn’t

very rewarding because all you did was do the tests even though you had all the

background of chemistry, the biochemistry, all the medical work behind it, didn’t matter.

You just did the test, what was the blood count and pass it on. It frustrated me. I

decided to go back to school. I said, “What can I do with what I’ve got?” I wanted to get

into ... Use my chemistry and microbiology backgrounds. I looked into drinking water.

That became civil engineering and environmental engineering. I went back to Michigan

State for two more years and got a degree in that after working in the lab for two or

three years. I walked out of there with a degree in civil engineering.

MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right. It took a little while but that’s okay.

MR. CINDER: It turned out okay.

MR. MCDANIEL: It turned out okay.

MR. CINDER: It turned out okay. I had a good career.

MR. MCDANIEL: That’s exactly right. Now, were you married at this time? Did you

start a family then?

MR. CINDER: No. I was single. I was able to move around, but once I started my

engineering career, I became married, but we were still childless so we could still

wander the countryside.

MR. MCDANIEL: Still go up and move if you needed to very easily.

MR. CINDER: It made an interesting early or mid-20s.

MR. MCDANIEL: You said civil engineering is that correct?

MR. CINDER: Yes.

MR. MCDANIEL: Civil engineering?

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MR. CINDER: Yes.

MR. MCDANIEL: Civil engineers have a tendency to get out and get their hands dirty,

don’t they?

MR. CINDER: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s a dirty shoe kind of business.

MR. MCDANIEL: It really is. Some civil engineers that I’ve interviewed said that’s what

attracted it to them. I mean, it’s not like they’re in an office all day. They get out and go.

You got your degree in civil engineering, University of Michigan.

MR. CINDER: No, Michigan State.

MR. MCDANIEL: Michigan State, excuse me. Then what did you do? Did you get a

job?

MR. CINDER: I got a job with a consulting firm in Michigan. That was a real nice dirty

shoe kind of job. A lot of field work. I really enjoyed that for about a year in the early

‘80s, stayed at Michigan, endured what turned into a depression.

MR. MCDANIEL: Really?

MR. CINDER: The rest of the country was in recession and Michigan was just

slammed. All new work, new construction, both private and public stopped. Being one

of the new kids on the block, along with several other of my colleagues, we were let

go. I was one year out of school and didn’t have a job. It’s like, “Okay, now what?”

MR. MCDANIEL: Now what, right.

MR. CINDER: As luck would have it, one of the vendors that we worked with that sold

odor control equipment, he was on the board of directors of that company that he was

reaping and he worked with us. He says, “Well, Gary. How would you like to work for

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us in Henderson, Nevada?” My wife and I were young. I don’t want to say young and

dumb, but it was pretty close because we moved to suburban Las Vegas.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.

MR. CINDER: We lived there for about six months. When I got out there, my boss

said, “Now, Gary. I’m going to tell you one thing. People don’t just put up with the

desert. They either love it or they hate it. You’ll find out pretty quick what you are,” and

I found out I hated it. You go from around here like green trees and vegetation to bare

and brown deserts as far as the eye can see. That did not set well with me. We were

out there for about six months and visited some of the sites around the west and then

decided we needed to move back east and ended up in Orlando, Florida. We had

family in Bradenton which was about an hour-and-a-half away. It’s back to back to

family roots. We were just disconnected from family.

MR. MCDANIEL: Where did you go to work for in Bradenton? I mean in Orlando,

excuse me.

MR. CINDER: I worked for the Orange County Utilities. That was an amazing

experience because I was on the ground floor of so much of the explosive growth that

you see today.

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. Sure.

MR. CINDER: We got there almost at the time Epcot Center opened.

MR. MCDANIEL: About what year was this?

MR. CINDER: 1982. Disney World had started but the expansion of some of the other

parks and, of course, all the influx of the other parks and the hotels, attractions. The

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demands on the water and sewer system, and all the people that were moving in was

just phenomenal.

MR. MCDANIEL: Not bad.

MR. CINDER: It was great training to learn by the seat of your pants. How do you

master plan a utility that changes by the month? There was never a dull moment. It

was a very exciting time.

MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did you have a mentor there or someone, a supervisor who

really impacted you and trained you because I mean, you’ve been doing this a little bit,

but you didn’t have a lot of experience.

MR. CINDER: No. There was a group of about three of us young engineers. We all

had about the same amount of experience and our boss was our mentor. He had been

in the business for probably 15 years. He’d been there, done that literally. He’d been

with the county for a number of years. He took us under his wing and he would coach

us, but let us pretty much take off on our own paths and just keep him in a loop, once

he got comfortable with us. It was wild. It wasn’t quite on the same maybe timeframe

as building Oak Ridge, but just the 18-hour days just trying to keep up with all of the

buildings, sewer plants, designing and building plants, pipes and pump stations, and all

the things that go with it just to keep ahead of the growth. It’s phenomenal. A thousand

people a day were moving to Florida.

MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?

MR. CINDER: A lot of them were coming to the Orlando area. It was exciting.

MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. What was some of the big things that you dealt with, maybe

specific instances?

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MR. CINDER: In that particular position was with Orange County Utilities. It was mainly

master planning a lot of the water lines and tank, the water tanks, elevated water tanks

to make sure there was plenty of… It was one specific project that jumped out at me.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: One of the big challenges was so many developers had been allowed to

just put in their subdivisions and build little tiny package plants to do water and sewers.

As soon as they sold the last house, they walked away. The state of Florida came in

and said, “Okay, utility. You’re the public utility. You get to take them.” Trying to get

them up to speed and get them connected to real infrastructure was real challenging.

Of course, the people in these developments, they already had their yards and

everything. Here you are taking their two-inch water line, and making it a six-inch water

line, and digging up everybody’s yard. They didn’t like it.

MR. MCDANIEL: They didn’t like it, did they?

MR. CINDER: In the end, they had better water. They had better fire protection. It’s

just a matter of being on the ground floor. So much growth was really rewarding.

MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine that because of the geographies so different in

Florida than, for example, here that they did things differently. I mean, they had to do

things differently to a certain degree.

MR. CINDER: One of the big challenges was the ground water table. The water table

was maybe a foot or two below the surface. Once you start digging a trench to put a

pipe in or put a manhole in, you’d hit water. You were literally in the water. You’d have

to put in dewatering system to dewater the hole so you could work in the dry, finish

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your work and then you turn the pumps off, pull the well points out and go on. It made

for very costly and very slow construction.

MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.

MR. CINDER: Excavation was a whole lot easier there because it was sand and not

the rock we’ve got here. It was a completely different activity.

MR. MCDANIEL: How long were you in Orange County?

MR. CINDER: I was in Orange County about four years. Then the opportunity came

along to move to Seminole County which was just north. It was a promotional

opportunity. I moved up there to be the engineering manager. It was very identical to

what I was doing. A lot of development pressure. There, a lot of the players were

interesting because some of the big developments that we got involved with up there

were people that... I mean, Gary Player. One of his developments was there. Geno

Paulucci, Geno’s Pizza, he was a big developer there. He got his own exit off the

interstate.


MR. CINDER: This guy has got some clout in Tallahassee.

MR. MCDANIEL: He does, doesn’t he?

MR. CINDER: You got to really rub elbows with some of the big, big players.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: In Orange County, we were mid-level engineers. I went to Seminole. I

got to meet with some of the greater, near great people. That was an interesting

experience. Then over time I made the progression to utility manager and eventually

ended up as the utility director there.

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MR. MCDANIEL: You probably learned a thing or two about politics in that job didn’t

you?

MR. CINDER: Yeah, I did. I really, really did. That job was somewhat political, but you

can still stay technical. As I moved up the ladder, you get closer and closer to the buzz

saw, I used to say. You start really seeing how politics factors into a lot of decision-

making. It’s eye-opening when you start seeing some of this, “Okay. That’s where this

is going to go.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Right. That’s how these deals are made, right?

MR. CINDER: Yeah. It doesn’t matter I had books and calculators and I could calculate

what it needed to be, “This is what it’s going to be, Gary.” “Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure. Exactly. You stayed there until?

MR. CINDER: I made the leap to the department head for the environmental services

director. It was an odd transition.

MR. MCDANIEL: From the utility manger?

MR. CINDER: From utility manger, my immediate boss who was the director had been

named the assistant county manager. He wanted me to be his successor. Then the

county manager had been his predecessor. Not that I had any sights on that

progression, but those guys both had been in my shoes. I’m thinking, “I don't know

anything about running a department.” They said, “Don’t worry. We’ll help you. We’ll

help guide you.” They really were going to be my mentors. I went to the meeting. At

that time, the county commission had to approve my appointment and they’d all known

me as the utility manager so I wasn’t completely unknown, but apparently the county

manager had displeased them with some of his development decisions. They

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approved me, introduced a motion to fire the county manager and elevate the assistant

county manager.

MR. MCDANIEL: Your mentor?

MR. CINDER: My mentor who then proceeds to say, “No. I resign.”

MR. MCDANIEL: No.

MR. CINDER: I was like I’ve been a director for 30 seconds and all my mentors are

gone. I spent the next about two-and-a-half years helping just hold things together as

you can imagine.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: The politics were brutal at that point. The county attorney became the

county manager, acting. The public works director was the acting deputy. He was the

field guy. Everybody was just holding things together while they’re trying to do a

search. They did a nationwide search and they got some candidates. One by one, they

all probably got told behind the curtain, “Don’t go through with it. It’s a political

nightmare.” We went over two years without a county manager with multiple

candidates pulling out. It was like nobody wants this job. That put me closer and closer

to the political buzz saw and the commission was getting frustrated, so I mean any little

hiccup they were not pleased. I was there ‘til 1991, again, doing a lot of the growth

issues for water and sewer. I did have solid waste under me in that position. I got to

oversee a landfill and they implemented a curbside recycling in Seminole County. It

was a countywide recycling program.

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MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine the last several months, at least the last several

months you were looking on the horizons, seeing if there was any opportunities

available.

MR. CINDER: It got to that point where my wife and I, and by the time we had two

children, both of them were born in Orlando and said, “I don't know how much more of

this I can take.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Did you think as some people would, that maybe this isn’t for

me, not just this place, this whole what have I gotten myself into, career-wise?

MR. CINDER: That’s very true because when I got out of school, I thought we went to

different career fairs and engineering career seminars, and they had a guy from a

consulting, a guy from regulatory, and a guy from governmental engineering world. I

thought the worst thing I could ever think of doing is being a government engineer. I

just never in a million years would have seen my career being in government

engineering. I did have to process that. I said, “Is it the place or is it…”

MR. MCDANIEL: Is it the job?

MR. CINDER: …is it the job? I talked to some friends, I talked to colleagues and

there’s some folks that I knew in Florida that they said, “You guys are messed up.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Right. It was the place.

MR. CINDER: It was the place.

MR. MCDANIEL: It was the place.

MR. CINDER: Which reinforced for me, but I knew Florida politics in general just

statewide were just really…

MR. MCDANIEL: Brutal.

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MR. CINDER: Brutal is a good word. I started looking in the trade journals. Back then,

it was before the internet. We had to wait for the magazines and go to the ads.

MR. MCDANIEL: Of course.

MR. CINDER: At the time, my wife was working for Martin Marietta.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.

MR. CINDER: She was in their weapons systems, but that was Martin Marietta. Along

comes this job for public works director in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I said, “Hmm.” I

started doing some research. Of course, I’ve heard of Oak Ridge, but not to the detail

that most people would.

MR. MCDANIEL: Do now.

MR. CINDER: Yeah, do now. I said, “That sounds like an interesting place.”

MR. MCDANIEL: And Martin Marietta was here.

MR. CINDER: And Martin Marietta was…

MR. MCDANIEL: That would make it reasonable…

MR. CINDER: For transfer.

MR. MCDANIEL: …for transfer, yeah.

MR. CINDER: Lo and behold, I put in for it and got an interview and we vacationed up

in Gatlinburg. She and I came over for my interview. First thing we did was,

grandparents came down from Michigan and they babysat the kids while we came

over, just the two of us. I said, “Let’s go over and see what Oak Ridge is all about.” A

couple of things, they still stick in my mind. We were driving in to town and we drive by

the mall and the mall was just finishing up. They were reconstructing the whole thing.

My wife says, “Well, that’s one thing in this town’s favors. She says, “It’s got a mall.”

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She says, “I got to have easy access to the mall.” Of course we didn’t know how close

Knoxville was and that kind of thing, but it’s going to be right here. It was brand new.

Hey, what can go wrong?

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.

MR. CINDER: Lo and behold…

MR. MCDANIEL: But that’s a whole different story.

MR. CINDER: That’s a whole another interview. Then we continued up Illinois and we

hit the ... I said, “Well, according to the map, this ought to be the main four corners of

the town, two main roads.” It was like, I don't know, maybe five or 5:15 in the afternoon

and I said, “Where is the vehicles?” There’s no real traffic. Not compared to Orlando.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, of course.

MR. CINDER: Not compared to Orlando. Relatively speaking, it was, “Wow, where is

this? Let me start driving around a little bit.” I said, “Where’s all the houses?”

MR. MCDANIEL: You can’t see.

MR. CINDER: You can’t see the houses. I wasn’t used to the terrain and then being ...

Of course, in Florida, they level all the trees and then they build the houses. All the

years, the houses are nestled into the trees.

MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.

MR. CINDER: That was refreshing. I said, “This is really [inaudible].” Emily said, “This

is pretty slick.” We kept driving around. I said, “Let’s go see if we can find the public

works compound.” That was quite an interesting place.

MR. MCDANIEL: Where was that then?

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MR. CINDER: That was at the corner of Lafayette and Gettysburg where the ... What’s

the name of that, where the Len Hart Development is?

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. I know what you’re talking about.

MR. CINDER: That was the public works site and the buildings were vintage World

War II. It’s like, “Okay. This looks like it needs some upgrading. We need a bulldozer.

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly.

MR. CINDER: We drove around some more and then we decided to go ahead have

dinner.

MR. MCDANIEL: Have you been interviewed yet?

MR. CINDER: No. This was all the day before. I wanted to get the lay of the land.

MR. MCDANIEL: Good.

MR. CINDER: I said, “Well, let’s go find a river.” We drove out. We ended up on Milton

Lake Drive. We found, at the time, it was ... Gosh, what was the name of it?

MR. MCDANIEL: Was it Gregory’s then?

MR. CINDER: It was Gregory’s.

MR. MCDANIEL: It was Gregory’s then?

MR. CINDER: No, it was not. It was the next one after Gregory’s, Lakeside, no.

MR. MCDANIEL: We can’t keep up. It’s been so many things.

MR. CINDER: I know. It’s been so many things.

MR. MCDANIEL: Anyway, it was a restaurant, a nice restaurant along the river.

MR. CINDER: Yes. We had a nice meal. I said, “Well, this is pleasant. I mean, you

can’t beat the water for a nice surrounding.” Then I said, “Well, we’ve gotten the paper.

We knew what the schedule was. The city council was meeting at night. Let’s go to

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the city council meeting.” I wanted to see what this group acted like compared to the

group that I was working for.

MR. MCDANIEL: Right.

MR. CINDER: I walk in, I was sitting down and it was Mack Bailey’s first meeting.

MR. MCDANIEL: Was he mayor?

MR. CINDER: Mack was the Fire Chief.

MR. MCDANIEL: Mack was the Fire Chief, right. Who was the mayor?

MR. CINDER: The mayor at the time was Ed Nephew.

MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, Ed Nephew.

MR. CINDER: He was the Mayor. Jeff Broughton was the City Manager and I hadn’t

met any of them. They didn’t know who I was.

MR. MCDANIEL: They didn’t know who you were. Anyway, you mentioned this was

Mack’s first meeting. You said that for a reason, I’m sure.

MR. CINDER: It stood out because the city manager introduced him. The meetings are

on television so he introduced him to the council and to the community, “Here’s our

new fire chief, Mack Bailey.” I mean, they gave him a round of applause, welcome him.

It’s like, “Wow. This is pretty homey. This is nice.”

MR. MCDANIEL: How did the rest of the meeting go?

MR. CINDER: It was fine. It really was civil, pretty well-managed, didn’t go near as

long as subsequent years. A couple of years worth of meetings had gone long, but it

was way better than what I was seeing in Florida. It was a breath of fresh air and I

said, “Man, I like this place.” We went back. We were at the Comfort Inn. I report the

next day for my interview. I get the individual interview with Jeff Broughton, the City

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Manager and then the team interview with Paul Boyer who was the Personnel Director.

Then they asked Jack Suggs to sit in since Jack was Electric Director and he’d been in

public works so he knew where I might speak to see if I was trying to hoodoo them.

MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.

MR. CINDER: It was a group interview for several hours.

MR. MCDANIEL: The job that you were going to interview for was Public Works

Director.

MR. CINDER: Yes.

MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me what that means. I mean, just specifically.

MR. CINDER: Okay. The Public Works Director especially here is really as a full

service position and that the department, not only is your traditional public works

functions like streets, and sidewalks, and storm drains, and that type, maybe fleet

maintenance, but also the water and sewer systems. A lot of places, Knoxville for

instance, the public works operations there are streets, and engineering, and drainage,

and that kind of thing, but you got KUB [Knoxville Utility Board] who does the water

and sewer and electric and gas. That intrigued me because I had an extensive

experience with water and sewer. We oversaw the solid waste contract, but we really

didn’t do anything with it. I had had experience overseeing haulers and the landfill

operation in Florida. There was a lot of overlap. I was weakest probably in the streets

and pavement, and that kind of thing.

MR. MCDANIEL: Everything except really basically everything except for electric.

Electric was separate?

MR. CINDER: Yes.

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MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right.

MR. CINDER: I always said if it didn’t need electrons, I probably had it.

MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, there you go. All right. I just wanted to understand exactly

what that job was. You said you met with the team of people.

MR. CINDER: Met with a team, spent a couple of hours. I can’t remember the

sequencing. I think Paul Boyer took me on a tour of the city. He took me to some of the

neighborhoods and showed me different types of houses and where the schools were,

kind of get the lay of the land and showed me on a map here. This was long before

GPS [Global Positioning System].

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, of course.

MR. CINDER: Then we were going to meet the City Manager for lunch out at the river.

We went out there and we had some glasses of ice water. I’m saying this for a reason.

MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. That’s fine.

MR. CINDER: It comes back to haunt me 24 years later. We had ice water and

somehow I made a hand gesture or something answering a question and I knocked

the glass of water all over the table. I said, “Well, there goes this job.” I said, “Well,

okay. I just have to do the best I can and keep going.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: It was an all-day affair. We finished lunch. We had a nice lunch. The

wait staff took care of us, but I was embarrassed as you can imagine.


MR. CINDER: Get done and go back to the hotel. My wife says, “How did it go?” I said,

“Well, it was going fine until ...” She says, “Well, there will be more.” That was the end

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of it. We went back and then we finished our vacation with the grandparents and the

kids in Gatlinburg. I said, “Well, it was nice while we had it,” but I thought, “Man, I really

would like to live up here.” I don't know. It was a few weeks later, I get a phone call

from Paul saying, “We want to make an offer.” “Really?” He and I struck it up.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you?

MR. CINDER: We’re friends. We’re still friends. We talked back and forth. I said, “Tell

me about this policy about employees having to live in a city because back in Detroit,

you had to live in the city. I told you my dad had to get special permission from the

Detroit City Council to live outside the city.


MR. CINDER: There’s a reason. I mean they make their people live in the city because

otherwise they’d all leave.


MR. CINDER: It’s Detroit. I said, “What’s wrong with Oak Ridge? I didn’t see anything

that would have to make me live there. I probably want to live there.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: He says, “Well, it’s just a policy.” He said, “The department heads and

the higher level employees ought to live in the community that they run.” I said, “That

makes perfect sense.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: Anyway, we had a nice conversation and we talked where it was going

to come and then I got my letter.

MR. MCDANIEL: Is that still the policy, the higher level have to live in the city?

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MR. CINDER: Generally, yeah. I don't know if it’s been ...

MR. MCDANIEL: It’s expected though. It certainly is expected if you’re running a

department.

MR. CINDER: Especially department heads. I think even some of them were senior

staff, city engineer, typically had lived. Steve Byrd had lived there. I think it’s lightened

up a little bit. It probably had to do with, “Okay. You got to live with the policies you’re

enforcing.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly. Anyway, I interrupted. Go ahead.

MR. CINDER: That’s all right.

MR. MCDANIEL: You got your ...

MR. CINDER: I got the offer letter and I said, “Well, all right. Do we really want to move

to Tennessee?” It really didn’t take us long to decide. We both loved it up here.

MR. MCDANIEL: How old were your kids?

MR. CINDER: Kids were five and three.

MR. MCDANIEL: They were still young. They wouldn’t cost too much of a fit if…

MR. CINDER: No. Daughter, she was three.

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. She didn’t know.

MR. CINDER: She didn’t know. Our son had just started school.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.

MR. CINDER: He was in kindergarten. I’ll connect some of these dots later because

they all do interrelate.

MR. MCDANIEL: That’s fine.

20

MR. CINDER: My wife put in for a transfer to Martin Marietta up here and they said,

“Well, right now the Cold War is winding down. It was 1991. We’re not doing a lot of

hiring, but you got good credentials. We’ll see what we can do. We’ll give it a shot.”

Our son, I said, had started school. His elementary school wasn’t far from the house,

but because of the influx of people to Florida, the school system couldn’t keep up.

There were 21 portable classrooms on his school campus.

MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.

MR. CINDER: You had a full school, but the school was so full they had to have 21

portable classrooms out in the yard and he was in one of them. These are

kindergarteners. They’re in their little trailer and to go to the bathroom, they got to walk

outside and go to the building. I was like, this is an interesting way to run a school

system, but anyway, it always clicked along for that fall and I left Seminole County in

late September of ‘91 and I packed up the U-Haul and I moved up here by myself. My

wife stayed behind with the kids. I move into the Garden Apartments which I’ve been

told is pretty much the gateway for everybody who comes to Oak Ridge.

MR. MCDANIEL: Everybody who comes to Oak Ridge.

MR. CINDER: I put my tour of duty at the Garden Apartments.

MR. MCDANIEL: I interviewed a guy yesterday when he and his wife got married they

moved in the Garden Apartments and lived there for eight years until they built their

own house.

MR. CINDER: Oh, wow. Eight years, wow.

MR. MCDANIEL: They moved out in ‘68 and they still live in the same house that they

built in ‘68.

21

MR. CINDER: Oh, wow.

MR. MCDANIEL: He does. His wife passed away a couple years ago. You’re right,

Garden Apartments. It’s where everybody starts.

MR. CINDER: That’s what we did. My wife stayed behind. My first week here, of

course, I was by myself, I came home from work, flipped on the national news or

something. I think it was CBS or one of the networks was doing an expose on the sad

state of Florida schools. This was the national broadcast. They were at my son’s

elementary school…

MR. MCDANIEL: Are you serious?

MR. CINDER: …showing the farm of portable classrooms.


MR. CINDER: I said, “Man, did I make the right decision. If the national news is saying,

“What lousy schools Florida has, it’s a good place to be from.


MR. CINDER: We had heard about the schools once we researched Oak Ridge and

said, “I can’t wait to get my son up here and then in a couple of years, my daughter will

start and you’d get them both in the system.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: The house sold fairly quickly. I mean, this was early October and by the

end of November, the house had been sold in Florida. We didn’t have to be apart too

long. I went back for Thanksgiving. A quick turnaround visit.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

22

MR. CINDER: Christmas was a real whirlwind because the people who bought the

house wanted ... They had to take possession on the 27th of December. I could not

forget that for a reason. They already moved all their stuff, with our permission, into the

garage. I came down for Christmas. That was our last hoorah. We opened the

presents, I packed it in the car and everything up, sealed it up and the movers came

on the 26th to haul all our stuff out.

MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.

MR. CINDER: Christmas evening, my son and I jumped a plane and fly back to

Knoxville because we had to get settled in here and be ready when the moving van hit

two days later with our stuff.

MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have a house or were you just come to the apartment?

MR. CINDER: No. We’re going to divvy it up. We’re going to put a lot of it in storage. I

had to make the decisions. She packed the truck with, “Okay, put this stuff in first

because that’s going in storage and then the last stuff in the truck was going to be the

first out into the apartment because the four of us were going to move from a three-

bedroom home into a two-bedroom apartment.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.

MR. CINDER: Which was quite cozy, but for us it was an adventure. We knew it was

going to be short-term. I got him up here and we batched it for a while. We got him into

school through 1st of January. He started that second semester of kindergarten.

MR. MCDANIEL: Where?

MR. CINDER: In Linden.

MR. MCDANIEL: At Linden?

23

MR. CINDER: Linden Elementary.

MR. MCDANIEL: All right. Okay.

MR. CINDER: Then wife and daughter came down or came up, probably mid-January.

It was only a couple of weeks.

MR. MCDANIEL: Not too long.

MR. CINDER: No. It was only a couple of weeks. She was just hanging on because

she liked being in Florida just because of the warmth.

MR. MCDANIEL: I’m sure. You got here. You got settled.

MR. CINDER: I’m here.

MR. MCDANIEL: You’re here, you’re settled. Let’s talk a little bit about your career

from that point here in Oak Ridge because I would imagine are you retired now?

MR. CINDER: I am retired from the city right now.

MR. MCDANIEL: That’s what I mean. You worked from then until you retired from the

city, for the city?

MR. CINDER: From the same position.

MR. MCDANIEL: For how many years?

MR. CINDER: Almost 25 years.

MR. MCDANIEL: Almost 25 years.

MR. CINDER: Just about a month shy of 25 years.

MR. MCDANIEL: You worked in the same position. I know you had a little detour

there.

MR. CINDER: I had two detours.

MR. MCDANIEL: You had two detours.

24

MR. CINDER: Interim city manager.

MR. MCDANIEL: Interim city manager. Talk about working in Oak Ridge, public works

for Oak Ridge, what have been some of your big issues, some of your big challenges,

big things that have faced the city over the last 25 years as far as public works go.

MR. CINDER: One of the big things is the aging infrastructure. The water system was

old. It was original equipment. Sewer system was old. It was original equipment. We’re

trying to get that fixed, but still stay somewhat affordable knowing that there’s going to

be a lot of money have to be spent to get this back into shape. That was a very big

challenge. It was one of my entire career. The last few years was the EPA’s

[Environmental Protection Agency] work because their opinion was we hadn’t done

enough even though we had a tremendous amount of work.

MR. MCDANIEL: When you got here it was 50 years old, anyway.

MR. CINDER: They had a lot of money put into it. They had just really started

recognizing that they needed to and in fact when I got into town, I learned that the

state had come in and was about to put a moratorium on the city because of recurring

overflows and lack of performance and that kind of thing. They were going to be

really…

MR. MCDANIEL: Tough.

MR. CINDER: …really tough and come down on the city. Get the city in order. You will

fix your system, you will do this and lay out that. A lot of what the EPA did was 20

years later, but the state was serious. My predecessor agreed to everything verbally.

They took it and said, “Okay. No problem. We won’t put this in writing,” and he agreed

to it. A month later, he retires. When I saw him afterward, I said, “I know why you

25

retired when you retired.” He says, “Well, you don’t think I was going to stick around

and have to put up with all that, did you?” It was an ongoing struggle to get the sewer

system where it needed to be.

MR. MCDANIEL: It was basically the sewer system.

MR. CINDER: The sewer was worse.

MR. MCDANIEL: The water lines were…

MR. CINDER: The water lines, they’re still a problem just because of age, but cast

irons have been known to last 100 years. At the time, the city did not own the water

plant. It just bought water from the Department of Energy. The same plant but DOE

owned it. DOE’s contractors ran it and they sold water to the city.

MR. MCDANIEL: I see.

MR. CINDER: The city did have its own sewer plant and it had just been upgraded in

the early ‘80s. The plant was in pretty decent shape. It was the collection system, and

the pipes to get it there.

MR. MCDANIEL: The sewer plant is not far from here is it?

MR. CINDER: No.

MR. MCDANIEL: Just over down the road?

MR. CINDER: Just down the Turnpike. Just passed Montana. I told you earlier, I was a

little thin in my asphalt experience but I had some staff members who were strong in

asphalt which made a good partnership. We recognized the city needed to be more

aggressive with its pavement maintenance. We said about first couple of years I was

here to do a pavement management program where we could assess the pavements,

grade them against each other based on condition and traffic and that kind of thing,

26

and try to formulate a better funding plan. Again, more money to keep them upgraded

and keep them in better shape.

MR. MCDANIEL: People don’t want potholes on their street.

MR. CINDER: They don’t want potholes. Nobody does. It cost money to prevent

potholes.


MR. CINDER: You can only patch them so long, but soon you got to do something too.

That was a big challenge, the first year or so I was here. It was the beginning of the

replacement of the old public works compound. I found during my interview the City

Manager had told the Personnel Director, Mr. Boyer, “Whatever you do, don’t take him

by the old Public Works.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?

MR. CINDER: I didn’t know about that ‘til I was here.

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure.

MR. CINDER: I laughed. I said, “I knew before you interviewed me.” I said, “I found it.”

I said, “I drove by and I still showed up didn’t I?” He says, “I want you to lead the team

to replace the facility.” I mean, it’s one of the biggest buildings in town and it’s got a lot

of people working out of it.

MR. MCDANIEL: Which is the Central Services facility.

MR. CINDER: Yeah. It’s where council has their work sessions and other public

venues.

MR. MCDANIEL: That is a big building.

27

MR. CINDER: It’s a big building. It’s got lot of activities in it too. The Public Works

Department, the Electric Department, all the central warehousing and accounting

facilities, cost accounting, park and rec, fleet maintenance. School maintenance and

school transportation is run out of that building. You get all the school buses, got all the

bus drivers coming and going.

MR. MCDANIEL: You got the gas pumps there.

MR. CINDER: Got the fueling station. It’s a real nerve center to keep the city running.

MR. MCDANIEL: It’s out of the way. Really unless you’d go there, you don’t see it,

pretty much.

MR. CINDER: You wouldn’t just stumble upon it.


MR. CINDER: Unless you follow the sign, “What is this? Central Services Complex.”


MR. CINDER: That is interesting because that was probably about a two-year ordeal

trying to locate it.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, was it?

MR. CINDER: For cost considerations what we thought we tried to do is rebuild where

we were. They’re in Woodland and we’d do it a piece at a time. There was some open

land there. We would put in new offices there and you could move and turn around the

office and build the next piece. It was going to be a step process. The neighbors just

rose up in revolt and said, “We’ve done our time with this mess. It needs to go

someplace else.” We tried to convince them, “Look, it’s not going to look like this,” but

28

it was burned into their brains and they didn’t like the operations 24/7. I mean, snow

was snow and storms, there’s stuff going on over there day and night.


MR. CINDER: They just said, it needs to go. Council said, “Okay. Planning

Commission staff, you guys go out and come up with some sites.” We got to spend a

fair amount of time slicing and dicing a lot of different areas of town even uptown.

There was some thought about going into Oliver Springs.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?

MR. CINDER: Luckily cooler heads prevailed on that one. That’s where I really got to

start rubbing elbows with Charlie Hensley. Ray Evans was part of the Planning

Commission at the time. That’s where I started to really get to know folks that have

been true leaders in the community for years. That was when Dave Mosby was part of

the Planning Commission at the time, so I got to know him. We had a core group of

some of the staff and Jack Suggs was on that committee with me. We were

representing the staff interests saying, “Okay. Here’s some of the things you got to

think about.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Building that building was a big…

MR. CINDER: That was a big challenge.

MR. MCDANIEL: A big challenge and a big accomplishment, I would imagine in your

career.

MR. CINDER: I was quite proud of that one.

MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. Earlier you mentioned the EPA thing. I guess these were EPA

mandates concerning the water and sewer system. Is that correct?

29

MR. CINDER: Sewer system.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sewer system. Explain that to me. Tell me what happened? Briefly,

just in a nutshell.

MR. CINDER: In a nutshell, for some reason EPA decided that they thought Oak

Ridge could do better in its improvement of its sewer system, even though we had a

multiyear, multimillion dollar effort to improve the system. We’ve been working that

plan for at least 15 years before they came knocking. We had every reason to

continue.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: We got a letter. It’s called the 308 letter. It’s the federal law. The section

says that they can demand information. Basically, it’s a self-incriminating report. You

have to fess up everything you’ve ever done when you answer their questions. It’s self-

revealing.

MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly.

MR. CINDER: I knew it was going to be the beginning of the end. We submitted the

request for information. They took about a year and came back and said, “Okay, we’re

going to come do an inspection.” They came and did an inspection and they looked at

all the places that we had said we had problems with overflows. They said, “Yeah, you

got overflows. You got problems.” “We know we’ve got problems. We’ve got a plan to

fix them.” They send their inspection report and by design it’s not very flattering.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course.

30

MR. CINDER: We knew where it was going to end up. It was going to end up in an

order of some kind from the EPA to the city saying, “You are hereby ordered to do this,

this, this, and this.” $20 plus million or more.

MR. MCDANIEL: Or more.

MR. CINDER: You really don’t have choice.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: You really can’t fight EPA. Knoxville tried. It cost them a lot more

money. I knew about EPA. I knew what I was going to do. We talked to council.

Interestingly enough we got the inspection report and I had gone to then City Manager,

Jim O’Connor. This was in December of ‘09. I got the inspection. I said, “Jim, this is

pretty bad.” I said, “We need to share this with council.” He said, “Just put it off, just put

it off.” He said, “Let’s not ruin their holiday.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Really? Okay.

MR. CINDER: The next week, he resigns. He’s leaving town.

MR. MCDANIEL: He knew.

MR. CINDER: He knew.

MR. MCDANIEL: He knew.

MR. CINDER: He knew he was going. He didn’t want to have to fool with it.

MR. MCDANIEL: He didn’t want that letter going public is the reason he resigned.

MR. CINDER: It made perfect sense.


MR. CINDER: I mean, as soon as he resigned, that was when he tabbed me to be

interim again. That was my second tour of duty.

31

MR. MCDANIEL: Were you Interim City Manager between Broughton?

MR. CINDER: No, between Boyer.

MR. MCDANIEL: Boyer?

MR. CINDER: Yeah. Between Boyer and O’Connor.

MR. MCDANIEL: Was Boyer City Manager?

MR. CINDER: Yeah.

MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Paul Boyer was City Manager.

MR. CINDER: Yeah. He did an interim for a while and then he was a deputy under Bo

McDaniel. No relation I’m sure.

MR. MCDANIEL: No. Why you for the Interim City Manager? I mean, because you

were smart and good looking.

MR. CINDER: It works for me.

MR. MCDANIEL: No, seriously. Was it because you had a manager role?

MR. CINDER: My personality is I’m even tempered, even keeled. I got along with

almost everybody. I had the traits that would make a decent city manager.

MR. MCDANIEL: You’ve been with the city a long time and you knew all the players.

You knew where all the bodies were.

MR. CINDER: The players knew me.


MR. CINDER: It wasn’t like I’m unknown. If they reached out to somebody else outside

and pull them in and said, “We want you to be the acting.” My job was to hold the

organization together because it really is disruptive anytime the city manager leaves.


32

MR. CINDER: It’s always disruptive.

MR. MCDANIEL: They are the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of the city. I mean, they

run things.

MR. CINDER: By nature a lot of communities, it’s a very political process. The

department heads serve, in the charter, we did serve at the pleasure of the city

manager.


MR. CINDER: He can say, “Goodbye.” You have no recourse. You don’t even have an

appeal rights. It’s pretty tenuous position to be in. You have to get along with your

boss, every day.


MR. CINDER: That was my first stint between Boyer and…

MR. MCDANIEL: O’Connor.

MR. CINDER: …O’Connor.

MR. MCDANIEL: How long was that for?

MR. CINDER: That was about 10 months.

MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right.

MR. CINDER: Then as O’Connor was leaving, he’d been here five years, and then he

said he’s going to recommend to council that they name me the interim. That’s when I

told them. I said, “Now, I know why you were putting off telling them.” He says, “Yeah.

You’d get to tell them now.” He says, “I’ll be gone.”

33

MR. MCDANIEL: The thing about it is you’d already done it once and hadn’t

bankrupted the city or put us into ruin. They figured that would happen again. Council

approved you to be the interim city manager.

MR. CINDER: Interim City Manager and of course one of my ... I think it was my first

meeting was January of 2010, I believe. I got to tell them about EPA and what was

coming. I had the advantage and that I knew it from the ground up, from being in

Public Works. I just got to present it to them as their Acting City Manager. I got to hit

them both ways. The technical side and the administrative side. I told them what likely

was going to happen and when. It pretty much played out. We were going to receive

an order and it turned out to be an administrative order, which is doesn’t sound like it,

but it always as better than a consent order. We didn’t have to go to the Department of

Justice, have federal lawyers and federal judges tell us what to do. I got to really

literally negotiate directly with the EPA in Atlanta. We actually developed a really good

working relationship.

MR. MCDANIEL: Once you knew that you were going to have to do this.

MR. CINDER: When Mark Watson hits the door in August of 2010, about 10 months

later, basically we interviewed him and so on and so forth, and I told him what was

coming. The order came his first month here. “Hi, boss. Look what’s come.” That was a

rude welcoming to the community. It wasn’t like he didn’t know it was coming.

MR. MCDANIEL: He knew it was coming.

MR. CINDER: We had to get our heads together and work through how are we going

to deal with this. Of course, the thought was a lot of people saying, “You should fight

34

them, you should fight them.” There was some on council too, “You need to fight

them.” I said, “No, you don’t fight EPA.”

MR. MCDANIEL: I would imagine that. It probably gave you more heartburn than most

anything else in your career in Oak Ridge.

MR. CINDER: It did. It was consuming.

MR. MCDANIEL: It was a big deal. I mean, it was going to cost a lot of…

MR. CINDER: Everything else still stayed the same. We still had to do the water and

streets and the snow plowing and everything else. It still had to be done by Public

Works.


MR. CINDER: Then we’ve got this whole EPA mess, which was in piles, and piles, and

piles of reports and studies. It was more reports and more studies and then

implementing and going through all the financing, and all the downside to that. It was

really a testament to the grit of the whole department because everybody in that

department pulled together. It affected everybody in the Public Works Department

directly.

MR. MCDANIEL: I’m sure.

MR. CINDER: They gave new tasks to everybody and the department pulled together

and pulled it off.

MR. MCDANIEL: How many were in your department at that time?

MR. CINDER: At that time, probably maybe upper 90s - 96, 98 people - something

like that. We didn’t really add that many new people to deal with EPA. Everybody

pitched in and said “Look, we don’t need all these extra bodies we thought we were

35

going to need.” We didn’t really have to add that many to deal with it. They just took it

under their wing and found better ways to do things more efficiently which was a good

result. The department is huge. Public Works is the biggest department in the city. It’s

got over 100 people now. It keeps you busy. EPA was the biggest headache of my

career.

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, I bet.

MR. CINDER: In the end, the outcome was good. I mean, they let us go. They

reminded me and I reminded my successor and the city manager said ... Their parting

words were, “We will be back to see how you’re doing. Of course, don’t let your guard

down.” It wasn’t a threatening way, but they meant it.

MR. MCDANIEL: I mean how long was the time frame to be able to accomplish

everything they wanted done?

MR. CINDER: Five years. Start to finish. One time when we took to council some

particular item for their approval, we showed them what we’ve accomplished to date

and we stacked up all the reports and laid them out. All the plans that we’ve done,

rolled those out. We took a picture and put it up on the screen in the council room.

They gasped.

MR. MCDANIEL: Really?

MR. CINDER: I said, “That’s all because of EPA. Nothing there has anything to do with

anything other than to satisfy the EPA order.” The timeframes were extremely,

extremely tight. Ninety days after this, you got to have this and six months after this,

you got to have that. I was like, “Whew.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Was that still ongoing or is it completed?

36

MR. CINDER: The EPA related work is complete. It was virtually completed before I

retired about 15 months ago. It was virtually completed. Near enough that I felt

comfortable leaving. I had no intentions of leaving until I knew it was-

MR. MCDANIEL: It was okay.

MR. CINDER: It was okay. In fact, we knew we were going to need a little extra time

because the work hadn’t been completed within the five year window. It wasn’t going to

be. There was a delay in the big tanks that were being built.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: There was a delay in some of that work. I called my contact down there

and said, “What have we got to do to ask for more time?” He says, “You know what,

Gary.” He says, “You’re close enough.” He says, “You’re already under contract with

everything. You just got to finish it.” He said, “There’s no reason you wouldn’t finish it.”

He says, “We’re going to let you off. We’re going to end it early.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.

MR. CINDER: The letter came two days before my retirement.


MR. CINDER: It became my parting gift to the city.

MR. MCDANIEL: There you go.

MR. CINDER: It’s like, “Okay. I got us out of it.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.

MR. CINDER: There’s been no reporting to EPA. We still have to report to the state

but that’s the state regs [regulations]. That has to happen forever.


37

MR. CINDER: It always has to happen forever. The EPA, now, they’re still out there

and a lot of other things that were in those reports were things that the city said, “We

would do and keep doing.” They’ll come back and say, “Have you kept doing that?”


MR. CINDER: Which okay, man. It’s a good stewardship. They don’t want you to just

say, “Okay. There, we’re done,” and put it aside and forget it. Go back into disarray.

Part of the program is to get you in better shape and stay, you need to keep it that

way.

MR. MCDANIEL: You retired, what, a year-and-a-half ago?

MR. CINDER: Early September of 2015.

MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right. Why did you retire? You just could?

MR. CINDER: Yeah. I mean the way the retirement system was set up, you could

retire at age 60.

MR. MCDANIEL: I see.

MR. CINDER: I passed that milestone at six months previous. I’m young enough,

healthy enough that I want to…

MR. MCDANIEL: Do something else.

MR. CINDER: …do something different, try something different. I could ride it out here

and stay until I can’t go no more. That would be okay too. Just the desire to try some

new adventures. I’ve been doing this for 25 years. It’s like, “Okay. Time to do

something different.” It’s a good decision. I’ve missed the people. There’s a lot of

people I work with that I don’t see every day anymore. When you do see each other,

it’s like old times, so that’s fine.

38

MR. MCDANIEL: Did you find something else to do or are you still looking?

MR. CINDER: I’m doing some part-time consulting work. I like to say I’m actually

reliving my career. I am working with Morristown and helping them start planning a

new public works complex. I’m working with the Morristown Utility System to help them

deal with administrative order from…

MR. MCDANIEL: EPA.

MR. CINDER: From the state.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, from the state.

MR. CINDER: They got a state order and I tell them, “You are so lucky. You are so

lucky to get the state giving you an order and not EPA.”

MR. MCDANIEL: You’ve got all this experience. You’ve got the background in those

things, and both of those things. You’re available to help them and why wouldn’t you?

MR. CINDER: Yeah. It’s fun. I’m flashing back.

MR. MCDANIEL: The other thing is you’re a consultant. You’re not an employee.

When the project is done, you’re done.

MR. CINDER: It’s over.

MR. MCDANIEL: You’re done. You can walk away.

MR. CINDER: The staff, they have to take the items they need to their council just like

I used to have to take our items to our council.

MR. MCDANIEL: All right. Let’s go back. We talked about your career and where you

are from that point to now. I’m sure you got a million stories and a million opinions

about some people that you worked with.

MR. CINDER: Some opinions I’m not going to put on tape.

39

MR. MCDANIEL: I understand. I’m not going to ask you about that. If you were about

30 years older, I’d say, “Is there anything you want to get off your chest because now

is the time?” You’re still a young man. You still got a lot of life to live and a lot of people

you have to run in to at the grocery store.

MR. CINDER: That’s right.

MR. MCDANIEL: You’re in the Garden Apartments. Let’s talk about where you live.

Did you buy a house? Did you build a house?

MR. CINDER: We bought a house. We bought a house on West Outer up off ... They

took it basically right at the end of Newridge [Road]. It was always known as the red

door house. Being from Florida, we were intrigued with the steep front yard. It had a

big steep front yard. It had a curvy little driveway up to the top. We thought, “Wow. This

is pretty cool. There’s more elevation change in our property than there is in the whole

state of Florida. Until the first rain, after pine needles fell and you can’t get up or down.

MR. MCDANIEL: Because it’s too slick.

MR. CINDER: Too slick, too steep.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my.

MR. CINDER: The first time I cut grass.

MR. MCDANIEL: I was about to say.

MR. CINDER: I had the forethought to at least cut sideways, but it was so sloped. I

tore the whole side of my tennis shoe out.

MR. MCDANIEL: Did you really, oh gosh.

MR. CINDER: I called the guy I bought the house from. I said, “How did you mow this

front yard?” He says, “Golf spikes.”

40


MR. CINDER: Yeah, that’s good idea. To the day I sold that house, I cut the front yard

in golf shoes. Never slipped, never had a problem, after that.

MR. MCDANIEL: How long were you there?

MR. CINDER: We bought it in ‘92 and sold it in 2002. So 10 years.

MR. MCDANIEL: So 10 years.

MR. CINDER: We bought a house in Hendrix Creek. My son was just getting his

driver’s license. I said, “We really don’t want him backing down the driveway on to

West Outer.”


MR. CINDER: That’s just an accident waiting to happen.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: You got to think of those things.

MR. MCDANIEL: We needed a little bit more space. The kids were bigger. Give them

some space to have some friends over and not be in our face, between us in their

face.

MR. CINDER: Exactly. That’s what they were concerned about.

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. I’m sure they were.

MR. CINDER: We bought a house over there in Hendrix Creek. The guy I bought it

from said the problem with this house is it’s too close to town. If you don’t feel like

cooking, you say, “Oh, let’s just run in to Ruby Tuesday or Applebee’s or something.”

He says, “This house will cost you money.” We moved there in 2002 and it was a great

41

place. My wife loved gardening. She had plenty of jobs for me to do in the yard. She

never did get her transfer.

MR. MCDANIEL: That’s what I was going to ask you about.

MR. CINDER: I’m going to back up. She never did get a transfer. She became a stay-

at-home mom. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened or didn’t happen if

you’d say you didn’t get the transfer. She really embraced that role. Living here is a

little easier pace of life.


MR. CINDER: We could afford to live on what I was making. Especially our daughter

when she gets home from school, get off the bus and there’s Mom waiting for her.

There’s no afterschool care, none of that stuff.

MR. MCDANIEL: Nothing like that.

MR. CINDER: She kept that up. She tried a part-time job for a while and she says,

“You know, it’s really not worth it. I’m better served and I can be home, make a full

dinner” I didn’t have to do microwave dinners when I got home and that kind of thing.”

Anyway, she never did get a transfer. She did a lot of gardening, both at the West

Outer house and the Hendrix Creek house. This is where it becomes a little bit sad

because my wife got ... In 2005, she got sick. She started to develop a rash and itch

but no sign of a rash, just started itching. I said, “Your palms are itching. You're coming

into money.” I said, “Okay. That’s good.” Then her eyes start turning yellow. I said,

“That’s not good.” She went, and I went with her.” Long story short, turned out she had

bile duct cancer.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my.

42

MR. CINDER: It became a two-and-a-half year journey to ... It ends poorly. It’s a rare

disease. Basically, by the time you know you have it, it’s…

MR. MCDANIEL: It’s too late.

MR. CINDER: It’s too late.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my goodness.

MR. CINDER: It was two-and-a-half years of real tough times in Hendrix Creek.

MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. So she passed away?

MR. CINDER: She passed away.

MR. MCDANIEL: What year?

MR. CINDER: August of 2007.

MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right.

MR. CINDER: It was two weeks before my daughter was leaving. She graduated in

May of 2000 from high school. Her mom dies in August. Two weeks later, my daughter

goes to UT [University of Tennessee], moves into the dorm. My son is already at UT.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.

MR. CINDER: Within two weeks, I go from family of four to by myself. I was like,

“Okay.”

MR. MCDANIEL: Goodness.

MR. CINDER: This whole saga here is where the strength of, especially the city

organization is because everybody I worked with was so helpful, was so supportive.

They’d leave me alone but then they’d be supportive. I couldn’t have asked for a better

group of people to have to go through that journey with. I thanked them profusely when

it was over.

43


MR. CINDER: There were times you just want to go to the office just for a sense of

normalcy because that’s a whole parallel of universe that you don’t even realize exists.

MR. MCDANIEL: Right.

MR. CINDER: Anyway, she passed. We tried to form a new little family unit with my

two college kids and me.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly.

MR. CINDER: I stayed working at the city. That was my one constant that didn’t

change. It was just crazy before it all happened, then it was over.


MR. CINDER: This was my anchor. The city was my anchor. The things we were

working on, as crazy as they were, were comforting because it was all constant. It was

normal. That became real powerful. Then it becomes good because after a while, I

didn’t want to stay single. I wanted to date.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: What do you do when you’re 52 years old? How do you do this? I’m not

going to go troll the bars. I don’t dance. My opportunities are limited.

MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly. You’re not quite ready to go to the senior center yet.

MR. CINDER: No. I didn’t think so. I said I’ve still got some decent years and life

ahead of me. Long story short, it was suggested, “Why don’t you try online dating?”

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.

MR. CINDER: I said, “Okay. Let’s see what happens?” Anyway, one thing leads to

another. I signed up for eHarmony. I met this really nice woman who works at the Lab.

44

We start dating. We do the usual eHarmony thing and eventually ... She lived 1.4 miles

from me here in Oak Ridge.


MR. CINDER: We realized if it hadn’t been for online dating, we never would have

crossed paths because of different churches, different grocery stores, completely

different lives. We never would have even run into each other. That’s one of those

success stories. We dated then we got engaged. Not the world’s longest engagement

but it lasted a few years just to make sure. She’d come out of a troubled life and I had

my traumas.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: Then in 2011, I decided that I needed to get rid of the house in Hendrix

Creek. There’s too many ghosts.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.

MR. CINDER: I put it on the market and bought in the house I’m in now, that we’re in

now. Out in the east end, on Berwick.

MR. MCDANIEL: There you go.

MR. CINDER: There we go. We’re married.

MR. MCDANIEL: Did she have children?

MR. CINDER: She’s got two. She’s got a son and a daughter. Daughter lives in

Sevierville. Son lives in Fairview, Tennessee.

MR. MCDANIEL: Where are your children now?

MR. CINDER: My kids, they’re in Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? What did they go into?

45

MR. CINDER: My son is a statistician for Capital One. He’s in their numbers unit. Even

growing up here, his name is Matt but his nickname was “Math.”


MR. CINDER: Math Cinder. I mean, he was tutoring at the high school. He tutored the

athletes at UT.

MR. MCDANIEL: Did he?

MR. CINDER: He said, “Dad, football players don’t know math.” He says, “I don’t mind

doing the track athletes.” He said, “They understand.” Then he got ... Remember Chris

Lofton, the basketball player?

MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. Sure do.

MR. CINDER: He had failed Introductory Math twice and he’d been served notice that

one more failure and he was going to be suspended from basketball. That was his big

year.


MR. CINDER: They gave him to my son and said, “He’s yours.” I said, “They didn’t tell

you to take a test for him, did they?” “No, no, no, no.” He says, “I’ve got his cellphone

number here.” He says, “We’ll meet day and night.” Chris Lofton was his personal

project and he passed.

MR. MCDANIEL: He passed.

MR. CINDER: He passed.

MR. MCDANIEL: He passed. You said your daughter is in Raleigh?

MR. CINDER: My daughter is in Raleigh. She went in to exercise science. She’s got a

degree from UT in exercise science. I think she took after her old man in that she

46

thought she would want to use that as a spring board to a different profession,

because it’s like the entry degree that you would get for either being a pharmacist or a

physical therapist or something like that. She got to the point, she says, “I’m not so

sure I really want go anymore.” She says, “Maybe later.” She found out the hard way

there wasn’t a whole lot of jobs for entry level exercise scientists.


MR. CINDER: Anyway, she bopped around. She did a full-time stint with Young Life in

Clinton. She was big with Young Life, real big. She volunteered at UT so she’d come

back. Everybody was coming back to Oak Ridge and they needed help in Clinton. She

says, “I’ll take Clinton.” She became part of the Clinton Young Life group and she

stayed in town. She said, “I want to stick around ‘til my girls graduate from high school,

just to see them, that group of girls through, because I want to make sure they…”

MR. MCDANIEL: Her Young Life girls?

MR. CINDER: Her Young Life girls. Then she got on paid staff and was following a boy

to Houston, Texas. That lasted a little while. Then the relationship fizzled but she

stayed with Young Life. They appreciated that. “We thought once you and he broke up,

you’d be headed back.” “No, I told you I’d stay and I’m staying." Anyway, she always

loved organizing and she always said, “I’d love to be a wedding planner or an event

planner.” She did a lot of event planning with Young Life both volunteering and

especially as paid staff. She was at camp one time and she meets this young man.

He’s from Raleigh, goes to North Carolina State and he’s an engineer. They hit it off.

One thing leads to another. They’re now married and living in Raleigh and he’s an

47

engineer at a consulting firm and she’s with the engineering foundation at NC [North

Carolina] State, setting up all their events.

MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.

MR. CINDER: She took a path and she’s doing exactly what she loved to do.

MR. MCDANIEL: Wow, great. Good.

MR. CINDER: That’s where my kids are.

MR. MCDANIEL: Gary, thank you so much. Seriously.

MR. CINDER: This is fun. This was fun.

MR. MCDANIEL: Thanks so much for coming in. You had a long history with the city.

You did a lot of interesting things before that and you were there when some big things

happened for the city and we appreciate your service. Thanks for coming in.

MR. CINDER: Thank you. It’s my pleasure. It’s been a great career and I’ve got

fingerprints on a lot of things in this town.

MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. All right. Good. Thanks.

MR. CINDER: All right.

[End of Interview]

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