“The memory of Edith Warner, a noble personality, and of the enchanting environment in which she lived, will always be cherished by everyone who met her.”
Niels Bohr, Nobel-Prize-winning Physicist
Edith Warner had New Mexico in her soul. She loved it so much and spoke of its spirit with such respect and tenderness that she gives it back to us with an added radiance and meaning.
V.B. Price
In 27 months, Manhattan Project scientists created the world’s first nuclear bombs. They had a six-day workweek and a goal of harnessing atomic power before Adolf Hitler did. Amidst this constant stress, one way they relaxed was to dine at Edith Warner’s tea room.
Patty Templeton Archivist, National Security Research Center
https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/the-vault/the-vault-2022/edith-warner/
Warner died from leukemia in May l951 at age 57. Was she an early downwind victim of Los Alamos testing? We’ll never know.
A year before her death she wrote at Christmas, “How to endure the manmade devastating period in which we live and which seems almost as hopeless to control as drought; how to proceed when leadership seems utterly lacking, when individuals and nations seem stupid and arrogant; these no one human can answer. I only know that the power recognized by those other sky scanners still exists, that contact is possible. I know, too, what depths of kindness and selflessness exist in my fellow man.”
“When Tilano (her old friend from the Pueblo) lights the Christmas Eve fire, perhaps against a white hillside, I shall watch from the house where some have felt peace and hope that in our sky there are some bright stars.”
V.B. Price
http://newmexicomercury.com/blog/comments/provincial_matters_8_20_2013
In Edith’s Own Words:
“one or two groups of them are there most nights for dinner. They come in through the kitchen door, talk a bit before leaving, and are booked up weeks ahead. Because they are isolated and need even this change for morale, I feel it is definitely a war job for me.”
1943 Christmas Letter
“Today we gathered the Christmas greens. Large Los Alamos signs bar the canyons where we formerly found fir….
Most of the men whose knowledge made atomic bombs possible have returned to laboratories and universities to do research, to teach future scientists, to try to solve the world atomic problem.
But others have come to continue work on atomic weapons and other uses of the energy. So louder and louder blasts echo over the Plateau and my blood runs cold remembering Hiroshima.
If the world lived here, all would be reminded frequently that we must catch up with striding science and find a way to live together in the peace that Christmas signifies.”
1946 Christmas Letter
“For many, the little house at the river was a landmark, for some an experience. For me it was two decades of living and learning. I had hoped to live out my life ‘where the river makes noise.'”
1947 Christmas Letter
