James Edward Westcott was born on Jan. 20, 1922. in Chattanooga, Tenn., and grew up in Nashville. His father, Jamie, was an accountant at the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. His mother, Lucille (Green) Westcott, was a homemaker.
Ed’s interest in photography took him as a teenage amateur to Nashville in the early 1930s to shoot, for himself, a whirlwind appearance by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He soon learned to develop pictures and built his own darkroom. After high school, he worked at local photo studios and for the National Youth Administration, taking pictures of the Works Progress Administration’s efforts in Nashville.
He joined the Army Corps of Engineers in early 1942, photographing the construction of hydroelectric plants, dams and military bases in the Southeast. Later that year he was asked by the Corps to choose between two new postings: Alaska or what would become Oak Ridge. He chose the latter because of his knowledge of east Tennessee.
When he arrived, there was little to suggest the massive complex it would become.
“We came under an underpass, which was called ‘Elza,’ and then they said, ‘This is the project,’ ” he told The Tennessean. “I didn’t see anything going on and didn’t see how it could be a project.”
Mr. Westcott moved into a small prefabricated house — a model called a Cemesto A — with his wife, Edith (Seigenthaler) Westcott, and his son, James Jr. When the Wescotts had more children, they moved into a larger, Cemesto D, house, which he modernized and lived in for the next 65 years.
Oak Ridge — which would become a thriving city (minus the barbed fencing) — was used after the war for government research under the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and Mr. Westcott remained as the official photographer. In 1966, he turned to documenting the commission’s activities at its headquarters in Germantown, Md. He returned to live in Oak Ridge in 1977, where he also did some local photographic and darkroom work until his wife took sick. She died in 1996.
