Ralph Gates is on a mission. “No, not that kind of mission,” he’s quick to add. It’s his favorite joke these days. No, his mission is to capture on DVD the life stories of “the passionate people of Park City with imagination, initiative and perseverance.” That’s what he calls us. At 86 years old, he’s in a hurry to get the job done.

Gates is that rare individual who seems to be more interested in telling other people’s stories than telling his own. This in spite of the fact that his is more interesting than most. Talk to him long enough and the story eventually emerges.

Born in Chicago, Ill., Gates grew up in Nashville, Tenn. “I never told anybody in town that I was born in Chicago because I didn’t want my pals to know I was born a Yankee, he chuckles. As a boy, Gates wandered the nearby countryside, swimming in rivers and hunting quail and doves. “Back in the 1930s, Nashville was a small town, only about 160,000 people. I didn’t have to go far to be out in the country.”

As a teenager, Gates frequented the Grand Old Opry and danced to all the big-name bands that came to town. After graduating from high school at age 17, he enrolled at nearby Vanderbilt University and studied chemical engineering. But the war was on and he was eager to join the fight. When he turned 18 and wanted to volunteer, the Army refused. He was given a special deferment told to stay in engineering school: “We’ll call you up when we need you.”

The call came a year later and Gates soon found himself caught up in the most secret war project of the last century. He was secretly shipped to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he worked under J. Robert Oppenheimer building the first plutonium “A” bomb — one of the two that resulted in the surrender of Japan in August of 1945. His job was to melt and cast the highly explosive concoction of TNT and other chemicals that encased the plutonium and triggered the nuclear fission reaction. “We used steam to heat up the TNT in a big sugar melting kettle,” says Gates. “It was dangerous, yes, but our lives weren’t any more important than the foot soldiers in the foxholes.”

Gates recalls having lunch with Oppenheimer. “Our work was out a ways — in a spot where we could blow ourselves up without much collateral damage. He’d come into our tiny mess hall and sit down at a table with us. He seemed to be just a regular guy, a good manager, visiting with the GIs.

Gates was discharged soon after the war ended and went on to complete his engineering degree at Vanderbilt and a master’s degree at MIT. He then embarked on a 40-year career as an engineer in product development and technical sales with Stauffer Chemical Co. His job took him successively to Illinois, Connecticut and New York.

After retirement, Gates and Fran Kennedy moved to Park City together. They had visited Utah to ski in the 1980s, and knew then that they wanted to live here. “As soon as we got here we wanted to build a fence around the place,” he laughs. Avid outdoor enthusiasts, they took to the mountains with gusto. “There aren’t too many places that we didn’t visit, skiing, backpacking, hiking or camping in the Uintas and the state and national parks,” he says. Sadly, Kennedy passed away seven years ago and Gates has been going it alone since then.

The story Gates really wants to talk about began just a few years ago. He’s always had an interest in film. “I was shooting home movies of the family way back in the 1930s,” he says. “I got a camcorder several years ago and that’s when my passion and mission came to me to record visual life stories of mostly ordinary people who have lived through some of the most turbulent times in our history. I don’t want their descendants to just read about them or hear about them years later. I want them to feel their emotions as they watch them years from now talking in living color.

He began by taping fellow war veterans, but has since expanded into taping many fellow Parkites. He believes they have “immigrant” genes in them, as did our ancestors when they came to the United States. “How could they be better described,” he explains. “Some came for religious or economic reasons, some because they have the ‘free spirit’ gene. They think, ‘Hey, there’s something more interesting I want to do.’ That’s what the ski bums were all about. They wanted to ski so badly they would do anything to stay here. They took two or three jobs, bought houses dirt cheap and made out well. They have the immigrant genes.”

In the last few years Gates has taped the life stories of some local residents who have since passed on, including Jim Santy, Roger Harlan and Mel Fletcher all men who figured prominently in the history of this town. “That can happen to anybody at anytime,” he reminds us. “That’s why anytime anybody in town retires, I’d like to be in their office the next day to do their life story.” To date he’s taped nearly a hundred life stories, including those of local political and business leaders, real-estate developers and agents, performers and writers.

What began as a labor of love has evolved into a business of sorts for Gates. Though he initially did his video stories for free, he now charges a modest fee. “I can only do about two stories a week, so I’m not getting rich doing this. It’s truly a mission. I would dearly love to get stories from some of our newest Latino immigrants.”

Gates admits to a growing sense of urgency regarding his work. “I really think these stories are important and should be kept as a living history of the people responsible for bringing recognition to Park City as a world-class ski and vacation destination.”

For more information about Life Stories, contact Gates at [email protected]

Steve Phillips is a Park City-based writer and actor. Send your profile comments and suggestions to him at [email protected]

VITAL STATISTICS

Favorite things to do: ski, hike, fly fish, sing with the Park City Singers, and play bridge with friends at the senior center.

Favorite foods: anything except okra and very spicy food.

Favorite reading: biographies, political “tripe,” scientific journals, historical fiction and poetry from the 1800s.

Favorite music: classical, country & western and vintage big bands