Family Information for Ernst Arnold and Margaret Charcholla

Contributed by Jan Arnold-Blotz

My grandfather Ernst Arnold was born in Brugg, Switzerland on 3/13/1892. He took the compulsory military training for young Swiss boys (age 11-15) where he found his love for music with the military band. He departed with his brother August Arnold on the La Savoie in the port of Havre on 5/25/1907 for America at the age of 15. He made his home in Hammondsport, NY and later moving to Rochester, NY he became a machinist. He attended the Lutheran Church and became a 32 degree Mason and played with the Demascus Temple Shrine Band and the Rochester Park band. He met my Grandmother, Margaret Charcholla who was born in Bochum, Wesphalia, Germany and they were married in 1915.

His father was a railroad engineer in Switzerland and was married to an Anna Werder. They had many children.

His son, Walter Frank Arnold (my father) was born in Rochester, New York on 11/2/1920. He was recruited out of the University of Illinois in 1943 (W.W.II), where he studied metallurgy, and was inducted into the Army to work on the Manhattan Project as a group leader at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM. After the war he moved to Pleasanton, CA where he worked for 45 years at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He met my mother Ione Stroud after moving to California. He served as a Mechanical Engineer testing devices in the Marshall Islands and in Nevada. He also launched the organization IMOG and established an information exchange with the engineers in the British Atomic Energy Establishment and the US Atomic Energy Commission. He appeared in Life magazine in 1957 when a device failed to detonate and along with other engineers had to climb a 500 foot tower to disarm the weapon. Before he died on 5/22/1987 he had retired as the Deputy Head of Mechanical En! gineering. He was also a Mason and musician like his father. His sister, Margaret Arnold Gore of Penfield, NY also worked as a secretary with the Atomic Energy Commission during W.W.II. She lived in New Mexico for many years before returning to New York.