Nat Hartwell Godbold -- Nuclear Engineer

 

 

 

 

Nat Hartwell Godbold was born on January 31, 1908 in Comanche, Texas.  He was the youngest of three children born to Sanctus Wilbur Godbold and Mollie Evelyn Moore.  His father, Sanctus, was a proprietor of a hotel in Long Beach, California.  Mollie Evelyn Moore was a granddaughter of Stanley Thomas of Trigg County, Kentucky.  Nat's siblings were Sanctus Wilbur, Jr., born in 1899 and Mary Ida, born in 1904.

Nat grew up in Comanche and attended the local schools.  He enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin where he received his doctorate in physics in 1932. For two years in the late 1930s, he taught physics at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.  He then moved to Fort Worth where he became the head of the electrical engineering department at Freese & Nichols, an engineering, planning and consulting firm founded in 1894 and served clients across the southwest and southeast United States.  He worked with the firm from 1940 to 1942.

During World War II, Nat worked on numerous governmental projects.   He worked at the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Facility located 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas.  The Pantex plant was America’s only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility.  He went on to work at the Harvard Underwater Sound Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The sound lab was established in 1941 to research and design new equipment to improve underwater detections systems.  Also during the war, he worked at the Los Alamos Scientific Lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico. This lab was one of the world’s largest and most advanced scientific institution and was best known for its central role in helping develop the first atomic bomb. Nat’s  respected knowledge in the field of physics was critical in the nation’s war effort.

Following the war, Nat moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho where he lived until 1956 when he moved back to Fort Worth and worked as a nuclear engineer with the General Dynamics Corporation.  The company’s Fort Worth branch was involved primarily in aircraft production and became a part of Lockheed in 1993.  Nat worked at the company until his retirement.

While a student at the University of Texas, Nat met Evelyn Claudia Padgett of Houston, Texas. On March 27, 1932, Nat and Evelyn were married in Austin, Texas.  Evelyn was born on February 18, 1909 in Houston and was the daughter of Thomas Henry Padgett and Claudia Virginia Sullivan Padgett.  Nat and Evelyn became the parents of five children, Neil Hartwell, born in 1932; Mollie Jane, born in 1936; Virginia Lee, born in 1938; Sheryl Ann born in 1950 and Gary Thomas, born in 1951.

Nat died on June 5, 1993 at a nursing home in White Settlement, Texas at the age of 85. He was buried in the Laurel Land Memorial Park Cemetery in Fort Worth.  Evelyn died on August 8, 1995 at a nursing home in Fort Worth at the age of 86 and was buried in the Laurel Land Memorial Park Cemetery next  to her husband.

 

Nat and Evelyn tombstone

LINEAGE: (Nat Hartwell Godbold was the son of Sanctus Wilbur and Mollie Evelyn Moore Godbold and the grandson of Thomas Oscar and Sarah Adelie Thomas Moore.  Sarah Adelie was the third child of Stanley and Sarah Thompson Rothrock Thomas.  Stanley was the seventh child of James and Mary Standley Thomas.)