Oakridger A company manager told Oak Ridge city officials that an air ionization method is one way to reduce diseases such as COVID-19 at Oak Ridge Schools. “It could really save a life,” Russ Nelson, business development manager with Energy Savings Group, told the officials at a joint meeting of the Oak Ridge City Council Budget and Finance Committee and the Oak Ridge Board of Education. Board of Education member Angi Agle said she supported that measure. “The air purification system is mandatory,” she said. “I’m not convinced this pandemic will be the last.” “We buried my father yesterday. He died from COVID,” she said. Thomas E. Douglass, her father, died on Dec. 6 in Oak Ridge. The 84-year-old man was retired from Y-12 National Security Complex, where he was manager of mechanical engineering, according to his obituary.