Ernest Graves
My uncle [Louis Graves] down in North Carolina bought some of the stock for my
grandmother. He called up and told my father with great pride that he had done this.
My father did two things. First, he told my uncle to sell the stock immediately. And
second, he resigned. The point was that, as far as he could see, all they were doing was
using his name to sell stock that he didn't think was of proper value.
Q:
Not everyone would react that way.
A:
No, but that was the ethic of the officers out of that era. We read so much in the paper
today about conflicts of interest. You go back to that era, and the officers generally
were much more straight-laced in their standards about any business that traded on their
military career. It was much more of an ethical issue for them.
Q:
Do you remember the name of the firm that was building the building, by the way?
A:
No. I'll look and see if I can find that, but I don't remember what the construction firm
was.
Q:
He stayed in Washington, then?
A:
He stayed in Washington. As a matter of fact, I think my mother and I were still back
up in New York when this particular incident happened. What happened next was that
[Major] General [Edgar] Jadwin, the Chief of Engineers, arranged to bring my father
back on active duty. He and my father had been very close associates in World War I.
Jadwin arranged for my father to be chairman of the Interoceanic Canal Commission,
one of many boards that studied canals through the Isthmus of Panama and through
Nicaragua.
Q:
A connection you maintained.
A:
Yes. That's right. The Interoceanic Canal Commission was looking particularly at
Nicaragua as an alternate route for a second canal. This would have been in 1926 and
1927. My father came back on active duty for that. He then stayed on active duty and
became involved with the civil works program. This was at the time of the 1927 flood
on the Mississippi River. As a result of this flood, Congress passed the 1928 Flood
Control Act, which was a milestone in changing the federal role in flood control. My
father was one of the key people involved in writing that legislation.
Q:
Ah! How did he come to have that role?
A:
I think two reasons. One is that he had been the district engineer in Vicksburg
[Mississippi] back in the teens. He was there in 1913. So he had experience in the
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