Engineer Memoirs
In terms of my own experience, that was the first job I had where I felt that I really
accomplished something on my own. I had done some things before that, but there was
a case where Jim Lampert basically turned it over to me, and I was able to use my mind
to figure out what had to be done. Then I was able to go out and do it. I had never
quite had that opportunity before, and I got a lot of confidence from the success we had
in the training for the power program.
Q:
Was that his approach to all officers, or--
A:
I think, yes. Of course, he was very careful in picking the people, and he was able to get
a lot of extremely able people into the program. His deputies, Bill Gribble and then
Elmer Yates, were extremely capable. Joe Bacci was one of the best in his area,
construction. [Major William B.] Bill Taylor, who was the officer out of that program
that had polio--
Q:
Before Gribble?
A:
Taylor joined the program before Gribble. Taylor was more junior, though. He was a
staff officer who was helping Lampert from the very beginning on the justifications of
the program. He was a captain at the time, and he was struck with polio, was very ill
and out for a long time, and quite crippled by it.
He came back as a civilian, after he had had polio, and, of course, he had a
distinguished career as a civilian in government. He was the technical director at the
laboratories at Fort Belvoir for a time.
He was also the top R&D man in OCE for a time. Now, he's retired and living down
south of Mount Vernon. He was another example of a very able person. I could go on
because there was a whole string of them.
Lampert's idea was to let these people do their thing, and that contributed to the
success of the program.
Q:
Were you sorry to leave there?
A:
Not as sorry as some other assignments because I had finished something. I had
expected to be there about two years, and I went from there to Fort Leavenworth
[Kansas], to the Command and General Staff College, which was something I very
much wanted to do.
By the time I left, the plant was operating. It had a crew. I had gotten this graduate
schooling program rolling pretty well. The other thing I had done was to develop a
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