Engineer Memoirs
At the time, Nancy and I and the children had just moved into this house where we're
talking. The very week that my wife arrived with the children at Fort Sheridan was the
week of this command inspection. She had quite a time because at the conclusion of it
we had a get-together for everybody in our house. We did have the benefit of an
enlisted aide to help her put this together.
At the conclusion of the command inspection, [Major General Francis P.] Frank Koisch,
the Director of Civil Works, in his exit interview, said there were a lot of problems.
Then he went back to OCE and wrote a report that it was the worst division in the
Corps of Engineers.
Q:
Did he kind of surprise you with that?
A:
No. I knew there were problems. I also knew that the inspection had not gone well.
Some of the district engineers had gotten things together; but at least one did a very
poor job in terms of setting up the part of the inspection that was in his district.
The practice in those inspections was to send people to each district. The leader of the
team, and maybe a couple of the top people, would go to each district and visit for a
day.
I think possibly we skipped one of the districts--and it was probably Buffalo--because
the North Central Division had five districts. In only a week, it wasn't practical to visit
five districts. I think we went to Detroit, Saint Paul, Rock Island, and then Chicago. We
did not go to Buffalo.
I knew it was in trouble. I don't believe there was a particular reflection on me since I
had been there nominally six months, but actually in the job less than six months. I
didn't take it as a criticism of myself. I realized there was a lot of work that needed to
be done.
There were some fortunate coincidences. One blessing was that I was able, during the
time that I was there, to select new top civilians for most of the positions in the division
office.
In one case, the chief of engineering had died, and there was an interim man. I was able
to select [Lewis H.] Lew Blakey to come there as my chief of engineering, which was
an extremely fortunate choice. There was a series of these. Larry Beaudin was very
good as chief of construction operations. But he retired, and I selected Carl Cable to
come out from Philadelphia. If you're blessed with the ability to make these choices,
that allows you to pick somebody that's really capable.
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