Engineer Memoirs
A:
That was a terrific idea, and it was extraordinarily successful at the beginning.
Q:
In what way?
A:
Because it did make a bridge to the environmental movement. The people that were
selected for it at first were leaders of the environmental movement. The fact that they
were participating in the Corps' planning, or influencing it, had a very beneficial effect.
Some board members wanted to get into the specifics of projects. But Fred Clarke and
Jack Morris were very skillful in keeping them away from that. There were some
comments, but, by and large, they operated at the policy level, and they didn't get into
evaluating specific projects.
As time went on, the people who became members of the board were more
conservative. At the beginning, they represented the leadership in the environmental
movement. Later, more of them represented the status quo element. So the
effectiveness of the board diminished somewhat. They weren't as much on the cutting
edge.
When Vic Veysey was the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, he tended
to deprecate the Environmental Advisory Board as not representing the avant-garde of
environmentalism. He associated with a different group that was more radical. We
started out trying to involve Veysey in the Environmental Advisory Board. He did come
to the meetings and he did participate. But he had another set of contacts that weren't
on the board that perhaps were more activist.
Q:
How did Mr. Veysey and General Gribble get along?
A:
Poorly.
Q:
Why?
A:
I guess they just thought differently.
Q:
Reasonable men can think differently and still get along.
A:
They were both very gentlemanly to each other, but they didn't agree on things.
Q:
Which, I guess, accounts for your role as kind of a--
A:
That was so. Jack Morris, who was the Deputy Chief, had tried to somehow fill in. But
that hadn't worked too well because he himself didn't want to do everything Veysey
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