Ernest Graves
I would never have been involved in the water project review, if that hadn't taken place,
because I would have already been Deputy Chief.
Q:
Were you sorry that you --
A:
No. I would have stayed in civil works as long as I could. That was my lifelong
ambition--since the time I was a little boy--to be the head of the civil works program.
Q:
I think I may be getting ahead a little bit by following this line, but did that have some
consequences later on for you in terms of your assignments? Did you want to be Chief
of Engineers?
A:
When I went to be Director of Civil Works, I felt that I was going to be one of the
competitors to be Chief. I don't know that I ever had that much chance.
Bill Gribble left after three years as Chief. When he decided to retire, Jack Morris was
hands-down the leading candidate. Jack used to say that if Gribble had waited another
year, then Jack would have been older and I might have had a better chance. But I don't
know. Sure, I would have liked to be Chief of Engineers, but when they picked Jack,
I felt that he was the leading candidate. He and I were very close. My main interest was
staying on in civil works. I said, "Why don't you let me do that?" He said, "Fine."
Deputy Chief of Engineers, 19771978
Q:
What was it like working with General Morris? You're two very different people.
A:
Yes. Each of us respected the other a lot. I certainly did respect him, and he certainly
listened to me. I tried to get him to think things through before he did them.
Q:
He had kind of an experimental inclination?
A:
He had an experimental approach, and I argued that he shouldn't do this as much as he
tended to, that he should try to get something set before he put everybody into it
because when you drill the troops back and forth, you lose the cutting edge. My
philosophy was, you made up your mind what you were going to do and then that was
it. If the people knew that that was it, they would really make an all-out effort to make
it succeed; if they thought that you were likely to change your mind at some point,
they'd kind of let things go. They'd wait and see.
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