Well, it was a special project funded by PWA. The studies were authorized and
directed by the Mississippi Valley Committee of the Emergency Administration of
Public Works, subsequently the Water Planning Committee of the National
Resources Board and assigned to the USGS. The best-known hydrologists in the
country were consultants for the studies, so it gave me a chance to meet all of those
people during that time.
Q ..
Who were they? Do you remember them?
A ..
One was Robert E. Horton, who still is widely quoted. There was W.W. Horner
from St. Louis. Adolph Meyer of Minneapolis and L.K. Sherman, the father of the
unit hydrograph, from Chicago. Merrill Bernard from Louisiana, who was a live-
wire and who later on became my boss in the Weather Bureau, was a part-time
employee. I don't know if we really want to skip to that now or not.
Q ..
We'll try to go along chronologically, I think.
A
That was really the beginning of my real interest in hydrology and in doing research.
I always liked to do research work, so I worked on that in Washington. One of the
staff, who was a clerk on the project, was Duane Paul. He and I roomed together.
We had an apartment on G Street just about a block from the Treasury Building.
We lived there for some time. Did our own cooking and everything. The USGS
was in the old Interior building then and about two blocks from our apartment:
That project came to an end after, I guess probably a year and a half. Then I started
writing letters looking for other work. Up to that time and even later, I had firmly
decided I was not going to work for the Government all my life.
One of the men I met while on this project was chief engineer for the Pennsylvania
Water and Power Company. His name was C.F. Merriam. He gave me letters to
some of the chief engineers of some of the big hydropower companies, but none of
them had a vacancy for me at the moment. W.G. Hoyt, the man in charge of this
project, through his acquaintanceship with a man at the TVA [Tennessee Valley
Authority], got me a job as a hydraulic engineer with TVA, which was a nice
engagement. I had a chance to spend most of my time there on research.
We developed some flood routing procedures, which is one of the papers that was
published in ASCE [American Society of Civil Engineers] with two other writers
from TVA. I, being by myself, spent a lot of my weekends and a lot of hours doing
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