Q ..
He went over to Construction and Operations?
A ..
Yes, he became Chief of Operations. I don't think he did right away, but he
eventually did.
Q ..
No, eventually, yes.
He passed away. He was a good friend of ours, I mean my wife and his family.
A
After he retired, I used to play golf with him until he moved up to New Jersey.
First his wife passed away and then Mark passed away a couple of years ago. Roy
Beard came in and out. Bryce Hobbs, who's still living here. He's older than I am.
He was a sedimentation man. He came in from one of the field offices. He came
from Arkansas, the same place Al Cochran came from. I think they went and played
football together. Later on, Hagen came in.
After the war was over, another chap came in. I don't know whether you're
interested or not, but I think he was in my section. I was Assistant Chief in charge
of the Reservoir Regulation Section where we reviewed all of the plans for reservoir
operations. The districts had to submit their plans through the divisions for
operating the reservoirs, and the Chief's Office approved them. Then in Section 7
of the 1944 Flood Control Act, Congress passed a law that any dam built with
Federal money for space for flood control had to be operated in accordance with
plans approved by the Secretary of the Army. He designated the Chief of Engineers
to execute his authority.
Being in the Reservoir Regulation Section, we handled this. This included a number
of the Bureau of Reclamation dams. We had several private dams built by river
authorities that we issued regulations for. This was sort of a diplomatic job. The
field offices had to work with the people that were operating the dams and work out
a mutual agreement as to how the flood control storage should be operated. These
were submitted to our office for review, and then the Chief would submit them to
the Secretary of the Army for approval. They would be published in the Federal
Register. That was part of the branch's work; part of the time we reviewed the
hydrology studies for the different projects.
But this chap I was trying to think of his name, he came back from the war and
ended up in my section. He was deeply interested in transmitting materials in
pipelines using a fluid transmission. That's all he worked on. We couldn't get him
to do any of our work. So finally he moved on to something else.
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