much practical background on the construction work that they were far better than the
students from some other school that didn't have that kind of practical knowledge and the
experience of the instructor's life.
Hydrology and Hydraulic
Q ..
Why did you become interested in hydrology and hydraulic engineering?
exposure to working with the government actually. I had odd jobs
A
Well, it [was] my
in high school and so forth, working on a farm, and all that kind of stuff. But when I was
going to college my father was a heavy equipment operator and he worked for the Bureau
of Reclamation [BuRec]. So he got me connected with the engineering people there, and
I was able to get a couple [of] summer jobs working in the soils area.
So I worked in the soils area. Jobs were tough to get when I graduated, to tell you the
truth The Bureau of Reclamation, since I had been working for them for two summers,
they just assumed I was going to come to work for them after I graduated. They didn't
even come after me or anything. I really had to take off from school to go and find out
if I could go to work for them. They had never really even taken me off their rolls. I was
still one of their employees, which really was to my advantage when it come to retirement
because I got extra credit. But I was just on leave without pay when I was going to
school, after the first day I started working for them.
But, anyway, they had a few opportunities, while limited opportunities you might say,
where I could work when I got through school. There weren't very many other offers
around. I had a chance to go to work for Boeing, but I didn't think that I'd want to be in
the aeronautics type design.
So I took the job with the [Bureau] and just happened that the job in hydrology and
hydraulics sounded more interesting than the other jobs. And after I started work from
there I really enjoyed it.
Q ..
So you didn't have any course training at all beyond the basic BSCE [Bachelor of Science
Civil Engineering] work in hydraulics?
A ..
No. Well, you mean to have the normal courses. This professor that was in charge of
civil engineering taught a course on hydrology which was practically non-existent at that
time in most schools. But he had even written a book which was in draft form that didn't
get published because about the time he was ready to publish another couple of them came
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