Vernon
Frank Snyder was kind of the opposite from Al. He was concerned with coming up with
new innovations and things like that. He liked to work on research type things and
develop new ways to do things. He'd write professional papers and everybody knew who
he was, and he did a lot of international work. He retired relatively young to go into
private work.
But he was really a lot more recognized throughout the world than Al was because of his
international activities and his working on research type things that other people finally
used. Everybody knows Frank Snyder's unit hydrograph method, and he got recognition
from Ohio State for being an outstanding civil engineer. He's had a lot of recognition.
Gail Hathaway was the same way. He liked to be recognized for what he did. I was
leading up to what you asked me about Lew Blakey, how am I going to fit Lew into this
category? Well, Lew, I think, is from my standpoint--he was guy who got things done
that the generals wanted done. If they thought it was important that all of these reports
get in on time, why he'd get them in on time. Now they may have suffered because they
got in on time because they did not have the same quality, but he got them in.
If the general said he wanted something in, then by God, he got them in one way or
another. It did not make any difference how hard he had to work or who he had to push,
he'd get them done. But he and I had some differences a lot of times about what was more
important, getting the report in on time or having a high quality report. You can take
different viewpoints on that. I felt pretty strongly you ought to get the highest quality
reports you could get to begin with, and then you didn't have to worry about changes.
He didn't view it that way in a lot of cases in some of his jobs. He must have been good,
you know, because he got a lot of good jobs. He got moved around a lot, and he got the
kind of jobs he wanted, but he seemed to be good at them. I don't know of any of the
generals that didn't like him. Whoever he worked for, they all seemed to like him real
well.
But I had my differences with him about his planning reports because it would bother the
hell out of me if a survey report was due in on a particular date and theguy in hydraulics
and hydrology that was supposed to review it was off on vacation at that time. So it didn`t
get reviewed, it went in anyway, whether it was reviewed or not. But it got there on time.
That was what was important to get the job done.
Personally in some cases like that I`d rather see it delayed. But then again I wasn't the
guy that was managing reports either. My credits weren't for getting the report out on
time, my credits were for making sure the thing was right. So it all depended on where
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