Vernon
But, when Wendell retired, he tried to be a Chief of Engineering and he got in trouble
with, I don't know, General Groves [Brigadier General, later Lieutenant General, Richard
H. Groves, Deputy Director of Civil Works, January
197 I guess it was. He
really worked him over the coals because Homer tried to do some things that needed to
be done in Engineering, and General Groves was all over him. So he didn't get much
accomplished when he was acting, and then he went down to LMVD and became Chief
of Engineering down there. And boy he served under some tough generals down there,
and so he just kind of lost it as far as having a lot of brass, you know, to get things done.
He just didn't have the force to get things done that he had or that he tried to have to begin
with.
He lost a lot of his strength, I think, when he was down there, his inner, you know, [due
to] his action with General Groves. He just figured, I guess, that it didn't pay to fight
generals. So I don't think he was anywhere near the kind of a Chief of Engineering that
the people before him and after him had been. While he tried hard, he didn't have the
right kind of a personality, and he didn't have the reputation and all that kind of stuff that
he needed to do the job. So it was tough on him.
He was in there and had a bad time, too, when the dam safety program was on. There
was a lot of controversy about it. People didn't look at him like they did Wendell Johnson
or
or any of the others. They just didn't have the same kind of respect for his
judgment on professional engineering decisions.
Q ..
So for the time you spent in the headquarters, you seemed to be leaning toward Wendell
Johnson as the top Chief of Engineering Division.
A
Well, I had an awful lot of respect for Lloyd Duscha. I worked a lot closer with Lloyd
Duscha than I did with Wendell. When Wendell was in there, Al
did most of the
close meetings and so forth with Wendell. I didn't work closely with him. But he had
that kind of a charisma about him--Lloyd didn't quite have that kind of charisma.
But Lloyd had the technical capability, and he knew a lot about hydrology and hydraulics,
even though he had never worked in Hydrology and Hydraulics. He could understand
when I'd explain problems to him. But a lot of the other Chiefs of Engineering weren't
all that hip on it. He was a hell of a good man all the way around. It's just that he didn't
have that magnetism that some of the people have about them. He was adequate but as far
as socializing and all that stuff; he just didn't stand out, I don't think, like some of the
others did. Like Joe Tofani, like we were talking about.
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