Q ..
How would you weigh the relative influence on you of the Corps people you worked with,
who probably had more practical experience in engineering and hydraulics, versus your civil
engineering instructors, who were possibly more theoretical?
Lane was the only one who had a lot of practical experience. John McNown and Maury
A:
Albertson were young. I think Maury received his Ph.D. at Iowa at about that time; he had
worked briefly at TVA before returning to Iowa. McNown had degrees from Iowa and
Minnesota and had worked a short time at a Navy Laboratory in California before returning
Iowa to teach. Joe Howe had taught at Iowa for some time and done some consulting; he
was somewhat older than Albertson and McNown. But the Corps people we worked for,
both Bob Kriess and
Webster, had worked for the Special Engineering Division of the
Panama Canal.
of course, Martin Nelson, from the St. Paul District, who supervised the Corps' Iowa
City sub-office, had worked for the Corps for a long time and he knew more about locks than
anybody else. In many ways, he may be the one who influenced us the most. He came down
from St. Paul to visit the laboratory about once a month and review what we had done. In
an instant he would see what we should have done differently, or why the results weren't
what we expected, and so forth. Speaking of locks, have you interviewed John Davis?
No.
Q:
John was in the Ohio River Division, initially, I think. Later he was in the Chiefs Office in
A:
Washington, and he became the lock expert. He retired about the same time I did, I think,
but he did a report for WES on the locks just a few years ago as a consultant. I've known
him since the late `40's.
He worked for Jake Douma at OCE in structures?
A:
Yes, he would have. I just found out about the lock report he did about four years ago from
someone at Vicksburg who sent me a copy. It is kind of a summary of everything the Corps
had done on locks. The innovative lock study that Huntington District is doing now is
something totally new.
Q ..
Actually, you probably had less influence from the professors because you already had been
out for a long time so.
may well be, especially when we went back for graduate work, yes.
A: