Margaret S. Petersen
Wendell Johnson
Was Wendell Johnson still at MRD when you were there?
Yes. I don't remember exactly whether we knew that MRD had an opening, but we went to
Omaha for an interview in the spring of 1953 and they made us offers. It was at the same
grade we had been at
They told us later that their personnel people initially wouldn't
approve hiring us on the basis that, "No woman was worth that much money," and that
Wendell Johnson's reaction was, "We'll show them who runs this office."
So he hired you?
A:
Yes.
What was he like?
He was a nice person and very competent. The people we worked with in the Corps were
A:
by and large some of the finest people I've ever known. This is not to say they couldn't be
very testy and demanding when it came to something that wasn't going the way they thought
it should go or wasn't done right, and so forth. Wendell Johnson was very effective. He was
fair.
Hydraulics and Hydrology
You were also there at MRD the time that Tommy Hayes was district engineer for Omaha.
Do you remember him at all?
A:
I don't remember him. In fact, I don't think I could even tell you who the division engineers
were when I was there.
So., at Omaha, you were doing hydraulic work, basically structures, looking at structures, plus
the river and channel stabilization and sedimentation.
pretty broad scope from
structures to sedimentation, isn't it?
A:
Well, it was hydraulics. The whole thing was under hydraulics. At that time, Bob Pafford
was chief of the planning and reports branch and Tim Waara was head of the water
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