Theodore M.
really interested in, and I hope you can find a career in that field. At another
time he said, "I can't do much to help you, but if you ever get a chance to be
county surveyor somewhere, take it. That's a good job. It doesn't look like
much, but," he said, "you get all those fees for doing various things. You
ought to look for something like that."
This was the advice I got from the head of the Civil Engineering Department
who obviously didn't think very much of my ability. Abel was just a professor
of sanitary engineering, and I don't remember getting any advice from him at
the time.
So anyway, I went down to the Corps of Engineers office, and I know exactly
the day it was. It was June 13, 1939.
Before you continue with that, can I interrupt you?
Sure.
I want to pick up a couple of threads from your college years, still.
Sure.
First of all, you explained in a very interesting way how you stayed in civil
engineering-in other words, your brother suggested you go into double-E and
you didn't, you went into civil engineering.
Yes.
Did you ever think again about going into something other than civil
engineering when you were at Hopkins, or once you got in there you decided
that was the way you were going to go?
Oh, I knew that's where I wanted to be, because remember, I had the
surveying courses for a couple of years and my summer surveying work-and
then-1 liked the hydraulics, which was a course I took in my junior year. But
the course in hydraulics was not a particularly good course because, for one
thing, they didn't have enough money. The hydraulics lab was a little bit
antiquated, as I look back on it now, although it seemed wonderful-all those
big pumps and pipes and tanks and channels-but we couldn't run the big
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