Theodore M.
built up a tremendous amount of leave. I had been married in 1944 and had
never met my wife's family and my wife had never met my family. Her family
was in Mississippi, my mother and father were in Florida, and the rest of my
family-my brother and sister-were in Maryland.
And so, in the spring of 1946, I asked for, was given, leave to take two months
off to go back and visit family by car. By that time, you could drive again-if
you could get tires-and so we started out on February 15th to take a trip back
to the Southeast and Eastern part of the country.
We had a wonderful trip, down the Pacific Coast and across the southern tier
of states. On the first night we stopped at Salem to see the people I had worked
with there. My former boss, Buzz Bennett, had transferred back to Washington
so I didn't see him, but obtained his address. During the war the Bureau had
been reorganized into regions and was expanding, along with the rest of the
non military agencies. As we continued our trip we eventually got to
Washington, D. C., where I looked up Buzz Bennett.
It was another one of those cases when I walked in the door and Buzz said,
"Good to see you, Ted. Gosh, we need you back here, when can you start to
work.
(Laughter)
And I said, "No, that's not why I came in-1 just came in to see you. How's
all the family. After we had a nice visit, he said, "I'll tell you, I really would
like you to come back here and work. But I said, "No, I like it out West and
I want to get back with the Bureau but I want it to be out in the Pacific
Northwest, because I like that and my wife likes it. She's from Mississippi and
she thinks she's in Heaven with these cool summers out there."
And he said, "You ought to think about it. It wouldn't be permanent. We just
want you back here for two years." Then he told me, "What we've got is a
rotation plan and you'd probably have to come back here anyway if you go
back to work out in Salem, because we're trying to rotate people around. He
went on to say, "Once you get to know the system and how it works, you can
pick your spot. Right now, we're thinking about opening up an office in Santa
Barbara, and we've got a couple of other places in California, and I think
eventually we're going to get into Hawaii."
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