Water Resources People and issues
Historian of the Army. You know how it is done. In other words, that's the
protocol in the government.
Well, this man didn't do that. He just prepared the papers transferring me up
to Bill Warne's office in the department at an increase in grade and on a certain
day and carried them directly to me and told me where to report. It was
essentially an order ordering me to go to work up there. I showed it to Jack
Dixon, and he took it to Mike Strauss. Mike called me in to his office and he
says, "Do you want to go up there and work?"
Well, it was with some misgivings that I was going to go up there, because I
would be getting more into the political side of things, working directly for a
political appointee. But I said to Mike, "Well, I'd be doing essentially the same
thing I've been doing for you all these years, the function that's been taken
away from us. So I know I can do the work, and they're going to give me a
promotion.
And Mike says, "Is that where you want to go I guess I hemmed and hawed
a little and finally said that I couldn't afford to turn down a promotion. Then
Mike called the director of personnel of the Bureau of Reclamation over to his
office to talk about what he should do about this, because I was just one of a
number of people that Bill Warne had taken up to the department when he set
up this new office. And Mike was seeing a lot of his best people being taken
away.
So he turned to the director of personnel, Glen Thompson, and he said, "I want
you to promote Schad tomorrow so that I can write back to Bill Warne and tell
him that Schad is already at the grade level you are offering him and he was
only going to take the job because it was a promotion.
Well, I don't know whether that's something you ought to tell about yourself.
It makes me seem so mercenary, but anyway, that's what happened. I was
watching Glen Thompson and he just kind of turned white-almost I thought
he was going to faint right then and there. He started to say something and
stuttered and stammered a little, and it was obvious that he didn't know what
the hell to do. You know, what would happen if somebody said, "I want Marty
Reuss promoted tomorrow. There's a lot of paperwork and someone would
surely say that it couldn't be done.
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