Theodore M.
what I thought should be done, and I had gone through the whole rigmarole of
cost sharing and allocation of responsibilities among agencies, as well as a lot
of the other things we've been talking about today, which were things I had
been working on for years.
All we could agree on at that time was that we were going to have to have a
program of studies looking at specific areas in some depth to provide a basis
for making recommendations. Which, of course, was so obvious that we didn't
need to have a meeting to decide it, but I was there with one secretary and no
staff at that time and had barely begun to think about who I was going to get
to help me, and I didn't even have any stationery on which to write a letter.
We had to type on the address.
On Monday Bob Blakeley, who was the administrative man for the Corps of
Engineers, called me and offered to help with administrative details. I don't
know whether he was operating on his own or whether somebody at the Corps
had told him to call me. I think he was hoping to get the job as the
administrative director for the commission. I don't know what motivated him,
but he came over and helped me. He helped me get stationery, he helped me
get anything that I needed in the way of office furniture and equipment. He told
me that the Corps was glad to help, and that they had helped a lot of
commissions. He mentioned the names of some of them.
Of course, for presidential commissions, the General Services Administration
has an office set up to handle administrative details: payroll, personnel,
contracts, etcetera. That's the rule. But Bob Blakeley could do things so much
faster than GSA. My recollection is that he got my stationery printed in one
day, and a dozen little things that you have to do to get an agency started. To
be honest, I guess I was terrified. Here I was, with one little secretary who had
been one of my assistant secretaries at the Library and when she knew I was
taking a new job, she asked to come with me. She was only 18 years old.
When she bought a car, her father had to sign for it because she was too young.
But she was good! She could take dictation and was a very hard worker. But
she didn't have any background about the federal government: a high school
graduate, no college.
One of the first people I had contacted to see if he would be willing to work
with the commission was Howard Cook. I was told that Howard Cook had
been interviewed to be the executive director, along with Joe Tofani and Gene
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