Water Resources People and Issues
morning because he couldn't sleep, so he started working and worked all day.
When I mentioned the division chiefs, I forgot to mention that Bob Baker, as
chief of the Administrative Division, did a yeoman's job in his field.
Also, we did a lot of the studies by setting up committees where our staff did
the staff work. Harvey Banks chaired a committee on planning and Dwight
Metzler chaired a committee on water pollution control. We knew the people
in the country that knew the most about the various subject areas and we got
them to help.
We negotiated contracts with universities for the use of people who were
academics but had had experience with government policies. David
at
Cornell was in charge of one study. He had been back in the Office of the
Secretary of the Army for a year on sabbatical, so he was well versed on
authorization and appropriations processes for water resources. I don't
remember all the others, and there just isn't time to go through the whole list
of studies. We actually had about different studies of which 64 were
completed and published. Then we had two major compilations that were
published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. One was on state water
law, compiled by Dick Dewsnup with the assistance of a couple other lawyers,
and the other one on the federal water policies, which was done by in-house
staff.
I had the feeling that I was keeping a lot of balls in the air. My efficiency was
helped tremendously by the fact that I had two secretaries. In addition to the
young woman who had come from the Library, Lena Crist, who didn't have
much experience but worked very hard, I had Flo Broussard who had been Ed
Wenk's secretary at the Library and had worked with him in the Executive
Office of the President. Flo was my administrative assistant-the only fault she
had was that she typed so fast that the IBM Selectric typewriters with the letters
on the balls couldn't keep up with her. I shouldn't call that a fault!
IBM didn't believe it, and they sent someone to the office to check her out and
found that it was true. The machine just could not keep up with a really fast
typist. Not only was she fast, but she was accurate, almost unbelievably
accurate. When I wanted to get something done, I could dictate it and it would
come out perfectly. She corrected my tendency to be overly verbose. I have the
feeling we could use her to good advantage in transcribing this interview.
Previous Page
