Enaineer Memoirs
Our assignment to Savannah was very favorable. My boss was E. E. [Ellis] Wilhoyt, later General
Wilhoyt. His wife, Dolly, and their four girls had a very nice home in Savannah. We moved into
a lesser house, a nice, new home, not too far away, and started off our service as the deputy to the
district engineer. His boss was originally General "Weary" [Walter K.] Wilson, and then General
Charles Holle. Both generals became very important to me later. Wilson was only there a very
short while; then Holle came along.
Just before our tour ended, Holle left and Brigadier General Pat Strong took his place. General
Strong came in from Japan. I remember two things about him: he was from Savannah, Georgia,
and he had written Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy.
The tour in Savannah gave me an insight into a whole different world. We wore civilian clothes
much of the time, we lived on the civil
co
ity, and I got a look at the public works
program I found my work at Iowa, the graduate work, to be very applicable. I enjoyed working
with the C ivilian staff. They seemed to enjoy being with Gerry and me. It just was a very
enlightening experience. We had a big dredging program; the dredge Henry Bacon was there. We
were building Clark Hill Dam.
who was a technical adviser to the district
Some outstanding civilians. Mr. Charlie
engineer. Wilhoyt,
and Morris ran the headquarters. I was the least of the three, that's
for sure.
was an outstanding engineer, and he had Fred
Engineering, and "Shorty"
Gunn, Construction, under him. Savannah was a professional organization, truly. It was an old
district. One of the things I got into was cleaning up the records and other accumulations.
I also became involved in the public hearings. We had to issue permits in those days, too, but we
usually did that on Saturday. If we had a permit hearing, we'd schedule it on Saturday, and I
would go out as the deputy district engineer and run or help run the hearing. Each would take 10
or 15 minutes or maybe half an hour, and we did maybe one of those a month at the most.
We were very much involved with some very powerful political people in those days: Senator
Richard Russell; Strom Thurmond. We were trying to get
Dam authorized. So the civil
works side of the office was quite busy, from the dredging, the maintenance of the waterway, the
building of Clark Hill Dam, getting
authorized, public hearings for permits, et cetera.
I mean, it's sort of a mini-Corps of Engineers with all the functions there.
We had a boat, called the Danora. The Danora had been given to the Army by the Chrysler
Corporation in World War II. It was a luxury yacht, about 106 feet long, sleeping capacity for
four or six people. General Holle would inspect and we'd usually take him on a little spin in the
Danora. Mrs. Holle would come along. She was a great bridge player, so they loved to go out on
the boat and the ladies would play bridge. One of our lieutenants was Andy Pick, and on one
occasion the Chief of Engineers, [Lieutenant] General Lewis A. Pick, came to Savannah. Colonel
Wilhoyt had been in the CBI [China-Burma-India Theater] with General Pick in World War II,
and I had been in "Operation Snowbound," so there was lots to talk about.
Incidentally, one of the permits we had to hear was a permit for Hilton Head Island. That was
rather routinely handled because we didn't think anything would ever come of it.
The military area covered all of Georgia and up into North Carolina. We had real estate
responsibility as far north as Wilmington, North Carolina. That was kind of nice because I could
go up there with Gerry to her home. Kings Point was just getting started-an ammunition
terminal on the Cape Fear River. Savannah District acquired all the real estate for that.
Moody Air Force Base, Turner Air Force Base, Fort McPherson, Fort Benning and Warner
were in our area. I was responsible for safety and some project progress in general,
I did a lot of traveling around.
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