Memoirs
Senator Kerr's assistant was Don McBride, a truly outstanding public servant. He worked with
Senator Kerr all the time the senator was in Washington. The senator died, 1 January 1963, and
McBride stayed on with Senator [Mike] Monroney, who became the senior senator from
Oklahoma. Later, McBride was appointed director of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Don and
I quickly became and stayed very close. Later, if I ever had a problem, even as Chief, I could
always go to Don and get good, solid political advice. I have diverted here a little bit, but that was
the beginning of a very important relationship. He was a great teacher of how to do things in the
right way politically.
The Tulsa District boundaries included the drainage of the Arkansas and Red Rivers as far east
as the Arkansas state line. This meant parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, the northern tier
of Texas, and all of Oklahoma were included. The annual workload was 0 million and the
district staff was approximately 1,200. Tulsa had no military construction.
Howard Penney probably was the best staff officer I've ever known and an excellent planner.
Howard devoted much of his tour to propelling the projects through the planning into the
authorization stage. In those days there were a lot of projects. I recall being involved with the
construction of 26 dams, mostly Howard Penney's projects. That's more than the entire Corps
has built in many recent years.
Howard's emphasis on planning meant that the construction side of the house had built up a
backlog of disputes. The district engineer as contracting officer had to take care of these disputes,
and that became my first objective. I didn't want to interfere with the planning process, but I felt
that we had to get rid of some of those disputes. Work was being delayed and we weren't getting
enough bidders on the jobs. One reason was they couldn't get their money while changes were
tied up in disputes, et cetera.
I had learned in Goose Bay that the government's and the public's interests are best served if the
contractor and the contracting officer adopt a mutual philosophy of getting the work done. We
set up a program to eliminate and also to avoid disputes. Three years later we did not have a
single outstanding claim. In this process I believe that we gave the contractors nothing beyond
what they deserved. On the other hand, I am absolutely certain that we saved the taxpayers money
because we just didn't have the delays and the hang-ups which delayed needed projects from
becoming productive. Besides that, instead of having one and two bidders on a job, we were
beginning to get 10 and 15, and our prices were much better. Also important, we generated an
enthusiasm to produce. The morale of the construction industry in the Tulsa District area became
very good.
Of course, internally our morale was also high because we had a great program. I mean, it was
not a matter of the district wanting something to do. It was a matter of managing it so we did it
well while accommodating all this work.
A few months into the tour, the Waurika Dam on Beaver Creek became a major event and
challenge. Waurika, Oklahoma, was the site of a Bureau of Reclamation project in the final
stage. To show you Senator Kerr's
without going into all the political
there was a congressman from Texas whose district possessed a dam site on
another stream which came out of the panhandle of Texas into Oklahoma. There was also a dam
site just inside Oklahoma.
As I understand it, the Texas congressman was on the Interior Committee and threatened
pigeonhole Waurika unless Senator Kerr supported the development of his dam site in Tex as.
Kerr refused and had the project taken out of the Bureau of Reclamation's authorization package
and put into the Corps of Engineers' program. General Cassidy had forewarned me this might
happen. On 20 November 1962, I was told I had to have a survey report in Washington within 30
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