Memoirs
States, John was a cadet at the Military Academy, having entered in the summer of 1969, shortly
after I went to Vietnam. Our daughter was graduating from the University of Connecticut and
going to work as a teacher in Northern Virginia. So the move to Omaha involved only my wife
and myself, basically. We acquired a new automobile and drove from Arlington to Omaha and
rented a flat on the ninth floor of an apartment building. Susan moved into our home in Arli ngton
with much of our fumiture, so the move was easy, and we were able to get to Omaha and be ready
work in short order.
On arriving, I was surprised to find that the morale of the division was quite low and that there
wasn't much enthusiasm at that time. For many years the Missouri River Division had been a very
popular federal activity in Omaha and throughout the region, particularly because of its public
works program in the Missouri River Basin. In many ways the division had become a nonentity;
it wasn't very active in civic affairs, et cetera, at that time and rarely received much attention
publicly.
The Corps did have a lot of friends there, however, and the family and were welcomed to
Omaha warmly. We were beginning to get ourselves well established when the need to
reinvigorate the morale and enthusiasm of the personnel in the division became obvious. That
meant identifying the problem which, as it turned out, was not so much the lack of work but the
general abuse and criticism that was being heaped on the Corps as a result of the National
Environmental Policy Act [NEPA] which had been passed only a couple of months before my
assignment in the Missouri River Division began. It did not take very long to realize that the most
important concern during my period at the division was going to be the environment.
Those of us who were in positions of responsibility in the 1970 decade learned that the
environmental movement impacted seriously on every phase of the Corps of Engineers' activities.
We found ourselves trying to catch up with a law that had been passed with no grandfathering
aspects. Consequently, every project we had under construction or even in operation, for that
matter, was, in some measure, not in compliance with the law.
The Corps and the nation were fortunate that General Clarke was the Chief of Engineers at that
time. One of the first things I had to do as new division engineer was attend a course of
instruction in environmental matters at Aspen, along with General Clarke and others. The course
was titled the Seminar on the Environment and Sciences. The program was run by a lady named
Betty Willard. It was a very good course which gave an insight into the environmental philosophy
and did make a significant impact.
When I got to Aspen, Vietnam was still vivid. Vietnam was a place where survival was really the
name of the game, and the local people were in distress to just find enough food to stay alive. So
naturally I had a difficult time adjusting to some of the impacts of the environmental philosophy
on human needs. However, perhaps the reality of Vietnam made the ultimate understanding and
respect of environmental objectives more meaningful for me.
In any case, a problem facing Army engineers at that time was the national attitude towards the
military in general following the Vietnam situation coupled with the attitude towards engineers
in general, which was not very complimentary because of the environmental program. Together,
in the part of the United States that was probably most sensitive to environmental objectives,
these made for a fairly sporty course for the military engineer.
The real leadership problem, it seemed to me, was how to generate within the Missouri River
Division a strong motivation and belief that the work the Corps was doing was good, in the
national interest, and one in which we should have pride. To understand the scope of this
program, you mus t realize that the Missouri River Division's civil works boundary in cluded the
entire dra inage of the Missouri River, also a strong center of envi ronmental activists
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