Enaineer Memoirs
placed properly in his job. Also, each was an excellent supporter of the need to adjust the Corps'
approach to problem-solving based upon the new environmental policy act. While different, each
in his own way was a very strong and decisive district engineer.
As before, I set objectives for the division, and through the division to the districts. That was a
procedure I'd adopted years before. In this case, our primary single objective was to implement
NEPA. First, however, we had to restore morale and confidence in the district personnel. Next,
we had to clean up the projects in the public works program which were taking small amounts
of the annual appropriations just to keep them active when prospects of their ever being
accomplished were minimal. With a limited program, we needed to concentrate the small amount
of funds where project approval and construction were reasonable. So we had those three
things-the environment, the internal operation of the division, and the policing up of the civil
works program while attending to our military customers' needs.
On the environment, I think the true depth of our problem is evidenced by a story concerning my
division and the secretary, Ms. Helen Pierson. Helen had been the secretary to General Pick first
in Omaha and later in Washington. She had returned to Omaha after his term as Chief of
Engineers. She remained on duty in the federal government as the secretary to a succession of
division engineers assigned to MRD. She had seen the Corps from the highest position, and I felt
that if anyone had a reason to be proud of what we were doing, it would be Helen Pierson. She
was an outstanding secretary and an exceptional helper to me.
In discussions with her, I found that she didn't talk about her job out of the office with her friends
because of the adverse criticism the Corps was getting. Once I asked her what she thought about
the Corps, what was the discussion around town, and she said, "Well, I don't talk about it." That
to me was a fairly good clue that we had problems. I don't think Missouri River was having any
more trouble than anyone else. I just think it was the impact of the public outcry against the kind
of work the Corps was doing, the tremendous workload that came out of the National
Environmental Policy Act, and just a feeling of frustration and uncertainty as to what was going
to happen to the traditional Corps work.
So we started an active program of projecting the positive aspects of the Corps' past and the work
it was currently doing. A by-product of that was a gimmick which expressed a certain amount of
my philosophy about the Corps. I began to look for a slogan to which everyone could relate and
hang onto. Out of this came the "The Corps Cares" idea.
Interestingly, I had come up with two slogans, "The Corps Gives a Dam" and "The Corps Cares."
I asked Pat Pendergast one day to take a look at those and tell me what he thought. He said,
"Well, I like `The Corps Gives a Damn' but you can't use it because now is not a good time to
mention dams even if spelled differently," and so he said, "Take `The Corps Cares."' Which we
did
The public affairs officer was Harry Dolphin, and I asked him to get some buttons. Harry looked
into the matter and came back with a report that he could get buttons for 10 cents apiece. I
250 of them, for 250 buttons. At a meeting of division employees, plus the two district
engineers and their principal staff people, I was wearing one of the "The Corps Cares" buttons.
I reviewed the history of the Corps and the Missouri River Division, how much we'd done for the
economy and the people, and why we should be proud of our work. I then
everyone
to help me figure out what was expected of us and then how to do it.
Afterwards, a couple of people asked me where I'd gotten the button and where they could get
one. I said, "You can have one if you promise to wear it." So I passed out among the division
people a couple of hundred, and I gave Pat Pendergast and Anderson 25 for their folks. Shortly
after that, General Clarke had a division engineers conference in Washington where I wore one
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