Nowhere is there more and better talent than in the Corps' construction engineering
management. While a bit visionary, that's a reasonably good job for someone to make happen.
I don't want to give you the idea that everything we did went through one of those three, but
collectively, they were very helpful. I didn't believe in ad hoc committees. I may have told you
that earlier. I felt that if you had to form an ad hoc committee, you should get rid of it as soon
as possible. We had a couple of ad hoc committees, but they didn't last very long. They did
their job, and then they were disposed of.
So I liked these three outfits. They earned their pay.
You mentioned that you wanted to talk about energy conservation on the military side of the
house.
A
That's correct, I'm glad you brought that back. The studies group came up with the only
reasonable solution-to make a survey of major posts against certain criteria to see if they
were operating as efficiently as they might, or could they be improved.
I was successful in getting the government, the Army, to budget a certain amount of money
to do these surveys. After we made a few, the Energy Watch was implemented and overall
energy consumption declined. The post commanders felt we were taking money that would
have otherwise been theirs and using it for a specific subject. That may or not be true. If I had
been a post commander, I would have felt the same way, I am sure, but my understanding was
that most of that money was new money, not shaved off the top. Nevertheless, we did do the
energy survey for the Army.
In the energy arena the Corps took the initiative for the Army. Another was mobilization,
which we've talked about, and again, the studies group helped with that one.
Of course, the studies group didn't wait for the Chief of Engineers to call up and give them
a job. They were always reviewing certain Corps missions. Don
was very good, and
George Orrell also was excellent. The two of them made a very nice team, and their
presentations were high-type and professional in a quiet, not overly animated way. At
briefings in the Pentagon they did very well. That helped George get the job in FEMA, I
expect.
Q ..
I'd like to ask you now about your impact on the Corps' historical program, and your interest
in the Historical Foundation. I think some of this accompanied the Bicentennial.
A
I have said several times that I believed that the people who knew the Corps liked the Corps.
I knew the Corps had a great history. I did not inaugurate the history program. I don't mean
to take any credit for that, but I do think that in the course of time, I had something to do with
the momentum that the program developed, and maybe I don't deserve that either. Some of
the things I did were probably forced upon me because of national attitudes towards the Corps,
the recurring move to reorganize or put the Corps out of business, and my experiences in
district work, particularly in Tulsa, where I soon learned that it was better to have the initiative
than to react. If there was a problem, I tried to get it out in the public arena quickly before it
got there from another source.
The same thing was true in Omaha, where we had such a reaction from the environmentalists
and we were getting nowhere with the press until we established, as I mentioned, a separate
arrangement with the local newspapers to put our office on somebody's beat.
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