Memoirs
to facilities engineering by the Corps districts (one stop shopping) was singularly
successful. Mobilization efforts assisted the Army staff. Becoming a major command
allowed the Chief to meet directly with the Chief of Staff of the Army and his
commanders. This goal must remain in some form. This is the Corps' bedrock criteria.
1976 to 1980 showed good progress and momentum increased, but there is always
more to do and keep doing.
Sister service relations were excellent and constructive, but
Support the Nation
meaningful relations with other federal agencies - D e p a r t m e n t of Energy, Department
of Transportation, Department of State, et cetera-were disappointing, possibly
excepting EPA. International work thrived. The Corps' professional presence was
apparent in China, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and others. The Corps' role
in environmental matters stabilized as the public works program was transformed into
regulatory and O&M.
Good progress which allowed
Get OCE out of the Operations Business
headquarters to deal with crucial external issues and concentrate on the first three
goals more thoroughly. At the same time reorganization of the headquarters was
initiated but not finalized, leading to problems after 1980.
Post-Retirement Career
Turning to your retirement career, then, as a retired Chief of Engineers you must have had a
lot of options about what you could do. How did you sort through those and decide what to
do?
A
First off, I had no magic equation that I plugged into. I did give thought to the areas where I
could be of some value. My father had been a very good businessman, and I learned a lot by
association with him. There is a difference in working for somebody and working for yourself.
My father believed that it's always better to work for yourself, even with a small business,
than to work for someone else.
I like that thought, and another factor was the field of effort. Many Corps retirees do well in
engineering companies. My attraction was toward construction.
We didn't want to move. Gerry and I liked it in the Washington area, and we would have
moved for the right job but we didn't particularly want to. We refused one job which was
extremely attractive because we had to move. We owned our home, and this was our
"headquarters" area. I'm from Maryland; she's from North Carolina.
I asked myself how I would explain taking a job with a company that had previously worked
for the Corps, and also why I chose one of them over another. So I finally decided not to go
to work for anybody who had worked for the Corps. At least, not immediately. That was
naive, I expect, but I made the decision and that eliminated many good prospects. It turned out
that a week before I retired, I was asked to be the director of international operations for Royal
Volker Stevin-then the eleventh largest construction company in the world. The effort was
mainly in dredging, a field I was pretty comfortable with, plus a lot of roads and ports, which
I liked also. They offered me a very nice salary. It was less than I might have gotten from
some of the American companies, but the benefits were especially attractive. Also, I would
be the senior American---or non-Dutch person in the company.
They said, "You can stay in America, but we want you to come over here once a quarter to our
business meetings. We also want you to look at the international scene. You can do that from
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