John W. Morris
there as well as you can from here." They financed us to set up an office here in Washington,
which I did. That worked out very nicely. It was a fine job. It gave me a chance to get my feet
on the ground in the construction business and also gave me an office of my own which later
facilitated the transition into working for myself.
I was successful in getting new work, but fairly soon I became a troubleshooter for problems
in contracts using American money. I was sent to Yemen a couple of times to help straighten
out a
project. The claim was over 0 million, so it was a big exercise. Yemen's not
the greatest place in the world. As someone joked, "It's not the end of the world, but you can
see it from there."
Then there was the Zilwaukee Bridge in Michigan which had failed. The Dutch were great
engineers and business people, but the labor situation up in Michigan presented them with
many unfamiliar problems. Ultimately, at my urging, the contract was terminated for the
convenience of the owner, allowing our company to withdraw from the job successfully.
There were also efforts on the Miami People Carrier and the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel
projects.
I hired an ex-Corps colonel, Jess Baldwin, to help me. Right after Thanksgiving 1980, two
months after opening the office, I was called from Rotterdam by the principal who hired me.
He indicated that for the first time in its history, the company incurred a big loss. I suggested
that might mean they would not need me anymore. He said, "No," and they kept me.
The international business had to be put aside while they straightened up their internal
problems and kept their home base work solid. That's when they put me in the troubleshooting
business. Even so, I was not fully engaged. I was asked to stay at least another year and told
I could do other work so long as I was available when they needed me. That was really very
nice of them. By my second or third year I had met many people in Holland and formed,
informally, a company called Holland-American Industry Group with a friend over there. He
searched out companies that needed representation in the United States, so in the course of
a year or two I was representing about eight or nine companies from Holland. Finally, when
I was disengaged from
Stevin we had a solid business in place.
That business included some work with Royal Dutch Shell, and this led to a real business
adventure. Royal Dutch had a nondestructive procedure for testing pavements. The Corps of
Engineers used a vibrating process that was good but very cumbersome, while the Dutch
equipment was small and easily shipped. You could tow it behind a car or Jeep down the
runway or over the highway.
Royal Dutch Shell wanted to export that process to the United States. Dr. Matthew Witczak,
at the University of Maryland, was a leader in the asphalt and pavement business and a
consultant to the Dutch process in Holland. He and I began to work together trying to export
or set up its company, Pavement Consultancy Service [PCS]; in the U.S. The Royal Dutch
people had a wholly-owned Dutch company in New York called Scallop which financed the
startup of PCS, United States. Scallop personnel didn't want to get involved directly, so they
contracted with my new company, J. W. Morris, Ltd., to organize the project. I was hired as
the manager, and they paid J. W. Morris, Ltd. for all personnel and administrative support.
That expanded our office. I had already hired Jess Baldwin and another ex-Corps major, Tom
Donnelly, to help, but PCS pushed our office staff up to about 20 people. Tom was promoting
this product rather aggressively, but all of a sudden the main company back in Holland
decided they wanted to get out of the business. They sold PCS, and immediately I was told by
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