Engineer Memoirs
the people in New York they were only in this because they were told to by the people in
Holland and that I was to get rid of the business.
By this time, Matt and I had become very much involved in the activity. So I went to New
York and bought it myself. I became the owner of an engineering specialty company, one of
my exciting endeavors. Subsequently, Witczak became part owner. He was the real technical
brains of the company and had assembled a group of smart, ambitious graduates of the
University of Maryland. Ultimately, we sold it to Law Engineering of Atlanta.
In the PCS process, Dr. Witczak asked me to give a series of lectures on management at the
University of Maryland. Ultimately, he asked if I would help develop a course of instruction
in construction engineering management. I agreed and became a member of a committee
headed up by Mr. James Clark, the owner of Hyman Construction and Omni Construction.
Clark is a regent and put up half a million dollars, as I recall, of his own money and another
half million in matching funds, which generated a million and a half dollars to underwrite the
chair and this program. I was the deputy chairman and did most of the course organization
work and wrote the scenarios. We ran our paper up to the president, and it was accepted as
written.
At that time it was all pro bono. It was just an interesting exercise. I was then asked to
organize the course while a chair professor was sought. From the aspirants they selected an
individual from Georgia Tech, and he agreed to take the job. Then I was asked to begin
collecting the staff and get everything ready because the chairperson could not arrive until late
summer and the course was to start in September.
Lo and behold, about the middle of August the selectee announced he could not accept the job.
I was asked if I would take over the chair duties as acting professor. So that's how I got to be
chair professor at the University of Maryland for about three years. That was going on while
we were marketing PCS and while I was representing several overseas companies including
Partek, a Finnish company that was in the construction business. I have enjoyed immensely
working with Partek. Two other Finnish companies were in our fold, also. So we had a fairly
plus the four engineers out
big program going. We had hired Tom Donnelly, as
of the University of Maryland. Also retired Colonels Bob Bangert, Al Costanza, and Max
were helping. Later, Clay Meyers, Captain Meyers, USN [retired], was employed to
expand our civil engineering services to include operation and maintenance.
In 1985 J. W. Morris, Ltd. was fairly busy. As I say, we had about 20 people, we owned the
pavement testing company, and we were representing a group of foreign companies. None of
these were competing with each other,
And you were teaching.
A
And I was teaching at the University of Maryland. That became a problem, incidentally,
because it ties you down. My wife told me when I mentioned the opportunity to teach, "Jack,
that's going to tie you down too much," and that was the only comment she made. I decided
to do it because it had other benefits.
Anyhow, we were going well-the
looked good, the people were fairly happy and
had a good retirement plan and benefits, et cetera-except the teaching was tying us down as
Gerry had predicted. Then one day Dr. Witczak asked to move PCS from my office closer to
him at the University of Maryland. So we agreed but kept a liaison in Arlington. I offered
some of the released space to the Water Resources Congress. Joe Tofani had been running
WRC and had just stepped down. So they moved in with us with Ray Leonard in charge. I
continued as the chairman of PCS.
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