John W. Morris
At that time, I began to concern myself more with these companies we were representing in
the United States. We were up to about 12 from Europe and some from other areas. Also, I
had been to China twice to teach school and had some contacts in China. Saudi Arabia had
gotten to be important because of my background and new associations with a firm in Saudi
Arabia. The pavement business was attractive in Saudi, so I began going back and forth again
to Saudi Arabia. Our international base had grown, and we were really spreading out quite
nicely.
chairman of
Then out of the clear blue sky I got a call one day to go see Mr. John
Planning Research Corporation headquartered in McLean. John asked me if I'd help him find
somebody to take over the engineering group which was, at that time, the largest engineering
group in the United States. Its companies included Frederick R. Harris, Consouer Townsend,
Development Corp.
Environmental Management Incorporated, and Planning
to take John
So I sent resumes to him on several candidates. I really tried to get Mr.
Wall, even though John wasn't going to retire from the Army for six or eight months. Finally,
I told Mr.
I didn't have anyone left to suggest. He said, "Well, why don't you take it?"
By this time I figured I would be too old and also I felt he wanted to sell the engineering
group. He promised me he would not put it on the market for a couple of years.
I then told Mr.
about my company business, and he offered to buy it. I should have sold
it, perhaps, but I concluded I might not be with PRC very long, so I had better not abandon J.
W. Morris, Ltd. so soon. To eliminate any conflict I formed a new company called Engineer
Management Services, Inc.
Ltd. Captain Meyers became the president of
and
I sold all the J.W. Morris, Ltd. work to
As events developed, PRC was sold within two years anyway. It wasn't put on the market; Mr.
lived up to his word. He received a very attractive offer from Ashland Technology
Company [ATC], which owned DMJM, Holmes Narver, and Williams Bros. Company in
Tulsa. I was out of a job. Al
who was the chairman of ATC, certainly wasn't going
to give me his job, but he asked me to be his assistant.
There was still some engineering work being done in PRC, and I was kept on as the engineer
for two years. I wasn't out of a job completely, but it was just a matter of time. I was also
allowed to work for Ashland on an hourly basis up to
percent of my time.
During the 1987 SAME meeting in California, I received a call from Governor Bellmon of
OkIahoma, whom I had known for many years. He asked if I could prepare a proposal for the
state of OkIahoma to submit in the superconducting super collider competition. He asked me
to think it over and let him know. I said, "I will call tomorrow and tell you if I can do it." I
talked to Mr.
and his people, who happened to be at the SAME in San Francisco and
found out that DMJM and Bechtel had a team of people who had worked on a similar study
and could be made available if Oklahoma had a site. Most states had been working on the
project for more than a year We only had three months to get Oklahoma's report together.
So, to make a long story short, I accepted that task. J.W. Morris, Ltd. was back in business all
of a sudden.
was set up as a company to have the contract with the state of OkIahoma to perform the
study and I was the technical adviser and overseer and Chuck McGinnis was liaison with the
Governor's office. Structurally it was sound, and Bechtel and DMJM were subcontractors to
us. We put together a very nice report on time.
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