________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
Colonel Joe Smedle was the district engineer.
A:
He left that summer. Most of my time there was under Colonel John Mattina. Lieutenant
Colonel Ken Hartung was the deputy district engineer. Brigadier General Rogers was the
North Central Division Engineer.
That's where I again learned it's not good to be too close to the flagpole. I'd go down for a
routine bid opening and there would be General Rogers in the back of the room, ready to
critique how I opened bids.
Q:
Everything right there at Chicago. So, this is your first civil works assignment?
Captain Kem, Deputy District Engineer, Chicago District,
and Ann Kem in 1965.
A:
That's right, first district assignment. I should explain, the Chicago District at that time was
not the very small Chicago District of today. It had some 1,400 people as opposed to, I
believe, about 130 today. We had military construction responsibilities and we also had
procurement responsibilities. This was before the Defense Logistics Agency was established,
and we bought all kinds of things for the Army that later were to be procured by either the
Army Materiel Command or the Defense Logistics Agency. We also had sizable civil works
responsibilities: the entire Wisconsin coast of Lake Michigan, the Illinois Waterway, and
over in Indiana we had the Dunes State Park, with the "Save the Dunes" issue, and Indiana
Harbor. We had the CalSag Waterway, the connection between the Great Lakes and the
Illinois Waterway leading to the Mississippi. Thus, we had the lakes level issue, where the
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