Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
water level has gone up and down several times during the years. I was there during a down
period. So, it was a very interesting time for me.
Q:
That was quite a transition, engineer adviser in Vietnam to exec in the Chicago District.
A:
Sure, after you live in a mud hut for a while--
Q:
Went swimming with the liver flukes.
Q:
Liver flukes, and had the creatures running over the mat ceiling.
A:
You got to have a balanced meal too.
Q:
That's right, no peas for breakfast.
Q:
So, there was a lot of boning up needed pretty quickly, I guess, when you got to Chicago, the
district itself?
A:
No, the executive officer position was one where you're working in the command group and
it's paper flow, and they did that on purpose. It was supposed to be, as the Corps was doing
back then, a developmental assignment. The Corps really did a pretty good job back then of
trying to get all engineer captains, especially out of civil school, back in the districts to have
that experience. They had not done it in Chicago for some years before I arrived because they
thought the area was too expensive.
Why I got to be the guinea pig, I don't know, because it was still too expensive when I was
there. Since it cost a lot, I lived far out, in Park Forest. I commuted in by the Illinois Central
Railroad, about an hour and a half commute every day. The idea was that I'd spend a year in
the office and then a year in the field somewhere. It could have started the other way. I don't
quite know why the district engineer did it that way except I guess he thought that was the
best way. The idea was his that I would be the executive officer. I didn't replace anybody. I
became one extra part of the paper flow so I could get the breadth and the perspective of
what was going on. I would sit in when the deputy and the district engineer did their things
and I could pick up the flavor of what was going on. So, it really was not a dramatic, difficult
transition, but designed to move me onto a ramp of learning.
Q:
What sorts of problems was the district facing when you got there? Deepening some of the
harbors and waterways, I guess, was a concern with the anticipated new generation of ships
on the Great Lakes.
A:
Well, it's like all district engineers face. They're at some point in the cycle for a whole bunch
of general projects. They're either in early planning, finishing plan formulation, in design, or
in construction, so some are in all those realms. We were doing a lot of work on the Calumet
Saginaw Channel as a connector. We were widening it. So, that included real estate
acquisition, widening the channel--that's dredging, plus replacing something like 31 bridges
that had to be reconstructed to make longer spans. They were mostly railroad in an industrial
76
Previous Page
