________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Brigadier General Raymond J. Harvey (left), Assistant Commandant of the
Engineer School, presented the Army Commendation Medal to Captain Kem for
his work during the Alaska earthquake in October 1965. Ann Kem is on the right.
Q:
In Alaska you got some of the field experience that you might not have gotten in Chicago if
you had--
A:
That's right. That was the construction piece I did not get in Chicago.
Q:
Sometimes there's talk about, for emergency situations like this, identifying key people with
experience that could be pulled in to work on recovery. That wasn't part of your going to
Alaska, I guess, because you didn't have that experience and you were all captains. Do you
think that would be a good idea? I'm not really aware that we've really done that in practice
too often later on. I worked on Agnes in '72, our history of that, and they talked about having
a "ready district," you know, for people at all levels, and just how it would work. Then when
it happened they could go here and go there and people would have the experience.
So, based on this, what would you think about the value of that kind of thing, or does it
matter?
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