________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
So, my evaluation was, "I've really got a mess here, and quite different in its aspects--some
strengths and some weaknesses, certainly nothing cohesive, and no strong stovepipe like
what existed everywhere else in USACE."
Not that I really wanted a strong stovepipe but, as it was, I couldn't help anybody. So, the
public affairs plan really had in it several components. One important one was get the public
affairs person to be part of the commander's team.
I worked that by trying to jawbone with the division engineers, trying to convince them to
raise grades. Our division public affairs person was always a grade lower than the other
federal regional office representatives, whatever they were.
You look at our public affairs people, and they were always a grade lower. I tried to get more
people in the Public Affairs Office so they could do more than just putting out a newsletter
for the division office telling who got this recognition or who had the new baby.
I mean, we really needed to provide some help to the division engineer. So, I tried to
encourage appropriate staffing. Meanwhile, at the headquarters I tried to do the same thing--
to add a couple of people, hire the right kind of talent so we could get involved in the right
things, and maybe over time make some change. Then, over time, maybe I could cut back as
some of the folks who weren't pulling their weight retired and moved on.
So, I did get a couple of extra positions, and we hired folks like Warren Pappin, John Jones,
Gil Gilchrist, and Bob Hume. We brought in some young blood--people who had been out
in our divisions and districts and who understood things out there, and who weren't so very
happy with how things were and wanted to do better. I was really trying to attract to
Headquarters, USACE, the motivated people who wanted it better. I wanted to enlist them in
my campaign to get it better for Public Affairs and thus for the Corps.
Then I tried to work a raise in the grade levels of division public affairs officers. That was a
tough fight. We started with the Lower Mississippi Valley Division, then the South Atlantic
Division. I remember well being opposed by the personnel classification system for raising
the grades of our division public affairs officers. Ralph Loschialpo's deputy at the time was
the one that carried the ball for personnel.
Anyway, it came to a showdown in which the personnel classification person and I went up
to see the Deputy Chief of Engineers, General Morris, because personnel was nonconcurring
with what I was trying to do. I made the point about the level of the work and the importance
to the Corps. We were so decentralized. The divisions were where the work was happening
and the place where we were getting harpooned on this TV channel and that channel. Nobody
was putting together a counteraction. We could clip newspaper articles and tell the division
engineer what was happening, but nobody could or would put together a program to go out
and take the offensive and tell the story of the Corps.
The fact was that our people are always a grade below everybody else in the federal regional
system. I was arguing all of the reasons why they should be elevated a grade to be like their
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