________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
projects in that area were passed on by the Mississippi River Commission, not by the Board
of Engineers, and then would come to the Chief of Engineers directly. The Morgan City
flood wall project was one of those, with its many controversies.
There would be hearings in the hearing room at Vicksburg in the commission offices,
presided over by General Read. The commission would meet, and we'd all vote on the
projects. Some of those votes were quite close, like four to three.
Q:
Humh. You would later be on the Board of Engineers?
A:
Right.
Q:
When we were doing our interview on your time as Deputy Chief, you referred a couple of
times back to your experience in the Ohio River Division, and you were doing this in the
context of the relationship and as ACE headquarters from your perspective--now in the
headquarters, but back then as division engineer--and the things you remembered about that
experience that were troublesome, I guess is the word to use.
One of the things that you said is that getting guidance and decisions out of the headquarters
took too long to make things happen. I wonder if you would say a little bit more about that,
now that we're talking about your Ohio River Division time. How much of a problem was it
really--resources you mentioned. I think what you were getting at was that there were some
pretty critical things sometimes that took too long.
A:
Well, I think resources was a prime one and a thing that we never have solved at the
headquarters, even now. Even when I was deputy there was a question as to who really
controls the resources. There was always an argument--does the Director of Resource
Management control the FTEs, or does the Program Manager, Director of Civil Works, or
Director of Military Programs control them?
Sometime when we asked questions from the Ohio River Division--and I'm going back to
that point--we would get the view, "Well, the comptroller or resource manager did that."
We'd call that office, and the finger would point back, "No, that was Civil Works who did
that." So, part of the issue was trying to find where the buck stopped so we could grapple
with it at the staff level. Now, you could always get Bory Steinberg, and I don't remember
who the resource manager was in that day.
Q:
It was Colonel [Clarence] Gilkey.
A:
Basically, Bory would get aggressive at the staff level. It was just tedious to work through.
You had to raise it to a Bory level to really get a direct answer, and he wouldn't always agree,
but that was all right too. I mean, that's what people are supposed to do, stand up and be
counted. Then we would raise the issue up to the director level.
There was a continual resource issue thing. It was annual, but came more often because there
was a midyear review, and then somebody decides to cut something. One rather famous issue
was when, in midyear, Bory's people decided that we weren't using our civil works
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