________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
A:
I enjoyed it a great deal. How does that stack up against other assignments? I don't know.
I've never had a bad one. Some are better than others. The Ohio River Division was better
than a lot. I really enjoyed the great professional challenge, great people, a lot of friends. I
enjoyed the interactions, worked hard, and enjoyed it.
Q:
Okay. I don't know if you want, at this point, to say anything about--I guess you know some
of this was going on before you retired in terms of reorganization, and the plan that got shot
down included closing some divisions--not Ohio River, but some divisions and districts.
The new approach that's being taken now is to look first at the divisions, not with any--you
know, it's like going in tabula rasa, the secretary says.
A:
What does that mean?
Q:
Well, that means without much reference to the previous plan. In other words, they don't
have a plan. There were some things they liked about the earlier plan, and there is a lot that
isn't very popular about the earlier plan, but that the Corps clearly needs to reorganize and
clearly needs to get more efficient.
If you see any perspective that you could provide to that in terms of just not a specific
division but the overall issues that are involved. If you want to say something about that now,
fine.
A:
Sure.
Q:
It might be a good way to close out here on the division.
A:
Well, while I was in the Ohio River Division, you know, we had a very quiet look at
reorganizing the divisions in the middle of the United States. The people that were involved
in that were the commanders of the Lower Mississippi Valley Division, the Missouri River
Division, the North Central Division, and the Ohio River Division, under General Read who
was the head of the study effort.
Our charge from General Heiberg, Deputy Chief, to General Bratton was to get a look to see
if we could come up with some plan to do something in the middle. We met several times
without staffs but involved staffs on our own when we went home.
In our meetings, typically, we'd fly to St. Louis and rent a room in a hotel near the airport.
General Read would preside with the three of us, and he'd have a person there take notes and
run the Vu-Graph projector. We'd try to carve out a rationale for what might change and
why.
I don't know if we ever recommended anything specifically, other than we looked at some
alternatives and gave the pros and cons of each and addressed them forthrightly. We came
pretty close to what the last reorganization group came up with.
For example, it was clear that we didn't need all three divisions--the North Central Division,
the Missouri River Division, and the Ohio River Division. Certainly something could go
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