Years in
International Education and Development at Colorado State University
A celebration to honor
Maurice L. Albertson
Centennial Emeritus ProfessorThe organizing committee would like to invite you to rnntribute a letter, which will be presented to Maury at the dinner. Of course, the format and style of the letter, and whether it is handwritten or typed, is entirely up to you. Personal recollections and recall of technical experiences would be particularly appreciated.
If you would like to contribute a letter, please send it (preferably not folded) no later than March 11, 1998 to Bernadette Shepard, Department of Civil Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins,
co
80523-1372.Neil S. Grigg
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A fund has been established to assure that Dr.
Maurice L. Albertson's name is prominently displayed in the renovated and expanded Engineering
Building. Tax-deductible contributions toward Lhis effort may be enclosed in addition to your dinner reservation with a separate check made payable to the CSU Foundation.
Organizing committee:
Neil Grigg,Jack Cermak, Audrey Faulkner, Bonnie and Galan Frantz,June Griest, Pierre Julien, Pauline Kirky Kruetzer,Jean Lamm,Janet Montera,John Nelson, Everett Richardson,Jim Ruff, Tom Sanders, Bernadette Shepard,
A Symposium to Honor Maurice L. Albertson Centennial Emeritus Professor "International Education and Development
at Colorado State University" March 16, 1998 (Monday)
1:30 pm-5:15 pm
Room 228, Lory Student Center Colorado State University
A series of presentations to celebrate Colorado State's global leadership in education, research and
outreach. The emphasis will be on water, food production and social development.
We hope you will attend these distinguisheq keynotes prior to the dinner to honor Dr. Albertson
Please note our request to contrib'l{,tfJ a colleague letter to honor Dr. Maurice Alhertson
Maurice L. Alber
tson
Centennial Emeritus Professor
Celebrating
SO Years in
I
nternational Education
and
Development
at Co
l
orado State
University
March 16, 1998 ·
West Ballroom Lory Student Center
Maurice L. Albertson
Teacher, Adviser,Mentor, Friend
Maurice "Maury" Albertson's 50 years of teaching, research, and service at Colorado State University have influenced international education and development on a global scale. An unyielding dedication to hi career and to humanity are reflected in the numerous and varied roles Maury has played while at Colorado State. A Centennial Eme1itus Profe sor, Maury
has served the University a director of the Colorado State Univer ity
Research Foundation, director oflnternational Programs, and professor of civil engineering. Even though he has been "retired" for a number of years, he continues to be active in education, research, and outreach at Colorado State.
Maury's professional field include water resources engineering,
irrigation engineering, hydro power engineering, low-cost and low-energy sustainable wastewater treatment, and constructed wetlands for
wastewater treatment and international development, specializing in sustainable ,~Hage-based development. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the UNDP, AID, U ESCO, the Peace Corps, and other agencies on projects and programs dealing with water and sanitation, water resource development, on-farm water management, appropriate technology, village development, small industry development, research,
and education.
One of Maury's most recognized contributions was his critical role in the development and launching of the Peace Corps. Under the Kennedy
administration, Maury and his team of Colorado State researchers and professors representing more than a century of experience working in third-world villages, developed and conducted the feasibility study tl)at ultimately resulted in the formation of the Peace Corps.
The endeavor to improve the plight of third-world countries has been a thread running through the many years and facets of Maury' adult life.
He and his wife, Audrey Faulkner, developed a model for large-scale village development, which they presented in 1993 ata conference they organized: the International Conference on Sustainable Village-Based Development. More than 250 village developers from throughout the world attended, more than 100 of whom were working on village development in third-world countries. That same year Maury also created the Con ortium for Sustainable Village-Based Development, a nonprofit 501-c-3 corporation to study, organize, and implement sustainable development in impoverished villages.
More recently, Maury has erved as a consultant on sustainable village-based development to the Indonesian Ministry of Higher Education and to more than 30 universities and institutes throughout Indonesia.
Program
5:15 p.m. Reception and Cocktails
6:15 p.m. Dinner Service
7:15 p.m.
Master of Ceremonies, Neil S. Grigg Welcome and Brief Remarks
Recognition of Guests Remarks by Friends and Colleagues
7:45 p.m. Reflections of 50 Years in
International Education and Development at Colorado State University
Maurice L. Albertson
The Medlar String Quartet is a local ensemble that has been performing across the Front Range for the past three years.
The quartet includes professional players and students
who also perform with such ensembles as the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra, Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra,
and Loveland Chamber Orchestra, as well as
Throughout his career, Maurice Albertson has received numerous awards and recognitions for his teaching, research,
and service. Some of the honors he has received include:
1948
J.C. Stevens Award, American Society of Civil Engineers
1951
Erriil Hilgard· Prize, American Society of Ci,~! Engineers 1964
Croes Medal, American Society of Civil Engineers
1970
Selected as Centennial Professor frbm College of Engineering, CSU
1978
Honora_ry Doctor of Laws, Peshawar University, Pakistan 1979
Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Lowell University, Massachusetts
1986
Colorado Governor's Award of Merit for Science and Technology
1987
Selected by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Hydraulics Division, to give the Hunter Rouse Lecture
1988
Engineer of the Year, ational Award from the National Society of Professional Engineers
1989
Professional Achievement Award, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
1992
Public Service Award, College of Engineering, Colorado State University
Celebrating 50 Years in International Education and Development
at Colorado State University Organizing committee:
Jack Cermak, Audrey Faulkner, Bonnie Frantz,June Griest, Neil Grigg, PierreJulien,Jean Lamm.Janet Montera, Everett Richard on,Jim Ruff, Tom Sander , Bernie Shepard, Daryl & Mary Jo Simons, Eric Thompson
Produced and printed by Publications and Printing, Colorado State University.
World-class
professor
builds
legacy of programs at
Colorado State and abroad
(Photo by Office of Instructional Services)
F
or most of his career, Maury Albertson's wide-ranging interests have kept him hopping all over the globe."For a period of ten years, I was out of the country more than I was in the coun-try," Albertson said. "I was never in one place more than a week or two, on the move all the time, handling different re-sponsibilities."
For the past 50 years, those responsi-bilities have invigorated Colorado State's
programs in engineering and research and have shaped the fields of international edu-cation and development.
Albertson, Centennial professor emeri-. tus, has served Colorado State as director of the Research Foundation, director of the Office of International Programs and pro-fessor of civil engineering. He was respon-sible for initiating the engineering doctoral program and for increasing the emphasis of
research at Colorado State.
Albertson came to Colorado Agricul-tural and Mechanical College in 194 7. His efforts increased research activity and the
number of graduate students so greatly that
by 1958, 80 percent of the university's re-search budget was from the research he had brought in. Seeing this success, President
William Morgan asked Albertson to
be-come director of the Colorado State Uni-versity Research Foundation and to help
faculty across the university set up research
village development, small industry devel-opment, research and education.
On a trip to China in 1974, Albertson began to crystallize his thinking on a plan for sustainable development.
"There were signs everywhere in China that said, 'Serve the People,' "
Albertson said. "I realized then that
West-"Maury's work has been enormously influential on a global scale. His dedication to education and to service is untiring. The programs Maury initiated continue to expand and help us address many of the international challenges we face."
programs and obtain grants. Today, this position is known as the vice president for research and information technology.
Albertson's dedication to the univer-sity has always been matched by a commit-ment to improve the lives of
poverty-stricken people around the world. "Maury's work has been enormously influential on a global scale," said Neil
Grigg, department chairman of civil
engi-neering. "His dedication to education and to service is untiring. The programs Maury initiated continue to expand and help us
address many of the international
chal-lenges we face."
One of Albertson's most recognized
contributions was his critical role in the development and launching of the Peace Corps. Under the Kennedy administration, Albertson and his team of Colorado State
researchers and professors developed and conducted the feasibility study that
ulti-mately resulted in the formation of the Peace Corps. Albertson also set up the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
Gradu-ate School of Engineering, which later be
-came the Asian Institute of Technology. Albertson has served as consultant to
the World Bank, the United Nations Devel-opment Programme, the Agency for ,Inter-national Development, UNESCO and other agencies on projects dealing with water and sanitation, water resource development,
ern culture didn't have a major emphasis on service and that China didn't have the profit motive. I'm convinced you can't have sustainable development based en-tirely on service alone or profit alone - I concluded that we needed to mix the two."
Albertson and his wife, Audrey Faulkner, developed a model for large-scale village development based on the
conviction that the best way to serve would be to find out what people wanted and to help them work to realize their dreams, not
by going into a country and telling villag-ers what they needed. Last November, Albertson took a month-long trip to
Indo-nesia with Colorado State colleagues. In Indonesia, they used the model to work
with 100 universities and institutes that are helping surrounding villages.
Albertson continues to be active in education, research and outreach at Colo-rado State. He advises a dozen graduate students, inviting them to his home for meetings.
Road rage,
continued from Page 1
"They like the location because it's easier to find parking," Albertson quipped. "I enjoy doing research with my students. I've had a great interest in reducing pollu-tion by trying to convert from a petroleum-hydrocarbon economy to a hydrogen
economy. I'm working with students to do research on this. An awful lot of the work
we do as civil engineers helps with the
de-struction of the environment. If we're
de-stroying the environment, then were not using appropriate technology. So we
cre-ated the Appropriate Technology Institute in the civil engineering department to give this problem special study."
than low-anger individuals. People were categorized as high- or low-anger individu-als after completing a short driving anger questionnaire.
Deffenbacher's past studies also
re-vealed that high-anger individuals express anger on the road with more intensity than low-anger drivers and that women express driving anger as frequently as men.
Budget
forums
•
coming
T
he Strategic Planning Committee and the Executive Budget Committee havescheduled open forums to discuss key ele- . ments in the update of the University
Stra-tegic Plan and fiscal issues in the
univer-sity's 1998-99 budget.
The forums will be identical and will offer reviews of recent planning and budget hearings, preliminary views of state appro-priation levels and other revenue for
1998-99 and discussions of the campus planning
and budgeting process. Questions and
com-ments from the university community are
invited.
Open forums will be held in the Lory Student Center 8-10 a.m. April 1 in Room
213-215 and 2-4 p.m. April 2 in Room
203-205. •
"When driving conditions aren't
stressful, there is no difference between high-anger and low-anger individuals on the road," Deffenbacher said. "However,
when high-anger people are provoked, it's a whole different story. They have a much
shorter fuse."
High-anger individuals can avoid bouts of road rage by learning a few relax-ation techniques. Deffenbacher suggested playing favorite music or audio book tapes as a way to lower anger and prevent
nega-tive interactions with other drivers. Drivers
also can lower their anger by choosing not
to use profanity - which adds fuel to the fire - and concentrating on positive thoughts.
Commuters who frequently get angry about road conditions also should look at
their lifestyle for possible reasons - such as
always being late. Starting out earlier may prevent an angry episode.
"How we think about other drivers and events on the road can make things go from
bad to worse," Deffenbacher said. "A good
deal of anger is in one's head, and that kind of behavior can be changed." •
- Carrie Schafer Rise and shine! Daylight-saving time begins April 5. 2
When Albertson isn't working, he's climbing fourteeners (peaks 14,000 feet or higher) or maintaining trails. As a longtime member of the Colorado Mountain Club, Albertson has taken charge of maintenance for the Greyrock Trail in Poudre Canyon. He takes 30 or 40 people at a time to work on the trail and is anticipating the challenge
this summer of cleaning up after a recent fire in the area.
Albertson's time in the backcountry doesn't keep him away from international
The following is a list of open positions provided by the Office of Equal Opportunity. Check with OEO at 491-5836, Room JO I Student Services, for a complete listing. A detailed version of a job description may be obtained from the contact person listed. The OEO web address is: http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/OEO.
Village Coordinator (Family Housing/University
Village) - Housing and Food Services
Deadline: April I
Contact: Barbara Lattin, 491-4743
Research Associate · Soil and Crop Sciences
Deadline: April 21
Contact: Nora Lapitan, 491-1921
Associate Director . Office of Admissions
Deadline: April 23
Contact: DeAnn Keith, 491-7359
Research Associate (Whirling Disease Researcher) . Fishery and Wildlife Biology
Deadline: May 4
Contact: Eric Bergersen, 49 I -1415 •
interests for long. He's a member of the National Peace Corps Association, a group made up of 130,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers. The group is very active in lob-bying Congress in addition to sending crews into war-torn countries in eastern Europe and Afr:ica ..
"In Rwanda, where peQple were.being·
massacred, 20 volunteers went in and
stopped the killing," Albertson said. "They didn't have to argue. Their presence just changed the atmosphere. The presence of a volunteer is far more effective than the presence of a GI. A GI is there with a gun and is prepared to kill someone if
neces-sary. The Peace Corps volunteer doesn't have a gun, he only has his presence and doesn't have any agenda at all except help-ing people.
"The Peace Corps has had an
astound-ing effect and is a marvelous example of what can be done peacefully," he said.
"I've enjoyed putting my efforts into it."•
- June Greist
t, sustainable village-based development
Family: Wife. Audrey; daughter, Kay, ll psychiatrist in Philadelphia~
and daughJer, ~arah. a tbe,atei:
~Ofeli-so~ in Santa Crµz.
Noted: "Listening to di,scussions aboufthe depression and the drought durinJ qie first half of the 1930s had it
, strong Jinpact on me. It was the drought, and the dust storms that
fol-lowed. that sbo\Ved me the value and
impona,nce
qf
wa~r and COJ!V!flced meLmustspecialize and woddn water % resource enginetring,"
COMMENT
Comment is published and produced by Media and Community Relations for faculty, staff and state-classified perso11nel at Colorado State University. Publication dates are every Thursday -except during holiday breaks -during the academic year and twice during the summer.
All material for publication should be sent to
Comment editor, Room 271 Aylesworth Hall, or comment@Vines. ColoState.EDU by 9 a.m. Wednesday the week prior to intended publication. Questions should be directed to the editor, (970) 49/-6432, or submitted via the Vines e-mail address.
Comment is edited to confomi to Associated Press
news style. Editor: Paul Miller
Comment Advisory Committee
Classified Personnel Council: Sarah Garey, College
of Business, 49/-//84, sgarey@lamar.colostate.edu;
Joyce Reuter, Human Resource Services, 491-6737,
jreuter@vines.colostate.edu.
Administrative Professional Council: Ardeth Nieman, department of manufacturing technology and construction management, 491-7961,
nieman@cahs.colostate.edu; Lenora Bohren, National Center for Vehicle Emissions Control and Safety, 491-1805, bohren@cahs.colostate.edu.
Faculty Council: Holley Lange, University Libraries,
491-1846, hlange@manta.colostate.edu; Marty Tharp, journalism and technical communication,
\
Fifty Years
at
Colorado State University
•
by
Maurice L. Albertson
Centennial Emeritus Professor
Celebrating 50 Years in International Education and
Development
--March 16, 1998
Co~~do
Background
FIFTY YEARS AT COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
by
Maurice L. Albertson
I was born and raised in Hays, Kansas that is on the Great Plains about half way between Kansas City and Denver. My first two years of pre-engineering were taken at Fort Hays Kansas State College where my father was a professor in the Botany Department. His specialty was range management and Wayne Cook, former head of Range Management at CSU, did his Master's Degree with him. I have one sister, Mildred, who is married to Walt Newport - my fraternity brother at Iowa State. She and I had the traditional disagreements as children, but we have each been a great supporter of the other all through the years. She majored in music and plays the violin - which she taught me to love.
My earliest recollection of interest in a vocation was at the age of four, when I was fascinated with construction. Even at this age, I could watch a construction project for hours at a time. For Christmas, my parents gave me an Erector Set and Tinker Toys. These also occupied my time for hours day after day. In fact, I didn't have much time to play with other children in the neighborhood, because I was building bridges, buildings, towers and other structures out of these toys.
When I was 11 years of age, the stock market crash of 1929 occurred and I heard very urgent and frightening talk about the depression which followed--with Roosevelt being elected president of the country because he had a plan for economic recovery. My parents were raised on farms a few miles from Hays, Kansas. My father was the only member of his immediate family that had an education beyond the 8th grade. About once a month we would go to visit his family members who still lived on the homestead. Listening to the discussions about the
depression, and the drought during the first half of the 193 Os, let me know the terrible time everybody was having financially and the deep despair that had hit that part of the country. This was the time that the Oakies and the Arkies moved by the thousands in old broken down cars and trucks to California and Oregon. In fact, my father's sister and her family joined a group that moved to Oregon.
These very troubled times had a strong impact on my vocational interests and me.
Although I had definitely decided to go into Civil Engineering, it was these experiences with the drought, and the dust storms that followed, particularly in the spring of 1935, which helped to convince me I should go into water resources. Having been trained by my father on grassland research, I went with a team that spring to survey the damage caused by the drought and the dust storms. For this, we did inspections of the damage and then we set up grassland quadrants at the
agricultural experiment stations in Hays; Woodward, Oklahoma; Dalhart, Texas; Akron,
Colorado; and McCook, Nebraska. The dev<).station was almost beyond description. Heavy rains came about a week before we arrived at Akron and McCook. The dust was like talcum powder and the water just ran off in little balls of mud--never soaking into the ground. So there were devastating floods. These experiences also showed me the extreme importance of water and reinforced my conviction to specialize and work in water resource engineering.
These experiences also convinced me that I must never depend upon my parents for financial help. Therefore, beginning.at the age of 12, I found jobs, initially at ten cents per hour,
to earn the money necessary to pay all my e pen es--except my board and room while I was living at home for the first 20 Y~fl!S of my. life. . , , ; .
I was very fortunate to find jobs in research activities--first at the age of 11 when my father needed standard deviations calculated for his data.,, hich he used for his Master's thesis.
Later, I got a job working at the Agricultural Experiment Station in Hays. When I transferred to Iowa State College to get a B.S. in Civil Engineering, I was fortunate to get a research job working with Professor Pat Galligan on wastewater treatment. From then till now I have been working in research--nearly 70 years.
Because the pay was better (25 cents per hour) in the oil fields, I spent some time working there as a "roughneck" during the summers to help pay my expenses in college. The "driller" who was in charge of the drilling crew soon approached me about going into Petroleum Engineering so that he and I could form a drilling company and make a mint. I looked at this briefly but soon decided that water was more important to me than oil, even though I might not make as much money. These experiences in the oil field are the basis of the article that I wrote in 1941 for the Iowa Engineer--with the help of my classmate John Wentz, who was the editor of the Iowa Engineer that year.
Education
During my first two years at Fort Hays State, I took math, chemistry and physics courses and participated in football and track. I lettered in both sports. Karl and Wilma Carson, of Fort Collins, were there at the same time. They were the only married couple among the students in college so we were always asking them to chaperone our parties and dances. The college required that all such functions have chaperones, and most ofus didn't enjoy having an "old married couple" as much as having "one of us."
As I was completing my first two years in pre-engineering at Fort Hays College, I anticipated going to Kansas State College to finish my BS. However, in the spring of 1938 Jim Yeager, the football coach at Iowa State, came through Hays to visit old friends. He had been the football coach at Fort Hays College and in 1955 his team beat Kansas State in football. It was terribly humiliating to Kansas State to be beaten by this little college out in the plains of western Kansas, but it gave Jim very favorable publicity in the world of sports. Iowa State needed a new
coach so they grabbed Jini: Althn'ugh1
I had 'lettered in football and track at Fort Hays, I was not a particularly good football player·. So 'it was pfi'marity;;be'eatise o'f. an •old friendship with my father that Jim offered me a Job at Iowa State: He also said· Iowa ·state had a better engineering school than Kansas State. I' didii't Rnow'that inueli aMut the-qtiality of engineering schools, but I sure jumped at the chance 'fo Ha~e a':job." I·was rnost'futtufiate that the job was in wastewater research
with Pat Galligan in the'Civil Engineering>Departmerit::,: '··~
"-Pat was hoping 1that I·woulo be1 a star fdbtbali; player, so he would come out to watch football practice to see
hb~
I was doing; but I ;1ever rifade the first team: I think this was a disappointment to him. 'Instead, I waitdri the thitd team, which the coach used for the first and second teams to practice on. Although I could run f.ister than anybody else could on the squad, and the coach was in hopes that I could play end and receive passes, I could never catch a pass so I stayed on the third team. Playing end; I1e01:dd gefinto the·opponentDs backfield quickly and once I tackled a very promising ha:lfl:fack1sa
hard1I•tore up-muscles and ligaments.in his leg so badly that he ended up a cripple.' Sihte'l'cou1dn0t catdra.pass and since I made a cripple out of a very promising young athlete; I ;decided to dto'Jf;o'utof
football and get into other activities. I was on the track team but never letteied·afIowa
S'tate--the €ompetition was just too tough.It took me 5 years in college to finish my Civil Engineering degree, because I had to work
so much both in the sun1mer and during the school year to pay all my expenses--except during
my senior year, when my father paid $45 per-mbhth board and room for me to live in the Sigma
Chi fraternity house. It was a requirement that the president of the fraternity live in the fraternity house the year he was president. Walt Newport, ·who later married my sister, persuaded the other members of the fraternity to elect me as president, not because of any special leadership ability,
but because I was on good terms with the Dean of Students. The fraternity was on probation
because of a beer-bust they had the year before and beer was absolutely outlawed by the college. I had frequent contacts with the Dean because I was president of the Interchurch Council and a known teetotaler, so Walt was able to convince the fraternity members that they might get back in the good graces of the Dean ifl were the president of the fraternity.
In the sun1mer of 1940, there was a national ASCE Convention in Denver, so I went to it since I was president of the ASCE Student Chapter my senior year. This conference was a major point in my life not only because of the papers.I heard, but primarily because the Hydraulics Laboratory of the USBR had moved from Fort Collins to the basement of the Custom House in downtown Denver. I was absolutely fascinated, and spent hours oftime looking at all the operating hydraulic models and other displays concerning water. I also went to Fort Collins to see about graduate study in a water-related program. I knew about Carl Rohwer because of his evaporation studies and about Ralph Parshall because of the Parshall Flume. I was extremely excited because I got to meet these very important men and have an unhurried visit. They suggested that I talk to Nephi Christiansen who was Dean of Engineering and Head of the Civil Engineering Department, but unfortunately he was out of his office. Although Rohwer and Parshall were employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they were able to tell me that Christiansen was working hard to get a graduate program going in water resources, but that it
would be several years before a complete program would be in place. This contact with Colorado A and M, however, was another major point in my life.
Early in 1941, my advisor, Frank Kerekes, who was also the ASCE Chapter advisor so I had quite a lot of contact with him, told me about a Graduate Research Assistantship that was being offered at the University oflo~ a in Iowa City. I made application for this and was very
fortunate to receive it. I had already accepted a job with Armco Drainage and Metal Products in Middletown, Ohio when a recruiter came through Ames, so I called them to resign but they said to come ahead for the summer. Therefore, Dolly, my wife to be in June, and I drove down to Iowa City to find and reserve an apartment for the fall semester. This was a really exciting
adventure.
Eventually, I graduated from Iowa State with a BS in CE in 1941. As an undergraduate, I took as much as I could in the field of water, including courses in irrigation engineering and reclamation engineering, which were offered in the Agricultural Engineering Department.
Graduation was a rather minor event in June of 1941 because two days later, Dolly Campbell and I were married in her home Presbyterian church in Waterloo, Iowa. Our
honeymoon was driving to Middletown, Ohio where I irmnediately began work as an engineer-in-training with ARMCO Drainage and Metal Products. Previously, I had also made application
with the Soil Conservation Service, but the job didn't come through even though they promised
that it would eventually. I preferred the SCS as a summer job but since it wasn't absolutely certain, I went to ARMCO for the surnmer with the understanding that I would leave if and when
the SCS job was approved.
At ARMCO, they put their engineers-in-training at physical labor for several months so they would really learn the business from the bottom up. Therefore, my first day on the job was for another engineer and me to empty a carload of foundry sand with scoop shovels. We were both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed so we went at the job with gusto and emptied the car in one day. We were absolutely exhausted that night, but we came the next morning to see what new adventure was waiting for us. Much to our dismay, a new carload of foundry sand had been rolled in overnight and we were to empty it. We wizened up and this second carload of sand took us two days to empty. We then worked in the rolling mill for several days until I received word that the SCS summer job had been approved. So Dolly and I packed up and headed for Garden City, Kansas for the summer. This was another major point in my life, because I worked for Wes Orr with whom I was later associated on international engineering education activities, and because I was assigned to work with farmers on designing terraces and contour farming, to reduce erosion, and I advised farmers on wells for irrigation. This was an experience that I have drawn on repeatedly ever since.
Toward the end of the 1941 summer, Dolly and I joined my parents for a trip to Colorado to be in the mountains and to stop in Fort Collins on a Saturday afternoon so that I could show my family the Colorado A and M campus and to stay overnight. The next morning, we went to a
restaurant to have br~ak.fast: .~e:n we.sat down,,poJly sa~d, "Maury, did you notice that sign in
the front window, you better go look at it!'·The sign•said ''·We cater to white trade only." This
upset me so much that I told our group I thought we should go elsewhere. So we left and spent
30 minutes or so,trying to find a restauraat;without thatlsign. But all the otliet restaurants had the
same sign, until we .got .to the- Northern Hot-el whichdiacHhe most expensive restaurant in town so
they didn't need to have the ·sig11t; Therefor.e; We,had breakfast at the Northern Hotel. Wh~n we
later moved to Fort Collins,in.1947;1there were._sti11:111anY't"~staurants which displayed that
sign--so a group ofus organi~ed•to_get.thes.e,sjgns re~0ved and within a few years they were gone--but
that's another story. 1 also.discovered that blac~sicouldrnot get their hair cut1in Ft. Collins, so the
same group worked to get this restrictiun remoo/ed:-'. As soon as we were able to persuade one
barber, the others fell in line rather quickly
On this same trip, we drove:to,see.Kings:ley.Damin Nebraska that was under··,
construction. This was the lasthydra.ulic·fill damiever.burlt in the U.S. The equipment that was
used to build Fort Peck dam in Montana•was-b'rougllt•down to Nebraska for Kingsley Dam.
Seeing all this equipment in operation and the three-mile long narrow lake down the middle of
the dam, was another major experjence in my life ... My family could hardly drag me away.
While teaching classes on Hydraulic.Structures atCSl:J, I have taken many students to see this
dam and told them the story of its construction. Graduate Work
After completing the summer with the SCS in Garden City, Dolly and I headed for Iowa
City for the next great adventure. She had obtained an assistantship in the Iowa Child Welfare Institute with George Stoddard and Beth Wellman who were famous for their pioneering work demonstrating that the IQ can change. She began work on her Master's degree in Journalism. My assistantship was a USGS job taking data on Rapid Creek near Iowa City. My supervisor was Paul Benedict who played a major role in my life for many years to come. He was
determined to get me initiated into the ardors of being a USGS engineer. Repeatedly, he got me out of bed to catch the peak flow on Rapid Creek during major rainstorms and he had me out in
the coldest part of the winter, using an ice chisel to cut holes in the ice covering the Iowa River,
to make a stream flow measurement. He also had me taking and analyzing sediment samples,
flushing out gauging station intake pipes, keeping recorders running, and tabulating and
analyzing data and rating curves.. Although Joe Howe was my very casual but able advisor for
my masters degree, Paul was the one who really taught me the practical side of hydrology. In
retrospect, I am very much indebted to him--even though I thought he was a grueling task master
at the time.
Another person who had a major influence on me at Iowa during my masters program was Emery W. Lane. He taught a course in Erosion and Sedimentation and a course in Irrigation Engineering. But it was also my discussions with him about social issues that made my contact especially important and impressive. He also recommended me to Al Fry, who gave me a job at
limited contact with Hunter Rouse--I took a course in Fluid Mechanics from him.
Only one year was spent at TVA in Knoxvil e, Tennessee, but during this time I had the
good fortune to work in the Hydraulic Data Division. which had Al Fry as its Director. Al was
quite active in ASCE which gave me further contact with ASCE. My immediate supervisor was
Bill Ackermann who was a taskmaster but I learned a great deal from him about collecting and
analyzing hydrologic data. We had to make sense out of data taken in the field by the USGS and
TV A hydrologists, sometimes under very rying circurnstances--as Paul Benedict had taught me.
We also did a lot of flood routing down streams and through reservoirs. At Iowa, Ches Posey
taught me open channel flow which included making a slide rule to do the routing computations
much faster. At night I made a slide rule for the TV A work, but Bill wouldn't let me use it
because it was too much of an unproven innovation. Bill later went to Illinois to set up the Water
Resources Institute for the state. He was very creative in this and g ined national recognition for
his work. At TV A, I also met and worked with Sol Resnick with whom I have retained a long
time friendship.
Shortly after we went to Tennessee, our first child was born, Katherine Marie. I couldn't
believe how much time it took to take care of her. We spent all of our evenings washing diapers
and doing a dozen other tasks. In retrospect, we were quite amused with our inefficiency. When
we later had another child, Sarah Jean, the two of them combined took much less time to care for
because we had learned how.
Toward the end of the first year at TVA, Hunter Rouse called me to see ifl would be
interested in going back to Iowa to work with him on some new research using a wind tunnel.
This really excited me, because of the opportunity to work with Hunter so, I accepted his offer. Working with Hunter Rouse was without question the most wonderful experience of my life. I have been forever indebted to him for all he taught me. From him I learned how to plan and organize a research project, how to decide what data to collect and how to collect it in a
systematic manner, how to analyze the data in a meaningful way, how to relate the data to theory,
how to draw conclusions, and how to make recommendations. I also learned how to organize
and write technical reports and papers. One of the most important lessons was persistence--to
never give up if you have a good idea. The four years I spent working directly with Hunter were the most intense learning years of my life, and I can never thank him enough for all that he gave me. This four years also provided me an opportunity to get well acquainted with Phil Hubbard and Randy Jensen because we worked together in the wind tunnel research. Phil was a black electrical engineer who was developing our electronic instrumentation--especially the hot-wire anemometer for measuring velocities and turbulence in the air. Phil and I grew to be quite close friends.
About January of 1944 Hunter wanted Phil to get well acquainted with the hot-wire work
of Dr. Shubauer in the U.S. Bureau of standards in Washington, DC. But he didn't know how
well Phil would be treated in getting around in Washington, so he wanted me to go along. On
the way to Washington we flew on a DC-3 into Chicago then a DC-4 out of Chicago. This was
this DC-4, which had no heal;' ·Sirtae the DC-4 was pressurized it·could fly higher than the DC-3,
which was not pressurized, ·and it flew
in
colder·air'::So
·it' was terribly cold in the DC-4 and wenearly froze to death. W'e put on all the'clothing weih:adiand the airline gave us blankets but that
still was not enough to keep warm., · :1 ., J:,; ' · ' , ,.,,; .. F
£ _ I 1}~' 1. , ; : j-/:.,,..' J J .; , ; I r,
We had made reservatici11s,at the Hilton-hotel-ortiKStr.eet, but when we arrived they
would not let Phil stay there even-though WetwoJ1ld.be:in 'the same room. So we went around to
other hotels to try to find ·a room·for .both' of'us. ,I-was'determined not to split us up and stay in
two different hotels. We were so'naive that
we
lreprtryii:ig to find a white hotel. Finally, wegave up and tried to find a black hotel'but they wo'u:M no1! let me stay there. Then Phil
remembered that a high-schodl friend ofhis ?ird)es.M6~nes;· which was Phil's home town, had .
moved to Washington and· Phil thought h~ Worked at' a hotel, so we started a search and found ·
this friend who was the manager: of a,black
lioteL
At 'first this friend was not going to let me staythere with Phil but after a lot of friendly persuasion he agreed to go against the hotel policy and
let me stay. It was interesting to experience this discrimination against whites .
• . t '1. l ~. .: .... 1.-.: •
Phil and I spent the next day With Dr. Shubauer, and we were very excited about all the
new information we had obtained. As we were leaving, it,was late in the afternoon so I asked
where we could find a place to eat nearby. Dr: Shubauer said, "There is a Hot Shoppe just a few
blocks down Connecticut". So we started walking and talking about all that we had learned and
how we could apply it to our work. When we got to the Hot Shoppe, I went charging in and Phil
followed me. All the tables were full so we sat at the counter with Phil on the end and me next to
him. I was facing the wall so I didn't see what was happening in the rest of the room. The
waitress came up to take our orders and we gave them. As we went back to talking about what
we had learned, I noticed that Phil was having a hard time concentrating on the subject so I
looked behind me. There all of the waitresses were standing behind the counter trying to keep our waitress from serving us but she was pushing her way through and getting us water, napkins and silverware. This went on for a while until finally a number of the people sitting at tables called out, "Come on, don't pay any attention to him. We want our food--come on--come on". I didn't know what to do but I was determined not to leave that place without getting our food. I had decided that I would talk to the Manager--but the calls from the other customers got louder
and louder and finally the waitresses went back to work. What a reliefl ! ! So we all were served
and left the place happy. Many years later the first Washington sit-ins were in the Hot Shoppes all over Washington. So we declared that Phil and I were the first ones to stage a successful sit-in sit-in a Washsit-ington Hot Shoppe--back sit-in 1944--unsit-intentionally.
This reminds me of the story about the 20 people from India who came to the U.S. to work on the new water projects of which our model studies were a part. They had reservations at
the same hotel on K Street in 1948 or 1949, but when they arrived in the lobby to register, the
management would not let the darkest Indians stay there. As most people know, the people from India vary a great deal in the darkness of their skin. So the hotel personnel picked out the lightest skin colored Indians and said they could stay there but the darker ones would have to go to a black hotel. I was working on the model studies when this happened and when I heard the story
it made me just furious--but of course there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it except
to apologize to the Indians and to complain to the hotel the next time I went to Washington. I
thought the way they handled it was absolutely inexcusable.
· The technical aspects of our wind tunnel work were primarily in the area of diffusion of a
gas as it passed through turbulence created by screens and other objects, and for this the hot-wire
was indispensable. I also worked on the diffusion of heat as it passed upward to evaporate fog
over airport runways. After establishing the basic principles of fog dispersal in the wind tunnel, I
built full scale burners outdoors which used high test aviation gasoline to provide the necessary
heat. People would drive by the lab and see all this gasoline going up in heat and smoke and
really wonder what was going on. Gas rationing was underway at that time and some thought
our work was very wasteful. Never-the-less,. these burners were later built in large quantity for
the airports in England so that the fog could be dispersed over the landing strips. I've had a
number of pilots thank me for developing them s they could see to land during the war. Radar
and other landing aids had not yet been developed at that time.
At one point during my work with Hunter, a paper on evaporation by George Hickok,
who was Director of the Hydraulics Laboratory for TVA where Al Peterka worked, came out in
the ASCE Proceedings. Since Hunter knew I had a special interest in evaporation, and I had
been studying boundary layer problems in the wind tunnel, he suggested that I write a discussion
of this paper. So I came up with some ideas and Hunter helped me get it organized into a
paper/discussion. He also guided me on how to get it to ASCE. This discussion was published
and then sometime later it received the ASCE J.C. Stevens award--which surprised me but
pleased me very much. I was so naive and inexperienced that this would never have happened
without Hunter's guidance and encouragement. Diffusion of Submerged Jets
At another point, Hunter told me there really needed to be a fundamental study on the
diffusion of submerged jets, but he couldn't find funding for it. We discussed this idea at some length and I decided to take on this project and do the testing in the evenings and on the
weekends. We built adjustable equipment for both 2-dimensional slots and for 3-dimensional
orifices to create air jets. We found a quiet area in the lab and set up the equipment with the air blowers and Pitot tubes to measure the velocity. Doug Baines later measured the turbulence throughout the jets with hot-wire anemometers for his doctoral dissertation and then he published an excellent paper on the subject.
The testing for this project took many months and hundreds of hours to collect, compute and plot the data. For some of the tests I was able to con Randy Jenson and Yau Ben Dai into helping with the tests which required two people. Fortunately, this didn't actually take much of their time. They helped primarily as a favor to a friend, but they felt they had other better ways to spend their time.
As I came up with the plots of the curves; I kept,pointing out to.Hunter that Iwas getting
the normal error distribution and that we·shotrld db.v.e.lop theoretical equations'based·on: this,. but
he kept discouraging me about that idea. I wondered why Hunter didn't pick up on this idea, but
I was too naive and inexperienced to~1mow hbw;to·move:ahead without help. After the data were
all collected and I had approached:hirn repeatedlyali>but:the normal ~rror equations, however, he
came to me one day with a rough 0utliine/draft-ofaipapet.1based ·on the -very ideas I had-suggested.
He said the equations worked out reniarkab1y ,well atla_that-he thought we should complete and
polish the paper, and submit it for publicatioF1. This we-did but here I had· another lesson to learn
about persistence. · · ri i •' 1. L, :
Hunter said he would be happyto·,send"tht:! paper t9 ASCE fdr,publication. This he did,
but the ASCE sent it out for peeF review and got hii.dkievaluations saying it was too theoretical
and not practical enough for an ASCE publkatiori.-:I;was ready to give up, but this just sent
Hunter on a crusade. He sent the paper back with,1iletterexplaining why it really did have very
practical application. Again it was sent out for peer review and again it was turned down. This
made Hunter angry so he called the ASCE.;Editor
on
the phone and presented his argumentsagain. In desperation, the Editor asked Hunter to. suggest highly respected ASCE members to
whom the paper could be sent for peer review .. So:Hunter Sent a letter listing Art Ippen, Jim
Daily, Hans Albert Einstein, Carl Kindsvater and others·of similar caliber. These people sent
back glowing approval of the paper, and its application to ASCE, so it was published. The paper attracted a large amount of discussion and then it won the ASCE Emil Hilgard Prize. ASCE had come full circle from refusing the paper as inappropriate for ASCE to awarding it one of the ASCE prestigious honors. I never forgot this lesson in persistence.
While working with Hunter on the wind tunnel research and these other projects, I kept taking courses which especially interested me. Then Hunter suggested that I finish up a PhD. I checked into the number of credits I had completed and found that essentially all I needed to do was to write a dissertation. I had previously sworn that I would never go after a PhD because of the difficult experiences my father (and the family) went through as he was getting his during the depression. However, I could see that there would be great advantage to having a PhD. So I discussed a dissertation topic with Hunter and settled on evaporation research in the wind tunnel.
This research took about a year during evenings and weekends.
Although I never learned much about the details, I was disappointed in the way that Hunter treated E.W. Lane and Tony Kalinske. Lane had been instrumental in developing the USBR laboratory in Fort Collins and another one near Gunnison, Colorado, and he had a very practical approach to model studies and laboratory research. It was for this reason that Dean Dawson at Iowa had brought in Lane to head up the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research, but Dawson retained the title of Director and Lane was the Associate Director. Lane was not particularly skillful as an administrator. This simply was not his cup of tea. So when Hunter arrived in 193 8 he was frustrated with the lack of planning and focus for the IIHR. He felt that Lane was in the way of his progress. So he treated Lane in disrespectful ways. Finally, Lane
moved to TVA--ostensibly to help the War Effort where TVA was very much involved in the production of aluminum with its large quantities ofhydropower. Once Lane was out of the way, Hunter quickly moved into the position of Director of the IIHR. Tony Kalinske was there in the office next to Hunter's office but they never got along. I felt that T ny was doing good research, but he was not strong on theoretical fluid rrtechanics and Hunter made him so uncomfortable that he finally left the IIHR to take a position with Maytag in Arizona advising engineers on the design of washing machines. I always thought this was a terrible waste of research talent. Although I did not believe Hunter handled these two m n properly, I'm not sure I could have done much better. I certainly didn't figure out a good way to work with Max Parshall in the hydraulics laboratory. I always regretted my inability in this regard. Both Ray Chamberlain and Daryl Simons were highly successful ·and I always envied them in that regard.
Hunter is still my mentor on professional matters and I will always have the greatest admiration for what he accomplished, and I will always be grateful for what he did for me .. Getting to Colorado A and M College
Early in 1947, I heard that Nephi Christianson was coming to Iowa City to see his old friend Hunter Rouse--and to recruit someone to come to Colorado A and M College to help develop the Water Resources research and graduate program. I was able to get an interview with him and eventually he offered me the job even though I was only 28 years of age. Hunter saw that I was quite excited about the job at Colorado, so he took me into his office to say that he thought I should stay at Iowa where I had well-educated and well-recognized colleagues, with years of research experience, to work with. He said he had given summer short courses at Colorado A and M so he was acquainted with the people there. He added further that the Dean, Nephi Christianson was the only one who had a PhD in engineering but he was too busy to get into research--and that the only other person in the college of engineering with a PhD was Dwight Gunder and his PhD was in mathematics. His final comment was: "If you go out there you will just get buried and no one will ever hear from you again".
I thought about these comments a great deal but decided it was a golden opportunity and that ifl didn't succeed it would be my own fault. However, before I accepted the position, I wanted to see the job in person, so in April of 1947, Dolly and I flew out to Denver and went to Fort Collins. I had lengthy discussions with Nephi, Bob Lewis and other staff members, and I looked in detail at the facilities--especially the empty hydraulics laboratory that the USBR had left nearly ten years earlier. It looked like an exciting challenge, so I accepted the job.
Bob Lewis took us on a very exciting drive up the Big Thompson to Estes Park then south on the Peak to Peak Highway. We stopped about one-half mile south of the Longs Peak Inn to take a picture of Longs Peak. This was my first time to see the East Face up close. It was a very moving experience. Years later, I went up this East Face by the Kieners route, which I found to be easier than the present route. The easiest route was the old Cable Route which we used when I took Gus Yih and some others up to the top in the early 1950s.
i ·,. •• L .
During the summer of 1947,. I worked,on finishing my dissertation but I was unable to get a final draft completed by.the time we had to m0:ve'tb1Fort Collins. Consequently, many
evenings and weekends during the fall were,spentwoJking on finalizing it. At Christmas time,,
we went back to.Iowa Cityiand I was•able to·get·l:luat~r'~.final approval. The graduation ceremonywasinthespringof1948. ,.,· ·., .,., .,1.
When we moved out to fort Collins in.Aµgust-1947, I rented a moving van and packed everything into the van myself with the help.,of som.e fri~pds. Foolishly, I packed some very heavy items like the refrigerator on the
tail
·
gate--.sowe
went down the highway looking like a surfboard. The front wheels sometimes:bouncecl,dear off the road. I drove the truck with .Emmit Laursen along so that he could drive the empty truck back to Iowa City. Dolly followed behind in the family car with our two daughtersr-,,two $1d five years of age. We were very fortunate there were no difficulties along the, W.ay;.
While Dolly and I were in Fort Collins in April of 1_947, we rented an apartment in the basement of John Tolliver's new house on Laporte Avenue just west of Shields Street. The rent was $75 per month and John made me pay from April until we arrived in August, even though
the apartment could not be occupied because a water line sprung a leak and swelled up his oak floor in the apartment so that it was 3 to 4 feet above the concrete floor underneath. I had tried in April to get one of the quonset huts on campus, but they were all full. By the time we arrived in August, however, one of the quonsets had become available, so we moved in there with rent at $25 per month and gave up the Toliver apartment. We were just 3 units away from Harry Troxel who had joined the faculty of the College of Forestry. Most of the units were occupied by students--only a small number of units were made available to faculty. After a year in the
quonset, we bought a house at 1502 Mathews with the help of Dolly's father Clarence Campbell. We were still living in this house at the time of Dolly's death in 1976. I stayed on in this house for several years, renting the extra bedrooms to students like Kate Taylor and Ken Yoder. Getting Started at Colorado A and M
When Hunter saw that I was determined to go to Colorado, he took me aside again and said that he wanted to help in any way that he could. He pointed out that most of my experience was in wind tunnel research and that I had only limited experience in hydraulics and water related research--which was my main assignment at Colorado. He recommended that initially I search for funds to build a wind tunnel where I had so much experience. Then he said that he thought I might get money for this purpose from the Office of Naval Research, and that he would help me in this regard. Again I was heavily indebted to Hunter. With the help of Jack Cermak, who was my first M.S. student, and Hunter, we got a proposal to ONR and the wind tunnel was funded. Jack and I then managed to get other funding for the research in the new climatological wind tunnel which was built in the west side of the steel building which the college had obtained from the Denver Federal Center after the war.
Fortunately, Jack :vas such an able researcher and administrator that he gradually took over the entire wind tunnel program and really ran with it to make it what it is today. This
allowed me to move full force into the water resources part of the academic and research program for which I was hired.
, '
Initially, I worked hard with Nephi arid Bob Lewis on establishing a respectable array of courses in the water resources field on campus. I organized and taught most of the new courses for the first few times until we were able to find a new faculty member to take them over. Nephi
continued for a while to teach those courses which he had been teaching before I arrived. We
also set up extension courses for engineers in Denver. For this we drove down to Denver to teach these courses a couple of nights each week. This was a real grind, but it gave us contacts with engineers in engineering firms and government agencies. This helped to increase the number of our graduate students and set the stage for research support. I remember one night,
when it was my turn too drive, we were·corrting back about 10 or 11 at night when it was very
cold and Nephi was complaining that my car was not putting out enough heat, so we stopped to
get some road maps at the mid-point near Longmont to put in front of the radiator. This helped a little but not much. The next morning we learned that the temperature was 40 degrees below zero. Forty below is where Fahrenheit and Centigrade are the same and mercury freezes solid!!!
In the middle of all this progress and hard work, Nephi threw a curve by resigning as Dean to take the position as Head of the School of Civil Engineering at Cornell University. His children were getting to college age and he wanted them to attend a very high quality university like Cornell. Cornell had the policy of not charging tuition for the children of faculty members, and when Nephi added this saving to his increased salary, he couldn't afford not to take this new position.
Then Dwight Gunder went to Cornell, which really didn't make a whole lot of difference because he was away on consulting jobs so much that we hardly ever saw him. Never-the-less, this put us back to square one as far as PhD associates was concerned. It was even worse than Hunter had described. Shortly after this, in 1949, Bob Lewis, who had by this time become Head of the Civil Engineering Department, left to take a position at Clarkson University in up-state New York.
Max Parshall had very ably kept the Hydraulics Lab in good condition after the USBR left in 1938, and he and Nephi Christensen had built several piping systems with different size pipes and pumps to give the lab more flexibility. On the academic front, we were most fortunate that the undergraduate courses were being handled so ably by Max, Herb Schweizer, Jack
Cermak, George Koonsman, Bob Dodds and Bob Lewis. Later, George Smith, Ike Koloseus, and Ed Schulz joined this undergraduate group. Several of them worked on an M.S. degree and they finished as follows: George Koonsman 1950, Herb and Ike 1952, Ed 1953, and George Smith 1957. Art Corey was my third M.S. student in 1950 and Ike was my eighth MS student--both of whom went on for PhD degrees and then came back as faculty members. They student--both did
an outstanding job of teaching graduate courses in water resources and guiding graduate students in their research. I remember that Dolly ,and I also notited, admired and appreciated the concern
that Herb and Ellen always showed for.other people .. -:They were always very solicitous about
Dolly and how she was progressing. .1r. ,.· • ,1:·:·:
A.R.(Robbie) Robinson, who received his M.S. at CSU,joined the Agricultural Research Service with Rohwer and Parshall and ·expanded the· work 00: the vortex tube sand! trap, which
was originally developed by Parshall .. Tbis·was also:a,thesis topic for George Koonsman who received his M.S. in 1950. George:and
I
p.ublished·a paper on:his research in the. Proceeding~ ofthe Fourth Congress ofthe.InternationalAssooiation for- Hydraulic Research in Bombay, India.
Finding Outside Funding and New Faculty · ... , ! ... :
Even before arriving at Colorado A ahd M, I-was wm1dering where I could get.the money for the major academic and research program which Nephi and I envisioned. After discussions
with Nephi and other college officials, it became clear t_hat fonding from the College would be so
tiny, if at all, that I would have to go ·outside for .. t'unds· like Hunter had done at Iowa. My
experience with Hunter gave me some clues about outside funding, but he never discussed this
with me in detail. Consequently, I was terribly inexperienced in this very practical aspect of
finding research funding from outside the institution.
It was also very evident that we must employ high-caliber faculty to carry on the academic and research program which was envisioned. Fortunately, the soft money from the sponsored research helped enormously in this regard.
As explained later, Dean Peterson came in 1949 and did a truly remarkable job of joining in both the search for funding and the search for very competent faculty members.
International Engineering and the Model Studies
When India and Pakistan gained their independence there was a great push to develop water resources projects, including several major dams, financed by the World Bank. The International Engineering Co. obtained contracts to design several new dams for India. They wanted to have their design office near the USBR to be able to use USBR engineers as
consultants, so they located in Denver. I then talked to them about us doing the models studies of the dams in our laboratory. By this time we had gained enough of a reputation that they agreed to having models of Bhakra Dam, Rihand Dam and Hirakud Dam tested in our laboratory which had been built for the USBR to do model studies in the 1930s. I was so naive and
inexperienced in hydraulic model studies of dams and appurtenant structures that it was
imperative to get someone to serve as an advisor. Fortunately, Al Peterka whom I had met while I was with TVA, because Al was then working at the TVA hydraulics lab in Norris, Tennessee, had moved to the USBR lab after the war and was available to serve as an extremely valuable advisor. These studies in our lab would not have been possible without his help.
Fortunately, we initially had enough space in our lab for the model studies, but we had a
very inadequate shop for building the necessary components of the models and other research
equipment. While on a visit at U.C.Berkeley to see Hans Albert Einstein and Joe Johnson, I ran
into Lyle Wiggen who worked in their shop for their laboratories. Joe was very complimentary
about Lyle's ability in his work and in his apparent administrative skills. Since I needed
someone to head up our shop work, I spoke to him about moving to Fort Collins. He was
definitely interested so I got as much infonnation about him as I couid and brought it back to
discuss with our CSU officials. They agreed with my assessment of the situation and the person,
so we offered the job to Lyle and he anived with his family soon after. With his leadership and
organizational ability, and with surplus property available, we gradually built up our shop
equipment and instruments so that we could handle anything from making a watch to building
big hydraulic models and flumes.
With the help of Al Peterka and the effectiveness of Lyle and the shop crew, we were
able to handle the construction, testing and analysis of each model very effectively. The funds
coming from these studies helped enormous y to provide soft money for GRAs and new faculty.
By this time, Bill Morgan had become President of Colorado A and M, and he let us keep the
overhead funds to help build our program. These funds were used for instruments and equipment
as well as GRAs and new staff. Without this combination of circumstances and funding, we
never could have progressed so fast in the development of our research and academic programs.
It was during these model studies that my wife Dolly developed polio in September 1949.
She was the first bulbar patient at Colorado General Hospital to recover--thanks to the
tracheotomy that had been developed so she would not have to breath through her throat which
was paralyzed. This was a very difficult time and I was spending many days in Denver just
outside her room--since they would not let me in because of the possibility of contagion. Fortunately, she could see me and we exchanged smiles. Unfortunately, a report was due to
International Engineering Company on a model study at the same time and their representative,
Bruce Johnson, kept calling and pressuring me to get it to him. He seemed to have no
understanding of my problem and what I was going through. Thanks to Al Peterka we finally got the report to him.
Expansion of the Laboratory
Even though I had thought the laboratory which the USBR had left in 193 8 was quite large, it soon became evident that it was much too small. When we first ran out of space inside, we built Rihand model outside to the east of the initial lab. It was on this model that my
daughter Kay was playing one weekend when she fell and had a very ugly break in her leg. Then we decided in the mid-l 950s to expand the laboratory another 80 feet east. With the help of
Harry Hepting, the College Engineer, we got the shell built but Ray chamberlain and I thought
we could save money by pouring the concrete floor ourselves--which we did. We hired expert
and cement. Ray was the first person that ever out-shoveled me and it was really embarrassing
that I couldn't keep up with him. I attributed this to.the fact-th.at Ray was accu~tomed to hard
work from growing up on a farm in Michigan anqJ had be~n glued to my desk without any
exercise. But with Ray half my size it was neverthele§s ~mbarrassing. Arrival of Dean Peterson . \I~ · ..
?
We were very fortunate .to find Dean Peterson tQ come inJ949 to replace Bob Lewis as head of Civil Engineering. He had a PhD and research:~xperience so he was an enormous help in
getting our academic and research programs.in order ..
He
.
stayed for 9 years until 1958. This was an absolutely crucial period and it was under his exceptionally skillful leadership that we'
progressed very rapidly. Dean helped to bring in high quality new staff with Ph.D.s and research experience, and he helped enormously to get our research programs in order. We spent many hours together discussing ideas and problems, and planning next steps.
With respect to long range funding, it was most fortunate that I had worked so much with
Paul Benedict in the USGS and with Carl Izzard who was in charge ofresearch in the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. They had only very small amounts of money available for
research--e.g. hundreds or very few thousands of dollars. Although they had a number of specific research projects which they would like to have done, they had very little money available to support them. Through E.W. Lane, I also got acquainted with Whit Borland of the Bureau of Reclamation--but all their research was done in their own laboratory.
With the small amounts of money that we were able to obtain from the USGS and the Bureau of Public Roads initially, we financed the building of several small research projects on scour from jets and flow in open channels. We were also able to support several GRAs. This resulted in a number of very good theses and papers which we presented at professional meetings and we began to gain a reputation. These included the theses and papers on scour from jets,
which were sponsored by Carl Izzard, and the sediment movement in rivers and canals which
was sponsored by Paul Benedict.
Included in this was the outstanding model study which we conducted on the turbulence flume for the Middle Loup River under the highway bridge at Dunning, Nebraska. This model study predicted exactly the performance of the field installation where all of the bed load was pulled up into suspension by baffles on the bed so that the total load could be measured with suspended load samplers. This was the first time such a model study with sediment had been done, and Paul and I really had our fingers crossed. It was a great day when the construction was completed and the river was turned back to flowing normally--and we found that it worked just as predicted from the model. I believe this was successful because the Froude Number and the intense turbulence were so dominate that the Reynolds Number and the viscous forces were overwhelmed. The surfaces where boundary layer forces could occur were so minor that the
gravitational forces were in control. We had deliberately used the sharp edges of the baffle plates
