Regional Oral History Office University of The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

General Wesley Peel: Beverly Willis Oral History Project

Interviews conducted by Victor W. Geraci, PhD in 2008

Copyright © 2008 by The Regents of the University of California

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

*********************************

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and General Wesley Peel, dated September 29, 2008. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

General Wesley Peel, “Beverly Willis Oral History Project” conducted by Victor W. Geraci, PhD, in 2008, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2008. iii

Discursive Table of Contents—General Wesley Peel

Interview 1: September 12, 2008 Tape 1

Working with Beverly Willis on the Army's Aliamanu Valley Housing Project in — Willis's Collaborative Professionalism, Ability to Finish the Project On Time and Under Budget—Adaptation of Architecture to Hawaiian Style and Climate—Peel's Army Experiences on Baffin Island, in Vietnam, in the Aftermath of Hurricane Camille at Biloxi, Mississippi, and at Ford Leonard Wood—Retirement from the Army, and Back to Texas A & M to Oversee Construction and Development.

Introduction to this interview by Beverly Willis

The Aliamanu Valley community in , Hawaii, adjacent to Pearl Harbor, is a planned community of 11,500 inhabitants. The 525-acre site, located in an inactive volcano crater, was used as a massive ammunition storage site during WW2. To serve the population of 11, 500 people, we planned housing, school buildings, parks, and a small town center with a fire station. The site plan was composed of four villages, each containing from 500 to 1,000 homes. The village was divided into two or three neighborhoods of 20 to 35 acres. Each neighborhood had a recreation center within 600 feet walking distance of any home. Within a neighborhood, we planned three to five clusters of multi-family housing. Each cluster was composed of 50 to 100 homes covering five to eight acres. At the cul de sacs, two taller `portal' buildings on either side of the entrance defined more private areas. Educational facilities were provided for 2,100 children from kindergarten to the eighth grade and approximately 850 in the ninth and twelfth grades. High school students were bused to existing off-site schools.

1

Interview 1: September 12, 2008 Begin Audiofile 1

01-00:00:00 Geraci: Quiet time. Today is Friday, September 12, 2008, and we are in the Bryan, Texas home of General Wesley E. Peel. This interview with General Peel is being conducted by Victor Geraci, Associate Director of the University of California Berkeley's Regional Oral History Office, and the interview is part of the Beverly Willis Oral History series of interviews to document the life and work of artist, architect, urbanist, lecturer, and writer, Beverly Willis. Funding for these interviews comes from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. General Peel was a client representative for the Corps of Engineers in Hawaii and negotiated the design of the 1978 completion of the military housing project. Help me with this. How do you say it?

01-00:00:55 Peel: Aliamanu.

01-00:00:57 Geraci: Aliamanu. The project serves as a benchmark for Ms. Willis's career because of the use of her firm's newly developed computerized approach to residential land analysis, referred to as CARLA. First of all, thank you for agreeing to do this.

01-00:01:16 Peel: You're quite welcome.

01-00:01:16 Geraci: We're sitting here in the midst of waiting for Hurricane Ike to strike Houston or Galveston.

01-00:01:21 Peel: I hope we finish this before it hits.

01-00:01:24 Geraci: Before it hits. It would be best to start a little bit with your background of your general life, and then as we move through the interview, we'll move to your experiences in the Army Corps, and in particular, your experiences with Beverly and with the project in Hawaii. So I guess start at the beginning.

01-00:01:46 Peel: Well, start at the beginning—how long do you want? Okay. I grew up in northeast Texas. Entered Texas A&M College, now Texas A&M University, in 1942. In 1943, the war was not going so well, and as you may know. Texas A&M College at that time was an all-military, all-male school. Most of our classmates and upper classmen had already gone to the Army, or to the Air Force, or to the Navy, and the freshmen class was about all that was attending the college at that time. In April of forty-three, we were afraid we were going to miss the war. So 137 of us hitchhiked to San Antonio one Saturday 2

morning and joined the Army. It was four days before I was eighteen, so I had to forge my application for service. I went to World War II in Europe, came back, completed my education here at A&M College, and taught vocational agriculture for four years. Then the Korean War came along and I was recalled. Then I decided that I would make the Army my career. I applied for regular Army and was accepted into the Corps of Engineers.

A lot of projects. A lot of assignments between then and when I first met Beverly Willis. I had been assistant district engineer of St. Louis, district engineer in Korea, Far East District, and then had gone back to the office of the Chief of Engineers as Executive to the Chief. My assignment from there was to Hawaii. I was the engineer for United States Army Pacific, responsible for all engineering activities in the Pacific. Stayed in that job for a year and then I was transferred as the division engineer of the Pacific Ocean Division. The Pacific Ocean Division was one of ten divisions of the Corps that performs both civil works and military construction for the Army, as well as for the Air Force. And the job in Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean Division was to plan, design, and construct all Corps of Engineer projects in the Pacific, whether it be Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Thailand, the Hawaiian Islands, Enewetak, American Samoa, or some other island. There were projects that we had.

01-00:05:50 Geraci: Now, what types of projects?

01-00:05:53 Peel: These were both military construction, as well as civil construction projects. Military construction would be post camps and stations. We built complete camps in Korea. In American Samoa, for example, we built an infrastructure for the city of Pago Pago, and had an interesting experience on island of Ta'u, which is one of the five islands of the American Samoa islands. This was a project to build a dock for the people who live on Ta'u. They can grow almost anything. It's a volcanic soil. They can grow almost anything, but they can't get it to market over on the big island, which is where Pago Pago is. And so what the Department of Interior wanted us to do was to build a channel from the ring of coral, about a mile out, which prevented ships from getting in close to the island. It was not convenient to ship produce from Ta'u to anywhere else. So my job was to build the channel and the dock.

01-00:07:39 Geraci: A new experience.

01-00:07:41 Peel: Yes, a new experience. These kinds of experiences happened all over the Pacific, and it was fascinating. But back to Hawaii. When I came into contact with this project, I had been assigned, as I said, from the Pacific engineer to the Pacific Ocean Division engineer. This was one of our many projects. It was a project to build family housing for Air Force and Army families in what 3

was an old volcanic crater. Actually in the city of Honolulu. And the crater had been inactive for four million years, so it wasn't—

01-00:08:38 Geraci: You weren't worried about an eruption?

01-00:08:39 Peel: Wasn't worried too much about that. But it was called the Aliamanu Crater Housing Project. And it was suggested to us by a member of the House of Representatives who visited the site, that we change the name to Aliamanu Valley Housing Project, because he noted that when we flew over it, two ends of the crater lip had eroded so it really formed a valley instead of a crater. That may have helped us get it approved in the Congress.

01-00:09:21 Geraci: Now, when you say get it approved, I mean, does the military own the land at this point?

01-00:09:25 Peel: Oh, yes. The military owned the land and it had been, during World War I and World War II, and continued to be after World War II, an ammunition storage area. And there were a lot of ammunition duds that were scattered about the floor of the crater, or the valley, and so we had to deal with that. But we had to deal with something even more difficult when I came on the scene, and that was the budget. Traditionally, the appropriations for family housing in the Department of Defense is so much per housing unit. The appropriation was so many dollars per housing unit. Well, in Hawaii, the cost of construction was considerably more than in, say, Missouri or almost anywhere except California in the States. So we had a problem of how in the world we were going to build decent and livable housing for the dollar amounts that were allocated for the project. It was a coincidence, I guess, but the city of Honolulu had been wanting to purchase a parcel of land on Diamond Head that the Army had used during World War I for coast artillery batteries, but really, it had not been used for anything except for reserve duty activities since that time, since World War I. So really, it was surplus. We declared it surplus and sold it to the city of Honolulu for five million dollars. What we hoped to do was to use that five million dollars to build the infrastructure for the project, not using the appropriations from the Congress for the housing units, but have the proceeds from the sale of the land transferred to the project. The problem was normally, in any sale of federal property, the proceeds goes to the general fund and the money in the general fund is appropriated by the Congress for all sorts of activities. So we had to get, somehow, this money, the proceeds, the five million from the sale of the land, into this project funding which had probably never been done before.

01-00:12:40 Geraci: So you needed a direct appropriation? 4

01-00:12:43 Peel: Well, not an appropriation, simply a transfer. To take the five million dollars that Honolulu paid us, the city of Honolulu paid us, and transfer that to the project funding. Not an appropriation. The appropriation we would use just for the housing units, above the infrastructure. Therefore, we would not drain off any dollars from the allocation per unit for the infrastructure. We would use the five million. And like I said, I don't think it was ever done before. So I went to Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Congressman Sparky Matsunaga and asked them if they could handle that. If we could make it work.

01-00:13:41 Geraci: If they could make that happen.

01-00:13:42 Peel: We knew it took legislation, special legislation. Well, they were very uneasy about it at first, but they wanted that housing project built as much as we did. So they agreed to seek special legislation and get it done. What they did was to attach a rider onto a separate appropriation bill allowing the Corps to use the five million for the infrastructure. They later, jokingly, told me, "Just don't ever do that again." They had to give up too many chits to get their colleagues to go along with that transfer.

01-00:14:34 Geraci: So it cost them politically?

01-00:14:35 Peel: It cost him politically. But they were very helpful and quite happy, really, that we could do it. So the funding was solved in that matter. There was another interesting thing that happened. When Beverly Willis started the early design, the preliminary design it was called—while they were doing that, I received a call from the Office of Chief Engineers, General George Rebb, who was the Chief of Military Construction at that time. And family housing came under him, as well. He had been discussing with an architect a system called Fast Track. And General Rebb wanted me to consider this architect to be the project architect.

01-00:15:49 Geraci: Do you know the name of this architect?

01-00:15:50 Peel: I've forgotten the name of the architect. But I told General Rebb, "We already have an architect. It's Beverly Willis out of ." Well, he said, "Is there any way we can get the architect with the Fast Track as a consultant to Beverly Willis?" And I said, "Well, I don't want to do that because I don't want to pay him. The funding on this project is very, very tight. We've just gone through an ordeal of getting enough money to build the infrastructure, so I just don't want to do that." He said, "But this Fast Track is really something." He was really sold on it. I thought, "Okay. If you'll pay for this guy and his 5

crew, his team, if you pay for him out of your budget and I don't have to pay for him, I'll talk to Beverly and see if it's all right." I did. Beverly wasn't too happy about it, I don't think. But anyway, she conceded and the architect came over to Hawaii. We had a meeting and the architect got up and began to tell us about the Fast Track method, which was nothing more, really, than a simultaneous designing of different elements in the project, which, of course, was not really new to us. May have been to him. And the construction, the same thing. Constructing simultaneously different components of the project. Anyway, he began to explain this, and as he did, we would explain to him that Beverly Willis's people are doing this. They're doing this. And he finally said, "Well, I guess there's not much I can offer, so I'm going to go to the beach," which he did. But he stayed on the project with us throughout the project and I don't think it bothered Beverly too much.

01-00:18:09 Geraci: Now, did this system offer something that was really new or different? That it caught the eye?

01-00:18:17 Peel: Well, what it did was to reduce the time for design, as well as the time for construction.

01-00:18:24 Geraci: Hopefully keeping costs down.

01-00:18:25 Peel: Yes. So keeping costs down, but also getting the project finished sooner. I'm not sure it'd keep the costs down, to tell you the truth. Although you can claim that. But most of the things that he had in mind, in fact, all, as far as I know, Beverly was already doing.

01-00:18:46 Geraci: Now, as you're arriving in Hawaii, Beverly had already been hired for this project?

01-00:18:53 Peel: Oh, Beverly had already been hired, yes.

01-00:18:54 Geraci: So you had nothing to do with—?

01-00:18:56 Peel: No, that was before I got there, that she was selected. She went through a selection process and I think they considered probably almost a hundred different firms. She was in the final list. The final list, I believe, was ten people, something like that. They were all interviewed before I got there, and Beverly was selected. I think she was selected for a number of reasons, one being the CARLA system. I think that was very impressive to our people, to the division people. And so Beverly was already on board. The architect that 6

had the Fast Track thing came on later and Beverly was already designing the project when he came on.

Well, the project went forth. We did the construction. However, I left the job before it was finished. When I was with the project was in 1974 and '75 and I think the project was completed maybe '76, '77, something like that.

01-00:20:15 Geraci: Yes, maybe even as late as '78.

01-00:20:15 Peel: Something like that, yes. Anyway, from what I learned, it was a very successful project and the design, by the way, was extremely successful because Beverly introduced a design that was compatible with the tropical climate. Most of the construction of housing units in the Forty Eight, in the Mainland, as they call it, were pretty much the same. But Beverly introduced a more open, more Hawaiian style housing which was very popular.

01-00:21:07 Geraci: Now, it seems to when you talk about military housing, what are the military expectations of decent housing for the people that they're going to be bringing in? Because what I would like to see is the military's thoughts on what the project should be, how Beverly used that, and still, as an architect, brought in some different things, and what makes this project maybe a little bit different than others?

01-00:21:39 Peel: Well, I think the design was different. She didn't exceed the budget. She stayed within the budget but she simply did a design that was, as I said awhile ago, compatible with Hawaiian design, which is an open type of design. It was something that was unusual, frankly, for the military people who came there. But as I say, they were very pleased and it became very popular housing.

01-00:22:16 Geraci: Because, I mean, in military lifestyle, every three to four years you're moving.

01-00:22:20 Peel: Yes, that's right.

01-00:22:22 Geraci: And most of these people that are stationed there are from the Mainland.

01-00:22:26 Peel: That's right.

01-00:22:26 Geraci: So this could be something really different for them.

01-00:22:31 Peel: Yes, it was, but you adapt very quickly to Hawaii. 7

01-00:22:36 Geraci: To Hawaii. From what I have gathered about the project, it is much more open. In other words, inside and outside spaces kind of blend together.

01-00:22:44 Peel: That's right. It did, it did.

01-00:22:47 Geraci: Al fresco would be another—

01-00:22:48 Peel: Huh?

01-00:22:49 Geraci: Al fresco would be more of an Italianesque way, I guess, to look—

01-00:22:52 Peel: Yes, that's right.

01-00:22:53 Geraci: —to look at the way that it came about. So as far as the actual designs themselves, was there anything special about these, or are these just typical military kind of Spartan simplistic homes?

01-00:23:12 Peel: No, they weren't typical military apartments. As we've been talking about, they were different. But I think if we had had some other architects, we would have wound up with typical stateside designs, which would have been disastrous.

01-00:23:36 Geraci: Now, when you mentioned earlier, also, about the fact that in planning or building something in the Islands, there are environmental issues that are much different than building in—

01-00:23:48 Peel: Absolutely. Absolutely.

01-00:23:48 Geraci: And how did CARLA as a program and Beverly Willis and Associates handle that?

01-00:23:57 Peel: That accommodates that. Yes.

01-00:24:00 Geraci: So drainage. The fact that it's built on an old military dump. Did you have to do special cleanup for the site?

8

01-00:24:05 Peel: That wasn't really a dump.

01-00:24:07 Geraci: Well, a munitions [facility]. Yes, but there's still munitions.

01-00:24:12 Peel: Yes, there were. There were.

01-00:24:11 Geraci: I mean, today there would be environmental impact reports to be had.

01-00:24:14 Peel: That is true. EIS would have to be prepared today.

01-00:24:21 Geraci: Was there an EIS at that [point]?

01-00:24:22 Peel: Not like we know it today. Yes. There was a report prepared, and I'm not sure who did that. But there was a report prepared to take into account the fact that it had been used as an ammunition depot. And I think CARLA was very helpful to Beverly in designing it without interfering with some of the areas were where military shells had been dumped.

01-00:25:11 Geraci: Okay. And it seemed also that, from what I've read, her goals were to move as little dirt—

01-00:25:18 Peel: That's right.

01-00:25:18 Geraci: —as possible.

01-00:25:19 Peel: That's right.

01-00:25:20 Geraci: Maintaining natural drainage and utilizing that to her benefit.

01-00:25:26 Peel: Yes, yes.

01-00:25:27 Geraci: So, I mean, just really surveying the site to know where you could—

01-00:25:30 Peel: Now, it's interesting. We had a contractor, a separate contractor, to build the infrastructure, then the other contractor to build the housing. A little complicated, but all of the problems were overcome and it worked out okay. 9

01-00:25:53 Geraci: Now, it seemed that Beverly then had a special skill. I mean, she's having to work with another architectural firm.

01-00:26:00 Peel: That's right.

01-00:26:01 Geraci: She's working now with numerous contractors.

01-00:26:05 Peel: Well, of course, not all architects, but most architects do not have engineering capability. Some do. But most architects, and I think Beverly is one, hired an engineering firm to do their mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering and design. Now, that was Beverly's business to do that, not ours. Although the engineer she hired was approved by the Corps.

01-00:26:47 Geraci: Okay. Now, during this process, does the Corps have any input? I mean, what was your input as she's designing and bringing these things to you?

01-00:26:56 Peel: Design review. Our role was to take periodic looks and reviews of her design. The most important thing about design for us is to make certain that the design takes into account factors that will reduce the cost and time. And our team of architects, civil, mechanical, structural, engineers on my staff, reviewed the designs as they were designed. They did the preliminary design, and then, of course, she went into final design. And we had periodic reviews, as I say, and we developed a list of changes that were necessary; we would give to them to her and they would incorporate those changes into the next set of drawings.

01-00:28:02 Geraci: And it seems that her CARLA system, then, really expedites this process, because she completed this—

01-00:28:11 Peel: Very quickly. Yes, yes.

01-00:28:12 Geraci: I mean, faster than the normal time.

01-00:28:16 Peel: That's right.

01-00:28:16 Geraci: And within budget.

01-00:28:170 Peel: Within budget. 10

01-00:28:20 Geraci: And still had to go through reviews.

01-00:28:23 Peel: Oh, yes.

01-00:28:24 Geraci: Constantly along the way.

01-00:28:24 Peel: Well, the reviews were helpful to her. Actually, the reviews are very helpful because nobody can see all of the things that need to be done. So we were, in effect, another set of eyes and reviews to assist, in a way, but it was also an inspection of her design as she did it, as she proceeded.

01-00:28:58 Geraci: So it's designed to be a help as opposed—yes.

01-00:29:02 Peel: That's right. Now, when the construction starts, she remains involved in the project because, as we award the contract to the construction contractor, then my people do construction inspection. That is extremely important. First of all, design review is the first major item of importance in order to get a good project, and one within budget. The second thing is construction inspection. If you do not have an inspector that is on the job, you're not sure you're going to get what you hoped, because it would be covered up before you see it. But we have round-the-clock constant inspection on all of our construction projects of that type.

01-00:30:07 Geraci: The Corps does? Within the Corps?

01-00:30:08 Peel: The Corps does. During the construction, something will come up that requires a change in the original design. We go back to Beverly to make those changes and she, or her people, then make the design and give it to the contractor, or give it to us first, to the contractor to make the change necessary, whatever it is.

01-00:30:38 Geraci: Now, are there local inspections going on as far as building codes?

01-00:30:45 Peel: The Army is not subject to building codes. Or were not then. Maybe now, I don't know. That was thirty years ago. But inspection goes on by our people. The city is very seldom involved in any inspection except for the utilities that come into the project. Actually, the contractor deals with the city in getting water, and getting power, sewage. In other words, how to hook up to the sewer lines or to the city sewer, how to hook up to the city power system, and so forth. We deal with them then. But they're not involved in how we're 11

building the building. That's why we inspect it and do a much more thorough job than normally a city does. City can't inspect it near to the degree that we do.

01-00:31:46 Geraci: And that would also seem, in some ways, to expedite the process.

01-00:31:51 Peel: Oh, it does. Absolutely.

01-00:31:52 Geraci: Because if you had to wait for the local governmental agencies—

01-00:31:560 Peel: Yes, yes, yes.

01-00:31:57 Geraci: —things become really bogged down.

01-00:31:59 Peel: We'll make changes that won't require involvement of Beverly's people on a small change. Our inspectors have certain authority, up to a certain amount, to order it to be done, to be changed. Our chief of construction has another level of authority. Our district engineer has another level of authority, and then I have the full authority. The full authority as the division engineer is to make whatever change is necessary for whatever cost.

01-00:32:33 Geraci: That's a very clean system.

01-00:32:36 Peel: It's a clean system. It's been in practice a long, long time. The Corps was first organized in the 1820s. The first district engineer was Robert E. Lee in St. Louis. I used to be the assistant district engineer in St. Louis. We have a picture of Robert E. Lee on the wall, and also some design that he was involved in. He was a lieutenant, first lieutenant. His first job was to remove snags from the Mississippi to assist in the navigation—

01-00:33:20 Geraci: For riverboats going down.

01-00:33:21 Peel: —of riverboats. That's right. Exactly. He was promoted to a captain after that job. Finally wound up in Mexico during the war with Mexico.

01-00:33:37 Geraci: It seems to me then, that today, with modern codes, with environmental impact [studies] that have to be done, would it be possible for someone like Beverly to do a project this quickly? 12

01-00:33:50 Peel: You know, that's a good question. It depends upon who you have to deal with. And in some of these cases—some of the environmental groups become involved, litigation comes into play. For example, when I was Division Engineer of the North Pacific Division, we were building a dam called Applegate Dam in southern Oregon and, of all things, a lizard was discovered in the valley and the environmentalist group got a judge to order us to stop working on the dam. By the way, this environmentalist group found out about the lizard from one of the professors of Berkeley. And I think he had a group of students up there or something one summer.

01-00:35:17 Geraci: And those were interesting days in Berkeley.

01-00:35:21 Peel: And so we hired another professor from Berkeley to look and see if this lizard was somewhere else. Turned out it was over in the other valley, as well. So we got the injunction lifted and went ahead with the dam. So time was consumed by that. Now, the environmentalist group claimed that we put the lizard over in the other valley, but I don't think we did.

01-00:35:48 Geraci: You didn't move the lizard, right?

01-00:35:50 Peel: No, I don't think we moved the lizard. But anyway, to answer your question, we have that kind of interference, yes.

01-00:35:58 Geraci: Okay. Another thing—

01-00:36:00 Peel: Although that's not bad. But yes—

01-00:36:02 Geraci: But, I mean, what I'm looking at is that Beverly takes great pride in that she moved this process, it almost seems to me, in Herculean record time.

01-00:36:11 Peel: She did. She really did. Now, of course, that's money in her pocket, too, because if she can reduce her costs, why, that's her objective. Not all of her objective, but that's one of her objectives.

01-00:36:24 Geraci: Well, she's running a business. She has to.

01-00:36:25 Peel: She's running a business. So she had two incentives. One, to do it well for us, and she did. And secondly, to do it quickly for her own benefit. But not all architects do that. And she's unique. 13

01-00:36:46 Geraci: And we're going to talk a little bit about her in just a second.

01-00:36:48 Peel: Okay, all right.

01-00:36:48 Geraci: You mentioned earlier that it's more expensive to build homes in Hawaii.

01-00:37:00 Peel: Oh, yes.

01-00:37:02 Geraci: Why?

01-00:37:03 Peel: Labor. First of all, the unions are very strong in Hawaii and skills are very scarce. You didn't have nearly the amount of skilled people in Hawaii, at that time, at least, that you do in state side. So those costs. And, of course, there's shipping the materials there. Few materials are manufactured in Hawaii. So everything they use in the building, just about everything, has to be shipped from state side. And by the way, we had a representative in San Francisco who assisted the contractors working for us in getting priority shipping from San Francisco. He worked for the Corps, but he assisted the contractor, because it helped us, too.

01-00:38:15 Geraci: And if I remember reading right, Beverly also made arrangements.

01-00:38:18 Peel: She did.

01-00:38:19 Geraci: There were warehouse fees that were charged.

01-00:38:21 Peel: We warehoused basically at the site. In many cases, like building in downtown Honolulu, you would have to have a warehouse to put most of your material in to hold it until you needed it. Fortunately, we had enough room on the site to warehouse right on the site.

01-00:38:46 Geraci: Saving warehouse costs.

01-00:38:49 Peel: Saving warehousing costs.

01-00:38:49 Geraci: Yes, because I remember it was something like a five percent.

01-00:38:51 Peel: Yes, it was. 14

01-00:38:53 Geraci: And then when it came to labor, it seems to me in reading that Beverly was timing the project as other large projects—

01-00:39:06 Peel: Oh, yes. Yes. She timed the time for us to award the contract, the construction contract, just shortly after or right toward the end of several large construction contracts that were underway in downtown Honolulu. Those laborers were therefore made available to the new contractor on our job, and that helped, too. You can't always do that but it worked out great. That's right.

01-00:39:40 Geraci: But that shows her business acumen.

01-00:39:42 Peel: That shows her interest in making the project successful. Not all architects would be that helpful.

01-00:39:54 Geraci: Okay. I think just as a final thing that I'll throw in just for the record, and maybe you want to comment on. According to what I was gathering, she came in at costs that were forty percent less per square foot than comparable housing in the island at the time. She came in at $17.27 as opposed to $28.89. That's from her records.

01-00:40:21 Peel: That's numbers. I don't remember that.

01-00:40:24 Geraci: Yes, but that was from her records. I mean, the two major goals. She made budget and she made the time.

01-00:40:31 Peel: Yes. That's exactly right. And also the two critical things that you have to watch, and very seldom are totally successful in both.

01-00:40:46 Geraci: Right. Let's kind of shift gears for a second and let's talk about Beverly. Who is Beverly Willis? What is she? You're first meeting her. She's one of a handful of women architects at that time.

01-00:41:04 Peel: You're right. As a matter of fact, this, as I say, was thirty years ago. Thirty what? Thirty something years ago. And there were some eyebrows that went up when Beverly was selected by the Corps. And certainly in the industry. She had beat out some pretty good firms and she was not a very big firm. She had done some housing, though, I think for the Marine Corps down in San Diego. My people, before I got there, had taken a look at that housing. That was one of the things, as I understand it, which influenced them to select her. But being a woman, to some people, was a surprise. But she, I think, proved she 15

could do it and I think a lot of people had a whole different attitude about women architects when Beverly finished.

01-00:42:17 Geraci: What's her personality like, then?

01-00:42:20 Peel: What was her personality like?

01-00:42:21 Geraci: Yes. She's walking into—

01-00:42:22 Peel: Extremely friendly. Another thing about her. She's responsive and also she takes criticism, but she accepts help very well, very easily.

01-00:42:44 Geraci: Constructive criticism.

01-00:42:45 Peel: Yes, that's right. Suggestions, I'd say. Yes.

01-00:42:50 Geraci: Because, I mean, she's walking into an organization. The Army Corps is male dominated at all levels.

01-00:42:56 Peel: That's right. Very definitely. Very definitely. Yes.

01-00:42:58 Geraci: The building trades and what's happening is male-dominated and so here's—

01-00:43:01 Peel: And so is the architectural trade.

01-00:43:03 Geraci: And architectural trade. And here's a woman walking in and she's—

01-00:43:07 Peel: In a big project. A hundred and thirty something million on a project, which today is not that big, but then, that was a very big project.

01-00:43:18 Geraci: And all these people are taking orders?

01-00:43:22 Peel: Oh, there were a lot of people, not only in the architectural world, but also in the Corps that were, "What do you mean? Who is she?"

01-00:43:35 Geraci: And where did she come from? 16

01-00:43:38 Peel: And it was interesting to watch it develop, and I think she made a lot of friends and a lot of believers after that project was done.

01-00:43:36 Geraci: So this is a key project for her—?

01-00:43:49 Peel: Oh, a key project. I think at that time in her career, it was a very key project. I didn't realize that. Because she had done other housing elsewhere, but maybe not in that environment, nor of that amount. I don't know.

01-00:44:07 Geraci: And it must have been a fun project for her because she did—

01-00:44:11 Peel: It was a fun project.

01-00:44:11 Geraci: She lived in Hawaii for quite a while.

01-00:44:14 Peel: That's right. I didn't know about that. But she was very familiar with Hawaii, which was very helpful. And also, she was familiar with the military. Not the Corps, but she was very familiar with, I guess the Navy. I think she worked for an admiral years earlier. I didn't even know that. But it didn't make any difference. She was very comfortable with us. And of course, my division, we only had, I think, a handful of military officers in my division. My division was made up of about four hundred – a little more. About 600 civilians, and all professional architects themselves. Engineers, accountants, lawyers, the whole works.

01-00:45:11 Geraci: A shooting match. You had them all covered.

01-00:45:11 Peel: Yes. That's right. And she had to deal with that environment, and it was a little bit new to her. Not totally, because like I say, she had worked for the Navy, I think.

01-00:45:29 Geraci: She had to be personable.

01-00:45:33 Peel: She was, very definitely. Or she is.

01-00:45:35 Geraci: Confident, yes.

01-00:45:36 Peel: Confident, yes. 17

01-00:45:37 Geraci: Especially for a woman coming in. And you said that she takes criticism well.

01-00:45:42 Peel: Very well, that's right. Not criticism, suggestions.

01-00:45:45 Geraci: But she also has to be a strong personality.

01-00:45:49 Peel: I didn't sense that she was unusually hardnosed. I thought she was very congenial. And her people loved her. And that tells you a lot right there.

01-00:46:05 Geraci: If people love the boss, that tells you a lot about the work environment.

01-00:46:10 Peel: Yes. It sure does. That's right. And I enjoyed working with her.

01-00:46:15 Geraci: Did you get to know her personally?

01-00:46:17 Peel: Well, yes, I got to know her personally. But I learned much more about her since we finished the project than I did while we were doing the project. We kept in touch for the last thirty years and I've had dealings with hundreds of architecture firms, maybe several hundreds. Thousands. But why did I stay in touch with her? I was impressed with her, and I enjoyed her, and I wanted to see how she would do in the field, and she's done well.

01-00:47:01 Geraci: She's done extremely well.

01-00:47:05 Peel: Yes. And by the way, she is well known now in the Corps.

01-00:47:12 Geraci: Really? How? Yes.

01-00:47:14 Peel: Certainly among the older people, my age.

01-00:47:22 Geraci: She's a very social person. Did she bring a woman's touch to all of this? And could that have been part of the—?

01-00:47:32 Peel: Well, what's a woman's touch?

01-00:47:32 Geraci: That's a good question. I'm looking at a gender difference in how she approached— 18

01-00:47:40 Peel: For some people, it may have been more difficult to work with a woman than a man. Some of my people. But I never sensed that. In fact, I think they were all charmed by her. And certainly they were respectful of her. They were impressed with her professionalism, but also, I think, they were impressed with her charm, as I say.

01-00:48:17 Geraci: Well, she's obviously a good businesswoman.

01-00:48:21 Peel: Do you know her?

01-00:48:22 Geraci: No, I don't. I have never met her. I will meet her for the first time in October.

01-00:48:25 Peel: Well, that's good. I'd like to hear what you think of her.

01-00:48:31 Geraci: [I'll go to New York for] my interview with her. Let's stop there for a moment.

[End Audio File 1]

Begin Audio File 2

02-00:00:002 Geraci: This is Victor Geraci. The date is September 12, 2008. I'm here in Bryan, Texas, in the home of General Wesley E. Peel. This is video number two, and we're kind of switching topics. I want to talk a little bit about your career.

02-00:00:19 Peel: My career has been split in the Army between troop duty and the construction business, the planning, designing, construction business of the Corps. The Corps has two major missions, and I have spent about half time in each. My first assignment in the planning, designing, construction side of the Corps was in 1959. I had just finished schooling at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and I was assigned to the Eastern Ocean District of the Corps, which was headquartered in , which primarily covered all of the Corps activities in Canada, as well as in Iceland, the Azures, and Bermuda. I was assigned to the Corps activity in Canada, Baffin Island, Canada. As you remember, we had the DEW [Defensive Early Warning] Line. Remember the DEW?

02-00:01:37 Geraci: The DEW, yes.

02-00:01:37 Peel: Was built to intercept or to identify, I should say, any aircraft coming over the pole from the Soviet Union to bomb Canada or the United States. That was the DEW, built up above the Artic Circle. Baffin Island had one of these DEW 19

sites about in the middle of it. And the problem was what had happened was that the—and by the way, at Thule, we had a bomber base, and their mission was to stay prepared, even on the runway, with target folders in hand. If the Soviets came over the pole, they were to retaliate. And they had their own target folders and the targets already identified in the Soviet Union. And, of course, they would receive their orders from Colorado Springs, from NORAD, which is in Colorado Springs. The problem was they were communicating with conventional radio. In the Artic, we have what's called the Artic Lights, as you know, the aurora borealis. They interfere with normal radio communications, and in many cases, when the Northern Lights would get very active, the communication between Thule and Colorado Springs would be cut off completely. Well, the Russians could come over the pole and Thule would never know about it. They would be sitting on the runway while the states in Canada were being bombed.

The Armed Services Committee learned about this and became concerned because of the vulnerability that this created. So the Corps of Engineers was ordered to develop and build a communication system that was close to 100% effective. Experiments had been undertaken on what is called the Troposphere Scatter System of Communication. What happens is that you project a beam into the troposphere, which is a layer above the earth, and that would be reflected back down to a collector, a screen, a huge screen, and into a feed horn. The screen would be parabolic and it went into a feed horn and into a radio. They'd been experimenting with this system for several years. They had been successful with it for about sixty miles in West Virginia, and that's all they'd done. Here we have much further than sixty miles, so we weren't sure it would work.

Now, what they decided to do was to build a series of relays. The first relay would be about 700 miles south of Thule on Baffin Island, which as I say, was above the Artic Circle. And we would build these big parabolic screens 180 feet by 180 feet. One hundred and eighty feet tall. And one would be a replica of the other so that we had backup, and we'd shoot this beam from Colorado Springs all the way up by relays to this parabolic screen up to the troposphere and back down to the screens in Thule. A new system of communication. I guess it was the forerunner, really, of the cell phone. But anyway, my job was to go to Baffin Island, where there was nothing. It was on the eastern coast of Baffin Island, across from Greenland, and no civilization at all. In fact, the Penny Highland separated the east coast from the west coast of Baffin Island. There were a few Eskimos who lived on the west coast, a few hundred. Well, I guess a couple thousand. That's about it. Of course, this is the fifth largest island in the world. It's a huge, huge island. The winds would come up on the Greenland side, over the pole, and back down on the western side of Baffin Island. Horribly, horribly cold winds. The Eskimos say that no one with any sense would live on the east side of Baffin Island. Only the white man was dumb enough to go there. Well, the Air Force had taken aerial pictures of this area where they had identified what is called Cape Dyer, and this is where we 20

were going to build these twin towers for this particular relay station, and we were going to also build housing for the people to run the station, garages for their equipment to go in and so forth. Just a little community, really.

So my first duty was to get on an airplane and go to Montreal, Canada, and meet the contractor who had already been awarded the contract. Had a design and everything already done. The design was by Medcalf and Eddy, which is a large design firm in Boston. And I was to meet this contractor. Peter Kiewit out of Omaha, Nebraska was the contractor. About a dozen civilian contract people met me in Montreal. We chartered an Otter airplane and flew up in hops to Labrador first, and then up to Frobisher Bay in the southern part of Baffin Island, and then finally into Cape Dyer. And at Cape Dyer, we landed on skis on the snow. Now, this is in the summer, but we still had snow in certain areas of the island. And this fjord, which was a bay, actually, was the site of where—back in Norfolk, Virginia, they were loading six Liberty ships with equipment and materials to build this facility, and first I was to develop a runway as soon as the equipment got there down near the beach. There wasn't much of a beach, however.

02-00:09:25 Geraci: I was going to say.

02-00:09:27 Peel: So I was to meet the six Liberty ships, unload the materials and the equipment. The contractor would then bring his people up from Montreal and build the facility. And, of course, I had a staff, and our job was to inspect the facility as it was constructed. But our first job was to meet the ships. We met the six ships. They came right on time sometime in mid-July, and we unloaded four of them. Had two to go. All six of them were still at anchor out in the fjord, and I woke up one morning, looked out, and all the ships were gone. We had two that we hadn't unloaded. And I kind of panicked. I said, "What happened?" Well, what had happened was some ice had floated in overnight into the fjord and the ships captains were afraid of an iceberg, of course, so they had taken all six ships out into the open water until the icebergs floated out. Came back in, and we unloaded the six ships and they left. They took off. We stacked all the materials and everything down on the beach in the fjord, took our tractor, a D-7 tractor and dozed out with—I had then just a dozen people. And, of course, all of the stevedores and everything that were with the ships, they left. So thirteen of us were left up there in—

02-00:11:10 Geraci: Nowhere.

02-00:11:11 Peel: Nowhere is exactly right. So we built the runway, got everything finished, and then the contractor began to bring up his people, landing on the runway. He had leased a couple of old C-47s and had one C-54, I think. Surplus from World War II. And he started bringing his people up. Most of them were 21

French Canadians out of Montreal. But the fellows that constructed the towers were all Indians out of the upper state of New York. Is it Mohawk?

2-00:12:00 Geraci: Mohican.

02-00:12:00 Peel: Mohican Indians out of New York, who were noted for—in fact, I think they helped build skyscrapers in New York. They're fearless at heights and so forth. So anyway, they got up there. The next job was to have the contractor build a switchback road, construction road about twelve miles up to the top of this mountain, because that's where we were going to build the facilities. So we built the switchback and started the construction. And by the way, the contractor was to build a Corps of Engineer camp next to his camp. And, of course, along with the contractors’ people, up came my people from Medcalf and Eddy. They were not Corps people. I had one lieutenant that was a Corps guy, but all the rest were contract people from Medcalf and Eddy And by the way, Bob Perry, who was Admiral Perry's son, was my chief engineer up there. Interesting fellow. Just like his dad. Anyway, they came up. I had about twenty-five or thirty of these contract people who were my engineering inspectors, and then, of course, I had the construction inspectors, as well. And we had some interesting experiences.

I'll just tell you about one of them. This was in the summer of 1958, I guess it was. In the spring of '59, we had the switchback road now, as I told you about. We'd almost finished the job. That winter, by the way, was pretty bad. In fact, it covered our equipment except just the smokestacks is all we could find one morning on our equipment. But anyway, I got a call. I was by myself in the camp. All my people were up on the construction. Got a call from aviation operations down at the strip that a member of Parliament had just come in on the contractor's plane and he wanted transportation up to my camp, which was up this twelve mile switchback. They didn't have anybody to send him up. I had nobody to send down. So I jumped in—a weasel. A weasel is a sort of— did you ever hear of that?

02-00:14:46 Geraci: I've heard of them.

02-00:14:47 Peel: Weasel is sort of a jeep-like vehicle. Had tracks. It swims. And so I jumped into this weasel by myself, which was against my rules, always two people were to go, and took off down the switchbacks. Well, the spring thaws had caused the floods. The road was flooded about every few miles. I got to this one huge pond. I didn't know how deep it was. All I could see was how far it was. It was a long way. So I decided I was going to swim my weasel. So went out into the water and ice was floating out there. About in the mid-part, a block of ice got between my right track and the rollers and threw my track. So I have one track and I'm going around in circles out in the middle of the water. 22

Had no idea how deep it was. And in addition to that, my feet were getting wet. I looked down and water was coming in at the bottom of the weasel. I had neglected to put the plug in before I took off up at the camp and the water kept coming up and I couldn't find the plug. So I said, "Well, I'll just get on top." So I crawled out through the window. I found an orange signal flag in the hatch of this weasel. I spread it on the top. In the meantime, I'm sinking. And so I took a boat hook from the side of the vessel, and I could feel the bottom. So I knew that—

02-00:16:46 Geraci: You weren't going down too far.

02-00:16:47 Peel: I wasn't going out too far. But I did go down until I had about a foot of free board on the top of the jeep. The rest of it was sitting on solid ground. So I thought, "Well—" Now, the DEW Line people had a chopper and it moved around quite a bit. It often came down to the air strip to shoot the bull with my people, and I thought, "Maybe he'll come by," because I couldn't use the radio, didn't have cell phones in those days. Couldn't use the radio, it was underwater. And so I was really in a mess. It was getting cold, colder and colder. I was wet, soaking wet. Fog was moving in. And I was sitting there, it seemed like forever, but I finally heard the chopper. But it was way off. And I had this signal panel out there, and I thought, "Maybe he'll see it." He went right on by. And I thought, "That's it. I've had it." That was my only hope. So in a few minutes—it seemed like about an hour and a half, but it was probably just ten minutes—I heard him come back. Somebody in the chopper had seen that panel. He came down, rescued me. But that was one experience. I had several experiences like that. But anyway, it was a very fascinating place.

02-00:18:26 Geraci: Building up on the DEW Line, that's amazing. What other places were you stationed or did you command in? What other places were you stationed or command in?

02-00:18:40 Peel: I was assigned to command the Thirty-Fifth Engineer Battalion that was at Fort Lewis Washington. This was during the Vietnam War.

02-00:18:56 Geraci: Would you like to take a break?

02-00:18:57 Peel: Yes. During the Vietnam War, I was assigned as a lieutenant colonel to command the Thirty-Fifth Engineer Battalion. The Thirty-Fifth was only on paper. There were no people in it. It had been a battalion used during World War II, so it was a battalion being recreated. And I got to Fort Lewis. The executive officer showed up, a major. My sergeant major showed up. And we were it. Finally, people began to come in. Got the whole battalion together. About a thousand people, combat engineer battalion. My lord. 23

02-00:19:55 Geraci: Here, we'll stop. We'll stop.

02-00:19:58 Peel: So anyway, we got all of our input and we trained the battalion for six months and took them to Vietnam. I selected a group of about twenty-five people, I think it was, and myself, and we flew ahead in an Air Force airplane, a C-41, and stopped in Japan on the way. Flew on in to Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. We got there about dusk and a fellow come running out of where the tower was and saying, you know, "We got word the VCs are going to strike tonight." Here we are with an airplane, a bunch of green horns, and we're already in battle. Well, the VCs did hit that night with mortars. We got nothing. They got some airplanes, but not ours. And we couldn't see a thing. It was all black pitch, pitch dark pretty soon. We circled our aircraft and just waited because—

02-00:21:29 Geraci: There wasn't much you could do.

02-00:21:30 Peel: Yes, not much we could do. Well, the next morning we found out we were at the wrong place. We were ninety-five miles too far south. So we got back in the airplane and flew up to Qui Nhon. I commanded a battalion in Vietnam for six months. We were in combat most of that time. We were doing a lot of repairing roads from the monsoon, repairing bridges, building bridges, laying minefields, taking minefields up. One of the jobs that my battalion had was to remove the mines from the road that the Viet Cong would put in at night. And this road was a main supply route for the first cav division, which was about ninety miles up north of where we were. One of my jobs was to clear the mines out of that road every morning.

And I divided it up into four segments and gave each company a segment to clear. My people would go down, discover the mines, remove them, and by ten o'clock, we'd have it open and then they could take their trucks and take the supplies up. That was one of the most hazardous jobs that we had. I lost more men to mines than to anything else. So I commanded that battalion for six months, and then I was transferred to chief of operations of the Eighteenth Engineer Brigade. We had two engineer brigades over there. The Eighteenth Engineer Brigade had, the north half of South Vietnam. Another brigade had the lower half.

02-00:23:48 Geraci: What was your rank now?

02-00:23:50 Peel: I was a lieutenant colonel then.

02-00:23:51 Geraci: A lieutenant colonel, okay. 24

02-00:23:52 Peel: Yes. We had eighteen battalions in the Eighteenth Engineer Brigade. My job was chief of operations. My duties required me to visit those battalions. Not all of them. But I stayed in an airplane. I had, I believe, 147 flights, something like that, in a 180 day period. Going to these battalions to keep them busy. Assign them jobs, make sure they were—and inspect them and so forth. And I finished that after six months. Came back.

My next command was at Fort Benning, Georgia, after the Army War College. I finished that in Carlyle, Pennsylvania. I was assigned to the Nine Thirty-First Engineer Group, which is made up of four engineer battalions, plus a bunch of light equipment companies, bridge companies, a whole bunch of different separate companies. All the engineers at Fort Benning. One of the most interesting jobs that we did while I was there. Hurricane Camille, which occurred—what, it was 1972? Anyway, I was driving to work one Monday morning. I knew that the hurricane, of course, was coming in. We didn't know where. But it finally struck on Sunday around Biloxi, Mississippi, throughout the whole Gulf Coast. And as soon as I got to my group headquarters, I told my chief of operations to get all of the low boys, the six-wheeled trailers for our trucks, collect them from all the projects all over the place, even out of Florida. We had projects in Florida, Northern Georgia, and get everything on the post and get some of those if we could. Collect them into the largest motor pool we had and pack chainsaws, front end loaders, everything we could think of that we'd be using for clean up, because I had a hunch that we were going to be asked, because we were the only engineers in the whole southeast part of the United States.

And sure enough, about noon I got a call from the commanding general of Third Army stationed at Atlanta and he ordered me to move a reinforced battalion to Biloxi, Mississippi, and help in the cleanup. The damage had already been done. And he said, "How soon can you get them on the road?" This was about noon this one day. I said, "Tomorrow morning at six o'clock." He said, "No, no, no, no. I'm talking about a whole reinforced battalion." I said, "We will be on the road at six o'clock in the morning." He said, "Okay." Sure enough, we'd already prepared. Our people had gotten everything lined up and we had a convoy formed the next morning at six, and they crossed the IP, the Initial Port, at six o'clock. Took off for Biloxi.

I also had aircraft in the group, choppers and fixed-wing aircraft. And I took one of our aircraft, with a pilot, of course, and he and I flew down to Biloxi. We got to Biloxi, got to the airport, and we couldn't land. It was strewn with the debris, buildings and things, so we couldn't use the runway. So we flew around and finally found a section of road that was clear enough and wide enough for us to land our light aircraft on it. And he did, and I walked back to the airport because I saw some vehicles at the airport when we were flying over. Walked into a building with no roof on it, and Governor Williams of Mississippi was standing there kind of in a daze looking around, and I 25

reported to him who I was, told him I had the reinforced battalion on the way. He said, "I think I'll kiss you." And he said he had asked for it at Third Army Atlanta. But he didn't know when it was coming or if it was coming or anything.

So I said, "Well, where can we help you?" He said, "Well, we got a map out and Picayune was one place, Bay St. Louis was another place. Course, Biloxi was a place." Wherever he had real damage, we could go do the cleanup. So I decided to fly up to Hattiesburg, intercept the battalion and direct them to wherever these towns were. They had to saw their way in to some of these towns. And so we'd been there about two days. And by the way, I called back to Fort Benning to bring the two choppers down because we could use them going around and checking on the places. So I had the two choppers. So I took one of the choppers. I think it was the second day we were there.

One of my companies was already at Picayune and cleaning up. I flew up there. I didn't know where they were, and I'm flying around, and I found them. I found some trucks out at the fairgrounds. So I went down to the fairgrounds and the mayor saw me flying around, came up and met me and he said, "Don't take my boys. Don't take my boys." I said, "I’m not going to take your boys." I said, "We're going to stay here until we're finished." About that time, up drove three pizza trucks. He had ordered pizzas for the whole dang company. So the relationship was great. The people there were so grateful and so appreciate. And as a matter of fact, we stayed almost two weeks. When we left, there were sheets with makeshift printing on them saying, "Thank God for the Army engineers." Made our guys feel pretty good.

02-00:31:20 Geraci: All right, Sir, that's got to make them feel real good.

02-00:31:23 Peel: They had worked very hard and it was hard work. But the people would come out and I would go around. Ladies would bring out cookies and pies and things to the guys out there with chainsaws, you know. And we were ordered to not saw out any trees in the yards, only those trees that were blocking traffic.

02-00:31:54 Geraci: Roadways.

02-00:31:56 Peel: Yes, roadways. Well, we got finished in this particular town. So these people had been so nice to bring out these cookies and everything, I said, "Go ahead and work in their yards." Of course, the reason my headquarters didn't want me to work in the yards was the liabilities involved. But you see people that need the help. I thought I'd take a chance.

02-00:32:25 Geraci: It seems kind of strange, but that liability issue becomes so— 26

02-00:32:29 Peel: Right. Our legal system is broken. But anyway, that was one of the most interesting things. After Fort Benning, the next command I had was commanding general of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I had been at Fort Leonard Wood twenty-five years earlier as a captain, and I had worked. Let me tell you one more story. Can you stand it?

02-00:32:55 Geraci: Yes, I can stand one more.

02-00:32:58 Peel: All right. When I was assigned to Fort Leonard Wood, I was assigned to the G-4 section, the logistic section of the post. And I forgot. Oh, yes, one morning my boss came in and threw a newspaper on my desk and said, "What do you think about that?" Well, that was the Capehart housing project. Capehart Housing Bill had passed Congress. Senator Homer Capehart from Indiana had been the sponsor of the bill. It was to build family housing at various posts. The post had not been identified, not all of them. So he said, "Let's see if we can get some of those houses." I said, "Colonel." I was a captain. I said, "Colonel, we're a temporary post." Fort Leonard Wood was temporary then, even though it was called a fort. Should have been called a camp, but it was called a fort and it was temporary. I said, "We're temporary. We're not going to get it." And besides, it was due to be closed. But they were working on getting it permanent, making it a fort, real fort. So I said, "We're not going to get any housing." He said, "Well, let's try." So I call Fifth Army in Chicago, my counterpart up there, and I said, "How do we apply for these houses?" He said, "You're not going to get any houses." "Well, send me some applications anyway." So he did.

One of the requirements was that we would get certification from the FHA, Federal Housing Administration, that there was a need for housing in the military community that was not available in the civilian community for the military. Leonard Wood was certainly in that category. But we were temporary. But anyway, I'm going to go through the drill. In the meantime, Senator Symington of Missouri gets the thing made permanent. Well, that gives us a real shot at it. So I went to St. Louis. First of all, I got all the papers filled out, got the commanding general to sign the papers requesting the houses, and it was to go to Fifth Army on up to Department of the Army. But before we did that, we had to have a certification from FHA in Saint Louis. So I took the papers and we left blank the number of houses because we didn't know how many FHA would certify for. So I went over to G-1 to find out how many we ought to ask for, and they laughed about it and said, "You're not going to get any houses." Okay. I looked up on the board and I saw that we had 1,531 housing units. These were surplus trailers that had been used in a flood situation in the Mississippi Delta some years ago, had been declared surplus by—at that time, it was not FEMA, it was something else. And the commanding general at Leonard Wood had picked them up and brought them there. We had 1,531 of these things. And it had a little plywood houses there, 27

too, and we lived in one of those. My wife said, "We live in the box the trailers came in."

But anyway, it was pathetic. One thousand five hundred thirty one. So nobody would tell me how many to ask for. So I got to St. Louis and went to FHA, introduced myself and explained to them what I wanted. And the guys were very nice. And he called in a couple of fellows who were very familiar with Fort Leonard Wood and he explained to them what's going on. And he said, "Is there really that kind of a need at Fort Leonard Wood." These guys said, "You better believe it. They really need them." So he looked to me and he said, "How many do you need?" I said, "How many do I need?" He said, "How many do you need?" I said, "We need 1,531." He said, "Okay," took it, put it in there, and signed it. And before I had left, my boss had said, "At least ask for a couple of hundred, but don't embarrass the general." I said, "Oh, I won't embarrass the general." So when I said, "1,531," and the guy certified that, I said, "There goes my career." But I didn't say anything. I didn't stop it. And I even took it and mailed it that very day because I wanted to get it to Fifth Army as soon as possible. Already been signed by the general, signed by FHA, so I sent it in.

On the way back to Leonard Wood, I realized that I'd made a mistake. I should have brought it back and they would not have let 1,531 go forward, probably. So I got back that night after duty hours, and I called my boss, Colonel Finberg, who was a great guy, and I told him that I'm back, got certification and mailed the thing in. He said, "Well, that's great, Ed." He said, "How many did they certify to?" I said, "1,531." There was silence. In a few minutes, he said, "Peel, meet me at headquarters tomorrow morning at seven o'clock." So I said, "Okay," and I turned to my wife and I said, "You better start packing. That's the end of it." I meant, that's it, because I knew that I had really messed up.

So the next morning I was up there about six o'clock. Well, Colonel Finberg didn't show up until almost eight. Well, the general had shown up. I saw him go in the back door or the side door, so I knew he was in his office. The chief of staff was there. Finally, Colonel Finberg came out. I guess our appointment was at eight. So anyway, Colonel Finberg had called the chief of staff, who was Colonel Rosenbaum, and had told him what I had done. Both of them were mad as little wet hens. They were upset. Wouldn’t even speak to me. So they escorted me in and all three went in in front of the general and we reported. And I'd never met the general. So the chief of staff said, "General," he said, "Captain Peel here has gone to St. Louis. He got FHA to certify for some houses and we'll let him tell you about it." So he looked at me and he said, "Well, Captain, how many houses did they certify for?" And by this time I didn't give a damn and I said, "One thousand five hundred thirty one, Sir." And he said, "Well, good. Maybe we'll get a couple of hundred out of it." So there was silence. And these two guys, I think they didn't know what to say. "So was there anything else?" And I said, "No, Sir, that's it. It's gone." And he 28

said, "Well, good job, Peel." And we left. Colonel Finberg didn't speak to me all the way back to the office. We walked back to the office, he didn't say a word. He was pretty upset. Well, he finally got over it.

And shortly thereafter, I was assigned to civil schooling to get my engineering degree at the University of Missouri-Rolla, which is only about, what, forty miles from Fort Leonard Wood. So I moved to Rolla and I thought, "Well, you know, they haven't fired me yet." I'm still here. So I went ahead and started school. I was ready to graduate and Colonel Finberg came over. I came home from school one day and parked in front of my house was an Army sedan. And I thought, "Oh, my lord. They've come after me." [laughter]

02-00:42:21 Geraci: [laughter] They remembered.

02-00:42:22 Peel: Well, I looked there and it was Colonel Finberg. And he got out. I invited him in and he shook my hand and he said he had driven from Leonard Wood to congratulate me. Congress had approved 1,531 units for Leonard Wood. The largest number of houses for any one location in that bill.

02-00:42:49 Geraci: But at the location, really, 1,531 is nothing.

02-00:42:54 Peel: Was nothing. No. Nothing.

02-00:42:55 Geraci: I mean, Leonard Wood is in the middle of nowhere between—

02-00:42:59 Peel: But it was better than nothing.

02-00:43:00 Geraci: Yes.

02-00:43:00 Peel: And they were talking about a couple of hundred or so. And the irony of all this is I went back twenty-five years later and moved into the commanding general's house that I had gotten approved, that I had gotten FHA to certify for.

02-00:43:21 Geraci: You pre-approved your house.

02-00:43:22 Peel: I pre-approved my house.

02-00:43:23 Geraci: Oh, that's good. So you were commanding general, then? 29

02-00:43:26 Peel: I was commanding general at Leonard Wood twenty-five years later. It was an interesting career. I enjoyed every moment of it. There was never a dull moment.

02-00:43:42 Geraci: What were the years you were at Leonard Wood?

02-00:46:46 Peel: Well, I came from Leonard Wood here. I retired from Leonard Wood. Seventy-nine.

02-00:43:55 Geraci: Seventy-nine, okay.

02-00:43:57 Peel: I came here and what had happened was my next assignment was Washington. I had five years before I was required to retire, unless I had been promoted to three-star. So I had a call from one of the members of the Board of Regents and he had called OCE, Office of Chief Engineers, and they were starting this huge building program here in the A&M system, or start it in A&M first, and they wanted somebody out of the corps who had had experience in the construction game. They had a fellow here who was running the thing who had been, a civilian, who had done some construction for one of the oil companies. Mobil, I believe it was. Well, he played more golf than he did anything else. But he was a nice fellow. But he had retired on active duty, really. He'd quit work. So anyway, he asked me when I was going to retire and I said, "Probably about five years from now." He said, "Well, we got this big project here," and he went on and on. He said, "When were you last time here at A&M?" I said, "It was 1948." He said, "You wouldn't know it." He said, "You need to come down and look at it." And he talked about this job. And I said, "Dooley, I've got a job. I don't need a job." He said, "Well, just come down and just take a look at your old school." I said, "Okay." So I flew down and a guy named Clyde Wells, who was chairman of the board of regents and Dooley Bell and a couple of other guys met me in a little minivan and we drove around and looked at everything. And I kind of thought, "You know, I've done everything they've asked me to do. I don't want to go back to Washington. I just don't want to go. But I'll go, you know." I've never asked for anything, I've never refused anything. But I was about to refuse the Washington job. Of course, that would have been bad.

But anyway, I went back to Leonard Wood and I'd already told him I'm not interested. So I got another call about a month later. That was in March of seventy-nine. And I got another call from Dooley Bell and he said, "We've decided that we got to have you down here." I turned and I thought, "You know, I think I'll consider it." So I said, "Well, when do you want me?" He said, "Right now." I said, "Look, I'm supposed to leave here in July so I can't. I got to retire first, of course." But in order for you to retire at that time, any 30

general officer had to get the chief of staff of the Army's approval. And, of course, my boss's approval, who happened to be a four-star at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Well, I happened to be going to Fort Monroe in a couple of weeks on a meeting we had. So when I'll go and talk to my boss, who was General Stary. Just a terrific guy. So anyway, I told Dooley. I said, "Well, let me think about it. "Okay."

So I went to Fort Monroe, told General Stary about it. Of course, he was West Point. And he said, "You aggies think A&M is Mecca, don't you?" And I said, "Yes, we do." Or I said, "Yes, Sir, we do." He said, "I don't blame you." He said, "In fact, I'm going to retire myself this summer. I haven't announced it yet, but I'm going to retire this summer." So he said, "You know, Ed," he said, "the brass ring goes by only one time and you better grab it while it goes by." I said, "Oh, okay." So I came back and I still wasn't made up my mind. Well, I got another call from Dooley. And I said, "Okay." I said, "I can't get there until the middle of April," and we talked about it back and forth and he said, "Okay," and we agreed with that. Well, first of all, before that, when I got off the phone after I accepted the job, which was vice-chancellor of the system. When I accepted the job, my wife came in to my study and said, "Who was that?" I said, "That was Dooley Bell again." She said, "What'd he want?" I said, "Well, he wanted me to come to A&M." She said, "Oh, I'm not going." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "All you're going to do is go watch football." I said, "No, no." But I said, "I think I took the job." She said, "Well, I'm not going." I said, "Okay." Of course, she had followed me all over the world. I knew she was going. So she finally said, "Okay. We'll go if you'll stay maybe three, maybe four years." I said, "I promise. We'll stay four years." So I said, "Okay. And then we'll go wherever you want to go. Where do you want to go?" She said, "Back to Hawaii." I said, "Okay, we'll do that."

So I got here and started the job and it was such a fascinating thing. I introduced the Corps Engineer System of planning, design and construction to the A&M system. It was easy to do and it was accepted very well. Architects liked it, the contractors liked it. Some of them had worked for the Corps. They knew the system and it was just a real pleasure. Well, we stayed the four years. The first thing was to renovate Kyle Field, which is the big football stadium. We did that. Stayed the four years and she said, "Where are we going now?" I said, "I don't know. I don't have any orders." She said, "Well, we might as well stay here." She said, "It's home now." So I said, "Good." So I stayed in that job twenty-two years. And finally I said, "You know, it's time to give somebody else a shot at this," because it was so much fun.

02-00:50:52 Geraci: Well, you had given me some stats. You had some impressive numbers for what you completed. 31

02-00:50:57 Peel: See, what we had when I came here, three universities in the system. A&M was the flagship. We had Prairie View, which was a predominantly black university. We had Tarlton, which was up in Stephenville, near Fort Worth. That was it. Shortly thereafter, we started adding universities that were separate universities. State universities, but separate universities like at Corpus Christi. We added Corpus Christi. We added Laredo. I'll tell you about Laredo, then I'll shut up. We added A&I at South Texas. We finally wound up with nine universities. Not only did we do all the construction, planning, design and construction for these nine universities, we also did it for the ag experiments station and the engineering experiment station, and they have facilities all over the state. We did work all the way from El Paso to Texarkana, from Brownsville to Amarillo, all over the state. The university system had five aircraft. We used two of them almost every day, flying all over the state. In the construction game you say you "placed". We placed 1.72 billion in six hundred, I believe, thirty major projects in twenty-two years. Never had one single lawsuit.

02-00:52:50 Geraci: That's amazing.

02-00:52:51 Peel: Never one single lawsuit. And the reason we didn't have any lawsuits is we had people, good people, who stayed on top of the job of the design and who stayed on top of the construction. We had claims, yes, but we settled those claims. They were all settled in good nature. You know, we had arguments, but we always wound up going to lunch or something. It was nothing serious. And the reason it worked was because we had a system. If you don't have a system, nothing works, as you well know.

02-00:53:36 Geraci: That's an amazing record in itself.

02-00:53:36 Peel: Yes.

02-00:53:38 Geraci: I mean, that's at the base of the growth of your state college system.

02-00:53:42 Peel: It is, it really is. And we had to get approval. Let me just tell you about one problem. I'm sorry. Let me just tell you. Turn that off.

02-00:53:54 Geraci: Well, let's put it this way. We have about six minutes. We have about six minutes.

02-00:53:57 Peel: Okay. One project was a coliseum. Coliseums became pretty common in every university. A&M had a field house that we called a coliseum, but it was 32

a disgrace. So our board of regents wanted a coliseum that would seat—for basketball, primarily, for graduation and for other events. So I said, "Well, what size coliseum do we need?" Well, we need to have one that seats about 8,000 people. Now, at that time, the enrollment here was about 35,000. It's almost fifty now. But anyway, seat 8,000. What will that cost? We figured it up. And first we have to get approval at the coordinating board in Austin. Well, the project came to about thirty-five million. So I took that to the coordinating board in Austin, and oh, they had a fit. "No, can't spend thirty- five million." So I came back and the board was very disappointed. They were going to use political pressure to the coordinating board, but they didn't. But anyway, the coordinating board did not seem to favor A&M very much. They were primarily a University of Texas interest. So anyway, I got with the architect and I said, "How in the world can we reduce the cost and increase the seats?" So we reasoned that the big cost was the canopy for the big coliseum. Every foot of beam, lengthwise or either way, added enormous amount. And it was progressively more as you added a foot. Well, they said, "Look. If we take all of these offices and practice fields and things out of underneath the canopy, which was in the basement part, and move them outside, then we reduce the canopy but keep the seats." So we did that. We wound up with 12,500 seats and thirty-one million dollar project and it worked great. It's beautiful. I'll drive you by it if you want me to.

02-00:56:58 Geraci: Yes, that sounds good. So let's kind of sign off of the tape.

02-00:57:02 Peel: Good.

02-00:57:02 Geraci: I'd like to officially thank you on the tape. Thank you very much. This is great.

02-00:57:06 Peel: Yes.

[End of Interview]