Interview with Bob Hudson

JPG Worker Recorded on March 6, 2006 (Monday)

Interview done by Mike Moore at the Historical Society

          July 9 1962 I came to work at the JPG at the data reduction branch as a math technician GS-5.  Even though I had a degree in mathematics there was not a vacancy as a mathematician.  Then after about a year of working in data reduction as a math Tech, I got promoted to a GS-7 mathematician; I went from 2.39 an hour to 3.20 an hour in one jump, and I thought I was walking on air.  I stayed there from 1963 to about to the second day of January of 1967.  Due to the build up for Vietnam, I went to night shift. We were shooting up all the fuse tests at night, we had a data reduction section on fuses, and my boss put me overseeing a bunch of mathematicians.  We had about 2 or 3 or 4 who would come in from Hanover College, students, on data reduction.  I stayed on nights until August 1969. I was moved to the day shift as Chief of the Ballistics Division.  I did that through 1970, 1971 or so and I was also made Chief of Engineering Test Branch.  So I was my own boss; I was a branch of the division, and I was on board the division and in the Chief’s job. In the summer of 1977, we hired Ike Peterson, because Mr. Everhart was going to retire in government. He came on in the summer of 1977.  Mr. Everhart retired close to January of 1978.

          We reorganized the division I had by 1978. It was called Methodology and Data Reduction Division. That included the test directors, ballistics and computers’ branches But in that same time, Mr. Peterson had become chief or director of MTD and he brought me down and sat me down beside him to kind of be his assistant, even though; I still had that math division down the hallway.  I sat down to be his assistant.  Around 1982, Mr. Peterson was taken out of the position of director of testing and they brought up a Colonel from logistics and put him in charge of being the director. That was sort of the time frame of the position called Technical Director.  Mr. Peterson never really served as Technical Director, he transferred to White Sands Missile Range, and they opened up this Technical Director position, and I believe I was selected around 1983 as Technical Director.

     Now that was a day-to-day contact based with testing on JPG.  I did more assisting the commander, orienting new commanders, trying to get them up to speed and helping with day-to-day decisions about the total operations at JPG.  Not just the testing at JPG.  I told the commanders along the way when they were brought in, they would do community and PR work, go to dinners banquets and teas and socials, and I would stay up at the proving ground and I would just run the proving ground on a day-to-day basis and all they would do is to be a figure in it.  And for the most part that’s how it worked. They would get involved in things, on the surface of things. They would get oriented and about two years we’d lose them and we’d start all over again. 

          Now somewhere after 1983, and I don’t know exactly the time frame, when Bennett was the Colonel in the Proving Ground. He had all these people working for him, the directors and office chiefs and he had to supervise them and do evaluations on them and all that such.  And he said “This is your job now” and from that point till the last day of the Proving Ground, I guess I rated about everybody except for me, even the commander and his secretary except they just wouldn’t recognize it.  Anyway, that was…

          (So you actually did the reviews of every person and rated them and showed all the chiefs and stuff?)

          Absolutely, all of them.  It didn’t go quite well when I was rating the MTD’S Chief because it was always a military slot and the military don’t like civilians rating them because their rating is important to their career.  And I gave them good ratings, I didn’t hurt them, but they just didn’t like the idea of it.

          (So you had to learn certain military words or they wouldn’t get promoted)

          Right, I had to learn a few tricks to do the rating.  The number rating is what is important to them.  You were a Captain in the Army, you know how it was “A” rated. (Bob means Mike Moore)

          (Yeah, I know how I was rated too)

          They didn’t go for that too much.

          (But if the rater didn’t like you they would say “this is a pretty good officer.  He does a good job blah-blah-blah”, but if they really wanted to promote you they would say “ this is a the most outstanding man in his field, he can’t do anything wrong”, so you had to use some pretty big adjectives if they were going to get you promoted.)

          Exactly if an officer gets all ratings of 1, that’s as high as it can get, he’s walking on water.  And he can get some 2’s because 2’s are pretty outstanding work too, and you can mix up 1’s and 2’s in an officers rating and he’s okay.  But if you jump into that 3 bracket, he’s on thin ice.  That’s how it worked.

          Colonel Bishop came on board in 1973 to 1977 or 78, so he was there about a five year stretch and that was before I was a Technical Director.

March 13 Interview continued)

     What I am going to do is tell you little stories along the way of my career path. When I was hired in 1962, we did not have any work for me to do.  So a guy named Stein and I had the same problem. The office workers would not share with us.  The incumbents were kind of selfish about the work. Most of it was classified, but we had clearances.  Charley and I started doing things to make the flow of things better and give assistance to what we were doing.  We put in a card index system to track all the ammunition by item by the manufacturer or assembly plant, load plant that put it together.  We could track the item from the time it entered the proving ground until the test report or decision was made. We made up a whole bundle of Mathematical sheets where we computed constants where we could.  We would make all these calculations for this constants and give the sheets to the data reduction people so that they could jump up into the process to a fixed point and they did not have to do all these repetitive calculations.

     There was really not a system or there was  no way to track costs of doing work so old Stein and I worked on a cost accounting tracking They gave us permission because we didn’t have anything to do anyway and as long as we were doing something constructive, I guess we were okay.  We put together a method of assigning work order numbers to everything that came into test.  That work order number stayed with the test until it left the proving ground as a report.

     We got all the time keepers in the proving ground together and we trained them how to fill out for ever person in their office for an 80 hour two week pay period what projects they worked on.  The minimum amount of time that we would let them charge to a project would be increments of one hour.  Charley and I went to payroll and got the pay of every single direct person that had anything to do with testing. At the end of the two week period on Monday morning the time keepers would finalize that report from their cost center codes.  They would bring them up to our office on Monday morning, so in theory we had a track of what an individual did for the 80 hours during that two week period. 

     We compiled all those costs against a given work order for the whole proving ground and we rolled that up and we not only put in the number of hours to a project, but we put the direct labor cost in it.  At the end of a two week period we knew the direct labor hours it took to do the project, and also how much it cost.

Stein and I did this for a year or so.  We would get the data in on Monday for the two week period and by noon we would have the report done and expended only 8 hours for the two of us.  (Four man hours for Charley and four for me.)  We would turn that report in to finance and accounting. 

     Russell Smart was in charge of finance and accounting and it dawned on him one time that these two guys were up there doing cost accounting work and they were not under his control.  They were doing his work, so he then requested that we turn all the work over to him and he asked for five people to do it with.  (Laughter)  Here Charley and I were doing it in 8 man hours every two weeks and he wanted five full time people to do it.  He didn’t get five, but he got three.  So Charley and I did those kind of things and finally they began giving us some work and gradually and so they began sharing with us.

     I went on the night shift in 1967.  They played a joke on me.  JPG started a night shift in about 1966.  Everhart, the boss, Jim Selig they were all in on it.  I came in to work one day and there was a 52, personnel action on my desk directing me to night shift the next pay period. All the proper signatures were on the 52.  Doyle Shafer had signed off on it, Personnel had signed off on it, I don’t know if the commander had signed it, but anyway, I didn’t say anything, I just put it into my desk drawer  and kept quite about it.  Finally they decided they ought to ask me about it.  It turned out the whole thing was a joke; however, the beginning of 1967, I came in and found a real one on my desk directing me to the night shift. I went on night shift in 1967, They gave us Hanover students, three or four of them. That is how we ended up with Steve McGuiness.  We had three or four students at a time working 20 hours a week and we had two or three permanent employees . They would rotate from day to night shift. But, I stayed on night shift.  That is how Steve McGuiness became a permanent employee.

      I had one guy that they had hired out of a mental institution who had a Master’s degree in Physics from Detroit.  I don’t know where they found these guys.  I guess from the register or something.  This guy was really brilliant, but after a little while you could tell that he did belong in a mental institution.  With the government you know you have one year that you can fire a guy or let him go.  A person hired is on one year probation.  You can terminate the employee with out cause.  I had trouble with him, he wanted to fight; he wouldn’t work.  He had to get back and forth to work and he couldn’t drive, so we had to get transportation.  Finally at the end of the year after he had threatened to beat me up. I told Everhart that we’re not keeping this dude and he said, “Okay.”  So we fire him, well, or we let him go.

     After about a year after that, I got a letter from Southern Illinois University, I think it was, where he applied to as a Professor in their Physics department and he gave me as a reference which wasn’t smart.  Why I answered all the questions from the University and clear down to the last one. It said, “Would you hire him back.”  Well when you say no you have to tell why.  I wrote the reason, I came to personnel and I took it back to personnel.  Margurite Ligon, head of personnel said, “you could not say that.”  I said, “What do you mean that I can not say that.”  “I can tell the truth and that is what the truth is.” I would not hire him back and here is the reason. Margrite said we can not send it back like that. I just took the papers sealed them up and sent it back to the University myself. You ought to be able to tell the truth. 

Here Mr. Hudson talks to the interviewer. “You know me and you have worked with me, I did oddball things, I was an oddball I guess.

      I had people call me in connection to somebody working for me, you know checking on references and stuff particularly at the end, I had people calling me about positions at Yuma, Arizona. Well I had occasion to tell them the truth about the person.  It would have been very easy to build them all up and got rid of them, but that is just not how I am.  I am going to tell you how it is up front.  I never put anybody down.  I would just tell them about their work habits.  The folks at Yuma thanked me. They said no one had ever told them the truth about a prospective employee before.  I said, “You know if I was hiring and you did that for me I would appreciate it.”  Even though I could say get rid of a problem, instead of doing that, I ended up keeping the problem. 

     I was on that night shift two and one half years and here is how I got off the night shift.  I was at Aberdeen Proving Ground for a week. Doyle Shafer went to Aberdeen once a month.  It was a PR type of visit.   Plus he knew people at Aberdeen that had worked at JPG and they were still friends of his.  Braimier, head of Assembly at JPG went to Aberdeen, they were old buddies.  Anyway it was August of 69.  They called me up at Aberdeen they wanted me to find Shafer to be at a meeting that needed a JPG Rep. I guess they weren’t going to send me.  Well I could not find Shafer.  I called Braimier’s wife, He never staid in a motel. She said, “She did not know where they were.” Anyway to make a long story short, He did not show up.  He came back on a Thursday; I came back on a Friday.  On Monday, the story was that Shafer was gone.

      I asked, What do you mean Shafer was gone?” Well Col Mayhall called him in and said you are out of here.  So he took retirement and the employees took up a collection to buy Shafer a savings bond. I believe it was around $1500 dollars.  So we had to stand up at the south end of the Proving Ground at the flag pole like we did when they had speakers, visitors and some kind of formal program.  The stands were put up for people to sit on to have a big ceremony for Shafer.

     That morning he did not come in to work for his own ceremony.  I had to go down town to find him in a bar somewhere and brought him back out there and he could hardly stand up.  His family was there and the whole crowd gathered and gave him a big send off, however that send off was not part of his choice.  He had such a drinking problem, he went into the hospital. He would have these Liver attacks.  My Mother was in the hospital at the same time. I would go down to visit my mother and I would go visit him.  He suffered.  He went to Ohio where he had a sister, I think and he finally died and he was only 49 years old.  He was a smart man, but he could not leave the bottle alone.  You know that they had parties up at “Old Timbers”.  He fell over the wooden log rails that line the back porch and fell down to the creek.  It just scratched him up.

     One time on nights, they had a test run down there at “N” Position.The guards in their patrols found this round on the bench.  It had not been fired.  Well the program had been shot during the day time and I don’t know what that crew did when they walked off and left that round.  The guards notified Shafer and called McClung in (security) about 8:00 at night in the conference room.  They called me down there because I was on night shift with data reduction stuff.  Shafer came up there.  This item was classified secret.  So he found out who the test director was and called his boss in.  We did not call the Proof Director in.  So Shafer comes in and says Bob this can’t be a classified round.  I said we deal with it all the time. It was a 40 millimeter.  Shaffer said we don’t have any 40 millimeter here.  I said, “We do. It is secret.”  It was in that category of COFRAM.  We had that vault on night shift that we kept locked, unless I had to get in it.  Shaffer said, “Prove it to me.” I opened up the vault we had the specifications in there, and copies of the same item. I got them out and showed them to him.  He just did not know at his level all the particulars of the round.  We got the rough report out that the test director had used and all the rounds on the report were accounted for.  The report had data on every one of them.  Yet here was one of them lying down on the bench at the firing position. 

     Here is another story. I was working Saturdays, Shaffer came up there where I was working by myself.  He said come and go with me and I said, “wait a minute.”  Where are we going?  He said, “We were going out to where the test was down range, where we had the targets in the woods.”  They fired that COFRAM type round.  I said, “I don’t have time to go down there.”  He said, “you are going with me.” So I had to quit what ever I was working on, rode down with him to look around. 

     He let the alcohol get the best of him. He wanted me to come down and do Test Scheduling during the days for him, but I turned it down not knowing what path I was going to take after that, but it turned out, it was the best thing that I did.

     In August 69, I came to day shift.  I took over Data Reduction, because in 69 when Shafer left, Mr. Chambers moved up to be in charge of testing, Chambers selected Everhart  to come down and be his deputy.  This left the Chief of Ballistics and Data Reduction Branch open.  I was offered the job as Chief.  I had to check it out with Jim Selig to see if it was okay with him, because he had more time than I did.  It was okay with Jim, so I took over. I had trouble with this move because I did not want to make Jim mad.  He assured me that everything was okay, so I took over Data Reduction.  We must have had a re-organization, I am not sure how it came about, but I ended up as Chief of Test Engineering Division where all the test directors worked. 

     Betty Graves, bless her heart, she was secretary of Ballistics and Records.  When I came off of nights, I did not even know how to do a DF (Disposition Form) or a time card, Betty ran the office.  She taught me all the stuff how to do.  I mean she took me by the hand and led me down the path and taught me the minutia of doing business.  Then I moved over into the Test Directors Division in 1971.  The first thing they told me that I had a problem with a person that was drinking.   I said, “That was against the rules.”  I was naïve about it. I felt that we had to go by the rules.  Well, no, this guy does not go by the rules.

     They said, “You can not make him go by the rules.:  Yes I can to, I said, “You watch and see.”  The employee was a super nice guy, he just had a drinking problem.  It took me a year and in that year, I thought I was being fired.  They would chew me out, The NAACP was on my case, one brother-in-law was on my case, but one brother-in-law was on my side. Col Bishop would chew me out because I reprimanded this person.  I put him on leave without pay.  Finally we fired him. 

     He came to my house that night and cried.  He said, “He was a alcoholic and needed help.”  I said, “I have been waiting all this time for you to say that.”  “I have waited a year.”   “You come back in the morning and we will get it all lined up and straightened up.”  We will send you to “AA”.  He went to it for two years and I don’t think he missed a meeting.  As far as I know, he did not drink anymore.  So it was worth the effort, but all the time I was in it, I thought that I was going to be fired.  You have to give a guy a chance to straighten up, but the onus falls on you as supervisor.  You have to provide training when they need it.  You have to provide counseling. You got to get all that stuff done. You have to give them a chance to straighten up whatever they have done

     You don’t know what accurate is. We had a guy named Myron Phillips as a test director. Have you ever heard of him?  (No, I never have.)  It was kind of a standing joke.  You remember how Data Reduction used to take a proof director’s records every entry, every letter and  compare it see that he had all the right data.  This guy was such a perfectionist he spent so much time producing this hand written rough copy that there could not be mistakes in it.  Well it would really upset him.  Let’s say he entered a number wrong or he misspelled something just any little thing.  Well I don’t know if you remember, but we had those red pencils, they were ever-sharp. They had red on one end and black on the other.  (Oh Yes, I do remember, I had forgotten about them.)  We took great pride in trying to find something wrong with his record, (Chuckle) and we would put a big red circle around the mistake, oh boy, Jeez he would almost have a heart attack and he beat himself up.  He wasn’t mad at us, but he would get mad at himself, He would have a fit. If we put one red mark on that piece of paper,(Chuckle), you know if you fill out several pages of this stuff, it is easy to make a small mistake, but he was a real perfectionist.

     (I never heard of him, some of the proof directors were pretty sloppy and some were pretty neat. I remember Woody Bell had a perfect print,  Msm)

  Yeah old Myron would have a fit.  You know you talked about doing thousands of those firing records. It got so that I could look at the typed copy and tell you what girl typed it.

  (Gosh, they were punching cards by the time I got there-MSM)

 One of the best typist we had during that time as I saw it in the typing pool was Betty Lucas, If you looked at her she had sort of stubby fingers and you would not believe that see could type at all.  But I am telling you she was a whiz on the typewriter.  You could tell when she had done something.  Another person that I could tell was Dolly Harsin.  I don’t know how they did it, but you could tell their typing was the most distinct. 

     I am going to tell you something about Herb Inskeep.  Oh, when what was that Colonel’s name, some Colonel, I will remember in a minute.  Herb was a proof director for me, but he was also had those EEO Duties assigned to him (Equal Employment Opportunity).  It was a combination of duties, but the EEO hdq side of the house did not like that, because they did not think he could put enough time in.  This Colonel called me down to the office one day and he said Bob, “We’re doing away with the EEO.”  I said, “There  is no way in the world we can do away with the EEO.”  Bob said, “I will give you a week to reverse this order”.  Once TECOM (Test and Evaluation Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland) finds out and Herb calls up there and tells them that he is no longer the EEO officer, that General is going to stand you at attention (Chuckle) and tell you what you are going to do.  It did not take a week. The Colonel called me the next day and said, “Bob not only did they tell me that I had to put him back in ( Herb as EEO Officer)  but I had to put him in full time. (Chuckle)  We lost him, I lost him as a Test director (proof director/test director) .  They put him in full time as the EEO Officer. Herb was a nice guy, I really liked working with him.

     As I told you earlier in those early years they really did not give me much to do, so in accordance with that, I was in that line of getting cross trained.  I don’t know if I told you this or not, but we had to go to the Secretary of the Army once a year for a briefing on our budget.  There was nobody in the finance and accounting office that would go.  Why!,  I did not know anything about budget work, but they picked me to go.  Well I did not know at the time, but it turned out to be a benefit.  I had to learn the system well enough to brief the system.  We had to brief it at TECOM, then DARCOM, then go on down and brief the Secretary of the Army.  I ended up having to do that.  Well it did not hurt me to do that.  It got me outside of testing and into something else. In the later years there was not much that they could tell me about that finance and accounting. I went off up there and those are the kind of things that paid off when I became a Technical Director. 

     Of course then I was sort of over everything, into everybody’s business. I told you that Ike Peterson came on board in 1977, Everhart retired First of January 1978.  That is when Ike moved me down by his desk, I had to go down and sit beside him, but I was still in charge of that division down there (Test Engineering). I was a GS-12 down there and they combined, You remember what turned into MAD (Methods and Analysis Division) Well, they made it a GS-13. I don’t know all who applied for it, but one day Ike asked me if I could stay after work a few minutes and I said sure.  He said I have to interview you. And I said, “What for what are you interviewing me for?”  He said, “I have to Interview you for that job, you put in for.  I said, “I really don’t want the job.” I want to go back down there in Test Engineering where I belong.”  But I want you to give me the promotion, but I want to go back.  He said, “It won’t work that way.”  I said, “Then the interview is over. That is all I got to say, and that is all I said to him, but of course he selected me for the job, but that was our interview. 

     You remember Conrad (Colonel Hawkins Conrad JPG Commander late 70’s). He thought that the Personnel Director at that time walked on water and he gave her some high level award. In the conference room at the weekly meeting, we all stood up and he read the award off with her standing up there.  It was an important one, the highest one you could get in the Army. Anyway when it was all over he told us to come around and shake her hand.  Well sometimes you have to take a stand and suffer the consequences.  Well it was kind of obvious, a guy as big as I am standing back there at a table by myself and not get in line.  They all went around, nobody said a word about it afterwards. 

     One day shortly after that , Conrad came up to my office that day, Mr. Peterson was not there that day, Jan Long was the secretary  for me and Peterson and sat outside Peterson’s office. Conrad came in there and asked me something about test connected and I don’t know if I was on the phone or what, but I answered his question, but in the middle of this he put in a jab about her, the personnel director.  I said I will address that comment when I answer the question that you came up her to ask me about.  (I am telling you Mike, it was a day that I could have got fired.)  We got to yelling so loud at each other that neither one of us could hear the other one. Our noses were all most touching. Jan left the office. It scared her so that she got clear out of there. She did not want to be a witness.  I had my fist doubled up.  I would have knocked him right on his Butt. (Laughing) Now this is when the Technical Director’s job was open.  I had applied for that job and here was the person that would choose me if I got chosen.  We were yelling and it was all over her. All of a sudden he said that I have a 10:00 appointment that I have to go to. I followed him out there yelling at him all the way down the steps. (laughter ). 

     Do You know what?,  Bless his heart, he was a person, he never held a grudge, which is just opposite of the Everhart Story.  He treated me like it never happened. And we went on a trip to the Commander’s conference, before he made his selection.  He said Bob I have narrowed it down to two people.  I have narrowed it down to you and a guy from someplace else, about one hundred and ten applied for it.  You have an advantage, because you have been here. You know the people and you know the workload.  That gives you the inside track on it.  I said whatever you have to do.  Pick whoever you want to pick.  He ended up picking me and then he left the proving ground and he went to a post in Washington around Seattle. He was at a board meeting at Fort Knox and called me one day and said I am on my way to JPG.  I am coming up just to see you.  We spent the afternoon together. And then he retired and moved to his wife’s family’s land on Cape Cod.  He was a good guy. He never held a grudge or he would have fired me.

     Let me go clear back up to this Everhart Story.  When I got hired, I told you that I was hired as a Math Technician and he tried to get it promoted and converted into a math series.  You ever hear of the name Courtney Whitiker?  (No, I don’t think so.—MSM) He was down in personnel.  He completed a desk audit on the job and he wouldn’t ever put the 52’s in to promote me.  He told Everhart that I deserved it, but he wouldn’t put it in.  He wouldn’t do it. It went on and on and on.  Finally one morning, I said to Mr. Everhart, could I go down and talk to him.  He said go down and do whatever you have to.  I have talked to him until I am blue in the face. Courtney’s office is where you come in to the middle of Building 100, right square in the middle, the very first office on the left, right there on the corner was where Courtney’s office was.  He was the personnel specialist to do desk audits.  His desk was situated to where behind him was a window. Well I did not sit down.  I started on him standing up and that argument got awful heated. I said, “Courtney here is what I am going to do.”  “Do you see that window behind you?”  “I am going to knock you right through it.”  Well he scooted his desk back away from the desk far enough that I could not reach over the desk and hit him. (Laughing).  I was ready to knock him out. Now that would have ended my career at JPG right then had I done that.  It would have been the end.  So I left the office and I went back upstairs to my desk.  It was not two minutes before here came Whitney flying into Mr. Everhart’s office.  I had come back and told Mr. Everhart what I had done too.  He went in there and shut the door with Mr. Everhart and him inside. 

     Whitney shot out of that room and Mr. Everhart called me into his office.  Mr. Everhart said that Whitney had told me what you did and here is what I told him.  On the next pay period he will have had the promotion and a 52 on his desk where he got it that you have promised all this time. If you don’t, we are going down to the motor pool and get a car.We are going to drive to Our OPM office in Chicago. We are going to Chicago on duty and to report you (laughter).  And sure enough the next pay period, I had the pay raise.

     I don’t know if I ought to tell all this stuff or not. ( I know, I don’t know what we will do with it.  One hundred years from now nobody will give a hoot—MSM) 

     What was that guy’s name? He was a Test Director, a dark haired guy and he had heart trouble, he went to Yuma and he died out there.  I can’t remember his name, anyway you guys (Data Reduction) had run a significance test on something. I guess he was running a test for Libby on substituting components.  When you would get a new lot in you (JPG) would test it.  If you test the velocities and there was no difference in the results you would substitute the new components in place of the old components.  Anyway you guys had run a “T” Test to find the significant differences. 

     I don’t know what the answer was.  It was either significant or not significant, but he disagreed with it.  He came flying down into my office.  He said that he had worked for O’Brian Engineering all those years and had been a test director all these years “I know how to do these calculations and this cannot be right.”  I (Bob Hudson) looked at the report and said that is what the test says, whatever Data Reduction’s decision is it.  The Test Director said “you can’t make me put that in the report.”  (Bob Hudson) Yes I can. That’s exactly what your going to do is put it in that report.  Oh, he stormed out of there like a bull in a china shop.

     This reminds me of a story on Woody Bell. It was a fuse test and it was a safety phase.  You shoot into a target close and that round should not function.  The timing mechanism would not have had time enough to get it armed.  These rounds theoretically end up being all duds, because they weren’t supposed to fire in that length of time.  You remember a test the spec had a criteria in the Mil Spec that if it functioned within so many feet, lets say 25 feet behind the target, we set up cameras back there and it would count as a valid round if it did not function on target.

      Well one of these rounds functioned and Woody without seeing the camera data or anything on the spot said it was okay. There was a lot of fuses sitting on a ship to go to Vietnam.  The Representative called his boss up and said the lot was accepted.  The camera data showed that that round had functioned in close to the target, so it was a malfunction.  So we (JPG) put out a report that the lot was rejected.  Whew Wee (Whistle--Boy did that cause trouble). 

     This guy from the company went to Picatinny Arsenal then he went to TECOM Headquarters complained to them, trying to make us change that Lot to the status “accepted”. He had gone out on a limb, but the ship had left the port.  It was steaming over seas with the rejected lot and it was rejected in a critical phase to, see.  A thing like that when you are running the “tabe test” you just cannot have a “critical defect”.  So anyway we wouldn’t change the results of the test.  This guy made a trip out to JPG and he talked to Woody, and I was there.  Woody was as stubborn as a mule. The guy wanted us to say that the round was lost.  No! Sireee!   The rep begged and pleaded with us to someway or another to mark the round “lost” so the status of the lot would be changed.

     The Rep said, “Do anything we wanted to with it, but get it out of this rejected status.” Boy you talk about Woody, He got red in the face, I thought he was going to hit this guy. Ole Woody stood his ground, I was standing behind Woody.  It was our decision and we were sticking with it.  The Rep said you know that is going to cost me my job.  I said here is what happened, here are the results, go away with it.  I don’t know whatever happened to that guy, but boy Woody was like a Tiger, you could not get him to change something that he did not believe.  That’s the right way to be too.

     Some stuff left out.  Not relevant to JPG.

     Tell me about that Tornado in 1974:

     I was on the second floor. I was on the first floor when we got the call that it was so many minutes away.  Bishop told me “Bob it is your job to get everyone here in that tunnel.  Why, I did not know where the tunnel was. I started telling everyone to get down in the tunnel.  They were moaning and groaning.  There were not any lights down there. Water was standing in that tunnel and people didn’t want to go in there because it was too scary.  I was trying to herd them in there. Couldn’t get them all in there, some wouldn’t go in at all. They were all crowded at the bottom of the steps stumbling in the dark.  I stood at the top of the steps at the tunnel door. The tornado went by. As a result of the tornado generators and lights were put in there. 

     It had lights in there, but the electricity was out.  Then later we used the tunnel for disaster drill.  We put food down there.  We had water to drink.  We started having a lot of practices down there.  We would have our practice on the same day that the county practiced.  It was a tough day that day.  Now a funny part of that story was.  It occurred just a few minutes before 4:00 pm., when we were getting out anyway.  When we gave them an all clear people just ran like rabbits. They jumped in their vehicles and rightfully so, because they didn’t know what had happened to their home.  I did not know what my house was like. 

     Well one of the ladies that was in typing grabbed her report she was working on, a secret one and slammed it in my hands when she started down into the tunnel.  Well she sure did not come back and get it. Now here I am no electricity, everybody runs away and I have this secret report in my hand. I got Jim Selig to go with me back up stairs. I found a pack of matches and I was lighting a match and Jim could not get the vault open by the time the match would burn out. Well you know when you in the dark and you have a little bit of light, it takes a little bit if time to get your eyes accustomed to the dark.  Well we had a light and lose it, we had a light and we would lose it.  We couldn’t get the door open. 

     I said Jim lets just stop this.  “We will wait until we just get totally accustomed to the conditions and then maybe we can see too get it open.”  All the proving ground was gone you see.  Here was Jim and I trying to get this vault door open.  We finally got it open. We then went home after that.

     We saw that the Tornado just tore the whole hilltop up.  Hanover and all that was wiped out.  Well Col. Bishop set up a Command Center down at the top of the hill.  That night we took a bunch of our generators to the hospital and places that needed them.  He stayed down there I think all night in that Command Center, well the next morning everybody came back to work, He dismissed the whole proving ground, the whole work force was allowed to go home change clothes take government vehicles down there and start helping people, primarily JPG people, we worked with them first. 

     We worked down there, I don’t know if it was one day or two days, whatever it was, and helped get JPG people moved to places and rescued.  The proving ground people got some kind of award from the Army for doing that.  We did a lot of service for the community that event.  The Proving Ground only lost electricity. That was all.  At my house there were big chunks of hail.  Now the hail stones weren’t round like they normally are. They were all irregular shapes.  The edges were jagged all over my yard.

      I got up on the roof. My roof was about seven years old.  I reported it to the insurance company, but I said take care of people worse off than me.  I got up there and measured it. It was 30 squares of roofing.   I was at the proving ground one day, and I got a call from my insurance company adjuster.  To put on a roof at that time was 40 dollars a square.  I was bracing for a big let down, because it was 7 years old.  He said there are 40 squares, 30 dollars a square. It would be $1200 dollars to replace your roof.  You have 50 dollar deductible. Would it be alright If I left a check for $1150 dollars here at your house?  I said it would be fine. (chuckling) So I had to put a new roof on.

     Some stuff not relevant.

     Back to relevant stuff:

     There was a woman that worked down in Supply in Bldg 108.  She lived on Cragmont Street. Her house was torn up and she had two girls.  Well what she did, she took her barbeque grill and made them some hamburgers.  Well it was raining and it was cold, so they cooked hamburgers for supper, She and these two girls.  They brought this grill inside, put it in the middle of the floor and they laid down beside it to get the warmth because they did not have any heat.  She woke up, the girls were already unconscious. She could barely go herself. She drug herself out of that house to get out into the fresh air.  A neighbor was in his house.  You had to stand guard over your house because there were looters, You hope there wouldn’t be, but there is.  She got him awake and they went over to the house an drug those two girls out.  They came within an inch of their life of dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.  She had a son named Gerald.  Talk about strange, after Vietnam, JPG started Reductions in Force and he bumped his own mother out of a job. 

     I worked the Deer Hunt.  It was on a Saturday, I always worked the North hunt. You had to leave the front at 4:00am.  You would take a person with you and lay out all the forms and what have you, get it all laid out and you could start checking them in. and getting them all assigned to their areas. And then we had a guy we put out at Gate 8, because we would let people in from the East side and they wouldn’t have to come in from the front. 

     You had to leave a t 4:00 am to get all this work done.  Well this woman, that I am talking about was supposed to be up there. She did not show up and I finally had to go on without her.  The guy was at gate 8 to do that for me, so I went on to old Timbers by myself.  I called over there at Gate 8 and I told the man there that I am by myself. Here what I want you to do.  Whoever is standing at Gate 8, send them in two or three of them and they are going to work for me or they are not going to hunt.  So he did.  I had these tables set up and we had to get slips signed for liability.  We had an area for the maps. I had them lined up at the table to help me.  Then we let all the hunters through and we got them registered.  We gave them a briefing film. I had to wrap up my papers and give them to the person that took my place. I turned my stuff into security and went home. 

     Sunday afternoon the phone rang, there was this lady.  She said Bob what am I going to do.  The way the rule was if you worked on the deer hunt you were supposed to take off one of the work days in the week before and you would get compensated for working the weekend there.  She had already had her day off.  She said, “Sunday I had company.”  “Saturday, I had all this work to be done.”    “I had house-work.” I had to go to the grocery store.  I spent all day working on it.  I got up this morning and the people came, they had their meal and they were gone and I sat down in my chair to relax. 

     It was like a bomb went off in her head, She realized that she was supposed to be out there Saturday at 4o’clock in the morning at the proving ground. She said I am so sorry.  I said, “it worked out fine.  There was no problem.”  She said Yeah, but what am I going to do. I have already taken a day off.  Bob Said just you and I know that don’t we.  She said Yeah.  I said end of the story.  Well she retired.  The very first morning after she retired she was going to sleep in.  I got up at 4 o’clock, I called her.  I said where are you?  I am standing out here waiting for you to go up north to do that deer hunt and I am waiting on you because you haven’t showed up.  She said Bob, “I am going to kill you”.  She said, “but, I deserve it”.  Wake me up on my very first morning to get me to come out there.   She finally went to Florida and eventually died there.  She would come back to Madison from time to time and we would rehash this story.