News Release
| Release Number: | 98-010 |
| Dated: | 2/2/1998 |
| Contact: | Heidi Y. Helwig, 503-808-4510 |
Portland, Ore. -- Three uniforms-an Army white, an Army green and a World War II Eisenhower jacket-hang loosely as if waiting for the man who wore them in peace and war. Nearby boxes of photographs, news clippings and honorary awards release the musty scent of memories.
The man is Jackson Graham. He worked his way through the Corps of Engineers ranks to Major General, and holds the distinction of designing and managing construction of Washington, D.C.'s 98-mile rapid rail transit system.
Graham's daughter, Dixie Johnston, donated the items to the Corps' Portland Office in December 1997. (They have since been shipped to the Corps' Headquarters office in Washington, D.C.) Some of the items include tickets to his junior prom and high school cotillion, an English report on Edgar Alan Poe, a passport, official photographs, structural engineering manuals, a number of military medals and a key to the city of Portland.
"You'll just have to ask me specific questions," Johnston said when asked if she would talk about her father's career. One question is all it took--she began recalling memory after memory without prompting.
The first question--Why give away all these items that once belonged to her father? "To clean out the basement," Johnston said with a touch of irreverent humor--a gift she said she learned from her mother.
"A tiny woman with sparkling eyes and flashes of gray in her upswept black hair" is how the Washington Post described Graham's wife and Johnston's mother, but the words describe Johnston to a T.
"My brother and I are very proud of what he [Graham] did," she said, sweeping her hair from her face, "but I can't see holding onto this stuff and letting it yellow. I thought maybe an Army museum could use it."
And perhaps that is what her father would have wanted. "My dad always felt like he was married to the Army, and my mom accepted that. She always said the Army is his first love."
Although many Corps employees never met the man, "he looks and acts like a man in command," accords a Jan. 19 Washington Post article. "He is over 6 feet tall, broad shouldered and trim waisted. He is square-jawed, dome-headed and tight-skinned. His right eyebrow turns upward in rather Mephistophelean fashion and his hair is so closely cropped that he looks bald.
"Graham's voice is deep and resonant and his words are few and well chosen. His eyes are hazel and his gaze steady, but there is an occasional slightly wicked twinkle that frequently precedes a full hearty laugh. He can turn on the charm and he is obviously skillful in dealing with people."
Graham's first love was a lasting love. "[He had] great respect for the way government was set up in the United States," Johnston said of her father. "He was so patriotic...the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address had a tremendous impact on him."
After 31 years of working for the Army, including serving as Portland District's commander from 1955 to 1958, he retired reluctantly as a major general and director of the civil works in February 1967. As the first recipient of the Starr-Edwards heart valve, he reportedly said he was ready for a rest.
"One of the things I think about as a retirement is to get up on that hill over The Dalles (one of his "babies") and look down at that dam I built," reads a quote from Graham in a Feb. 2, 1975 Oregonian article by Bill Keller. "If there is a Graham legend in the Northwest Corps district, though, it is not about the concrete-pouring he directed, but about his unorthodox way of doing business.
"Take the usually ho-hum chore of inspecting dredges," Keller wrote. "Standard operating procedure is this: Direct the dredge into quiet water, ride a launch to the dredge, inspect, and send the dredge back to work. A waste of working time, Graham declared.
"So, the colonel found himself a 'couple of lean and hungry chopper pilots.' On rounds, he would direct the helicopter pilot to swoop down over a dredge," Keller explained. "Then he would lower himself into the crows nest, inspect the dredge and hoist himself back into the hovering chopper."
"I just love it! We'd never think of such a dastardly unsafe thing as lowering someone from a helicopter," said Dave Beach, chief of the Channels and Harbors Project in Portland District who oversees the District's dredging mission.
On one of Graham's dredge inspection rounds, Graham watched the collision of the dredge Rossell and another ship, which left a gaping whole in the dredge. Graham and the helicopter crew fished 15 men from the ship before it sank.
His "rest" of retirement from the Corps and military lasted only 17 days. In 1967, he accepted the position as director of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro). A number of news clippings refer to Graham as the $4.5 billion man, the projected cost of completing Metro's subway system.
"We've got a real simple mission here," Graham was quoted as saying, "and that is to build a showpiece of public transportation in the nation's capital."
Much of what Graham did was of showcase appeal. "I didn't even know he had medals until after his death," Johnston said, but she recalls learning of his stature while on break from college. "I answered the phone and the woman on the other end of the line said the president was calling and was my father home. I thought, 'president of what?'"
Jacqueline Kennedy and her family had requested an eternal flame for John F. Kennedy's grave. "[President Lyndon] Johnson went to his top advisors who said the Corps of Engineers could do the work. They called the chief of the Corps, who knew my Dad's work. He spent at least two nights and three days designing the flame," she said.
Long before his military and civilian careers began, Graham had worked on projects that would become well known. As a teenager, he worked on the construction crew for his father's bridge building company, constructing the Golden Gate Bridge. He placed underwater explosives near the excavation sites for the bridge. He also helped build the St. Johns Bridge and the harbor wall in Portland.
In his article, Keller described the dauntless and deliberate characteristics of the boy who grew up to supervise a great number of people and projects:
"One summer day the teenager finished a shift on the construction crew of the new Golden Gate Bridge and climbed into his Model T. He turned the key and a kick of electricity knocked him to the ground. 'I knew right away that the guys in the crew had wired the ignition to the steel coils in the seat,' Graham recalls. 'But I got back into that car and did it again two more times just to break the guys up.'"
Graham died at the age of 69 on March 2, 1985, of an apparent heart attack.
Born June 27, 1915, in Mosier, Ore., he grew up in Portland. After earning an engineering degree from Oregon State University in 1936, he began his career with the Corps, which included serving as Deputy District Engineer, Los Angeles District, from 1949 to 1951. From 1951 to 1954, he served in Washington, D.C., as personnel director for the Corps. During his tenure at Portland District, from 1955 to 1958, his area of responsibility encompassed the lower Columbia River basin, western Oregon and southwestern Washington. The largest single project, carried to 92 percent completion during this period, was the $260-million The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River.
Graham was the Ohio River Division Engineer from 1961 to 1963 before he assumed the position of Director for Civil Works. He retired in 1967.
During World War II, he commanded several thousand combat engineer troops in Europe, and later a regiment of engineers in Korea. He also served in Brazil, the Philippines and Germany.