CHAPTER 4 - ALTUS CONCLUDES

 I had become tied to my desk.  The amount of paper-review was
enormous. Daily reports came in from each Safety Technician.
Medical sent us reports on any injury regardless of severity. We
received copies of the weekly and monthly reports from every other
off-site facility. Material came from home office daily.  

 Work had become my only activity. A day of work was finished with
movement by us all to the base Officer's Club. Altus was a very
small town and the Officer's Club became our regular hangout. We
drank and talked shop.

 One afternoon my secretary made a suggestion. Her husband was
forming a semi-professional football league Oklahoma. He would
coach the Altus team. It would travel around the state but only
have an overnight on weekends. Sally recalled my mentioning how
much I loved playing football. She thought it would just be a
great idea if I joined the team.

 I was very tempted. At twenty two I was sure I would never play
again. Now here, unexpectedly, was another chance to play the
game. I reported for practice. It took a while to get in shape but
I was having a lot more fun than hanging out at the Officer's
Club. There were two things I had not taken into consideration.  

 One was the level of competition. Oklahoma had some of the best    
" has beens" in the country. Oklahoma had supplied the Sooners,
A&M, Rice University and colleges all over the USA with some of
it's finest players.  

 Two, I had not taken my bosse's reaction in to consideration.
Nolan was beside himself. It made him very unhappy having his
"Safety Man" playing tackle football before the entire Atlas
organization and community of Altus, Oklahoma. He thought it set a
bad example for safety.

 I played that season as a tackle for the Oklahoma Yellow Jackets.
They were quite a bunch of "part time" football players. These
people were bigger, stronger, and tougher than anything I had seen
before, on a football field. I saw many of them remove their false
teeth before each game. Our fullback played for the Chicago Bears
in his prime. The other tackle was "All American" from Rice
University. The quarterback played for the Sooners. The
competition was equally qualified. We won our share of games.
There were days when I went to work looking like one of the
accidents I was trying to prevent. But I was having a very good
time. 

 The Annual Safety Engineers conference was scheduled and I was
selected to be a keynote speaker. Altus was one of the first of
the F-series silo bases and Jack Garrison felt my input would be
helpful to the newer sites. I prepared my speech on "co-occupancy
with the Corp of Engineers" After my experience with Corp I felt
that would amuse my fellow Safety Engineers.  They were also
experiencing their share of problems with the Corp.

 I climbed on a plane, and flew to Santa Maria, Ca. to spend one
day with my sister Louise before flying down to San Diego. My
young nephew Nick had a new skate board. I had never been on a
skateboard. It looked interesting. 

 The next day I flew down to San Diego and presented my safety
speech. I turned the pages slowly with my left arm.  My right arm
was in a cast to the shoulder. My boss enjoyed the cast more than
the speech.  He said explaining me, as a Safety Engineer, to
others was becoming quite an exercise in futility.

 A USAF Safety Officer, Major Downs was assigned as liaison between
Astronautics and Air Force. Most of his enquiries were directed to
me. Major Downs and I got along great. His only shock came after
working with me for almost a year, he asked me how old I was. When
I responded that I was 23 he looked shocked. He had assumed he was
working with some experienced hand in his thirties. That was a
nice compliment about my work and a lousy crack about my looks.

 The paper flow out of my office was equally formidable. I collated
every possible hazard from other bases along with engineering
studies, and NASA bulletins into a weekly bulletin to the Site
Chiefs. We found that the safety documents for off-site operations
were coming from so many sources a Site Chief could become very
frustrated trying to acquire the information and follow the
guidelines. 

 We spent many office hours collating every source document into
one manual. Then we reduced the size down to a pocket book, and
titled it The Safety Advisor. We had it distributed throughout the
base. The Safety Advisor contained the sections for SOPS (standard
operating procedures), TOPS (temp.ops) , BOPS base ops), SRs
(safety regulations), and so forth. For the first time a site
supervisor preparing to perform any procedure could pull out his
manual and see everything there was on that item. It was very well
received. We sent a few to home office expecting that they would
like to reproduce it for the other sites but heard nothing back.

 I found myself losing all personal touch with the sites.
Everything I knew about the silo progress was coming in from my
safety Techs. They had become experts in the field and I truly
trusted their observations.  When they asked me to come down on
their behalf in an on site safety dispute, they got what they
asked for and a bit more. 

 Safety was frequently a disputed issue. The Astronautics mission
was to install this system quickly and effectively and get it
turned over to USAF. National Defence and all that. I kept
promising myself to put the papers aside and spend a week in the 
field. It never seemed to happen. The bottom line was things
seemed to be going well. We were moving into the second and final
year at Altus with no major events. 

 I assigned one of my Safety Technicians, Pat Robinson to learn the
use of emergency rescue equipment for on-site use. He spent days
with our Mine Safety Appliance and Scott Air sales reps. He was an
extremely bright and quick young man only four years older than
me. He also proved to be an excellent instructor and that is a
rare talent. We put on a one day class in how to use the emergency
equipment to get out of a silo. We offered it to every new hire
including all the subcontractor personnel. Then I asked Pat to
make a circuit of all the silos and teach a five man crew how to
rescue people in a silo emergency. 

 We wrote a plan whereby the Stand-talker (stationed at the exit
tunnel from the silo) would keep a record of every man entering
and leaving the silo and what level he was working on. We
stationed all these new, expensive rescue devices in a big locker
just inside the tunnel, behind the blast doors. I bought horns for
every site, to be mounted next to the stand talker. He could
activate the horn to evacuate the silo. God at twenty three, how I
loved to devise these plans and spend money on gadgets. 

 Some site-managers were reluctant. Once more Safety was diverting
man-hours from production. I heard frequently," Hell, man, we
aren't going to be staying here for twenty years." But I was
having a good time and we were going to do it right at Altus. My
performance reviews had been excellent, I had my boss on my side
and I had just been reclassified from Safety Engineer to 
Safety Supervisor.  I was now a RED BADGE.

 Safety Engineers had been candy stripes  meaning they wore a red
and white striped badge and were staff advisors not supervisors.
An all red badge meant supervisor. Therefore officially, until
then, the Safety Technicians officially worked for my boss, not
me. In reality my boss seldom even saw them. 

 My best friend and counterpart Bill Whitmer was Security
Supervisor or Security Officer.  Bill was a Red Badge. How I
envied his supervisor status. He enjoyed reminding me of that
little difference in our position frequently.

 The chief of Industrial Relations pinned on my red badge and took
me to all the dept. heads. He enjoyed reintroducing me as his new
Safety Supervisor. At twenty three did I ever enjoy that day. A
small ego was not one of my problems.

 While that was going on I was having my third big battle with 
Operations Management. Pat Robinson had learned of a defective
high pressure hydraulic valve installed at every site. Site
Management was aware but felt it was a low priority threat. Pat
felt it was extremely hazardous. Remembering Don Morgan's backing
for me in Cheyenne, I threw in my full support for Pat. He
obtained all the documents, went around asking all the questions,
and came to the conclusion that we should shut down the system. 
Since this valve affected hydraulics throughout the silo, that
shut down the silo.