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<br /> <br />VIII <br /> <br />STATEMENT <br /> <br />been responsible for constructing the two largest dams of the Colorado River <br />storage project. The jobs are lltting climaxes to their work with the Bureau. <br />"We regret to see th~m go but they have served full 30~year careers together and <br />it is fitting that they bow out together. They were together as students at the <br />University of New .Mexico; they both started with Reclamation as assistant <br />engineers in the early thirties; they both served as company commanders during <br />World War II in the South Pacific; and they hath climbed the ladder to top <br />construction jobs at ,the same time," <br />HOne consolation; II Commissioner Dominy continued, lIis that Jim Seery <br />didn't get the retirement bug along with his two friends." <br />Seery, who was construction management engineer at the Navajo unit before <br />g9ing to the Curecanti unit went through engineering school at the University of <br />New Mexico with Wylie and Walton, was also a combat engineer in the South <br />Pacific during World War II, and just as they did, he climbed in the Bureau of <br />Reclamation from ap- assistant engineer in the early thirty's to his present major <br />assignment. Among their fellow engineers the trio had been dubbed Hthe three <br />musketeers of the Colorado River storage project." <br />Wylie, a native of Jenny Lind, Ark., has been construction engineer at Glen <br />Canyon Dam since ;construction started in the summer of 1956. Glen Canyon <br />Dam, largest of the CRSP dams and a close rival in size to the world-famous <br />Hoover Dam on the lower Colorado, was topped out September 13,1963, and only <br />minor structural w\Jfk remains before tho giant structure is officially labeled <br />IIcompleted." Glen, Canyon powerplant, begun by Mr. Wylie, will have a genera- <br />ting capacity of 900,000 kilowatts when construction is completed and all genera- <br />tors are installed. In addition to his engineering duties, Wylie was responsible for <br />establishing and map.aging the now~thriving construction city of Page, which had <br />to be carved out of the isolated and inhospitable desert country of northern <br />Arizona, near the U~ah border. <br />Walton, who initi~ted construction of Flaming Gorge Dam and power plant in <br />northern Utah at al;most the same time that work began on Glen Canyon Dam, <br />leaves his assignment with the construction work virtually completed. The dam <br />was topped out in November 1962, and initial power from Flaming Gorge power- <br />plant, the first power to be generated by the Colorado River storage project, <br />went on the line in :t;lovember 1963. Just as Wylie had done in northern Arizona, <br />Walton was responsible for establishing a construction town-Dutch John-in the <br />isolated, mountainous terrain of northern Utah. <br />