Community Relations 119 



rich overnight out of this program. Then it got to the point where you couldn't 

 beUeve anybody or anything they said, and that program floundered. It even- 

 tually did get on its feet, and, as I say, today it seems to be a growing 

 development — not exactly as we hoped for and anticipated, but certainly I 

 think it still has a great deal of potential. 



Then other developments started up in the county. When we first got into it, 

 we could not induce any local interest from the governmental standpoint of the 

 county, and we had to work primarily with Richmond, basically with the federal 

 housing officials. I think I got to know almost everybody in the Federal Housing 

 Administration during that time. 



Obtaining proper facilities at Dahlgren has always been a problem. Have you been 

 involved in the various military construction dilemmas over the years'? 



1 have been involved in some. We have a much more sophisticated and better 

 qualified and better organized Public Works Department today than we've had 

 here before. Public Works is well staffed to take care of these problems, but I go 

 back to the days when we were trying to get the computer lab, and we had to 

 have the program approved by the Department of Defense. For some reason or 

 another when the appropriation bill came up in the House of Representatives, 

 certain elements in there said we had too many computer facilities that were 

 duplicating efforts throughout the nation, and they just wiped it out. It was 

 reported — I'll never forget this — it happened that particular morning, it was 

 Saturday, we were painting the interior of our house. 



I was living in Potomac Beach. Because the painters were there, everything 

 was a mess. My wife and I went down to the diner in Colonial Beach to eat 

 breakfast, and I grabbed the paper. I was sitting there waiting for my breakfast 

 when I looked and saw this article in the paper about our Laboratory having 

 been knocked out of the appropriation bill. That was the first information that I 

 had about it, so I immediately got on the phone and called Russ Lyddane. He 

 didn't know anything about it. I asked him if he could get Captain Sellars. * He 

 said, "Well, Captain Sellars is out on the golf course." I said, "Russ, I'll be back 

 home in about 20 minutes." Russ went out on the golf course and found 

 Captain Sellars, and just as I returned to the house, the phone rang. Captain 

 Sellars was in his office, and to say he was upset is putting it mildly. He had not 

 been informed of this action by anybody in Washington, and nobody knew 

 about it until I told them. It was just a little tiny article buried in the Richmond 

 Times Dispatch. So we went to work and that's why I contacted various officials 

 and told them what had happened and what it meant, and to make a long story 



*Captain Robert F. Sellars was Commanding Officer at Dahlgren from August 1961 until June 

 1964. 



