Getting Hired at the Bureau of Public Roads – Part II 

Compiled from Individual interviews, Winter 2008 

The Federal Highway Administration training program has evolved through the years. 

In this second look at “getting hired,” retirees recall their training program experiences 

in Federal Lands, Federal Aid, and Headquarters offices and their views on trainees and 

the training program. 

For the Vancouver office of the Direct Federal program (now Federal Lands 

Highways), retirees recalled that personnel and hiring matters were largely taken care of 

by the Region 10 Office in Portland throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s. Direct hires such 

as Vern Ford and John Bucholtz remembered being sent to Portland to do their 

paperwork. 

The north side of the materials wing, 1965. WFLHD Archives 

The Region Office also hired recent college graduates for the training program, 

and sent trainees to their assignments on Direct Federal projects. Lyle Renz was hired 

into the training program in Boise, Idaho, in 1962, and was soon sent to work on the 

Cascade Warm Lakes Highway. “We were doing the initial staking and construction,” he 

said, as well as grading on that forest highway. “I was doing survey and construction 

inspection.” 

Trainees were often given a lot of responsibility on their jobs. Lyle recalled that 

he had a supervisory role “on the old Warren Wagon Road, which is north of McCall. It 

was just a slide correction project,” he said, “but I acted as Assistant Project Engineer 

under Gordon Mead who was the Project Engineer.” Similarly, Willis Grafe said he 

“was given one of the very first undergraduate assignments to the junior engineering 

program.” He was still a junior in college when he was sent up to the White Pass 

Highway to serve as Project Engineer. 

Lyle spent another construction season in Idaho in 1963. “We were doing 

projects on the south fork of the Clearwater...paving and surveying for the next project,” 

he said, “and I was a paving inspector. Then I went up to work on U.S. 12, up towards 

Lolo Pass, along the Locksaw River, and I was a paving inspector up there, as well. We 

lived in Grangeville for those assignments that summer.” 

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Although trainees are often hired after graduation, many spent some time at the 

Bureau of Public Roads during their college years. Fred Rogers came to work at the
BPR headquarters office in December 1957, working 32 hours a week while finishing his 

last college course. “I happened to get a job in a bituminous lab there,” he said. At that 

time the BPR labs were located adjacent to what was then called National Airport. 

After graduation, Fred signed up for the training program, and as others have 

reported, found that BPR moved people right into their assignments. “I graduated 

Saturday and was on a plane on Monday” to the Georgia Division Office. He spent a 

year there and “six months or so on the Baltimore Transportation Study.” 

It was on the Transportation Study that Fred learned how easy it is to get lost in 

the system. “I was assigned to a consultant, ... (and) I didn’t get a paycheck. What 

happened was, it ended up in the dead letter office, because they didn’t know where I 

was. The record was lost or something. It was finally straightened out, of course.” 

At the time, there were government rules against married couples being employed 

in the same agency, but his wife was able to find a job at the Forest Service in 

Washington, D.C. 

Not everyone who begins the training program completes it, but Jim Hall made 

sure that he got the benefit of the full program before taking a permanent assignment. 

“When I was in the training program,” he said, “the D.C. Division asked me to come 

there to be an area engineer.” They wanted him immediately, and urged him to drop out 

and take the assignment. “I said ‘No, I want to finish the training program,’” and he did. 

Under the usual procedure, graduates were allowed to apply to offices where they most 

wanted to work, and he said the others in the program all got one of their top three 

choices. “I applied to several places,” he said, but “I specifically didn’t apply to D.C. 

because I knew they wanted me. They sent me there anyway....Out of 60 people, I was 

the only one who didn’t get any one of my choices.” 

Jim also spent some time as a trainee in the Region 10 Office. He remembered 

going along on a hydraulics review in 1964 with Herb Gregory and Gene Fiala: “I 

came over with them and they made their analysis of this office and how it did hydraulics 

design.” At the time, the office had no hydraulics engineer. “I listened, and everything 

sounded right,” he said, but when they got back into the car, Herb Gregory had another 

view. “He says, ‘that’s the damnedest hydraulics office I ever saw. They send the 

hydraulics guy out and he guesses how big the pipes ought to be. Then the design 

engineer goes out and he guesses how big the pipe ought to be, and whoever gets the 

biggest pipe wins.’” 

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That review made an impression on 

the 25-year-old engineer. Jim said that 

when he returned fourteen years later as 

Division Engineer, “I had an idea that one 

area I wanted to improve was hydraulics. 

When I got here...we immediately hired a 

hydraulics engineer....Up until that time, 

through the whole history of this program, 

they never had a hydraulics engineer.” 

 During their training program 

assignments, trainees’ performances are 

closely monitored. Ray Westby recalled 

that he was asked to keep tabs on one 

A current view of Hurricane Ridge near Ray 

Westby’s Heart of the Hills project of 1956-59. 

WFLHD Archives, 25th Anniversary Galleries. 
Young man who came to his job in the Heart of the Hills. It was the first time he’d ever 

gotten a letter ahead of someone’s arrival. “They sent a fellow up there and they sent me 

a letter, and they told me I was to report on him every two weeks. Apparently 

somewhere along the line he got into it with somebody.” Ray said he never had a 

problem with that employee. “He was fine....I think probably he had a personality 

conflict with somebody and they...wrote him up.” 

Ray was not a graduate of the training program himself, but he had a lot of respect 

for it. “A lot of the...older residents...didn’t want anything to do with them,” he said, 

but viewed the participants in the “Junior Highway Engineer program....(as) kind of a 

thorn in their sides.” Ray was not much older than some of the trainees himself, 

however: “I’d say to myself, ‘You’d better be careful, because they may be the boss one 

of these days.’” He made it a point to mentor the people who came to him. “So I got 

along pretty good, and consequently I had quite a few junior engineers working for me.” 

In many cases, some of those trainees did “turn out to be the boss.” One that he 

recalled was Dick Cowdery – who retired as Division Administrator in Idaho – who 

worked for him on the Smith River project. 

 Willis Grafe also found that the 

trainees on his projects often moved up 

quickly. “Keith Koehler, who later 

became chief of computer stuff in the D.C. 

office – he was a classmate of mine” in the 

junior highway engineer program, he said. 

He also remembered that a future Division 

Engineer, “John Mors....came to me first 

as a Junior Engineer on the Umpqua, right 

out of school.” 

 Although it was the Region Office 

that made the decision of which projects 

would get trainees for their 3-4 month 

A recent view of Mott Bridge on the Umpqua River. 

WFLHD Archives. 

assignments, Ray Westby always felt it was a worthwhile program and the participants 

were of high quality. “I think I had one on every job I was on.... I never had one that I 

felt wasn’t going anyplace. Every one I ever had, I was real impressed with.” 

After completing the training program, Lyle Renz worked on Direct Federal 

projects in Oregon until 1971 when he moved over to Federal-aid work in that office. 

Willis Grafe remained in Direct Federal work after the training program, then moved to 

Oregon Division in 1957. After Fred Rogers completed the training program, he was 

assigned to a project in Libby, Montana, spending the rest of his career working out of 

the Vancouver Federal Lands office. Jim Hall had moved up to head of the Direct 

Federal office in headquarters before coming out to Vancouver as Division Engineer. 

Ray Westby remained in Direct Federal work until 1959, moved to the Federal-aid office 

in Olympia, and returned to Vancouver ten years later as Chief of Design. 

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If you have comments on this story or have other stories to share, please email me 

at marili.reilly@fhwa.dot.gov.