Newsmakers and Friends

The magazine I used to work for (and still freelance for), Engineering News-Record (ENR), long considered the bible of the construction industry, has just released their annual list of The Top 25 Newsmakers. I am thrilled to report that one of them is "mine," one that I wrote the story on that made him eligible to be nominated for the honor.

Bob Nilsson is being cited for his admirable work with severely injured vets at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital. He (and Jim Todd, head of The Peterson Companies, a developer -- Bob always demands that the credit be shared) came up with the idea of a scholarship for deserving injured vets, most of them amputees, which would pay their expenses beyond what the government pays them while they finish or expand their education.

Bob and Jim have been raising money from their fellow Urban Land Institute Foundation governors, from Turner Construction, where Bob serves as a senior advisor, and from anyone they can corner who has $25 to spare. They have talked the ULI Foundation into letting them use it as a platform for the scholarship, so it's called the ULI Second Chance Scholarship. They have two recipients, both of whom, not coincidentally, plan to go into construction or real estate when they finish their studies. And they have more in the pipeline. But beyond that, Bob spends several days a week out at either Walter Reed or Bethesda basically helping the injured vets adjust to their new life, helping their families through the overwhelming and confusing bureaucracy, and pumping them up in general. There's nothing that gets him more excited than to get a call or a note from a vet a few months after his or her release from Walter Reed saying how well they're doing out in the world. Some of them are doing absolutely awesome things!

I've known Bob for somewhere around 17 or 18 years. I met him when he was president of Turner International. I liked him immediately. He was always the one with the brightest eyes and the sharpest mind in the room. He looked waaaaay ahead, was always a visionary. And he was a nice guy who gave a rip about people. He still is, obviously.

Bob helped me immeasureably when I went to Kuwait in the early 90s to report on the rebuilding after the first Gulf War. (Who knew then that it would be the first and not the only?!) He hooked me up with his guys over there, and they and the other contractors my various construction pals linked me up with absolutely made my trip possible, fruitful and a whole lotta fun! And Bob and I have kept in touch all these years ever since. He's been keeping me up to speed on his activities with the amputees for several years and I'm delighted and gratified that he's getting some of the recognition he deserves.

I absolutely consider Bob a friend. In fact, I consider all of the Newsmakers I've considered "mine" over the years to be friends, as well as "my" two winners of ENR's big annual award, the Award of Excellence. As a journalist, it's good to have objectivity, but, especially in the trade-magazine world, we go back to the same people, the top dogs in the industry, over and over and you kinda can't help but get to be friends with them when you've known them and talked to them frequently over 10, 15 or more years.

"My" first winner of ENR's top award was Terry Farley -- he prefers going by the name "Chip" -- who was president of Bechtel Construction, then a unit of Bechtel Corp., when they were charged with doing whatever it took to get the fires put out in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. Terry -- I still have a hard time calling him Chip -- calls me when he's in the neighborhood and he frequently sends me jokes via e-mail, some better than others. At the time, ENR's top award was called "Man of the Year" award, which was a very strong name that everybody in the industry knew.

When my second top award winner was named two years later, it was a woman, Ginger Evans. First woman to snag that award. She was honored for being responsible for getting the Denver International Airport (DIA) built. Getting the environmental and other approvals to even build it was the hardest part and she accomplished that. She also was the project manager for the city for the whole huge project. (We won't talk about how controversial the baggage system was at DIA and how long it delayed the airport's opening.) By the time she won the honor, it had been mandated from above at McGraw-Hill that we change the name from Man of the Year to something less sexist. So it became the namby-pamby "Award of Excellence." Well, what could they do? But Ginger wanted equal status with the Men of the Year, so we called her the "Woman of the Year" and the "Award of Excellence" winner. (That was a challenge for our art director.)

Ginger and I got to be friends after I followed her around for several days at the airport and we are to this day. I watched her three daughters grow up! I consider her one of my best industry friends. Post-DIA she went to CH2M Hill, Carter & Burgess and, as of this month, Parsons Corp., where she's a senior VP.

My two other Newsmaker-friends are both now-retired military guys, Generals, in fact: Ralph Locurcio and Pat Burns. I met Ralph in Kuwait -- he was in charge of the reconstruction for the Army Corps of Engineers. He was the most dynamic, personable and common-sense-oriented leaders I'd ever met. And he was beyond creative in his approach to getting things done. (Ask him how he got his guys into Kuwait in the first place!). He's now a professor at Florida Institute of Technology, and, true to form, he has brought innovation, this time in the form of a construction management degree program. I see Ralph mostly at ENR and SAME (Society of Military Engineers) events these days, and we always give each other great big hugs. Get a drink or two in him and get him talking about driving his sports car (Porsche, was it?) across the nation, and you'll be rolling on the floor.

Pat Burns was my most recent Newsmaker before Bob. Pat -- General Burns at the time -- was the chief engineer of the Air Force's largest command, Air Combat Command (ACC). He led a major-league turnaround of construction times, budgets and methods for ACC, some of which extended to the Corps and NAVFAC. When I wrote about him, everybody talked about how brilliant he was, and how competitive, both of which, combined with his high perceptivity and level of caring about people, made him good at what he did. Pat's passion for music -- he was lead guitar in the ACC band -- got me back into music too. I now have an 88-key electronic keyboard (which I don't play nearly often enough) and an iPod with nearly 2,000 songs on it. Pat is now a VP with Mortenson Construction and a frequently requested speaker all around the nation. Some egotistical retired military officers insist, even tacitly, that you still call them "General," but Pat, from the first moment he retired a couple of years ago, said, "Call me Pat."

My Newsmaker-friends are wonderful human beings. If I forgot anybody, I apologize. I'm writing this as I watch the Green Bay Packers whup the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL playoff games -- YAY! Love to see Brett Favre win! All of these guys -- Ginger's one of the guys too -- are inspirations to me, true mentors, and I feel privileged to call them friends.