Oscar C. Boldt ... in his own words
Spring 2006

I can remember when I started, I remember saying to myself,
"I'm going to make it honestly, or I'm not going to even try."

I think I was 4 years old, maybe 5, 
and we were building a canning factory on the edge of Appleton, 
and it was muddy, and they took me out, sat me on a post, 
and they went around the site, and that was my first exposure to construction. 
Of course, I always wanted to be in construction because,
perhaps my hero has always been my grandfather, who was in construction. 
And he taught me a lot of stuff, and made me think that that was the place to go.

I started in Madison in 1942, and went in service in '43 in my freshman year, 
and at that point we certainly weren't winning the war yet, 
and patriotism was very, very strong.
Everybody wanted to go in the service, and most everybody got there.

The day I met our crew, which was in Tucson, Arizona, 
they had been flying together for about 3 weeks or so, 
and they brought us around on a truck and dropped one navigator off at each airplane.
We took off in the airplane; I'd never been in a V24 before,
and I promptly threw up all over the nose wheel, 
so they weren't sure in the beginning, that I was the navigator for 'em.
But we got past that, and by the end of the war, they thought they'd keep me.

It was extremely difficult to transition back to school in Madison.
Part of that was that I was in a hurry, and I was taking too many courses,
but also I wasn't quite reconditioned enough from the war to go that fast,
and so it took a while.

There was only one course that I thought I knew more than the instructor,
and I should have chosen a better way to express my knowledge, 
'cause I ended up with a D in that course.

In those days, I couldn't find a date; I had to have help in getting a date,
and some of my friends were going to school at Lawrence [University] 
and so they got me a date; it was a blind date.
Actually, the goirl that I was going with got sick, and Pat filled in,
so it's been a wonderful life ever since.
She's a good observer when I'm over the centerline 
and need to be brought back and she certainly has increased my horizons immeasurably.
It's amazing what you can learn from a liberal arts graduate [tongue in cheek].

I always thought that maybe we might eventually succeed in construction.
And it was tough going, through the Depression and in the years after.
It really took a long time before we ever took off at all.

What I love about construction, I think, 
is that for the most part it's the building's never been built before, 
and certainly you don't know the conditions under which it would be built,
what the costs should be, 
who the people are that you're going to work with, who the subcontractors might be,
all of that, and there's a kind of a creative chaos in it,
and I've always loved trying to solve problems. 
That doesn't say I've solved 'em all, 
but there's something about construction that is unpredictable.
And I really love that environment where every day I wake up,
I go to work, and no two are the same.

I think the Performing Arts Center in Appleton 
was one of the most rewarding challenges for us.
It was a project that cost about $50 million and probably should have cost $70 million.
And everybody comes and can't believe we built it at that price.
And to build it in the length of time we did, 
nobody's ever done that before, nobody will ever do it again.
That's kind of satisfying.

I think that Oklahoma City is a very good example of the kind of 
company that over the years I was trying to create.
When the bombing occurred in '99, Jerry Ennis called the fire department,
I believe it was, and asked whether they needed any help.
We didn't know what had happened, 
and they told him bring everything we had as quickly as we could.
and we ended up with 100 people at the site.
We were among the first to respond.
and we directed many of the other 400 people that were on the site.
We really, I think, played the pivotal role there.
We got cited by the President, we got in the New York Times, 
if that's any distinction for anybody and we felt good about what we had done.

I think the thing that gives me the greatest pleasure 
is to describe an aspiration, an idea, a pursuit, to employees, 
and to find that they sign on to that effort, and that jointly, then, 
you produce something that we've never done before, or, in some cases, 
nobody's ever done before.
And we've had some wonderful growth in people, 
some of 'em we get from this university in Madison, 
and to see them take off and succeed on their own is a wonderful feeling, 
with a little instruction, from time to time.
But we also have people, some of 'em never saw the inside of a high school,
and they have been some of the best people we have.
People are what you should value, and relationships, 
and this business of honesty, integrity, hard work, 
love of construction -- that's our motto, 
that's what we try to get hired on the basis of, and it's what we try to deliver.


Date created: Monday,  20-Jul-2006 11:30:00 CST
Date last modified: Monday, 20-Jul-2006 11:30:00 CST
Copyright 2006 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System