ALUMNI NEWS
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Congratulations to Oscar C. Boldt (BS ’48),
who received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
in May. Read about his achievements and watch the video, “Oscar
C. Boldt … in his own words,” at www.engr.wisc.edu/cee.
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 girl 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 asquickly
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."
