Ivan Waggoner

The following came in via e-mail and was entitled "The Passing of a Comrade"......

"The following doesn't relate directly to a member of our group, but there is a tenuous tie to the ADA school at Fort Bliss in the general period that I was in the missile school. My friend and colleague, Ivan Waggoner was at Fort Bliss, attending Nike Hercules classes as part of a team of West Point Cadets as part of their training program.

I first met Ivan nearly 30 years ago when I joined the ranks of my companies staff at Carollo engineers. Ivan had joined just a year later, and was the lead structural engineer for our Northern California office. Ivan had spent twelve years in the army, in Germany and two tours of duty in Vietnam flying both rotary wing and fixed wing aircraft.

He left the army as a major to pursue an engineering career with an environmental engineering firm. When I first met Ivan, I could tell that he had been and officer and was a gentleman of a very high caliber. He was one of the most calm and stable persons under the stress of design and construction fire that I have ever met. He was diligent in resolving both design and construction problems with fairness and honesty that gives credit to the training and background that he received at West Point.

I had the pleasure of working with him on large design and construction projects in the states of Oregon, California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona. On a project Ivan was a team player with creative solutions and a proactive attitude.

I had the pleasure of working with Ivan and socializing with both Ivan and his wife Linda for a two year tour in the Las Vegas, Nevada, building a 3.5 mile tunnel through a rock mountain, several miles of large diameter steel pipelines, major water treatment improvements at an existing plant on the shore Lake Mead, and design and construction of the largest Ozone Treatment facility (600 million gallons per day) in the United States of America.

Away from work, Ivan was an individual who enjoyed life with friends and his family. Sailing boats was one of his passions in life. Ivan lost the battle with brain cancer early this month after nearly a year of chemotherapy, radiation treatments and surgeries. Ivan was working on one of our projects in the San Diego area, awaiting his time to retire and sail around the world with his wife Linda and perhaps a friend or two as crew.

This note is a bit of a catharsis for me to write this account. I only hope that I am not being too much of a bore.

Regards,

Walter (Chuck) Lapsley"