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OCR for page 183
PERCY HAROLD McGAUHEY
1904-1975
BY VINTON W. BACON
P. H. (MACK) McGAUHEY, who died on October 8, 1975, was
intimately known and deeply respected by professional engineers,
educators, and governmental officials in the State of California
and throughout the nation and world. His name was synonymous
with sanitary engineering and water resources. There were few
people facing perplexing, practical engineering problems who did
not seek his help.
Professor McGauhey was born on a homestead ranch on January
20, 1904, in Ritter, Oregon. The harshness of the eastern Oregon
lands is reflected in his philosophy of life and in his verses, many of
which appear in Rimrock Ranch and Other Verses and in Oral History
of the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory, published by the
Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
Before getting to the real man and human being, let us look at
his outstanding professional record, which was recognized by elec-
tion to the National Academy of Engineering in 1973. In 1927 he
received a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from
Oregon State University; a Civil Engineering degree in 1929 from
Virginia Polytechnic Institute; and a Master of Science degree in
hydraulic and sanitary engineering from the University of Wiscon-
sin, Madison, in 1941. Utah State University honored him with a
Doctor of Science honorary degree in 1971.
He served in faculty posts at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, at the
University of Southern California and at the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley, the last beginning in 1952. In 1957 he was
appointed Director of the Sanitary Engineering Research Labora-
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tory, Professor of Civil Engineering, and Professor of Public
Health. In addition, he was appointed to the chairmanship of the
Department of Civil Engineering.
It was in the latter capacity that he molded and led what has
become one of the most respected sanitary engineering labora-
tories in the world. Professor McGauhey conducted pioneering
investigations on a wide variety of subjects that included the com-
posting and management of solid wastes, the economic evaluation
of water, the treatment of waste by septic tanks and percolation
fields, the eutrophication of natural waters, the fate of detergents
in sewage treatment, and the use of the soil mantle as a waste
management and water reclamation system. In each of these areas,
Professor McGauhey became a world expert. What was so amazing,
besides the diversity and excellence of his research, was his ability
to bring his spirit of eternal optimism and his manner of meaning-
ful compromise into the organization of his research, into the
organization of the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory,
and into the academic programs in civil engineering and public
health. These qualities are reflected in the type of research that he
undertook- he had the ability to hold together interdisciplinary
research groups with the knack of allowing each investigator to
contribute both toward the mutual objective of the group and
toward fulfilling his own individual satisfactions.
He retired as Director of the Laboratory in 1969, but he was soon
recalled by the Chancellor of the Berkeley campus to conduct a
study of the role of the University in environmental studies.
In addition to the honors mentioned above, he received the
Fuller Award of the American Water Works Association ~ 1950), the
Harrison Prescott Eddy Medal of the Water Pollution Control
Federation (1960), the Distinguished Service Award of the Na-
tional Clay Pipe Institute (1964), the Service Award of the Califor-
nia Water Pollution Control Board (1964), and the Gordon M. Fair
Medal of the Water Pollution Control Federation (19691.
He served as a consultant for the State of California on the Lake
Tahoe water management problems, HEW, AID, Israel, the Ford
Foundation, and many others. One of his last significant contribu-
tions was as chairman of a three-person board of consultants that
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developed a Wisconsin Statewide Solid Waste Recycling Program,
which resulted in the legislature creating an authority empowered
to design and overate recvclin~ systems the first of its tvue in the
nation.
Cal 1 ~ ~ J
J 1
But such creative achievements are expected of someone elected
to NAE. Virginians, Californians, and admirers around the world
will always remember the warm, humble, helpful, philosophical,
and poetic man.
First and last, he was an educator. He had unique and old-
fashioned views as to what an educator should be. Undoubtedly,
these were formed by his early bleak schooldays in a one-room
schoolhouse in eastern Oregon and by the fact he had to work his
way through grade school, high school, and college. Such experi-
ences would harden in philosophy even the softest of dispositions.
His verse "Schoolhouse" expresses his ideas on the real purpose
and meaning of education:
Schoolhouse
Its blackboard showed the sentence parsed—
Though feebly understood
And random truths there shone a while,
Then disappeared for good.
Yet stubborn minds perforce must yield
Beyond its battered door.
We went in poor and ignorant-
And came out only poor.
Adversity being the creator of character, Professor McGauhey
had more than his share. Just when he was about to complete his
doctorate, he contracted tuberculosis. He spent two years in a
sanatorium and another year recuperating from surgery. From his
verse "Sanatorium," a glimpse of this time emerges:
Sanatorium
Ink armary
Like patient oxen in their stalls
We lie benumbed of flesh and brain;
Each crack, each smear upon the walls,
Becomes the pattern of our pain.
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Horizons
Slowly the restful arc where earth
Meets patterned skies we knew so well;
The far horizons of' the mind
Are squared and shrunk to tit this cell.
Evening In Summer
There is a hungriness that grips the heart
When the last oblique rays of' the dying sun
Shatter like hopes against these ageless hills
That wall us ol'l'l'rom lit'e.
I see you there alone yet cannot come
To share your solitude
When lengthening shadows of' the evening grow—
Suddenly to a blackness that is night;
Bearing on its restless wings
The hot damp cloak of' loneliness.
Education to him was the task of instilling useful and well-
structured knowledge into recipients who were expected to work
hard and doing this without unnecessary interference or ballyhoo
from administrators. He had little time for professors who taught
at 8:10 a.m. what came into their heads at 7:55 a.m.; nor did he
have much sympathy for the professional student who spent too
many years getting too few degrees. In his unpublished novel, aptly
entitled "Phooey on Your Alma Mater," you can find these at-
titudes precisely stated:
Sound advice and high purpose have not always been the considerations by
which our institutions of' higher learning are populated. A good long loaf'
at the old man's expense has always stood high among the reasons for
congregating within ivy-covered walls. Nor, has improvement in headwork
always been the end result of' the learning process in such an environment.
A couple of' generations ago, some colleges were so succ:essl'ul in co:~vert-
ing their loat'ers into sots that many parents were thankful that poverty
protected their sons from the moral strain of' a college education.
On the "free-thinker" professor he states:
Much of' a University catalog is given over to a list of' subjects along with
descriptions indicating that the whole {held of' human knowledge is to be
covered by Professor Van Beer in three hours per week for one semester.
186
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By this subterfuge the grouchy old professor can teach anything he pleases
without fear that the accrediting committee will compare his course
unfavorably with the same course at Harvard.
He gave equally short shrift to the elitist academician who felt that
the dispensation of knowledge and the conduct of esoteric scholarly
research had to be divorced from any semblance of everyday hard
work. In his Oral History of the Sanitary Engineering Research Labora-
tory, he notes that the Richmond Field Station is some seven miles
northwest of the Berkeley campus and remarks:
Reluctance of' some faculty members to undertake such a long journey
(from campus) was one of the problems of' utilizing the (Field Station). I
once explained this phenomenon on the rationale that the (Field Station)
was located on the wrong side of the Campus. Thus it was not on the way to
Europe and hence (was) geographically inconvenient.
His feelings on the unreasonable world of academe were summed
up, during the so-called Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, on a
scrap of paper found in his desk drawer:
There is nothing so crude, lewd, or treasonable that the sub-species of
apes, it tolerates as students, will not attempt to force upon the community.
There is nothing so preposterous, unbecoming an academic community or
even common civilization, that its faculty will not, in its childlike naivete,
espouse in the name of Academic Freedom. There is nothing so craven or
absurd that its administration will not embrace when the enemies of society
and America have at the gates of Sproul Hall. There is no demand so
preposterous, that it will not be tolerated while faculty and students
ponder how to remove the cause of this blatant attack on society.
Mack said he was one person who "gave up church for Lent and
never went back"; and when he became Emeritus he would let you
know that he had just been "retarded from the University." His
poetry conveys his wit and "pure fun" humor:
Advice Is Worth Its Salt
I sought a friend (advice to borrow).
He said, "Go home and drown your sorrow!"
I felt so bad I shed a tear-
And found the salt improved my beer.
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La Cucurac:ha
~ picked up my glass and went t'or a drink
There was something in it and he jumped in the sink.
He got clean away~ause he saw me first.
Strange how a cockroach can quench one's thirst!
Professor McGauhey's poetry showed all his moods. There are
things in these lines that you rarely heard him say. The barely
endurable pain that he must have suffered almost constantly
throughout his life only seeps through to the outside world in his
verses.
Dichotomy
Though 'gult'ed in weariness by day
That makes him long t'or bed
A man may come to dread the night-
When night holds things to dread.
Mack was a true example of the type of individual here now
being paid homage: a descendent of pioneer Americans who took
the promise of the American dream literally and who achieved it
through the application of strenuous physical labor to a lifelong
quest for education and excellence. In Rimrock he wrote his
epitaph:
He did not lose his zest t'or lit'e
Nor judge the race not worth the run.
But he would have judged his duty shirked
It' he tailed to do what must be drone.
Throughout his life, Percy Harold McGauhey was sustained by a
loving and loveable wile called Margo.
188
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OCR for page 190
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
civil engineering
