Finding Tim by Charlie

Finding Tim
A Fourth Alternate Reality

by: Charlie

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Episode 130

Collider

A while ago Charlie called me up and said, “Ronnie, we have to tell the story of the super collider, and you’re the only person to tell it. Start writing. Oh, by the way, I looked over the last episode you wrote, Episode 49–Threesome, and I notice that you did talk about your sexual history, but you didn’t tell us how you learned to masturbate. You’ll take care of that this time, won’t you?”

Sure, Charlie. The whole world’s waiting with bated breath to learn how a shy, virtually sexless little nerd learned to jack off. The answer is all too simple. I read it in a book. How else would a nerd learn to jack off? I read about it in a book at the library, went home and to my room and tried it, and guess what? It worked. I was relieved to know that I was normal. My plumbing was never tested in any other way until the Gang took over. With Sharon, Kyle and the Gang around, I don’t get to jack off very often any more.

One paragraph isn’t going to be sufficient to satisfy Charlie’s request that I tell about the super collider. That dominated my life for at least a decade.

When Sharon, Kyle and I had gotten back from the first Snowmass Conference (on high energy particle physics) in 1982 we had briefed Tim, Charlie, Fred and others on the conference. Our report included a summary of the beginning discussions about the possibility of the U.S. building a super collider which might very well be the world’s highest energy particle accelerator. It could turn out to be the tool needed to produce and identify a Higgs boson, a key particle which had been predicted in theory, but never produced.

As Charlie reported then, Fred convinced Kyle, Sharon and me, as well as Tim and Charlie that the university’s Institute for Advanced Physics should take the lead in seeking to have the super collider built in North Dakota. It was as improbable a quest as Jumper’s expecting to beat the University of Michigan Wolverines in football. The key to our success was in convincing Will Carleton to be the Project Manager from the beginning. Will had put together the IAP in order to bring Kyle, Sharon and me to North Dakota, and had shown both managerial talent as well as great scientific insight.

But the project went forward because Fred and Tim didn’t think outside of boxes, they didn’t even recognize the concept of a box to limit your thoughts. They were constantly popping with ideas, and Will turned out to be the perfect person to create reality from their ideas. The design team that Will put together for the IAP was in place and working hard before the federal government had made any kind of decision about going forward with the super collider. When the National Reference Design Study in 1983 suggested that the country go ahead with the project, the Department of Energy began a major review of the idea. When their Request for Proposal was published in 1984, the IAP had been working for two years. Every other competing institution was just starting.

And not only was the IAP way ahead of the design game, Tim, Fred, and the university’s Washington Office were already beginning the lobbying and politicking that would be required to get North Dakota selected. With the Request for Proposal came federal funding for the design process. The IAP was so far ahead of any other design team that it couldn’t be ignored, even though that was the inclination of many in the Department of Energy–guys who’d come out of the big universities like MIT, Stanford, and Cal Tech, and who assumed that one of those schools, or a region with tremendous political clout would be selected. But since the funding proposal that the IAP submitted was an order of magnitude better than any competing proposal, we simply could not be ignored.

Federal design money allowed us to greatly increase our design team and start developing a detailed proposal. Carl and Associates was contracted to coordinate the overall design as well as do the architectural design for the buildings that would be needed. The School of Engineering at NDSU was brought on board as engineering consultants, but the actually engineering design was contracted to a group from Vermillion, South Dakota. They were electrical engineers who were well connected to the University of South Dakota School of Engineering, and they had design experience with high energy power generation and electromagnets–exactly what would be needed for the super collider.

Fred insisted that the major players had to represent all of the states of the Northern Tier, because we were going to need their collective political clout if we were to stand any chance of being selected. Thus a mining consortium from Michigan’s UP was brought on board to plan the construction of the more than fifty miles of tunnel that the accelerator ring would require. There was a big hardware wholesale house in Ashland, Wisconsin, that had an outstanding reputation. They agreed to manage purchasing for the project. A landscape architecture firm in Moorhead, Minnesota, was recommended by Carl to do the landscape design, not a minor task when a ring with a circumference of over fifty miles was involved.

A real estate consortium from Bismarck was recruited to do site selection and purchase. We would need to have purchase options in place to assure that the land would be available, but we couldn’t actually purchase land unless and until we were selected and funds were provided.

If the super collider was to be built its major competitor would be CERN’s Large Electron–Positron Collider which was scheduled to open in 1989. It was a pan-European effort, and involved all of the top European particle physicists. I, along with my colleagues, thought that it was very important for the American effort to also be international, and we were anxious to draw in the Asian scientific community. To this end we involved the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, which is dedicated to Asian studies, and the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, which had the same interests. Though no longer in the Senate, Mansfield was probably the most important politician from the Northern Tier, and his, and his Foundation’s, interest in Asia, and Japan in particular, would be invaluable. We can thank Charlie for dreaming all that up! It would prove to be incredibly important to our efforts.

We put together a key planning team of nine people: Tim, Charlie, Fred, Kyle, Sharon, Will, Carl, Dirk, and me. It was sort of overloaded with the Gang, wasn’t it? Well, it wasn’t official; the formal planning team was twenty-six members–much too large to accomplish anything. Tim realized right away that this thing would go forward only as long as the right people stayed in control. That was the nine people of the informal team. The first issue we attacked was, “How detailed a proposal should we submit?” We were talking about that in 1983 before the government even knew it was going to build a super collider. Carl was insistent: as detailed as possible. He said, “If you look at other proposals the government has bought into you’ll find huge gaps in the design process, goofy estimates instead of careful costing, assumptions about engineering progress that are wildly optimistic, lowball labor estimates, and all kinds of silliness. That’s what leads to the huge cost overruns that are the hallmark of all government projects of this type. If Carl and Associates is going to be involved with this project we’re going to present a proposal that we’re confident can be brought in on time and under budget. Then we have to convince the Department of Energy that we really can bring it in on time and under budget.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

Carl continued: “OK, for starters, we’re about to embark on a huge design project. We don’t know the exact time frame, so it’s hard to talk about ‘on time,’ but we can talk about budget. The first job for this project team is to design the scope of the design process, and put time and dollar estimates on it. If we can bring in the proposal on time and under budget, it speaks to our being able to do the final job on time and under budget.”

In six months we had a design proposal all packaged. When the government announced that design funding was available, we were ready with our proposal. All we had to do was adjust timelines to conform to the now published government plans, and refine costs based on current prices, wage scales, and the effects of the revised timelines. Ronnie was right, when the final proposal was submitted, it was accompanied with the final report on our usage of the design grant. With it was our detailed budget and actual expenditures, and a check for the amount that we were under budget–$75,435.23!

Will and Carl quickly became the design leaders. Dirk, Carl’s number one architect, took responsibility for the building design, and Carl was responsible for the overall design submission. Will was an excellent manager, but Carl oversaw the details of the design process.

The first thing that the team did when the formal Request for Proposal was published by the Department of Energy was go over it with a fine toothed comb. It was ambiguous in far too many places, leaving open the possibility of design changes as the project went forward. We drove the Department of Energy crazy with lists of questions which were designed to nail down unanswered issues. We sent every such list of questions to all of the others that had received design funding from DOE. It quickly became clear that our most significant competition for the project was the Texas team that was located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area and headed by University of Texas scientists. The Texans’ repeated comments on our lists of questions to DOE were on the order of, “We’ll resolve those issues when we get to them.”

Carl insisted, “No, resolve them now or you’ll have serious time and cost overruns later.” He and others made numerous trips to Washington trying to make that point. We eventually got most of the questions answered, and those that weren’t answered we responded to in a clear prefatory statement which indicated how we believed each unanswered question should be answered. It went on to state that we had based our planning on the assumption that DOE would adopt our answers to the question, and warning that a decision different from that would necessitate change orders and an alteration of time and cost estimates.

Just how detailed was the proposal we developed and submitted? It was six cubic feet of paper–double that of our only serious competitor: Texas. It contained detailed architectural plans for buildings, materials lists, tunneling protocols, landscape plans, interior designs, electrical schematics showing every wire we intended to install, and on and on forever. We made an early decision that we should work within existing engineering capabilities and not posit technical advances that had not yet taken place. The scientific advances that this project was to facilitate involved high speed particles–not the electrical engineering of electromagnets. We knew enough about electromagnets to make the accelerator work, we didn’t need to involve ourselves in the design of the next generation of electromagnets–which is what the Texans did.

The Texas proposal called for the project to be completed at a total cost of $4.4 billion. Our proposal was for $7.2 billion. Now we had to convince DOE that we could actually build the super collider complex that we’d designed for $7.2 billion (which included 20% for overruns), and that Texas couldn’t build their design for $4.4 billion even though they’d budgeted 15% for overruns.

The proposals were submitted in early 1986, and once they were formally submitted, we were allowed to review the other proposals. We quickly realized that the Texas proposal was the one to beat, both because it was the most realistic and doable of our competitors, and because they had the greatest political clout. We took their proposal and went over it in detail. At our first meeting Carl announced, “This is crap. To build what they propose will involve them in all kinds of engineering delays while they try to create and implement next generation technology. It will delay them years, at least, and at least double their cost. If that project goes forward the government won’t have a super collider before 2000 and if they do have it then, it will costs $11 to $12 billion in 1986 dollars.”

“How do we convince DOE of that?”

“Submit as detailed an analysis of their plan as we did of our own.”

“You know,” Charlie said, “we don’t have a funding grant to analyze their proposal. This team’s expensive.”

Fred said, “We have to keep this team together. A lot of them can go back to other work, like Carl and Dirk, but others were employed by IAP just for this, and we can’t afford to lose them if we get the contract. The foundation will supply funds in the short term, and we need to go back to DOE for interim funding.”

DOE was reluctant, but we told them that we needed the funding in order to keep the team together. If it couldn’t be kept together, it would impede our ability accept the final contract. Furthermore, we could be of immense help to DOE in analyzing the Texas and other contracts. We urged them to fund the Texas team in the same way. They bought into the proposal, but at a lower funding level than we requested. Fred’s foundation made up the difference and the team stayed together.

We went over the Texas proposal and recosted key elements. Our final analysis that we submitted to DOE suggested that, based on sampling of their cost estimates, it would cost between $9.8 billion to $13.1 billion to implement their design, and they wouldn’t end up with anything any better than we would build. We also told DOE that we thought that the 20% overrun that we’d built into our proposal was pessimistic, and that we expected the overrun to be in the neighborhood of 9%, unless DOE didn’t accept our prefatory assumptions.

The battle moved to the political front. Tim and Charlie were back and forth to Washington a lot in 1987 and 1988. They got the entire congressional delegation from the Northern Tier to lobby DOE. It became a real regional issue, and the senators from Montana, Idaho, the two Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan–14 strong–let it be known that military appropriations for the south were going to be disputed by 14 senators if this project went to Texas. They argued that the south got way more than the lion’s share of military spending, and it was time to recognize the north–and a few missile silos in North Dakota and Montana didn’t cut it.

The Japanese Ambassador to the United States weighed in, noting that several leading Japanese particle physicists were involved in the IAP/UND proposal, and the Japanese government was extremely eager to partner with the United States in this important scientific venture.

The most important meeting, however, involved Carl and Tim meeting with the key review committee of DOE, specifically addressing the question of whether the IAP proposal could actually be brought in on time and under budget. Carl’s case was impressive: Carl and Associates had been involved with the design for 512 homes, 24 schools, 12 churches, 67 commercial buildings and a number of other projects that didn’t fit a clear category. They were renown for being on time and under budget, and, in fact, their track record on the projects just listed was on time and under budget on all but 7. And in six of those seven cases it was because the client demanded major changes midstream. In the last case, the North Dakota flood had cause massive cost and time adjustments. It wasn’t just an impressive record, it was as unbelievable as Jumper’s football streak. Carl concluded, “We can do it for the super collider because we’ve done our design detail to the same level as the building projects we’ve been discussing. We will be on time and under budget.”

The comments of the Texas team on our project centered on the fact that we were using dated engineering technology, while they would be pushing the envelope and developing valuable new technology. Our only response was that that was wonderful, as long as DOE was willing to accept the open ended cost increases that the implementation of unknown technology entailed. If DOE wanted to go that route, they shouldn’t pick our design. If they wanted to be heros in Washington, with the first project on this scale since the second world war that wasn’t hugely over budget, then they should go with North Dakota.

The announcement of the site selection was made in November of 1988. To the shock of the political world, the Institute of Advance Physics at the University of North Dakota, Will Carleton Project Manager, would build the super collider for the United States. It would be built on the flat plains of North Dakota, just west of the extreme limits of the Red River flood plain–the extent of which had been carefully presented in the design proposal, along with a careful scientific analysis of how the flood plain was determined–it was details like that that made it very difficult to pass over the IAP proposal.

If the political world was shaken up, just imagine the North Dakota world. The state of North Dakota would build the largest scientific project ever, short of NASA! North Dakota with a population of less that 3/4 of a million people! Only four people on earth weren’t almost knocked senseless by the selection: Tim, Charlie, Fred, and Carl. Will Carleton, who’d labored tirelessly for almost six years had, despite his best efforts, and despite living with the optimism of Tim, Charlie, Fred, and Carl, never really believed that North Dakota would win. As for Sharon, Kyle and me? Well, I hate to admit it, but we were shaken up like the rest. In fact, the three of us had spent so much time working within the US scientific establishment, that we were virtually certain that Texas would get the bid.

But it wasn’t the kind of event that gathered crowds like winning a football game or an Olympic medal. To the average citizen, or student on campus, it didn’t mean much. Of course, to every able-bodied unemployed person in the state, and most in the Northern Tier that were willing to move to eastern North Dakota it meant a job–a good job, even for unskilled construction workers. It meant science internships for every qualified physics, chemistry, and engineering major at most of the schools in the region. It meant a doubling of the physics faculty at UND, both in the Physics Department and the IAP. And on and on and on. Consider that the US government was going to spend about a billion dollars a year for six years in North Dakota, that’s about $1,500 for each living soul in the state, including newborns, those in nursing homes, and every one in between.

A more serious economic analysis suggested that about sixty percent of the money would actually be spent in North Dakota. But it was estimated that 80% of that would be respent in North Dakota, and 80% of that would be spent in North Dakota, etc. If you do the math, by the second year it means about two and a half billion dollars worth of economic activity each year. Considering that the current gross domestic product of the state was about $7 billion per year, the economic impact would be staggering.

Late one November (1988) morning I was in my office at the IAP, going over a recent article that I’d coauthored with a Ph.D. candidate. It had nothing to do with the super collider, so my mind was far, far away from that train of thought. It had, in fact, been pretty much out of my mind since we’d submitted our comments on the Texas proposal. The phone rang and I answered it. “Hello, this is Ronnie.”

“Dr. Littleton?”

“Yes. Can I help you?”

“This is Frank Kasimir at the Wall Street Journal.”

“That’s nice.”

“Am I right, Dr. Littleton, that you’re the Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Physics at the University of North Dakota? I have the right person, do I not?”

“If that’s who you’re calling, you got ’im.”

“Dr. Littleton, would you care to comment on the recent announcement by the DOE?”

The import of the call was only beginning to dawn on me. I think I guessed that the announcement had been made and this guy was trying to get a good quote from the losers. “I’m not aware of any DOE announcement. Would you care to enlighten me?”

“Dr. Littleton, DOE has just announced that the IAP has been awarded the contract to build the super collider. They’re saying that the contract will be finalized this month, and they expect design work to begin immediately, since they’ve underwritten keeping your design team in place. Would you like to comment?”

“Oh, my God. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m quite serious.”

I pulled my thoughts together and wondered exactly what I should say. I did say (and I’m quite certain because it was quoted verbatim in the newspaper the next day), “I’m just learning this, but you can believe that the IAP will do the job on time and under budget. You can quote me.”

“What’s the time frame, Dr. Littleton?”

“Six years from the date of the contract, barring a serious flood on the Red River–and that’s a real possibility that’s built into the contract timeline.”

“Would a flood damage your facility?”

“No. But it would bring construction in North Dakota to a standstill until it receded.”

“You’re confident that you can build this thing on time and under budget? That’s an incredible boast, considering the history of virtually all large government contracts.”

“On time and under budget. Call me back in six years. Now I have to go.”

By the time I got down the hall to Will’s office he had heard the news. So had, in fact, everyone in the building and they were all out in the hall, obviously elated, but not sure what to do. I wasn’t any help.

Charlie bailed us out. He called and said, “Get everyone from the IAP over to the President’s Dining Room. I’m inviting Carl and his staff as well. I’m also inviting other key people around the university, including Fred, of course. The celebration’s already started. We’re starting with lunch, and we’ll pause for a news conference at 3:00 p.m. My guess is that we may all still be here for dinner.”

People trickled into the dining room all afternoon; the room next door was opened to expand the space. The news conference at three added little to the information available. Tim had gotten a telephone call from DOE about ten minutes before the reporter from the Wall Street Journal had called me. Tim hadn’t learned anything specific, only that the IAP had been selected and that the contract would be signed in a month. DOE did ask Tim to confirm that we were still prepared to go forward, as if that was ever in doubt. The call had come from the Under Secretary for Science himself. When Tim had said that the university and the IAP were ready to go the Secretary had said, “You know, Tim, we’re really going out on a limb on this. To give a contact of this kind to a small university like yours is virtually unheard of. Overnight you’re going to become one of the largest university recipients of federal funds in the country. But your proposal was so vastly superior to the others that you left us little choice. Please, please, don’t screw up. For both of our sakes.”

Tim had said, “How much of that can I quote at my news conference?”

“All but the last plea. I think everyone’ll understand that without your saying it.”

“Well, sir, all I can do is quote my brother, Carl: On time and under budget.”

“I don’t care about on time and under budget. No federal program achieves that. A good job, in reasonable time, and not so far over budget that Congress doesn’t get riled and I’ll be very, very happy.”

“On time and under budget. Quote me. It’s Carl’s mantra, and it’ll be our mantra for this project.”

“Tim, I’ve enjoyed the few times I’ve met you so far with this project. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

“I’m not, said Tim. If you or I are involved, rather than our Project Managers, then something’s going wrong. I’ll be glad to join you for lunch at the contract signing and again at the ribbon cutting in 1994.”

“The administration will have changed by then and I’ll be gone.”

“We’ll be sure you’re invited to the ribbon cutting.”

“If you accomplish what you’ve promised then this will be my greatest bureaucratic achievement. I’ll be there.”

“I will be too.”

Tim issued the invitation to the 1994 ribbon cutting at his press conference. He answered a lot of questions but didn’t provide much new information. They finally gave up asking questions about 3:45 and Tim and the others at the conference returned to the party in the President’s Dining Room.

Dinner was a grand buffet feast that was set up about 6:00 p.m. and continued into the evening. People began drifting away about 6:30 and by 9:00 we’d dwindled down to a pretty small group. Sharon had gone and picked up Kevin and Rhoda from school and brought them back to campus. Now she suggested that it was time to get them home. They’d been having a grand time with all of the scientists, whom they knew, and the food. But at ages11 and 8 it was past their bedtimes, and Sharon gathered them for the trip home. At that point Will Carleton came up to the three of us and said, “You know, I’m a bachelor and live alone. I don’t think that I can stand being alone tonight, there’s just too much going on in my mind. Could I join the three of you this evening?”

Sharon responded first, “Of course, Will. We’re all heading home now, come on over.”

Sharon took the kids in her car, and Kyle and I drove home in his car. I said, “What do you make of Will’s wanting to come over? Did you get the impression he wanted to spend the night?”

“I think so. Well, we have a nice guest room, but I wonder if he has more in mind than that?”

“I wonder how much he’s guessed about our threesome. He certainly knows we all live together, but has he guessed that your status is more than boarder?”

“I don’t know, and that leads to the next question: are we going to tell him? We’re so professionally close, do we really want this big secret between us? When he does figure it out, will he resent not having been told?”

I said, “Tonight we play it by ear. If he thinks of the right questions to ask, he’s entitled to truthful answers. If not, then I think that we ought to have a serious conversation with Sharon about what to say to him.”

We got to the house a couple of minutes before Will, and we were able to share the gist of our conversation with Sharon before Will arrived. She had time to nod agreement.

Kyle, Will, and I got a fire going in our fireplace while Sharon got the kids ready for bed. (Well, yes, those are pretty traditional gender roles. Nobody’s perfect.) The kids came and played a while in front of the fire and we all had hot cocoa. Then it was off to bed for them (with Kyle), and Sharon, Will and I talked in the living room. It’d been quite a day. Will said, “Is this all a dream? Did anybody really think we had a chance at this thing?”

“Tim and Charlie did, and Fred and Carl.”

“They’re incredible optimists.”

“Yes, they are. They’re truly exceptional people.”

Will asked, “How did you know them? I know that there was significant plotting to make it possible for the three of you to come here, but what was the background?”

I said, “I went to summer camp with Tim, and Charlie was our counselor. We’ve stayed close ever since.”

Well, come on, that was true, even if it left a lot unsaid; right?

“There’s got to be more to it than that.”

Will was no dummy, was he?

“Actually, there were eight of us in that first group. All of us live in Grand Forks now, and we’re still close. The group’s grown and includes our wives and a number of others.”

“You make it sound like a sort of formal group. Do you have a name?”

“We don’t advertise. But, yes, the group has a name; we call ourselves the Gang.”

“Kyle, are you a member of the Gang?”

“Yes. I first met Ronnie and Sharon at the University of Wisconsin, in a chem lab, I think. We’ve been scientific partners ever since.”

“You all have a fantastic professional resume. And now with the collider, you’re just about at the top of your field.”

“You’re right there with us, Will.”

“Thanks to you guys. And Tim and Fred.”

Kyle said, “Did we correctly assume that you’d like to spend the night, Will? We have a guest room available.”

“Yes. I’d like that. I don’t really want to go home alone tonight. Normally it doesn’t bother me. I have lots of work to do, and keeping up with professional reading is incredibly time-consuming. But my mind isn’t going to settle into any of that tonight. I just can’t believe all that happened today.”

“It was quite a day, wasn’t it?”

Then Will asked the question that we’d been expecting, “Kyle, how come you’ve never gotten married? Surely Ronnie hasn’t gotten the only female physicist around, even if she is the best.”

Kyle said, “I guess I’m married to my laboratory. And I don’t have to come home to an empty house, because Ron and Sharon have always been so kind to let me board with them.”

“You three certainly have a unique relationship.”

“It seems to work for us.”

“Dinner conversation must be something else around here.”

“We had to lessen the talk of particles when the kids got old enough to join the conversation. But they both can talk particle physics almost as well as our undergraduate students.”

The conversation veered off in other directions and before long Will excused himself to go to bed. I took him up to the guest room. We kept extra tooth brushes, deodorant and the like in the guest bathroom, and he was set for the night. I offered him a pair of my pajamas (which I never wore except when forced by circumstances, perhaps like tonight), but he assured me that he slept in the buff (his word).

The question for the rest of us was where would Kyle sleep that night. If we slept in our usual trio, we might be discovered in some way by the guest in the house. But we certainly didn’t want to make Kyle sleep alone on the night of his big day. We all headed into the master bedroom and decided that we’d deal with Will in the morning if we had to.

The issue didn’t come up. Will didn’t get up until we were getting the kids ready for school. He thanked us for our hospitality, assuring us that he really appreciated not having to go home alone the night before. But he headed home that morning before breakfast, to shower, change, eat breakfast, and head to the IAP for the first of six years worth of incredibly busy days.

A week or so later Will came into Kyle’s office, shutting the door behind him. He asked, “Kyle, do you have a minute?”

“Sure, Will, what’s up?”

“I’d like to talk a little.”

“Go ahead, what’s the subject?”

“Me.”

“I’m all ears.”

“You know, I’m gay.”

“No, I didn’t know. It doesn’t show. You don’t have a label on your forehead. You certainly haven’t talked about it.”

“I know. I’ve stayed pretty deep in the closet. I’ve had a couple of short term partners, nothing lasting. They were pick-ups in a gay bar in Moorhead.”

“You have to be careful with that.”

“I’m very careful. So were the two guys I was with. And AIDS really isn’t a problem in this part of the country.”

“People who depended on that line of thought are dead or dying.”

“I know, and I haven’t. As I said, I’m careful.”

“Good, because we can’t afford to lose you. But why true confessions now?”

“You’re a bachelor; you don’t seem to be interested in dating. I know you live with Ronnie and Sharon, but there doesn’t seem to be any romance in your life. I couldn’t help but wonder....”

“Am I gay?”

“Yes.”

“That’s an interesting question. You know, Tim argues that there’s at least a little gay and a little straight in everybody. It’s true for me. I think I’m genuinely bisexual. So, in answer to your question, am I gay, the answer is, yes, a little.”

He thought a little and then sort of blurted out, “Oh, my God, I’ve been rather blind, haven’t I?”

“That question is sufficiently enigmatic that I won’t even try to answer.”

“You’re bisexual. You live with Ronnie and Sharon. You don’t have any outside romantic interests because you don’t need any. I won’t make that a question, because you don’t have to answer.”

“I’ll respond easily, Will. After your visit the other night we discussed how much we should tell you. We decided that we could trust you and that soon we should share a little more of our story with you. You came in here before we could act on that. We’ll have to ask you to keep your conclusions to yourself.”

“Of course. You didn’t even have to say that, but I understand that it was important for you to get that out on the table. This just blows my mind.”

“It blew our collective minds when we realized where our loving each other was going to lead. But it’s worked amazingly well.”

“Kevin and Rhoda. They’re Ronnie’s right?”

“We honestly don’t know. We could tell from testing, but we don’t want to. Ronnie and I have the same blood type, so it would take more than simple blood tests to tell. Right now, Kevin and Kay think of Ronnie as their father. In a few years they’ll be old enough to know the truth. If it’s important to them to know, we’ll have the tests done to find out.”

“I came here thinking that you might be gay, and that if you were something might develop between us. Silly me.”

“I’ll have to check with the others, but let’s set a date real soon for you to join us for dinner and conversation. As close as we’re going to be working together the next six years, we don’t want to have secrets.”

“I’d like that.”

Christmas season came and went and we hadn’t been able to have the dinner together that we planned with Will. We ran into a complication on the contract with DOE. The wage rates specified in the contract were the prevailing federal contractor rates for 1988. We had inflation clauses in the contract for wages, energy costs, and cost of living for all other parts of the contract. But the increases would have to be in the congressional DOE appropriation bill each year. The contract was being signed at the very end of December, it needed to contain 1989 wage and inflation rates. That meant that the Congress would get a last chance at the contract–the increases were automatic, but the capital appropriation that authorized it provided that Congress could suspend the awarding of the contract, if it saw fit, between the time of announcement and formal signing. The Texas congressional delegation had already started a movement to direct DOE to accept the Texas proposal on the grounds that it would cost less–which, of course, it would if they could do the job on time and under budget. We were absolutely certain that they could not. Congress had adjourned subject to recall by the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate. There was strong sentiment to recall Congress to undo the DOE decision.

Texas politicians are a tough bunch, and they play for keeps. (Remember Lyndon? Where was he when we needed him?) Tim and Charlie headed for Washington, and spent a lot of time there in December. There were seven states in the northern tier: Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The first thing that Charlie and Tim did was to head to Madison, Wisconsin, to visit Senator William Proxmire, the senior senator from all of the Northern Tier states, having first entered the Senate in August of 1957, 31 years before. Proxmire was known to be a vicious foe of government waste and he and his staff had gone over our proposal very carefully. At one point he’d declared that he hadn’t been able to find any significant waste in the project, and he was a whole-hearted endorser. That had been an amazing endorsement, because he was generally known as an opponent of basic scientific research. His reply to a question about that when he’d originally announced his support for our bid was that the scientific investigation of a Peruvian brothel, including repeat visits by the investigators, was worthy of a Golden Fleece Award, and that honest basic science, as was represented by a well designed super collider, was worthy of support.

We felt that Proxmire’s leadership was essential. He joined with us and Senator Quentin Burdick from North Dakota–the second most senior senator from the Northern Tier, having entered the Senate in August of 1960–in inviting the fourteen senators from the Northern Tier states to a working dinner in Washington. All came, two having to fly in from their homes for the meeting.

The group contained eight Democrats and six Republicans, and together they were a pretty significant block in the Senate. Tim and I let Proxmire and Burdick do the talking. Essentially, the strategy was to let it be known that this block would oppose any effort to derail the contract. Further, if the Northern Tier region was going to be denied this plum, a plum for which the region had waited for years, then this block was going to see to it that all plums would be denied in the coming Congress–to which twelve of the fourteen would be returning–regrettably that did not include Senator Proxmire. The effort to block the contract failed, largely because of the willingness of the fourteen senators to put aside party differences in favor of regional loyalties.

The contract was signed with some fanfare in Washington on the morning of December 28, 1988. We all flew back to North Dakota that afternoon, and celebrated with a big New Year’s Eve bash which Tim and Charlie threw at Dakota House. It was interesting the approach to alcohol that Tim and Charlie took. When they were entertaining the Gang and close friends they would serve beer or wine, but they never drank. At larger functions involving the university they didn’t serve alcohol. But in smaller groups, particularly of potential donors or faculty, they did serve all kinds of drinks; it was expected. That New Year’s Eve there was no alcohol–they explained that a lot of drinking over time would make driving home problematical and they wanted to avoid the problems. However, just at midnight out came the Champagne, and they let if flow for a while. By 12:30 the bottles ran out and they weren’t replaced! A good time was had by all: this group didn’t need alcohol for a good time!

That night we had a first at the Hideout: Uncles Phil and Franklin, along with Nate and Pat, hosted all the cousins, i.e. the children of the Gang. They ranged in age from Nels, Carl and Carol’s son, age 12, to Milt, second child of Tina and Merle, age 4. They had lots of food that kids love, a couple of televisions going, records for dancing in the basement, and lots of games. Several of the younger ones fell asleep before the New York ball dropped (at 11:00 p.m.), and they were quietly put to bed in one of the bedrooms. After watching the ball drop, everyone that was still awake went upstairs and changed into pajamas to watch either some party in Chicago that was featured on one station, or a party in Fargo featured on another. They all changed in the master bedroom, and they seemed utterly unembarrassed to change in front of each other.

After they heard “Auld Lang Syng” on two different stations, Phil turned off the TVs and passed out blankets. They all slept in a sort of heap on the living room floor, some of them using each other as pillows. Phil then grabbed Nate and took him up to the master bedroom and Franklin took Pat up to Felix’s old apartment on the third floor. Both pairs of sleeping men were awakened by early rising children! Nobody seemed in the least surprised to find the men paired up as they were.

The kids all showered together the next morning. That had a ball in the huge shower, and it didn’t take Milt long to figure out that he could get quite a reaction from the older kids if he aimed one of the loose shower heads at their genitals. Sex play was accepted by all of the kids as normal. Franklin, Phil, Nate, and Pat avoided any involvement in the play, even though the kids urged them to join them in the shower. It was clearly understood in the Gang, and we had all talked about it, that it was OK for the kids to be sexually comfortable with each other. But the adults all had to stay out of the mix. All of the kids’ parents realized that they needed to continually talk to their kids about boundaries, and about what they could say and do with friends outside the Gang. Over the years all of the kids proved to be fast learners in that regard, and we never had a problem or incident.

The new year brought incredible change to the campus. The number of physicists at the IAP had to double in number by the summer. A half dozen mid-level administrators had to be hired. Double that number of clerks and secretaries. And that was just for the Grand Forks facility. The main site would be about fifty miles northwest, north of the towns of Fordville and Conway. The building complex for the project would be a couple of miles outside the town of Fordville. That site would have to be built from scratch, and the first step, after land acquisition, would be to build a trailer park to house the campers and trailers of the construction workers. The land issue would not be a problem, because we’d secured options to purchase the land we’d need. The next project would be to build an apartment complex that could house construction workers now and permanent employees later. Since its projected use was long term, we wanted a decent development, and Carl and Associates had one built into the proposal. It wouldn’t be funded by the federal government under the contract, because it would eventually be sold to employees. However, the contract called for federally guaranteed loans.

We had to be ready to roll on both of these, and other, projects just as soon as the weather permitted in the spring. Thus the need for immediate staffing in Grand Forks. Tim called in Will early in the new year and told him, “Look, Will, if this is going to succeed you need two things: First, absolutely no fear about coming to me with your needs and requests. You’ll be fully supported, and I expect that you’re going to have to make a pest of yourself. You must not hesitate, or you’ll fail. Second, you need a good person to be the liaison between the IAP and the university administration–the position is identified in the contract. I’ve been thinking about who that might be, and I have a suggestion.”

“Who?”

“A young man named Pat Sturgis. He’s just finished a Ph.D. and hasn’t found a job as yet. I know him well. He’s sharp, hard working, and knows his way around the university; played defense at the beginning of Jumper’s streak. Interview him, and if you think you can work with him hire him as your University Liaison. I have an office in Twamley that just opened up and we’ll put him there. Eventually he’ll need another office either at the IAP or out in Fordville, but for the time being you’re short of space at that end, so he can just use the Twamley office.”

“My God, Tim, you don’t think in generalities, you think in details. Do I even need to interview this young man?”

“Yes, for two reasons. First, it’s important that you feel you can work well with him, because he’s going to be important in your operation. Second, it’s important for him to think that he earned the job, not that I handed it to him.”

“So, do I approach him, or wait for him to apply?”

“Call him up. I’ll give you his number. Tell him you got his name from the Placement Office. I know that he’s registered there. In fact, I’ll tell the Placement Office to send you his papers.”

“Done.”

Three days later Alex helped Pat move into the office in Twamley that Alex had just vacated. Before Pat had accepted the job, he had called Tim up and asked, “Uh, Tim. I’ve been offered the job of University Liaison for the collider project, but I’m pretty sure that you’re well aware of that. But, doesn’t this create a new conflict of interest between you and the Circle?”

“No, the office location doesn’t make any difference. You’ll report to Will, who’ll have to be replaced as the Director of the IAP, so that he can devote full time to being Project Manager for the super collider. The Director reports to the Graduate Dean, who reports to me. There are plenty of layers of separation. I sure hope you take the job.”

“I can’t believe you want an historian in this position and not a scientist.”

“Your job won’t be to explain the science of the super collider to the university community. It’ll be to make the needs of each group known and understood by the other. And to crack the whip to get the university moving–the collider people are going to be under tremendous pressure, and can’t be screwed up by slow responses to requests made of the university. You’re going to have to learn to be the man in the middle.”

“I suspect that my best qualification is my defense experience in football.”

“You may be right. Go tell Will you’ll take the job.” He did, and that explains the office move then taking place.

It was early in 1989 before we were able to find an evening when the three of us were free and we could find a babysitter for Kevin and Kay–they could spend the night with Tom’s daughters Noreen and Margaret who were virtually the same age as our kids. Will was able to join us, and we invited Tim and Charlie as well. Two things dominated the conversation that evening. The first was a fairly detailed history of the Gang. We didn’t keep much secret, and Will was fascinated. We didn’t make any moves to invite Will to be a part of the Gang, nor did Will hint for invitations. It was just a sharing of our stories.

Then Will brought up a completely different subject. “You know, guys, we need to be thinking of the first experiments to undertake on the collider.”

Kyle said, “Aren’t you a little ahead of yourself on that?’

“Not at all. The first experiment is detailed in our proposal and is part of the contract. It’ll be the responsibility of the IAP. It isn’t ground breaking, but should provide a good shakedown for the collider. Then it becomes a scientific instrument available to all comers. It won’t be the property of the university or of the IAP, but of the nation. And though we’ll have a contract to manage it, we’re specifically prohibited from favoring the IAP, the university, the state, or the region in allocating time on the collider. Competition to use it will be fierce.”

“We can’t favor ourselves in prioritizing experiments.”

“Exactly. But the contract is public, so any actions that we begin now are not based on insider information. I’m well aware that nobody but the people in this room think we’ll be on time and under budget, but they can’t say we didn’t warn them. The timeline calls for us to publish a Request for Proposal for experiments sometime later this year. We should be ready to submit soon after the RFP is published. Selection will be by a multi-university team, led by NSF. We want to be picked.”

Tim asked, “Are you guys going to be excluded from the competition?”

“No reason for us to be. The managers of other federal labs are often the most important experimenters.”

Ronnie said, “You know, the expertise at the IAP is largely theoretical, because we haven’t had access to the kind of equipment that attracts experimentalists. Sharon, Kyle and I certainly aren’t experimentalists.”

“Well, you’re going to be,” said Will. “Otherwise why are we building this damn thing?”

“Ask Tim and Fred.”

Charlie said, “We’re building it because the University of North Dakota, led by its one-syllable president–is the most far-thinking university in the country. And only Carl can inspire an “on time and under budget” project of this scale.”

Ronnie said, “That about sums it up.”

As the years went on Tim and Charlie were amazed and delighted at how little they had to be involved in the collider project. Will again proved to be an excellent manager. Carl was heavily involved, and kept the “on time and under budget” mantra alive on a daily basis. The site at Fordville grew exponentially: buildings, drilling, personnel, you name it.

The first year review, which included the Inspector General of DOE, the General Accounting Office, and a congressional committee, was stunned when Will sat down with them and went over the timeline and budget. At the one year mark we were on time, with a few minor exceptions on the timeline, and ahead of schedule on tunnel drilling–our riskiest time consideration. As for the budget, we were at 107% of budget, with a 20% cushion; in other words we could be at 119% of the budget, and still be “under budget.” Will’s target was to finish at 115% percent, but that was shared only with Carl, Sharon, Kyle and me.

Carl’s role became greater and greater. A good deal of the architectural work was done before the contract was signed–basic designs were part of our original proposal. The detail work now required was mostly done by Carl’s staff and technical personnel hired directly by the project. But Carl was used in a myriad of ways in managing the ongoing design process as well as overseeing construction. One of his key roles was dealing with DOE. Someone at DOE was always getting an idea of a way to do the job better; some new bell or whistle that could be added that would make the end product “better.” These were resisted with a vengeance. Carl would be sent to Washington to explain that changes were the death knell of “on time and under budget” even if the cost of the change was figured in extra. Changes always–and Carl insisted on always–screwed up timelines, affected projects in unexpected ways, and caused trouble. The super collider, as planned and contracted for, would do the job that physicists needed. Don’t monkey around with it. If Carl needed back-up in these battles, he’d call on Tim, and the two brothers would take on all comers. Will came back from Washington after one trip with Carl and Tim, in which they were resisting an idea that if the electromagnets were just 2% heavier, which could be achieved at very low cost, a significant energy plateau could be crossed, which greatly enhanced results. It all sounded so wonderful. So easy. So cheap. Carl had said, “You have no idea how much of the design process would have to be reviewed to determine the impact of such a change. It could literally increase the costs by 12 to 18%.”

Where Carl got those specific percentages I have no idea. Actually, that’s not true. I have a very good idea: he made them up. But he arrived with a 4 page analysis to support the numbers, though he thought most of the analysis was meaningless and not to the point. It didn’t matter, Carl knew that a change like that could almost derail the project. He simply couldn’t imagine where the idea had come from. It had turned out that some paper published at MIT had suggested that an energy level slightly higher than what we expected to achieve might be necessary to find the Higgs boson. It was highly speculative, and still at the hypothetical stage. But some DOE bureaucrat had read the article and come up with the idea of the proposed change. Tim listened to all of this and then announced, “If DOE demands this change, the University of North Dakota will withdraw from the project.”

The room full of people was absolutely stunned. All eyes were on Tim. Nobody ever considered the possibility that the university might withdraw; we were a contractor–we did what DOE told us. Tim didn’t think that way. “Gentleman, we have a contract. If you want to change it, you can. You own a large piece of real estate in northeastern North Dakota, and you can do with it as you please. We’ll build to contract, or we won’t build. Get yourselves another contractor. We’ve promised you, the scientific community, congress, and the public a project that will be “on time and under budget,” and this is a killer. A project killer and a reputation killer. No dice.” And he sat down. The DOE Project Manager left the room and we all sat in silence. Soon the Secretary of the Department of Energy came into the room and asked Tim to repeat his comment and explain it. Tim repeated exactly what he had said, but asked Carl to provide the explanation.

The Secretary listened for a while and then interrupted Carl. “I don’t have to hear any more. Gentlemen, we have a contract. Get on with it.” And he left.

Tim may not have left Washington as the most popular man at DOE, but he was an absolute hero at the IAP.

To be continued...

Posted: 02/26/10