| Consulting as a Profession |
Note: I have a lot of work to do to this section.
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I was into my third year at the National Cancer Institute, and had finished most of the work that I had wanted to complete before I left there. I had promised two years and was actually about to start my fourth. I was looking for "open land" as I kept telling myself. I was tired of working in offices and wanted to try my hand at farming, ranching, land development and a few other things while still working for major corporations as a consultant.
One of my key contractors at the National Cancer Institute was JRB Associates, a division of SAIC, Science Applications. Dr. Bob Beyster was the president of SAIC and had been trying to get me to go to work for him for some time. The head man in the Washington, D.C. offices of JRB Associates was this guy in the photo below, Jim Russell. He was the great grandson of a very famous western painter, Charles Russell. Charles Marion Russell (born March 19, 1864, in St. Louis, Missouri—October 24, 1926, died in Great Falls, Montana in), also known as C. M. Russell, was an artist of the American West. Russell created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the Western U.S. , in addition to bronze sculptures. Russell was also a storyteller and author. The C.M. Russell museum is located in his hometown of Great Falls, Montana and houses more than 2,000 Russell artworks, personal objects, and artifacts.
Jim had been trying for months to get me to visit Idaho to see the beauty of the land and to taste the rich life one could have living there. On a trip to Seattle to do business at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center at the U of Washington, we got off the plane in Spokane, a short drive from Sandpoint, Idaho and drove to Jim's mother's home. She knew how to get to a man's heart, for dinner we had elk steak smothered in mushroom gravy with lots of onions in the gravy. It was a local elk that another of her sons had gotten on a hunting trip. I was sold! If there was food like that in Idaho, it had to be a great place to live.
I went back to the Washington, D.C. area after this trip, put my Virginia house on the market for sale, and prepared to resign from the National Cancer Institute when I got a few more important things finished.
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| A fantastic company that I had watched grow from a beginning of six physicists in Houston to over 600 when Dr. Beyster wanted me to work for him. Now it has grown into enormous size as noted below. |
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Science Application International Corp (SAIC) - Dr. Bob Beyster had been after me for years to go to work for him in any role I would like. In Idaho, I decided that I needed some kind of work to keep solvent while I was doing something that I wanted to do on my new purchase of a ranch in Weiser, Idaho. In late 1974 I took him up on his offer, and he gave me the job and title of "Assistant to the President" and furthermore told me that I could live in Idaho but that when he called me to go somewhere, I would drop what I was doing and get on a plane and go to where he would direct me. I agreed to this.
This arrangement worked very well for me for a time, and also satisfied Dr. Beyster.
Founded by J. Robert Beyster, Ph.D., and a small group of scientists in 1969, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a FORTUNE 500® company, and its subsidiaries now has approximately 45,000 employees worldwide.
Revenues for the fiscal year that ended January 31, 2010, were $10.85 billion,up 8 percent from $10.07 billion infiscal year 2009. Full-year operatingincome was $867 million (8 percentof revenue), up 12 percent from $776million (7 percent of revenue) in fiscalyear 2009.
The first job Dr. Beyster asked me to do was to take over the major project that one of his divisions, JRB, had with the National Cancer Institute and with the State of Colorado. It was to develop a new cancer center that was to cover a six state area. My first assignment was to help JRB Associates, my old contractor when I was at the National Cancer Institute. They had gotten a contract to do the planning for a comprehensive cancer center in Denver, CO that would cover six western states. I became the Project Manager and I had a staff of people living and working in Denver. I stayed in my little house in Idaho Falls and drove back and forth on working days to Denver. What a life!! But that was what I had agreed to!
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| The Governor of Idaho, Cecil Andrus convinced me to work for his office as the part time Executive Director of the State of Idaho Cancer Control Program. |
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Idaho Cancer Program
I was well known to those in the State of Idaho that were involved in developing a state-wide cancer program. The Legislature for the State had approved a very large budget to start off the program, but they had no one to run it. It wasn't long before many doctors and the Governor of the State were on the phone with me to ask if I would be willing to get this program going. I became the half time Executive Director of the Idaho Cancer Control Program for the State of Idaho which required that I travel to every part of the beautiful State of Idaho, get to know the doctors and the hospitals, and to get their input into a cancer plan for the State.
St. Luke's Hospital in Boise had begun a major effort in cancer care through its Mountain States Tumor Institute. In Idaho Falls, another group had been working for some time to establish cancer efforts through its hospital. Support for cancer doctors and patients in the northern part of Idaho was handled by hospitals and treatment centers in Spokane, Washington. But in the rest of this large State, very little coordinated effort had been underway to make available the tools that were being developed through the National Cancer Institute and the forthcoming National Cancer Plan. The Governor, Cecil Andrus, wanted this to change. My job was to make an assessment of the needs of the State by interviewing doctors all over the State involved in cancer diagnosis, care and treatment. Then to go the next step in setting up a means to communicate with all medical personnel, the information they needed to be up-to-date on the latest findings in all areas.
A Cancer Coordinating Committe was established with representatives from all over the State of Idaho and from the Spokane area which provided advanced care to cancer patients in the northern part of Idaho. The offices of the Cancer Coordinating Committee were established in Boise.
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