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[[underline]] Bob Van Zandt: [[/underline]] Bob was 28 and a rich man's son from somewhere up around New York City as I recall. I can't remember what he looked like since he was soon to pass out of my ken never to return. However, I can recall some things about Bob and he appears in my later 1942 diary. I finally learned he had been a Navy pilot but had been ousted from the service for some reason I didn't ascertain. He was a queer kind of a guy but extremely interesting and hard to figure out. He was very bright and possessed of enough charm to get most anything out of anybody; he was also sensitive and unstable but at the same time he could be extremely tough if required. He was single and he loved to raise hell now and then. This propensity wasn't lost on Frank and me, who also were alone and far from home, and we'd entertain Bob now and then. In fact, he was so much fun after a few drinks that I think we favored entertaining him above the other younger fry in the group and perhaps carried it to a point that Charlie Creaser thought we were overdoing it a little. Of course, at this point, both Frank and I were still FE employees and had liberal expense accounts; when I became a WPB employee officially later on, my expense account vanished and I had to live on a $10-a-day government allowance which had to cover everything but travel. Bob Van Zandt was very fond of music and bitterly disappointed because his hands were too small to allow him to become a brilliant pianist.  Also he was interested in writing. He once told me he would be supremely happy if he could spend his life doing just three things: playing good music, writing well, and making love. He was a multi-faceted young man. His wPB work had to do with the material procurement end of the activity and he was a good one to have on this work because he could wangle material allotments out of some very tough ginks and make them like it. However, even at age 40 I was too old for Van and his friends and I reached this conclusion regretfully in the fall when Van invited me to a picnic in Chevy Chase with him and some of his friends. It was almost 20 years since I'd first gone to Shoals and met Willie and in another 20 years I reflected I'd be an "old man." And, in truth, in another 20 years I was retired. As I look back now, I think "Oh, to be 40 again!" --or even 60!

[[underline]] Bill Sagstetter: [[/underline]] Bill was in his 20s and from Denver. His father was general superintendent of motive power of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. I picture Bill as being a tall skinny redhead but I'm far from sure about this. Bill had been an American Locomotive Company service engineer on the diesels before coming to WPB. In WPB he worked largely on the materials program, which was obviously very involved and required a lot of attention; and while it was getting this attention, the locomotive scheduling job was being neglected and falling into a horrible, scrambled-up mess. I'm