History Lesson

In February of this year, John C. Anderson, FCSI, Honorary Member of the Institute, charter member and first president of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter, and fourteenth president of the Institute, passed away. A visionary, John foresaw the value of computers for bringing automation and consistency to specifications, and was a founder of the Construction Sciences Research Foundation. John continued to serve CSI in many ways long after his term as president; he also was active in AIA, a member of its Professional Development and Intern Development Program Committees, and was a member of the National Panel of the American Arbitration Association.

In 1986, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter named its highest award in his honor, the John C. Anderson Award of Excellence. Because he was a member of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter and an important influence in my life, I am preparing a tribute to honor his memory at our next chapter awards banquet.

While working on this project, I discovered to be true something I had previously suspected - for an organization that is heavily involved in documentation, we have done a poor job of keeping our own records. Beginning at what seemed a logical point, I asked what was available at Institute and in our chapter. In each case, all I received was a copy of John's Fellow's biography, which had little information. Going on to CSRF, I got even less. John's daughter was able to give me an outline of his work history, and I contacted some of the firms he worked for. Most of them no longer exist, and of the two most recent, one offered only the briefest comment.

Our organization is at least middl e-aged. We haven't been here as long as AIA, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary, but we have been here more than fifty years; about twenty of our chapters have reached that milestone, and just last year we had our fiftieth annual convention. As CSI grows older, we must face reality; our members will not be with us forever.

In the past few years we have lost other members known for their leadership - Andrew Drozda, J. Stewart Stein, Hans Meier, Larry Dean, Philip Todisco - as well as many members who were prominent in their regions and chapters. Of fifty-two Institute presidents, twenty-one are no longer with us, and about one third of our Fellows are gone. With each passing we lose a little more of what CSI is, and how we came to be where we now are. Because of our lack of records, much of CSI's early history is, or soon will be lost.

Does knowing our history make any difference? In a sense, it does not; we will continue to have meetings, offer education and certification classes, develop and update standards, and so on, regardless. In another sense, it is important, as knowing your history establishes a foundation for what you do. It also honors and preserves the memory of those who worked so hard to take CSI from a small group of specifiers to an organization recognized for its leadership in standardization of construction documents. From a strictly practical perspective, knowing what we have done in the past lets us see what has been tried before, what has succeeded, and why.

Last year I began work on a website for CSI Fellows, at www.FCSINet.org. This website will become the online repository for the Fellows' biographies and other information related to CSI Fellowship. When I began converting the biographies, I started with the more recent ones, as better information was available. Fortunately, Dick Eustis encouraged me to concentrate on the elder Fellows, and I have been spending more time on earlier classes of Fellows. Obviously, I am limited by the information I have; merely reformatting a brief existing biography does nothing to add to it.

I encourage each chapter and region to dig into its records and put in writing how it began, who the leaders were and what they did, and how they affected our industry. I have been told that some chapters do have good records, but even then, the information is often disorganized and inaccessible. If your chapter has no records, or stores them in cardboard boxes in someone's garage, find someone to collect and organize them. Computers and related technology make this task much easier than it once was; the cardboard box of mildewed paper has been replaced by the files in online storage where they can be accessed by anyone, but someone still has to remember to save the information.

In case the message isn't clear - make this an agenda item for your next meeting! As I have found through experience, the time to get this information is limited, and the longer you wait the more difficult it is. And at some point, it becomes impossible.

Sheldon Wolfe, RA, FCSI, CCS, CCCA
Institute Director, North Central Region, CSI