It's amazing what can happen when you have an ambitious daughter in charge of getting years of family possessions cleared out for an auction. This clock came out of the first office room I was assigned to when we moved to Washington, D.C. back in 1962. Completed in 1936, the South Building was the largest office building in the world until the completion of the Pentagon, with dimensions of 458 feet (140 m) by 944 feet (288 m) in seven stories with 4500 rooms and one of these clocks in nearly every room. I had been promoted to a position in the Personnel Division of the USDA Soil Conservation Service (SCS). It was an "office job" after my having worked 13 years as a field technician, construction inspection and in watershed planning. I knew it was an opportunity for me to complete my college degrees and advancement, but it was boring work and I could hardly wait for this clock to show that 5:00pm was approaching.
All of the clocks in the building were electric with transformers and controlled centrally. By the late '60's they were all replaced with much simpler clocks and I had advanced to Chief of the Employment Branch. While the disposal of the old clocks was done by GSA with security, somehow I came into possession of this one. For years it hung in our garage closet, set at 7 minutes before 5:00pm. When Carolyn came across it and heard the story, she decided I needed to have it restored. She took it to a clock repair fellow and had it cleaned up and converted to a regular battery operated system. We haven't decided where it will hang in our Brookdale Unit but it will be a reminder of what we went through years ago as I advanced to the Senior Executive Service level which enables us to live here today.
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