General Brehon Burke Somervell was an American army officer and business executive. Following his military retirement, he became president of Koppers, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based corporation that was involved in the coal mining industry. Both as an Army officer and at Koppers he was one of the outstanding industrial managers of his generation.
Background
Brehon was born on May 9, 1892 in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of William Taylor Somervell, a physician and educator, and Mary Burke Somervell. In 1906 the family moved to Washington, District of Columbia, where Somervell's parents established a girls' finishing school.
Education
He completed his own secondary education at Central High School in 1909. He graduated sixth in his class at West Point in 1914, and one of his first assignments was to construct roads in Mexico during Gen. John J. Pershing's campaign against Pancho Villa.
After World War I he graduated from the United States Army Engineer School in 1922, the Command and General Staff School (with honors) in 1923, and the Army War College in 1926.
Career
During World War I, Somervell served in France (August 1917 - May 1919), first as a captain working on various construction projects and later, in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, as a lieutenant colonel on the staff of the Eighty-ninth Division.
Somervell took two short leaves of absence to assist Walker D. Hines, who had been assistant director general of United States railroads during the war - first in navigation surveys of the Rhine and Danube for the League of Nations and later in an economic survey of Turkey. From 1930 to 1933 he worked on Mississippi River flood control and navigation projects. As a lieutenant colonel on detached service, he was chief of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in New York City from July 1936 until late 1940, supervising more than 200, 000 men on construction projects that included La Guardia Field.
He formed a close friendship with Harry Hopkins, head of the WPA. In the WPA, Somervell gained a national reputation as a brilliant, hard-driving manager who could get things done. Consequently in late 1940, having been promoted to colonel, he was made chief of the Construction Division of the Quartermaster Corps to expedite the lagging camp construction program. He completely reorganized the division, and within a year the program was months ahead of schedule; for this achievement an oak-leaf cluster was added to his Distinguished Service Medal. He had, meanwhile, talked President Roosevelt and Congress into approving construction of the Pentagon, then the world's largest office building. Shortly before Pearl Harbor, Somervell became assistant chief of staff, G-4.
In March 1942 General George C. Marshall, as chief of staff, instituted a drastic reorganization of the War Department. Marshall appointed Somervell commanding general of the Services of Supply - an inflexible body consisting of administrative agencies and the logistics agencies, known as the Technical Services. Later designated Army Service Forces, it was not a unified command but a holding company, with the Technical Services retaining their autonomous staffs and command statuses. Somervell's real authority rested on his position as Marshall's principal logistics adviser and operator. Somervell repeatedly but unsuccessfully sought greater control over the Technical Services by consolidating their operations along lines favored by modern industrial managers. Marshall chose Somervell primarily because he was a brilliant manager.
World War II was conducted on a global scale, and Marshall realized that logistical limitations could determine the practicality of strategic plans. Somervell's wartime accomplishments were the climax of his Army career; he was awarded a second oak-leaf cluster and two Legions of Merit, and was promoted from colonel to full general in four years.
Somervell retired in January 1946 with his permanent rank of major general and moved to Ocala, Florida. Soon, however, Frank Denton, an Army Service Forces alumnus and chairman of the board of the Mellon National Bank of Pittsburgh, approached him on behalf of Richard K. Mellon, and offered him the presidency of the Koppers Company. He accepted in April 1946. Koppers, formerly a holding company of 100 independent firms, had been consolidated into six autonomous operating divisions but lacked effective control and direction. Somervell selected a group of Army Service Forces veterans as his assistants, and by 1948 he had integrated the operating divisions, controlling them through functional staff departments of which the most important was the Control Division. Characteristically, Somervell chose and trained his own successor, Fred C. Foy, another Army Service Forces member, who became president of Koppers after Somervell's death.
He died on February 13, 1955 at Ocala, Florida.
Achievements
Views
Somervell believed that efficient management required "a positive method for checking the results. "
Quotations:
"Successful management depends on five factors. The first factor is a precise understanding of the job to be done. The second is qualified and capable men in key positions. The third is a workable organization properly adapted to the job to be done. The fourth is a simple, direct system for carrying on the activities involved in the job. The fifth is a positive method for checking on the results. Given any three of these five, a business or agency can probably function with fair success. four of them operating together will result in much better than average efficiency. however, it requires all five to create the best management obtainable. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Marshall said of Somervell, "He was one of the most efficient officers I have ever seen. And he got things done in Calcutta as fast as he did in the meadows around the Pentagon in another war I would start looking for another General Somervell the very first thing I did. . "
Connections
While serving with the army of occupation in Germany, Somervell married Anna Purnell, a YMCA volunteer from Chicago, on August 28, 1919; they had three daughters. His wife died on January 25, 1942; and on March 15, 1943, he married Louise Hampton Wartmann of Ocala, Florida.