Author Description

Given the time, place and circumstances, the Panama Canal remains the greatest engineering enterprise of the 20th century. A mathematically-gifted Alabama farm boy, who later found a home in Old Kentucky, parlayed his imagination and engineering expertise to conquer the most technically demanding part of Panama Canal construction - Gatun Locks and Dam. William Luther Sibert arrived in Panama in 1907, part of President Theodore Roosevelt's Army Corps of Engineers spearhead with orders to pierce the forbidden Isthmus of Panama, where thousands died during the failed French efforts. The American attempt was a long shot according to conventional wisdom - until the world learned all about TR and his Army Engineers. Crowning his canal success, Congress promoted Sibert to brigadier general, an honor that proved costly to the hybrid Sibert - one of the foremost engineers of his time and a soldier. After organizing and training raw recruits into the Big Red 1 -America's only infantry division in France in 1917-Sibert was relieved by General John. Pershing because of his engineering pedigree! Back Stateside, Major General Sibert created the Army's first Chemical Warfare Service. Soldier Sibert led fighting engineers into hostile territory and rebuilt the islands only railroad during the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1900). Engineer Sibert championed Ohio River navigation, blew up a dam on the Allegheny and planned a mammoth flood control system for the emerging Republic of China. Following World War I, there tired general took time from his hobby of fox hunting to engineer the dock-rail-highway complex that transformed Mobile, Alabama, into a major American port. At President Calvin Coolidge's request, he chaired the Sibert Commission that reviewed and subsequently approved plans to construct Boulder (Hoover) Dam. The General was Everyman, taking his lumps during a career crowded with numerous pitfalls, dodging some and paying a painful price when ensnared by others. Regardless, his endeavors were monumental in scope. He was a great American in peace and war.