TRADITION AND HISTORY

During my career the agency I work for has run on tradition and history - well for most of my career anyway - for the past 16 years we have been steadily moving away from that. Anyway I thought I would give you a little history lesson.

It is really interesting to note that since it was first established in 1881 there have been 20 agency heads in Washington D.C. More interesting than that is that the first 20 years and the first three agency heads apparently don't count since we were in a different Department during that period (I could give you examples of where to look to see this displayed on a single page but have determined that I probably shouldn't at this time).

So here is the history lesson---depending on how you use the above figures I have worked 39 years for the agency and that is either 30% of the agency's history or 33% depending on which date you use to count from (1881 or 1901). I have also worked under 9 agency heads or 45% of them or 53% of them depending on which number you use (20 or 17).

And here is the history lesson---no matter where you look or what you read the agency does not count the time that it was in the other department except occasionally when it can be used to make a point of how long we have served America and even then the dates are not the same and vary from 1881 - 1891 - 1901 - 1905. The dates you can count on showing up the most are 1901 or 1905.

And here is the tradition lesson---maybe we should re-establish the agency establishment date as 1993 when we first became an agency that had politics brought to the fore front for our leadership. Thats almost half of my career (41% to be exact).

Reviewing this post has re-affirmed my decision to retire.