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Gerald M. Hansler, Executive Director, Retires After 21 Years

All good things must ultimately come to an end, even the service of the Commission's highly effective and personable Executive Director, Jerry Hansler. After twenty-one years and more careers than most families have, let alone individuals, the time has come. Mr. Hansler is retiring, on June 30, 1998.

Jerry Hansler joined the Commission in October, 1977, to become only its second Executive Director since the organization's founding in 1961. He came to the DRBC after essentially completing careers in two other organizations. Having acquired degrees in both Civil and Industrial Engineering from the University of Washington in his native state, he joined the U.S. Public Health Service and worked all over the country on public health issues, many concerning water and pollution control. He directed many environmental programs for HEW agencies in the New York Regional Office. Then he became Regional Director in New York for the newly created U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Eventually, he retired from the USPHS at the rank of Assistant Surgeon General, equivalent to Rear Admiral. Then he joined the Commission and began a new career that has spanned nearly twenty-one years.

Along the way Jerry managed to gentlemanly farm and with his wife Leslie raise a son, now a major in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and instructor at West Point. Mr. Hansler has published many papers on environmental matters and acted as consultant to water authorities all around the world. Indeed, though his present career at the Commission ends in a few weeks, his calendar will be full with his next career as globe-trotting consultant.

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