Successful in dividing Washington officials from their industry advisory group, he trained his sights on the island, and on how to grab the animal kingdom for himself.
Long Island's North Fork was far too remote a place to attract good scientists, said Breeze. The cost of living there was far too high for government-salaried postdocs. Opportunities for spouses were also limited, except maybe to wait tables or work retail cash registers. As far as raising children, some scientists thought the school system fell short. "You'd have to go way up the Island to find any real sophistication," says one. And another, "The area is dead…it is not the type of place to attract young, upwardly mobile professionals. God knows how many miles you are from the nearest quality health care." Locals couldn't fill the scientific need, Breeze believed; they lacked the requisite education and experience. Recruiting would soundly fail. The laboratory would indeed fall into the sea, and with it would go Cap'n Breeze.
But there was a solution. By running a ferry across the Sound to Connecticut, Breeze could provide the scientists with a better place to live, one with a lower cost of living and better schools and real employment opportunities for spouses. At the same time, Plum Island would be connected with the Amtrak station there, allowing a link to universities like Yale and the University of Connecticut. "This ferry will turn Plum Island around," the new director boldly predicted. "It will help make us the number one research center in the world."
The Connecticut ferry's first customer was none other than Director Roger Breeze. He moved with his wife and children to a house in Cheshire. "I had to be on [the Connecticut boat]," he said. "It doesn't matter to me where I live. I just didn't think people would take it seriously without me being there."[35] The ferry's heaviest load was a mere seven or eight passengers. Former ferry engineer Ed Hollreiser says the boat often ferried a single passenger. Once, one of the new scientists Dr. Breeze recruited (all of whom "chose" Connecticut as their place of residence) realized he'd forgotten an important book while en route to the island. The ferry was sent all the way back to Connecticut, where a deckhand went and fished the book out of the scientist's trunk and brought it back — to the tune of $400 in marine fuel.
It was an open secret that new hires must hail from the Nutmeg State. "Anyone that wanted to work on Plum Island at that time — even on support staff — had to be from Connecticut," says a worker. Among the scientists and support staff interviewed who ventured opinions on the ferry, all of them suspected Breeze's wife was the motivation behind it. They say she disliked the countrified North Fork, and the closest university teaching positions for her were miles away at Stony Brook. With its many colleges and universities, Connecticut offered far better opportunities for her and the children. While all of this may be true, the director's own motivations seemed far deeper than pleasing his wife.
As ridership on the Connecticut ferry increased, professional camaraderie at the laboratory began to decline. People were beginning to fraternize based upon which boat — and from which state — they hailed. The move "set up two classes on the island," said Ed Hollreiser, "[Breeze's] people from Connecticut and us peons from Long Island." "I don't have a personal problem with him," notes Dr. Jim House. "But he caused a divisiveness between the New York and Connecticut people. He created the Connecticut people because to him, no one smart would live on [the New York] side. But for forty years it had worked without it." Dr. Carol House agrees. "He would have conversations with people on the Connecticut boat that [the New York staff] wouldn't be privy to."
The ferry was a top-of-the-line, luxurious $1.2 million, 540-horse-power, 110-foot-long boat — but there were flaws from the start. Hollreiser said there were design problems with the engines, and the exhaust noise ran afoul of local town ordinances. "It was like they bought a Yugo," says a former worker. "The engines constantly blew up and it cost the government big dollars in repairs." When they finally got the leaky, noisy, shuddering craft running, it cost a hefty $100,000 a year to operate — a significant chunk of funds for a "cost cutting" regime to bear.
Dr. Breeze maintains that "[i]t had been difficult to fill jobs in the past," but nothing in the records indicate that local hiring over the previous four decades had been problematic at all. As veteran Fran Demorest wrote, "The professional staff moved to Long Island, bought or built homes, raised their families and used our school systems. These families joined in the many local community activities, services, churches, and other programs." Breeze's detractors, large and small, would always say the Connecticut ferry was a colossal waste, a sham, all the way down to the nifty uniforms he dressed the marine crews in. Even the local congressman decried the move. "It sounds like a total waste of money," snapped George Hochbrueckner, a Democrat representing New York's First Congressional District. "It sounds like a few people — including Mr. Breeze — decided they wanted to live in Connecticut. The taxpayers shouldn't be paying for this… This does not make any sense to me." But the USDA had paid for it, and the congressman's objections were for naught.[36]
Even had he tried, Hochbrueckner could never have reversed the ferry. Because Dr. Breeze saw to it that undoing his Connecticut boat would be akin to unscrambling eggs. In a masterstroke, he did the one thing that would grant his new ferry perpetuity. He lionized the one man whose name was inextricably entwined with Plum Island, invoking in a simple step the potent feelings of a warm and distant past that instantly hushed would-be critics.
He named the boat after Jerry Callis.
The opinions of two of his allies are enlightening. "Yes, it was Roger's idea," says John Boyle, when asked who named the Connecticut ferry. "In my heart of hearts, I would never tell you what my honest opinion of that particular thing is. There are still a few things about him I can't quite figure out. He can be inscrutable — even to his closest friends."
The definitive word comes from Dr. Breeze's dear friend Dr. Robert Shope, with whom Breeze had lived after he legally separated from his first wife.[37] "He lived in Connecticut and wanted the ferry for himself. The excuse was that it would bring in a broader group of scientists — and it was a very controversial move." What did Shope think of the naming of the ferry? "It was very clever," Shope mused. "The J.J. Callis — he had it painted on the boat before anybody knew it — [after that] you couldn't take the boat away and nobody could counter the move." For no other reason than his own self-interest, Breeze traded on the good will his revered predecessor's good name, and in the process sliced the island's workforce into two parts.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
By this time, in the words of one observer, "[Employees] were praying that Breeze would die and Callis would come back." No longer was Dr. Breeze the rustic faux Scot, turned backslapping American cowboy. He now charged around the island with a flashy imperiousness. Says a retired Plum Island engineer, "You know, a lot changed when Breeze came in. He seemed real worried about climbing the ladder. He could care less about us Americans — or American labor, for that matter. The island was all for his own benefit. I remember one time, he was coming over on the early morning ferry, and we'd been coming off from the night shift. He shook his finger at Walt [Sinowski, Lab 257's building foreman] and said, 'I'm gonna get your job. I'm gonna have your job one day. It's not long now. Not long.' "Meanwhile, Walt had been retired already from another job, and working at Plum was something he was good at and enjoyed doing. Walt said to him, 'You can take it right now, Breeze. Go right ahead.' We'd sit there and take that crap from him, day in and day out.
35
But Dr. Breeze didn't even attempt to live on Long Island. The director lived alone on Plum Island in an old Army barracks until his family moved east from Washington State and joined him in Connecticut.
36
Hochbrueckner would tell the
37
"He and I have had a very good social relationship," says Dr. Shope, when asked about Roger Breeze. "I had separated from my wife and was living in Connecticut at the time and had a bachelor's house. He knocked on my door one night and said, 'Bob, do you have a spare room for me?' And I said, 'Yes, but I don't have a bed in it.' He said, 'Don't worry — I have a mattress in my car.' This was at a time when he was having marital problems, and he lived with me for about three months. So I got to know him well."