April 2
| 1962 | Miss Beverly Cover (pronounced KOH-ver), 22, of Cumberland, MD, becomes the first woman to take a full-time position with BPR as a highway engineer. A graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Miss Cover is sworn in by Deputy Administrator D. Grant Mickle while top officials Frank Turner, O. K. Normann, and Carl C. Saal look on. Miss Cover is assigned to Mr. Saal's Traffic Operations Division, where her work will include field studies using BPR's "Traffic Analyzer" to collect data on traffic flow. In 1964, Miss Cover, now Mrs. Beverly C. Norris, resigned to become a full-time mother and housewife, the same week BPR's second woman engineer, Miss Karen M. Porter, reported for duty in the Automatic Data Processing Division. Miss Porter says, "My teachers helped and encouraged me. They seemed to take pride in the fact that a girl was studying civil engineering."
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| 1971 | E.H. Ted Holmes, who joined BPR in 1928, retires as Associate Administrator for Planning. | |
| 1986 | Senator William Proxmire gives his monthly "Golden Fleece" award for "hitting the taxpayers with a $21 million toll to pay for unused and unneeded roads and bridges." | |
| 1987 | By a 67-to-33 vote, the Senate overrides President Ronald Reagan's veto of the Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act, even after the President drove to Capitol Hill to lobby against the measure, which he vetoed largely because it increased the number of "demonstration" projects to what was then a record high. The Act, which extends highway user fees for 5 years and funds the Strategic Highway Research Program, is widely perceived as the final authorization of the Interstate era. |
