Wallace (Wally) Wilson, Michigan
I became active in the Association in 1986 when Jim Boulton, George Hosek and I ventured to Pittsburgh for the annual ASFPM conference. During the plenary session the idea of forming a floodproofing committee was brought up but a committee chair was needed to begin the formation. I volunteered, assembled a few interested parties and formed the Floodproofing/Retrofitting Committee. I was the chair, and we had a good turnout of 10 to 15 people involved in various aspects of this type of mitigation. I remained chair until 1997.
- I brought about the inaugural Floodproofing Coordination Committee, composed of representatives from the various federal agencies and associations working on floodproofing. We had representatives from the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, the then Soil Conservation Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and me from ASFPM. Here, we finally got the agencies to describe their past, present, and future work in floodproofing and saw the beginning of information sharing joint initiatives.
- I was a member of the committee that established the Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM) program, which was to become an outstanding success for ASFPM, being embraced by over 10,000 professional floodplain professionals nationwide. Some agencies, governments and private companies require this certification to fill various positions to show they had verifiable knowledge in floodplain management.
- With the help and knowledge of a family friend, president of a nationally known foundation consulting firm, I brought to the ASFPM board the idea of forming a foundation within the ASFPM to provide financial support to the association as well as achieve other goals and missions outside the focus of the association. The ASFPM Foundation has grown to a self-supporting, fully functioning entity achieving goals never envisioned, through the leadership of various excellent presidents and boards of Trustees.
- I received the John R. Sheaffer award for excellence in floodproofing in 2011 in recognition of the aforementioned work, as well as many actual floodproofing projects completed in various parts of the United States and Ecuador.