“The Best Dam Man in the World!” by Larry Reed (PART TWO)

John Savage grew up in the small village of Cooksville (“a wee bit of New England in Wisconsin”), attended school there, as well as the nearby Evansville High School. He then attended the Hillside Home School at Spring Green for two years, a private academy operated by Frank Lloyd Wright’s aunts. In 1898 his family moved to Madison and he completed his junior and senior years at Madison High School, and then studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin for the next four years, graduating in 1903. Here is Savage about 15 years old.

His first job in civil engineering was with the U.S. Reclamation Service “Temporary Force” as an engineering aid at a salary of $60 per month to work on the Minidoka irrigation project in the Snake River Valley of Idaho. Thus began his life’s work, advancing in his profession with many impressive achievements and awards to come, although he modestly called himself just “one of Uncle Sam’s employees.” Savage always had great affection for his hometown of Cooksville on the Badfish Creek with the nearby Yahara River with their dams powering the four grist mills from their flowing waters. His father was Edwin Parker Savage (who served as chairman of the Town of Dunkirk in 1889) and his mother was Mary Therese Stebbins. He grew up on the family farm, which had been established by his grandfather who came to Wisconsin in 1842 settling in the Town of Dunkirk north of Cooksville. (Unfortunately, the historic farmhouse that he grew up in was destroyed by fire in 1996.) He first married Jessie Burdick Sexsmith of Milton Junction, Wisconsin, in 1918; she died in 1941. He later married Olga Lacher Miner in 1950. He had no children. When Savage died in 1967 at the age of 88, he was lauded for his designs of the world’s great dams, for his many impressive water project-related accomplishments throughout the world and for his dedicated service, his modesty and his self-effacement. As one person wrote, “Perhaps the final irony of his life was that John L. Savage, a man who hated publicity and was dedicated to public service, had actually left to posterity monuments as permanent as any created in the entire history of mankind.” No doubt: John Lucian Savage (1879-1967) was the best dam man in history. [Excerpt from “The Village of Cooksville: A Chronicle of the Town that Time Forgot,” by Larry A. Reed.]