Mines Magazine Turns 100 - the Timothy and Bernadette Marquez ...

iStock“Almost every one of my trusted mentors and advisors told me not to take this job,”Zanetell laughs. “They said the engineering problems couldn’t be solved, the funds wouldnever come, the agencies would never work together, the project would stall out and itwould ruin my career. I saw it the opposite way—great things aren’t supposed to comeeasy.”His friend and former football coach Marv Kay ’63 isn’t surprised to hear this from theformer linebacker. “Dave was always at his best when the odds were in question,” says Kay,who recently attended the bridge opening as a personal guest of Zanetell’s. “The success hehad was due to a great deal of effort and plain old hard work.”Craig Schurig ’87 who played alongside Zanetell for Mines from 1982 until 1986 echoesKay’s remarks. “Dave was an outstanding leader,” Schurig says. “Sometimes we were on thewrong side of the score, but Dave always played like we were about to win and demandedthat everyone else do the same. He’s a winner, and he motivates those who work with himto be winners,” adds Shurig, who is now head football coach at Washburn University in Topeka,Kansas.After receiving the assignment in 2001, his first act was to reorganize the team of primarystakeholders: the Federal Highway Administration; the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation,which operates Hoover Dam; theNational Park Service, which administersthe recreational landsdirectly behind the dam as wellas Lake Mead; the Western AreaPower Administration; and thetransportation departments ofthe two states that the newbridge would connect—Nevadaand Arizona.“One of the first thingswe did when we brought themultiagency team together wasto draw up a game plan thatdefined roles and responsibilities.That was not easy work.We were dealing with the most24 Fall/Winter 2010