[Stoves] VITA's origins

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Thanks Cecil

I was hoping you’d paint the original vision of using the airport in Butte.  Remember?

What was that (failed) vision all about?  Stoves would have featured if it had gone better.

Crispin

From: Cecil Cook <cec1863 at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2019 5:40 PM

NCAT ended up in Butter MT because Mike Mansfield, the retiring Speaker of the House wanted to help out Butte which was in terminal decline and gradually falling into the ever increasing maw of Anaconda Cooper's humongous open pit copper mine. I recall MM was somehow associated with the Montana School of Mines in Butte.  Any way Jerry Puckett, the director of a MHD Research Center also in Butte teamed up with Dick Saul who was spear heading a major drive by the dying War on Poverty to use the enthusiasm awakened by Fritz Schumacher's book Small Is Beautiful to revitalize the OEO. They got MM to tag a 3.5 million dollar rider to an omnibus appropriation bill to fund the start up of NCAT in Butte. If it worked AT was supposed to bring a small is beautiful revolution to Butte and unleash new Gandhi inspired little AT industries that would compensate for the demise of copper mining. Needless to say NCAT failed to deliver an explosion of little AT inspired jobs in Butte but it did reorient some of the 1500 community action agencies all round the USA!

 Enough already!

Cecil

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