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UNC HOMEPAGE
Most boys dream of what they want to be when they grow up. Policeman.
Fireman. Maybe even president.
Most boys end up letting go of their dream somewhere along the way. But
Bruce Runberg, growing up in Minneapolis, Minn., managed to hold tight to
his.
Since the time he was in junior high, he knew he wanted to go to the Naval
Academy in Annapolis, Md. And from that point forward, he focused on doing what
it took to get there.
Nearly 40 years later, Runberg is now charged with carrying out a different
kind of dream, the University's dream to make its campus big enough and modern
enough to accommodate a growing number of students and an ever-expanding
mission.
It is a daunting task, even for a guy who has been building things most of
his life, a task he approaches with a mixture of excitement and fear.
"The bottom line is we have an excellent staff that will be challenged by
the magnitude of the bond work, but clearly has the capability to do it
well."
Playing fireman
Many people in academia like to think they have career military men
pegged.
Military bearing, some would have you think, is overbearing. Too quick to
give an order, and too reluctant to lend an ear.
Runberg, a lanky, soft-spoken man, shattered that stereotype soon after he
came to work at Carolina in the fall of 1992 and stepped into an ongoing
controversy involving the University-owned cogeneration plant on Cameron
Avenue.
The contractor began work on the plant in fall of 1988. By January 1992,
the contractor was nearly a year behind. During this period, the plant operated
below acceptable standards and was too noisy.
By that time, the lingering problems with the plant, which turns steam into
heat and electricity for University use, had left nearby residents
boiling.
Runberg will never forget that first meeting he had with an overflow crowd
of those residents at the Carolina Inn.
Also present at that meeting was Ray DuBose, now director of Energy
Services, who managed the cogeneration systems at the time.
DuBose said Runberg was going to have a tough time with residents at that
first meeting no matter what he said or did. But the fact that Runberg made
himself available to meet again and again with residents, and hear their
concerns, did end up making a difference, DuBose said.
DuBose said Runberg's first task was to help resolve the mediation process
between the University and the contractor. The second task was to keep
residents informed about what was going on. Both tasks, DuBose said, required
Runberg to have a huge amount of patience and perseverance and long
conversations with everyone involved.
Over time, the dispute with the contractor was settled, and the frustration
that residents had with the University gave way to not just grudging
acceptance, but trust.
There is an inherent tension when a plant like this is stuck in a place so
close to where so many people live, and there is nothing anybody can do to make
that tension go away. But Runberg believes maintaining open communications with
residents is the only way to keep that tension at a level everyone can live
with.
Two years ago, for instance, Runberg and his staff met with residents for
15 consecutive Wednesdays to discuss plans for new silos at the plant.
When the time came to make a decision, there was only minimal
opposition.
In April, Runberg received the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award
for the range of contributions he has made during his tenure as associate vice
chancellor for facilities services.
The citation also recognized Runberg's work leading planning studies for
two outlying areas, Mason Farm and the Horace Williams property off Airport
Road. The Town of Chapel Hill adopted a resolution praising Runberg for his
consensus-building work with community members.
"I tend to get along with most everybody, which is helpful in these kinds
of situations," Runberg said.
Runberg wants people to know, too, that he didn't have to unlearn what he
was taught in the Navy. Anybody in the modern military knows that leadership is
not about tapping the brass on your collar and telling people what to
do.
"You wouldn't be successful in today's military being an autocrat," Runberg
said. "You've got to be a sound leader who can get people to do things
willingly. Leadership is somebody who looks after their people. And listens to
their suggestions."
DuBose knows all about the stereotype about retired military, too, but
neither Runberg nor the other retired military he works with fit the
mold.
"Bruce is a good delegator, and he expects people to handle things," DuBose
said.
"I like having the responsibility. He's not overbearing in the least, but
his expectations are high as they rightfully should be at a university of this
stature. He expects us to be the best."
Nobody here will soon forget the record snowstorms last January.
For Runberg, it was the worst of times and the best of times. The worst of
times because there were 20 inches of snow on the ground that shut down the
University for one of the few times in its history. The best of times because
the worst of times have a way of bringing out the best in people.
It wasn't just the grounds crews, either, Runberg said. It was
housekeepers, electric distribution crews, maintenance shop craftsmen and
others who came to work without being asked and did the jobs that had to be
done without being told.
"That's what I like about the spirit of the folks in Facility Services,"
Runberg said. "Unfortunately, too often, it's not readily recognized."
Landlubbing Navy man
He is who he is, has gone as far as he has, he will tell you, not
because of any special qualities he was born with, but because of the values of
responsibility and accountability instilled in him through what he calls his
"typical Midwestern upbringing."
His parents married in 1941 months before the Japanese attacked Pear
Harbor. His father enlisted days after Pearl Harbor and trained to be a diesel
mechanic. He was aboard a destroyer in the Pacific when Bruce was born on Dec.
31, 1942.
The father would not get home to see his son until after the war ended
three years later.
And while the father left the Navy after the war, the Navy never left his
son's imagination.
When Runberg's father was a boy, he romanticized about what it would be
like to be a cowboy in the old West. Being on a destroyer in the Pacific during
the biggest war of the century gave him excitement enough. Years after leaving
the Navy, Runberg's father still talked to Bruce about the sense of adventure
he had felt in those heady days at sea.
For a boy growing up in the 1950s, the old West was something you watched
on Saturday morning TV shows with Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger, shows where
the good guys always wore the white hats and were the fastest on the
draw.
The real cowboys and Indians, in those Cold War days, were the U.S. and the
Soviet Union. Servicemen aboard a U.S. submarine or battleship knew when they
patrolled the open sea that they could bump into an enemy with weapons as
deadly as their own.
About the time Runberg entered high school, the Soviet Union launched its
Sputnik satellite in 1957 and the space race had begun.
Sputnik also triggered a growing interest in the sciences in classrooms
across the U.S., but not for Runberg. He had always been more interested in
mathematics and that interest continued even after he received a hard-earned
Congressional appointment to the Naval Academy.
Even through all the miseries inflicted upon him his freshman year, he knew
he was where he was meant to be.
He had to walk the line like other plebes, had to be prepared to recite the
newspaper to an upperclassman questioning him over his breakfast.
"It was a trying experience but very much a molding experience with value,"
Runberg said. "From the very day you enter the academy, it creates a feeling of
being a member of a team. It makes you think under pressure, and it instills
the principles of duty, honor and loyalty.
"I was in there with 1,000 other people, and your whole class goes through
the same thing. That really brings you together as a class because everybody
got a bit of the pain."
By his senior year, his interest in mathematics had led him to engineering
and the decision to join the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps.
It was a job that would take him all over the world, and kept him grounded
ashore.
His task was to build whatever needed building at Navy bases from Scotland
to Japan. He served three tours of duty in Vietnam, including two with the
Seabees, a unit that John Wayne immortalized in the movie The Fighting Seabees.
For Runberg, life in Vietnam did not match the movie.
He was there to construct facilities and roads for both the Navy and
Marines. But like his father, he doesn't like to talk much about his war
experience.
"I did my service," Runberg said, and left it at that.
What Runberg will talk about more is the day in December 1982 when his
father joined him in Pearl Harbor to go out to see the Arizona Memorial. For
two years before that visit, Runberg had served as the resident officer in
charge of construction for the "shore side facility" that included a museum and
waiting area for visitors to take a launch out to the memorial site half a mile
away.
Runberg made sure that his father got the VIP treatment. Tour guides
escorted him around like he had been a royal admiral during the war.
Runberg is older now, and time has faded any memory of the words exchanged
between father and son that day. But time has also given Runberg the
perspective to see that day with his father as one of the proudest moments of
his life.
"It was a very special day," Runberg said.
The job left to do
Others may say Chapel Hill is closer to heaven than any place they
have even been.
Runberg and his family have been more places than most, and for them, it
has become the one place that truly feels like home.
Runberg has been at Carolina, at the same job, for eight years now, or
longer than he has stayed anywhere since grade school.
Being here for so long has allowed him to do the things he never could
while on the move, such as serving on the town's planning board the past four
years.
It is here, too, that he and Cynthia, his wife of 31 years, finished
rearing their two boys, Trevor and Courtney.
While his father did not spend much time in the water in the Navy, Trevor
did as the All-American captain of the Carolina swim team. And whenever there
was a meet, Runberg made sure he was there to see it. Trevor graduated from
Carolina with a business degree in 1998 and now works for an investment firm in
Raleigh. Courtney lives and works in Chapel Hill.
Eight years ago, when he started, the capital projects on campus averaged
about 35 a year in design construction.
In 1999, there were more than 80.
The $3.1 billion bond issue for state universities and community colleges
will bring nearly $500 million to campus over the next seven years, money that
will be coupled with another $500 million from non-appropriated sources.
The infusion of money will not just add to the number of projects over the
next seven years, but to the size of those projects.
Part of Runberg's task will be to make sure the bricks and mortar go up in
the right places on time and within budget.
He has to worry, too, about the availability of contractors and designers
given all the
construction projects that will be going on throughout the Triangle and the
state.
Another part of the job will be to get people on campus to accept the
reality of the inevitable inconveniences that all the construction will create.
"There will be some disruptions," Runberg said. "But the bottom line is we
will have some significant long-term gains. Our goal will be to involve people
throughout the campus in the process and communicate the details of each
project."
It's a big dream.
It took the work of a lot of people to take it this far. But for Runberg,
the fun has just begun.
Editor's note: This story is the last of a series featuring 2000 winners
of the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award. The late C. Knox Massey of
Durham created the awards in 1980 to recognize "unusual, meritorious or
superior contributions" by University employees. The award is supported by the
Massey-Weatherspoon Fund created by three generations of Massey and
Weatherspoon families. Former Interim Chancellor William O. McCoy selected the
honorees from nominations submitted by the campus. They each received an award
citation and $5,000.
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