There was one done in ’64, as I remember, so he wanted a new one just two years down the line?
He said to live up in that snow was asinine. Get the damn thing down where it belongs, out on the west side. I said okay. So you just do it, you know, that is what you are paid to do. If the Director gives you directions, then you better use them. Beside I didn’t have any problem with it, to me it made sense.
Did you have an idea for a physical move of headquarters like to Prospect or Union Creek?
“Get the houses and office out of there,” in just about those words. This whole conversation with him on this move to Redwoods and Crater Lake and the planning and all this stuff took may be fifteen minutes and that was it. He was catching a plane and I was catching a plane and that was it. I didn’t see him for a couple of years after that. We conversed you know, but by then we were going to another region. By that time, John Rutter was Regional Director. He was the key man for the Redwoods and North Cascades, but was under Hartzog’s thumb all the time. Of course John would get one me for Redwoods. I was the only guy working Redwoods. They had six or seven working North Cascades, they had a different problem up there. So, I spent most of my time down here as Bill [Donati] knows and certainly Paul knew. Paul did a good job up there.
Was Redwood a different situation?
I don’t know. I think it was geographic more than any thing. I never felt burdened, the only thing I felt bad about was the Superintendent at Crater Lake was the official title and that’s your duty assignment and all the rest of it, I was never able to do the job that should have been done at Crater Lake.
Largely because you just physically weren’t in the park?
I would come down here Sunday night, and I would work usually through Friday morning and get home Friday night. I’d spend Saturday and half of Sunday in the park, change my laundry and all that stuff, say hello to my wife and family, by then I was gone again. That went on until 1968, so there was no time.
