I know there was a difference as far as absorbing high graded people.
Right, they had five or six Deputy Directors. Their secretaries were all to grades higher than we had. The lower levels abandoned ship before the transfer actually took place. It was kind of funny seeing them come back in the organization that I almost went in, twenty years before doing the same type thing, which is fascinating. All that has a long term effect on the National Park Service, that many people in each regional office; it varied of, course. But you plug the Superintendent now at Golden Gate in as a fairly young fella. I don’t say there is anything wrong with him at all. But again, this is a position and there are a whole series of them filled by employees of the other agency that the Park Service existing staff were not able to compete for; this is difficult.
That kind of wraps up where I have been. I have enjoyed coming up to Redwoods, we had a few things to get squared around and it didn’t take long to do that, nice place to work. Occasionally you run into some people that you worked with previously like these two characters [Bill Donati and Ron Mastrogiuseppe] and you get to see them and enjoy them again. I had a Chief Ranger once three different times, Dick Rayner, I selected him one time and the other two times I moved in the job and he was already there. So it’s kinda fun when you do that.
[Bill] Kinda points out that it is a relatively small organization.
It really is.
I know that Howard Baker, going back to an earlier reference, published something about the family tree of the National Park Service.
Well, he was a great man to work for I’ll tell you.
Yeah, he still lives in Omaha. I have written to him a couple of times.
Right. Did you ever work in Omaha?
No, I was there once when I was a kid.
I don’t know where he was prior to being Regional Director there, seemed like he’d been there forever, you know.
