Why was it named after Hillory Tolson?
Hillory taught it. He and Lee Ramsdale. Lee Ramsdale was a Personnel Officer; nobody really knew just what he did. They held that east and west and Tolsen brought in outsides speakers like Dave Brower and other conservation groups. They had financial people and personnel, you would go right through the regional office and pick every function and whoever the Chief was would present that information, it was a week course. Then the next thing was a year or two after that when they started that Yosemite School. That of course went on the Grand Canyon afterwards. That was the only thing that was available.
So, a lot of the lower echelon people really never saw any training?
No. If there was any, I don’t know if there was or not. We had fire schools, every spring.
Usually in the parks?
They were put on by one of the parks. Further south in California, Yosemite is where you would go, up here and in thru the Pacific Northwest it was Rainier. Whatever the ones that Great Smokies had, they had a fire staff and we would send one or two from the park to those every year. That’s all there was. Now-a-days it’s something else. But you have to have it to keep up today. Did you ever add how many training programs you have been to, Bill?
[Bill] I don’t even want to think about it, or how many cards I have to recertify, or how many refresher course I have to go to; I don’t have time to work.
Footnotes:
1) Regional Director from 1950-1963.
2) Michael McCloskey.
