Did you choose German because some of the journals were in German?
That’s an antiquated requirement and I don’t know why they have it anymore. Years ago, the reason that Ph.D. students had to have two languages was that most of the literature was in French and German, and you had to translate it. A lot of the important literature had not been translated, and in order for you to learn about your field, you had to be able to read these two languages. It was aimed at having a reading knowledge. You didn’t have to learn how to speak it, use it, but you had to have a reading knowledge. At the University of North Dakota they required German and French, generally for the biology majors. When I got to OSU they required one language, and you could substitute some computer courses for the second language. In those days, you knew computers were coming. I had to hire a programmer to get my data on cards and we ran these programs.
When I had to take my German, I hired a tutor who was a Romanian. He had a Ph.D. in some field, but worked in animal husbandry at OSU as a common laborer. He spoke beautiful German as well as other languages and he had a little house down by Lincoln School in south Corvallis. I’d drive over there once a week. When I first met with him, he said when you come here next time, you [should] have a book in German. That’s the book you will read from for your test. I went down to the library and I borrowed a biology book in German. He had a fit, saying that I don’t want this book because every chapter is different. It had one chapter on amphibians, birds, mammals, insects and so forth. All these have different terminology. He wanted me to get a book on one subject like fish. I then got a German book on the evolution of fish, so that all through it the terminology was the same. After 100 pages I had mastered this 500 page book. I could read anywhere in it. That’s how they tested you. I spent six months meeting with him every week on Tuesdays, reading to him for two or three hours. If I found a word that I didn’t know, I would write it down and we would work on that. After six months I was able to go to some person on campus who gave these tests. She would take the book and open it up to some page at random. I would have to read the page to her, and that’s how I passed the test. I never used German again.
I know when we took a break I asked you about the NPS infrastructure at Crater Lake to support your work and the work of others around 1970 or so?
Carl Bond and h s student Hal Kibby had apparently used a ranger boat. This is the study that Kibby, Donaldson and Bond published in 1968 or so. They looked at the temperature and currents in the lake (11). They tracked plastic bags partially filled with water around the lake. When Donaldson decided to go down there, Bond had a boat that he’d been using at Klamath Lake for a fish study that he and Harry Phinney had been using. They decided to bring that boat to Crater and they lowered it into the lake. It was probably in the early summer of 1967 when they lowered Bond’s Boston Whaler into the lake. I don’t think the park gave any other support to Donaldson’s program.
