There are still additions to the state park system, which is simple great. At one time, I proposed facetiously that the whole state of California ought to go back to being publicly owned and having to have justifications made for every kind of development. In particular, not allowing cities like Los Angeles to grow the way it’s growing because then it gets a preponderance of legislators who control Sacramento and whoever holds the most votes, of course, gets the most money. So many of these projects were going to southern California. But so far there’ve been good additions to the state park system, all to the public’s benefit. There was a change of three directors when I was in the division. At first, it was a division of beaches and parks. My former commanding colonel in the Army Engineers during the war became the chief after he retired from the Army Engineers. And his commanding general was General Hannum, who became the director of resources for California after he retired. The colonel in change of the Pacific Division had become what was called a beach erosion control engineer for the state park system. He’s the one that hired me. At that time, Governor Earl Warren was in office and they had the director of natural resources taking change of the state parks. This was General Hannum. From there, former supervisor Nelson, who had been Supervisor of the Tahoe National Forest, was made chief forester and became the director of natural resources. He supervised the state park system. Then Newton Drury came from, I guess, it was Chicago at that time to become our new chief of state parks (18). When he retired, Charlie De Turk, who had been director of parks in Indiana and then later became one of the chief planners for the Washington State Parks System, came to California as the new director of parks. When Charlie De Turk retired, we got a new director, Fred Jones. He eventually went to Washington with the change of administration when Pat Brown lost out to Ronald Reagan.
We had of course, as every political party changes, new personnel handling the different divisions. They became what personnel handing the different divisions. They became what were called secretaries under the governor. They originally had about 12 divisions that all reported to the governor, but that was cut down to about a half a dozen. We were in the Resources Agency. When I retired in 1973, William Penn Mott was the director of state parks. Bill stayed on until several years after I had retired and then he went to Washington as the director of the National Park Service (19). Bill has passed away, as have so many of the men that I have known in the Forest Service and the State Park system. I’m now 85 and I don’t know whether I want to live to be a 105 but, at any rate, I’m glad I’m still surviving. I attribute a lot of that to the fact that I had my career in the National Park Service and the Forest Service and was not of doors so much of the time. But I came from a family of good genes where all my uncles lived to be almost 100, and my great grandmother lived to be over 100. So who knows, I may outlast George Burns. Well, Steve, that do you think? Is there anything else that we might discuss while I have the microphone here?
