I’ve prepared some questions for John chronologically. We’ll start with some background.
I started working at Crater Lake in 1978. The story that leads me to Crater Lake is a little jumbled. My parents were living in Cleveland, Ohio, when I was born. I went to elementary schools in Cleveland until I was in the seventh grade and we moved to San Jose, California. I spent my junior high, high school, college years there and did four years of high school teaching in the Bay Area. During that time Marilyn and I married. My wife and I decided we wanted a little more for our family than the concrete jungle down there, so we moved to Grants Pass. I applied to teach at high schools throughout California, Washington and Oregon, and was offered a job in Mt. Shasta. Grants Pass finally won out, so we located here.
Was Marilyn’s family a factor?
Marilyn’s family was in Grants Pass, but they didn’t have much to do with our decision. It was the job availability. Grants Pass was opening two new high schools the same year I was looking for a position. North Valley and Hidden Valley high schools opened that year. I was hired as the department head of Hidden Valley High School when it opened in 1977.
The connection between teaching, moving to Oregon and the Park Service was that I had enjoyed being a county peak ranger in the Santa Clara Valley. I’d spent a summer at a county park as a park ranger. I had three avenues for summer work because I wasn’t teaching. I went to the county park and they wanted me. They said, “We want you to work with kids cleaning up parks for the summer.” I thought, “I don’t think I want to do that since I work with kids all year. I would rather do something else.” As for the state system, I couldn’t even figure out how to apply and the only vacancy was as a technician doing bathroom clean up. I wasn’t really interested. My connection with Crater National Park was through Lloyd Smith, who was teaching in Grants Pass. He was kind of a guru of photography and I was teaching photography. Since I was teaching photography, I wanted some help from him. He was at South Middle School. I was at Hidden Valley, and went to talk with him about doing photography lesson plans. He was also teaching photography at Rogue Community College. He had evening classes in photography, and he taught math and some other things during the day to his junior high kids.
