Did you get to accompany him on some of his trips to various parks and study areas?
Not really. By the time I was fifteen, he retired from the Carnegie Institution. At that time I was somewhat accepted as an adult in my family, though you did have to prove yourself. I can remember the Dedication of Humboldt Redwoods State Park at Bull Creek Flat in 1931. My folks went with him and then I was ferreted off to a lady that looked after me there in Berkeley. In retrospect, it would have been a very interesting thing to have been there because that was the dedication at the Founders Grove. In 1932, we spent the summer in Benbow. Do you know where that is? It’s in Humboldt County, south of Garberville. Anyway, it’s a fancy hotel now and very expensive. I took my daughter there a few years ago, along with her daughter and my wife Kathie. Benbow was the site for the Council meeting of the Redwood League. So grandfather would usually arrange to stay there in the hotel, or one of the cabins. That summer we had a cabin which we rented in that same general area and so I did see grandfather a bit at that time when he was doing some Redwood League business. Drury had a cabin at Benbow, too. So the Drury family and our family were all there together. But I don’t remember even going to the hotel. As a matter of fact, my first remembrance of the hotel was that my wife and I spent a night there on our honeymoon in 1947.
Grandfather used to talk with me about parks and study areas. We would have discussions about his work and his thoughts about parks. In the last year of his life, I did a lot of philosophical reading when I was at sea in the Navy and I discussed some of these things with him on the occasion that I saw him in Berkeley.
Lawrence C. Merriam, Jr. Oral History Interview
Was your father interested in state parks at that point?
Yes. This continued from what he did in the 1930’s. I remember the Mount Diablo projects and can remember coming to Oregon at about that time, but don’t remember the specifics. I found a lot of correspondence while doing my state park history between Dad and Sam Boardman that concerns the management of CCC projects in Oregon. He certainly was involved with planning for awhile because his name appeared on a lot of the things as the top administrator. He didn’t have much of a role at Champoeg. Some people in his office were working on those projects.
