That consisted of Crater Lake, Oregon Caves and Lava Beds?
Well, Lava Beds was kind of in and out. We didn’t have a lot of Lava Beds work, but they did have us go down there and inventory property and some of their records. We didn’t officially have Lava Beds until they established the Klamath Falls Group Office. I took my retirement just shortly after that.
Was that very disrupting having so many superintendents through Crater Lake all the time?
Well, it went fairly smoothly despite having eight superintendents in sixteen years while I was there. [Don] Spalding came along and of course he was quite a politician. He insisted that all the mail goes through him and then the next thing I knew the regional office would by yelling at me- where’s this and where’s that? I’d dig around and try to find in somebody’s basket, not necessarily the one who was supposed to take care of it. After we went to Klamath Falls it was just too much. I was eligible to retire and told them they could have it.
Where was the office in Klamath Falls? Was it located on South 6th?
Yes.
They pretty much stayed in the same office the whole time?
Yes, the Superintendent and the secretary did. I just don’t remember exactly who all was there because procurement, property, and personnel all stayed up at Crater Lake.
Were you involved very directly in any of the planning efforts?
Yes, I took part in all the master plan meetings and so on.
How about the Redwood plans?
Well, I’ll show you something on that. No, I didn’t get involved in Redwoods but I’ll show you a clipping on some of that pretty soon.
Did it seem that the workload increased over when you arrived in 1953?
No. of course, it might have for the regional office since they handled all the accounting. We still had to do contracts for construction work and so on.
Did the administrative staff grow during that time?
As I say, it increased when they moved the office up to Crater Lake. All I had was the personnel, procurement, and property primarily. Also the warehouse and, of course, all the hiring and so on.
You had a question on employment. We advertised pretty much locally until the minority rule came along. The regional office would give us a list of names and we’d contact them, but most were in the southeast somewhere and they didn’t have money to come out here for seasonal work.
