Did you have any contacts in the Forest Service? I know with the Newberry project Cal Energy was up there as well.
No. That was one of the side issues. Obviously, Newberry Crater should be in the National Park Service. The only reason Newberry Crater is not is because Bob Smith and the representative down there in Klamath Falls won all for cattle and exploration. So we lost Newberry Crater (47). We’d have pushed for it very hard. Again, that was one of the things that Odegaard was not willing to do. That’s a nice property in that it would tie so very well with Crater Lake. It would nest in there really nice. We had nobody willing to fight for it, and quite frankly, my plate was full enough. There was not time for me to go to war on Newberry Crater. From my level, I’d have lost it, anyway. That would have taken some prime movers up the road a ways. But, no, we didn’t get any help much from the Forest Service. As I say, we did have a couple of dandy spies in BLM. We used to get some neat calls from those folks. And of course, ultimately, I’m sure you’re aware, the geothermal issue cost the district manager his job (48). His inability to force the Park Service to back down on it cost him his job.
Did what you set out to accomplish here preclude any role as a key man? I was thinking back to Spalding and Volz.
Yes, I had no interest in that. I didn’t want to play that role. What we talked about Crater Lake needed from day one and what was very obvious when I got there, was what I worked on.
So it didn’t mean being an absentee superintendent?
We’ve talked about this before. The greatest weakness right now in the National Park Service, as I see it, are superintendents that aren’t in the park. Old John Townsley (49). “Somebody has gotta stay home and watch his store.” We are, in this thrust of politicization brought about by Reagan and others, putting an awful lot of demands on superintendents to spend all their time farting around running all over the country, going to Rotary Clubs and all kinds of meaningless stuff. You have to mind the farm. You really have got to. And you watch parks that are failing, that are going downhill, that are not moving forward, you’re probably going to find that those parks have a superintendent that isn’t there all the time. He is gone a disproportionate amount of time. You are going to find that. I know of no exception. If you have a J. Leonard Volz, and he is told this is what I [the director] want you to do, then that’s what you do. Spalding, as an example, did some of that (50). But if you want to just look at a park, that’s a great way to look at it. If it’s vital, if it’s growing, if it’s progressing, if it’s getting better within the parameters of its boundaries or its expanding boundaries, if it’s a viable, dynamic place, the superintendent is there. If it is not, he probably isn’t.
