And you finished college?
In 1959.
Was it at that point that you had your first appointment with the Park Service?
The Park Service is an interesting story. The rules were a lot different in those days. I actually started as soon as I was old enough to go to work for them. You could go to work for the government at 18. I actually went to work for the Forest Service in the same little town [where I grew up]. I worked for them all the way through school. The Park Service was kind of an interesting offshoot. I happened to know the forest supervisor’s son. We went to the same school. I was majoring in forestry, and my goal was to get into forestry. One evening, when I was over at the forest supervisor’s house, he commented that based on what I seemed interested in, he suggested I might be happier with the Park Service than the Forest [Service]. He obviously had access to my files, and he based this simply on the standpoint that I was more interested in preservation and people than in cutting trees. The jobs that I’d had with the Forest Service, except for the first year, tended to revolve around recreation. For example, for a while I ran 22 campgrounds. I had a couple of lakes that I had to keep track of. So I was more of a recreation-type of person.
Those were all in the Black Hills area?
Yes. Anyway, he suggested that what I really needed to do was try the Park Service. In fact, he suggested at one time that he could wrangle a way that I could go to work at Mount Rushmore. In those days you could do those kind of things. I didn’t do that. I figured that if I was going to try the Park Service, I would try it on my own. I didn’t need any help.
What brought you to Devil’s Tower, instead of Rushmore or one of the South Dakota sites?
It was kind of a serendipity-type thing. I have a major in education and when I graduated I went over into northeast Wyoming and taught school. I taught chemistry, physics, and biology for three years in a small school in Hulett, Wyoming, which is right next door to Devils Tower. So it was a logical step for a summer job, just 13 miles away.
