Was that long period of not having a maintenance chief detrimental? I know that when I was hired there was an acting. . .
Yes, that’s right. It took a long time to make that happen. But it finally did. And, yes, it did hurt. I liked D.C., no doubt about it, but he was ill equipped to deal [with things in the long term] (61). I keep using the analogy of a race, but if its a good one, in that if you’re going to get in there and compete, and again, maintenance monies are tough. If you’re going to deal with that in an aggressive maintenance program, you have to have somebody in there that can play the game. Scott Ruesch was an absolute master at it. You figure that he now went directly from Crater Lake to one of the big parks as chief indicates, you know, that obviously he is very good (62). He is probably, I would guess, one of the top half dozen chiefs of maintenance in the National Park Service today, which is saying a lot.
Was that long period of not having a maintenance chief detrimental? I know that when I was hired there was an acting. . .
Yes, that’s right. It took a long time to make that happen. But it finally did. And, yes, it did hurt. I liked D.C., no doubt about it, but he was ill equipped to deal [with things in the long term] (61). I keep using the analogy of a race, but if its a good one, in that if you’re going to get in there and compete, and again, maintenance monies are tough. If you’re going to deal with that in an aggressive maintenance program, you have to have somebody in there that can play the game. Scott Ruesch was an absolute master at it. You figure that he now went directly from Crater Lake to one of the big parks as chief indicates, you know, that obviously he is very good (62). He is probably, I would guess, one of the top half dozen chiefs of maintenance in the National Park Service today, which is saying a lot.
Crater Lake used to play that role quite a bit, of being not really a stepping stone, but certainly a launching pad.
It is. Number one, it stretches everybody. I think there is nobody that does an assignment satisfactorily at Crater Lake that isn’t stretched. And that means you, as well as Scott Ruesch. That goes with the territory. It is not an easy area to deal with. And Scott came in there at an absolute perfect time to make things happen. Of course, we were lucky in that detail. You remember, where he came down on a detail for a while?
