When did you first meet Ron Mastrogiuseppe? I know he has had a long association with Dick Brown.
It seems to me as if it was in the late 1960’s, if I remember correctly. Ron was just really a neat guy and was one of the stalwarts that I thought was in the program.
Did you get any time to work with the museum collection and library, or with collectors?
Yes. I worked on the wet collection during what they call project time. Eventually, we worked out a situation where we had two individuals who were responsible. One was responsible for the audio visual, slide collection, and the projectors. That was Ed Payne, who was seasonal from Illinois, from a very fine family, who come out from Decatur for a number of years. Then we had a person who was responsible for the wet collection, [which included] the study skins and the observation file, where people would fill out observations on birds, animals, and that sort of thing that they saw. Those were GS-5s, as I recall. I can’t remember who that person was, but that was their prime responsibility. When those two positions were authorized, my involvement in that aspect of collections was practically nil. The only thing I did was saw to it that Ed and that other person had project time.
So you were focused on operations?
Right. The auditing and the scheduling and this sort of thing. And then, of course, I did interpretive programs myself a couple nights a week. We tried to distribute those evenly among the staff.
Did you get a chance to meet some of the people who had contributed to the collection such as Don Farner or George Ruhle?
No, I didn’t get to met them. I would have like to have had, but they were in the park before I arrived.
In conjunction with the rescue activities, I was fortunate enough to participate in some intensive three-day training sessions for our rescue teams. We had two teams there as Crater Lake. I didn’t get to see any of the other people that you mentioned.
