Well, what was interesting is just that I met Gene Peterson who was the first Medford District manager.
He was the brother of Helen Fitzgerald.
Jean: Yeah I was going to say I thought you knew of BLM earlier than that because..
Oh, I’m sorry.
Yes, and of course let’s see, the Umpqua, yeah, it bordered us on the north but we never had anything to do with the Umpqua Forest. Now, don’t ask me why, because here they were at Diamond Lake. We did have something to do, occasionally, with the concessionaires over at Diamond Lake. That was after Lou came here. Now I don’t think that, again to harp back to Leavitt’s plan, I don’t think that Leavitt was much of a public relations man when he was up here. He may have been when he was in Medford, and this I can’t speak, not at all on. Now we had an assistant superintendent by the name of Tom Parker, who stayed in Klamath Falls, and his address was Brown’s Pool Hall in Klamath Falls. I’m being very facetious, but that was just where you would find him. And in a way I can’t blame him because he was absolutely nothing to do down there, except just for people to know that he was there. Tom was a real nice guy but he was very ineffective, too.
Was he from Klamath, or was it a concession to Klamath Falls interest?
It was concession to Klamath. Tom was old Park Service, so he’d been around. And we had another assistant superintendent while we were here. He came down from Alaska. I can not remember his name (22). And there was a hint of a scandal having to do with his move from Alaska or something that had happened in Alaska. But I don’t remember what it was, I can’t even remember his name. I know he lived upstairs in the hospital [House 34] for a while. I don’t think his family was here at all. But that would have been in probably ’49, ’50, somewhere around there. And where we went from there, we vacillated back and forth as to whether the headquarters was going to be in Medford or be up here. And I think Tom Williams was here all the time (23). I think [John] Wosky still went down to Medford (24). Tom said, “This is no way to run a railroad”. So he stayed up here.
Yeah, they didn’t sell the house off until ’65. I don’t know much about Wosky’s superintendence.
I don’t think I ever met Wosky. I knew Tom Williams quite well because he was assistant superintendent at Olympic, a very fine man. So I guess I told you about the management of the lands outside of the park.
