Mather tried to make more of a vertical arrangement, rather than a horizontal. The Park Service seemed to walk away from that and after that, concentrated on expanding its influence.
It’s almost like they were trying, at that time, to take over places to, like you say, to expand the influence, but also to grab. I don’t know whether this is true or not, because my lay history proves to me that we have had places shoved down our throats that we absolutely did not want, and this may have been the case then, too. I don’t know. Because politicians do strange things sometimes as to bring something to their home turf. So, it’s hard to say.
Yeah, that probably has to be investigated a bit more.
I have never been that high up, nor privy to enough information to know. Actually, a branch chief in Washington is somewhat like a captain in the Pentagon. Not quite, it’s more like maybe a lieutenant colonel in the Pentagon. You formulated things and you went through a lot of people, and I worked quite closely with Spud Bill; I worked quite closely with Howard Baker. I’ve written and re-written memos for Howard Baker so many times it made me blue in the face. Finally, there was one still hanging there when Howard retied and I was sure glad to see Howard retire because he’d forget the memo! It could not be re-written, is all there is to it! But it was fun. It was a fun thirty years!
