Forest Service always seemed like a big city.
You get it.
And you get these different neighborhoods.
Right, you got it! It’s particularly true when you get into the supervisor element, this sort of thing. And I know that some of the supervisors, as far as the grade is concerned, are graded no more than what some of the superintendents in some of the park are. Not as much is some areas. But still, you get the feeling that, “Boy, I’m about three grades above you,” type of thing. Again, I am speaking of when I was in the service, I’m not speaking of what happens right now. I do know the BLM right now, I know the Roseburg district and I’m well impressed with it. I know a little bit about the Forest Service down there on the Umpqua, I think it’s fine. There’s some nice people, some wonderful people there. I know that the public relations has changed so dog gone much in the last twenty years. When Lon Garrison went to Yellowstone, he had to break down a lot of barriers there and he had some hard times. But, I think they’re not broken down; they never will be. But they’re broken a lot more down than they were. He was a great Public Relations man, and John McLoughlin was a good Public Relations man. He was not as gung-ho as Lon Garrison was, but the times have just changed. Now, I had a lot to do with the Forest Service when I was in Bryce Canyon and we got along fine. I don’t mean to indicate that we haven’t got along fine, because Forest Service has had a lot of problems with Park Service, too you know. So, it’s a mutual situation; neither on of us are clean on this thing. But the relations are so much better than they used to be, at least before I retired, anyway.
O.K., I think I’m ready for D.
Part Four
Administration of Crater Lake National Park in the 1970’s
Of course, you were Associate Regional Director.
I came out of Washington as superintendent of Coulee Dam and then I was at Coulee Dam for about two and half years. John Rutter, who was the regional director at that time, decided that my talents, such as they might or might not be, were better fitted to be in the regional office than they were in Coulee Dam. And I didn’t fight him too hard, it isn’t that I didn’t like Coulee Dam, we had a nice time over there, but I liked the Seattle area better, that’s all. And I was drawing closer to retirement and we did not have any stake in a house of a darn thing we went over to Seattle and we bought a house which helped us to build the house that we have now. So, that’s a personal part of it, but it did help. But my responsibilities over there had to do with everything, in those days, from Alaska to Lava Beds. So they were aimed at California and Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. It was a fairly big responsibility and I did a bit of traveling, too. It had to do with all the aspect of maintenance with interpretation, with all the ranger activities. I had nothing to do with administration per se. However, whenever I went into the field, why if there was something averse, or something was going wrong in the administration end of it, why I had carte blanche to look into that too. Not that I knew very much about it, so I would mess around with things like that, I didn’t know anything about it. Sometimes I think I was John Rutter’s hatchet man, and I know that I was in a couple of places. In fact, turn that off.
Recording stops.
