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1982
March 1 1982 Kei Yasuda of Glendale, Oregon, wins the third annual Dutton Creek Ski race in the time of 33:49 minutes. Brian Smith, 12, of Jacksonville, Oregon sets a new Junior Record of 46:10 minutes.
May 1982 The original, hand made metal chandelier, rehung in the Headquarters building lobby, ten years after the building was “modernized” with recessed fluorescent lighting. It was found tossed into a corner of the old Warehouse. Almost tossed out like so many other historic icons the park that has been lost over the years.
May 3 1982 The Park’s pair of nesting Peregrine falcons begin their incubation of three eggs.
May 13 1982 Two Peregrine falcon chicks are flown from California to replace the three unhatched eggs. The chicks fledge successfully. Tests show that the three eggs had died a week earlier.
June 1982 YCC non-resident camp, based in Chiloquin, begins work in the Park. Camping fee raised to $5 in Mazama Campground.
Water year: 623.5 inches (52 feet) of accumulated snow recorded.
June 19 1982 An earthquake registering 2.0 or 2.5 “rocks” the Park. This is the first record of quake since 1945.
June 30 1982 Two men who had been drinking, are injured as their car flips over one mile south of Headquarters.
July 1 1982 The North Entrance road opens.
July 3 1982 Stan Diller, 702 W. Casino, Everett, Washington, nephew of Dr. J.S. Diller, visits the Park. Diller claims that he is the first member of the Diller family to visit Crater Lake since Dr. Joseph Diller explored the area back in 1896.
July 4 1982 Cleetwood Cove plowed out, and the trail is opened.
July 5 1982 A 70-mile, high-speed chase begins on the West Road as Ranger Tom Young attempts to stop a speeding Datsun pickup driven by Larry Alexander of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Alexander was arrested and treated for facial cuts and a broken arm following an altercation with police following his collision with a stop sign in downtown Klamath Falls. A Klamath Falls police car was heavily damaged during the chase that involved five police agencies.
July 5 1982 Plane wreckage and three skeletal remains are discovered by a hiker near Huckleberry Campground, one mile west of Crater Lake National Park. The plane had disappeared on February 26, 1975, during a snowstorm, with a Klamath Falls high school teacher and two of his students on board.
On February 26, 1975, Jean Nunn drove to the airport in Klamath Falls and dropped off her husband, Dave, along with her daughter and grandchild. Dave was flying the two back home to Salem in his blue Cessna 182. Two 17-year-old student pilots, Jim Pryor and Matt Perkins, were coming along for the ride to pick up some flight hours.
The plane landed in Salem as planned, and then Dave, Jim and Matt strapped themselves back into the Cessna for the short flight home to Klamath Falls.
Jean, feeling a little chilled, went to bed early that night. She woke up early, too. Very early.
“I woke up at 9:30 p.m. with the sensation of a hand on my leg,” she recalled in a 2007 interview with Lee Beach of the Klamath Falls Herald and News. “I looked at the clock. I knew. I called the airport and told them the plane had gone down at 9:20 p.m. and he had died at 9:30. They confirmed they had lost the plane off the radar at 9:20 at 11,000 feet.”
Jean may have known, but nobody else did. Search parties hunted for the wreckage in vain. People speculated that it might have gone down in the lake.
Then, seven years later — on July 5, 1982 — a hiker just outside the park boundary, near Huckleberry Campground, spotted what looked like the badly mangled wreckage of a small airplane. Approaching, he found three skeletons slumped inside the cabin.
Jean had been right.
Investigators soon confirmed it was Dave, along with Jim Pryor and Matt Perkins, by looking in their wallets. Inside Dave’s, they found a folded piece of paper on which he had written, “Lose not thine airspeed, lest the ground rise up and smite thee.”Decades later, Jean published a book about her spiritual journey through the trauma of losing her husband. It’s titled “We Fly Away.” The Mysterious Deaths of Crater Lake National Park By Tyler Willford, May 6, 2015.
July 9 to 10 1982 Brian Smith, age 12, and Greg Tinseth, age 11, of Jacksonville, Oregon pull in 33 Kokanee salmon and one Rainbow trout from Cleetwood Cove after Chief Ranger Rudolph states, “Let’s get those fish out of the Lake.”
July 11 1982 Lake tour boats begin operation, the latest seasonal opening in memory.
July 12 1982 Ralph Peyton and the Crater Lake Lodge Company file an additional $117,515 lawsuit against the National Park Service claiming that the Government was at fault for the 1975 outbreak of water-born illnesses associated with the sewer overflow into the Park’s water system.
Using six shots, Seasonal Ranger Tom Young dispatches an injured beaver near North Junction. The beaver had been hit by a car and was blind in one eye. The beaver could possibly have come up from either the Lake, National Creek or Boundary Springs. This was the first ever-recorded sighting of a beaver on the Rim of Crater Lake. (Not to be confused with muskrat type mountain beaver found living in the Park’s lower streams.)
July 14 1982 Over $1,000 taken in cash and goods from five cars in Mazama Campground.
July 19 1982 Second major car clout of the season in Mazama Campground. Seven cars clouted for over $3,000 in lost cash and equipment.
July 23 1982 The “Square Knots” square dancing club from Newberg, Oregon, dance two square dances of two squares on the dock of Wizard Island. The club performs the first organized square dance inside the Rim of Crater Lake.
July 23 1982 Two granddaughters of Jacksonville’s pioneer newspaperman, Jim Sutton, visit the Park and take a boat ride. Sutton named Crater Lake. (Kathryn Sutton Schultz, 24001 Muirl Avenue, #329, El Toro, California 92630 and Wave Sutton White, 3233 Treat Circle, Tucson, Arizona, 85716)
July 23 1982 Twelve-year-old Brian Smith catches 37 Kokanee salmon off Wizard Island in five hours.
July 28 1982 Rim Drive is allowed to melt out and open “naturally”. An attempt to save money.
July 30 1982 Eight deer are spotted swimming single file, in the Lake, below Sinnott Overlook, heading West. Reported by Ranger Bruce Kaye.
August 1982 K.C. Publications publishes the new book, Crater Lake, The Story Behind the Scenery, written by Larry Smith, Ron Warfield and Lee Juillerat. The book was dedicated “to all who find Nature not an adversary to conquer and destroy, but a storehouse of infinite knowledge and experience linking man to all things past and present. They know conserving the natural environment is essential to our future well-being.”
August 2 1982 The second phase of the reconstruction of the last four miles of the West Rim Drive is begun. The project is expected to take at least two summers.
August 7 1982 The snow bank that had partially blocked the Rim Promenade near the Old Lake Trail, in front of the Cafeteria Building, finally melts out. One of the latest Rim snow melts on record.
August 7 1982 462 runners enter the 7th annual Crater Rim Marathon. 78 runners complete the full distance with 285 running the shorter 6.7-mile section.
Winners:
26 miles Dr. Al Glidden, 38, of Klamath Falls, Oregon 2:48:10
Jeanne Otteman, of Klamath Falls, Oregon 3:47:14
13 miles Dave Hall, of Klamath Falls, Oregon 1:19:14
Cheryl Martin, 15, of San Diego, California 1:48:38
6 miles Tracy Garrison, 15, of Klamath Falls, Oregon 34:08
Marnie Mason, 16, of Klamath Falls, Oregon 41:12,
a new women’s record
August 7 1982 Monica Honz, 24, becomes separated from her hiking and research party near Timber Crater, and wanders the northern section of the Park for 27 hours. Monica spends the night in a tree after spotting four bears. A ground and air search is launched the following day and Honz is spotted and rescued by helicopter.
August 16 to September 15 1982 The completion of a four-foot widening and pavement overlay of the West Rim Drive from the Wizard Island Overlook to the North Junction.
August 20 1982 The Park’s “Cluster Office” or also known as: “The Klamath Falls Group”, or as the “Crater Lake Administration Office” is formally closed. All furniture, files and personnel are moved to Crater Lake. Several long-term employees choose to take either early retirement or park transfers rather than moving to Crater Lake.
In order to accommodate the combining of the Klamath Falls office with the Park offices, Resource Management (two offices) are moved above the Fire Hall into the old “Nat Hall”. The building is promptly renamed “Rat Hall”. The large “School Room” in the Ad Building is divided into three offices and all remaining offices and employees, except for the Superintendent’s office shift up and down the halls. Basically these moves are a repeat of the major office shift that occurred in 1964 and again in 1969.
“Nat Hall”, the Interpretive Division, is moved into the downstairs of the old, and fast deteriorating Ranger Dorm. A snow tunnel is built out to the parking lot ensuring year round access.
August 22 1982 The Redwood Alliance, a pro environmental group, releases balloons near the updraft of the cooling tower of the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Plant in Eureka, California while research the airborne drift of radioactive steam emissions. A broken balloon and card are found, the following day on the south face of Wizard Island, near the top of the cone, by a Park visitor. The balloon and card are turned over to Ranger Larry Smith who was doing the boat trips that day. Larry mailed the card back to Eureka.
August 26 1982 Received at Park Headquarters the following note: Dear Ranger – We took these rocks home 6 year ago. On the way down the mountain our brakes went out. Since then we have encountered numerous bad luck happenings such as glass breaking when trying to repair windows, chimney moving away from the house, both cars breaking down at the same time, sewer trouble, I’ve lost my job bad back prevents me from getting another job. I feel the Maniloa Curse from Hawaii is on these rocks. Here fore I am returning them and asking you to put them back. Everyone I talk to about my problems says it the right and only thing to do. Thank you.
P.S. We got them along the shore of the Lake. (No signed name)
August 29 1982 Patrol Ranger Alice Siebecker attempts to stop a speeding, 1982 Volvo on the South Entrance Road. The driver refuses to stop and Alice gives chase. As Alice’s patrol car comes up from behind, the suddenly explodes, runs off the road, flies through the air and hits a pumice embankment 50 feet from the road. The driver, Amdris Merzejuskis, a German national, is instantly killed. The body remained in the wrecked car for four hours while the Jackson County Sheriff bomb squad and the F.B.I. check the car over for hidden explosives. The explosion was a military type of hand grenade that was being held in Merzdjuskis’s hand at the time of explosion. The German’s left hand was blown off, and the victim’s face was badly damaged. Found during a search of the car was a knife, and a pistol, both stored in the driver’s door and a rifle was found in the trunk. Also found was several sets of identifications, all false, and two California license plates. The Volvo had been stolen from a car rental company out of San Diego, California. Merzejuskis is wanted in Texas for drug smuggling charges and had served time in federal prison. Amdris had either planned to use the grenade against the Park Ranger and had accidentally dropped the device or he used the grenade to commit suicide. Alice leaves the Park Service and returns to her former career of violin making.
Written, July 2015: I was visiting and having breakfast with Marion Jack when Alice called in the incident. We went to the scene together and arrived perhaps 15 minutes after the incident, about the same time as the first couple of permanent rangers. I remember one of the permanents saying “maybe a fuel line blew up”. Marion and I walked down and looked in and it was obvious the explosion had nothing to do with the car. The fellow’s hand was off at the wrist and the steering wheel rim had a section of plastic stripped off the steel core and the steel indented toward the center a couple inches. His had numerous small cuts and punctures over his face and torso. Likewise, many small holes and short tears in the interior of the vehicle. I pulled a role of paper towels out of the car that had similar holes and tears and began unrolling it. Short pieces of wire were exposed which had caused the damage. Marion and I concluded at the scene that:
- The explosion occurred in the fellow’s hand, while his hand was up against the steering wheel.
- The explosive was a modern military hand grenade. (Unlike the “pineapple” grenades of
WWII, the newer ones use a sheet metal body with wire wrapped around the explosive core inside. The wire is scored in short sections so that it fragments; being small and light they lose velocity quickly and are a minimal threat to the guy who throws it, but devastating to anyone up close.) Probably like the U.S. M26, if I remember the number correctly.
3, He had driven past Alice as she was getting the South Boundary meter count so very likely knew that it was a lone female Ranger in pursuit (she pursued because he was going at a very high rate of speed in a 45 mph zone). The psychology of car thieves who play with hand grenades doesn’t indicate he would be likely to suicide while being pursued by a lone female Park Ranger.
- Given the above, Marion and I guessed that the guy had armed the grenade, dropped it and had just picked it up when it went off near the steering wheel, or had armed it and had a moment of indecision as to how best to toss it in Alice’s direction. OR (my favorite and I think most likely), he had been sold or given the grenade by someone who really didn’t like him and the grenade fuse had been trimmed from 5 seconds back to nothing. Pull the pin, release the spoon and KABOOM.
Side notes: Historically people (soldiers) who commit suicide using grenades hold the grenade to the chest. Seems unlikely that a suicide would arm the grenade and hold it against the steering wheel. Also, the car was about 50′ from the road. The attached pictures looking down on the car were taken from the edge of the road above the car. However, the car traveled some distance down the road after the explosion before crashing. That might have been close to 500′. Also, I don’t remember if the driver’s side window was down or blown out – if it was blown out the guy may have armed the grenade and THEN remembered to roll the window down. Either way, there was no doubt in our minds that he intended for it to go under Alice’s car. (She appeared to be pretty shaken up over the incident and didn’t take part in examining the wreckage or discussing it while I was there. When Marion and I arrived she still seemed to be under the impression that it was an accidental explosion and didn’t realize the guy intended to toss a grenade at her. I had met her but only in passing, and we didn’t talk at the scene.)
While admitting to being a bit of a redneck, I have to say things turned out just dandy. He was a low life SOB who intended to hurt one of ours and ended up dead instead. No problem. It was just coincidence that I was there visiting and that Marion invited me to go along on the call. Hope this clarifies things a bit. My memory is good on these points, but of course different people may remember things a bit differently.
Herschel Henderly, former CLNP seasonal ranger.
August 31 1982 The Federal Government agrees to settle out of court a $90,000 lawsuit filed against the government by former Lodge owner, Ralph Peyton stemming from the 1975-sewer/water problems. Peyton claimed that he had already paid out $81,989 in judgments to Park visitors who had either stayed or eaten at the Lodge and that he had paid out an additional $35,525 in legal fees. By now 76 claims have been settled and two more cases are still under arbitration.
Summer 1982 Dr. Charles Bacon, USGS geologist publishes a summary of his 4 years of geologic study at Crater Lake titled, Eruptive History of Mt. Mazama, Cascade Range, U.S.A.
Don Morris, of the University of California, finds that the water visibility of Crater Lake is about two times clearer than the water of Lake Tahoe.
Fall 1982 through the Middle of 1986 – Jon Jarvis – 2009 Director of the National Park Service served as Crater Lake Resource Management Specialist until 1986 when he became chief of Resource Management at North Cascades National Park. Jon followed Mark Forbes when he moved to the regional office in Seattle. Jon spent much of his time at CLNP writing the Park’s wilderness proposal. The plan still has not been enacted by Congress. The proposal took on new life when Jon was appointed NPS Director in 2009.
Note from Ron Warfield – Chief of Interpretation at Crater Lake during Jarvis’ tenure – July 16, 2009 – At the first pot luck held to welcome John and Paula to Crater Lake, I got the distinct impression that I was talking to a future Director of the NPS. I remember saying so at the time, and he just smiled. Jon has the chutzpah to be a great director. (Ron retired from interpretation at Mt. Rainier.)
September 1982 Glen Happell, 68, General Manager for Crater Lake Lodge Company retires after working in the Park for 27 years.
September 8 1982 Congress enacts Public Law 97-250 giving back 480 acres of the new Park additions to the Forest Service because of a previous timber sale on the land. The law also requires that the Secretary of the Interior is to promptly instigate studies to determine the status and trends of change in the water quality of Crater lake and to immediately implement action necessary to assure retention of the Lake’s natural pristine water quality. Every two years a report will be prepared, reporting the results of the studies. In anticipation of the Act’s passage, a 26-foot Monarch boat was purchased and launched on the Lake.
September 9 1982 A 100 acre prescribed burn set in the Panhandle area.
Fall 1982 A Klamath Indian shoots a cow elk in the Panhandle area.
October 20 1982 Ron Dirigar, the Park’s new purchasing agent of only four days, found dead in Stone House #31. Dirigar apparently died of an epileptic seizure. Ron lived alone, except for his large dog.
December 1982 Heavy snow and winds topple 191 trees onto the West Entrance Road.
Season 1982 New park folder written and printed, replacing the 20 year old blue mini-folder.
949 Park visitors participate in the ranger led winter snowshoe hikes.
14,561 visitors ride the boats. 55 government seasonals working for the Park.
21 larceny theft incidents result in a loss of $9,109 to Park visitors.
Total revenue from the entrance station and campground operations amounts to $200,272.
1,748 snowmobiles enter the Park. Three lightning caused fires burn 127 acres.
Season 1982 Visitation: 484,283 (Online says: 435,589)
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