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Jim Carroll oral history transcript
No full textOral history interview with Jim Carroll with unknown interviewer.
Jim Carroll began his career in the FWS as a student/trainee and shares his experiences at the many refuges he worked at: his re-design of a water control gauge in which he received an incentive award, water hole counts for Big Horned sheep and Buffalo, and recreational activities while living on the refuges. He retired from the Service as a Refuge Operations Specialist in the Regional Office (Region 3).
Organization: FWS
Name: Jim Carroll
Years: 1962-1994
Program: Refuges
Keywords: History, Biography, Employees (USFWS), Management, Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge, Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, Quivira National Wildlife RefugeINTERVIEW WITH JIM CARROLL
BY DOROTHE NORTON FEBRUARY 19, 2003
Also present Mrs. Joan Carroll
MS. NORTON: Good afternoon Jim. It’s nice to see you. It was easy to find your
place, because you gave me good directions.
MR. CARROLL: Good, thank you.
MS. NORTON: So we’ll do this interview and when it’s completed, it is sent in to
Washington or actually, to the National Conservation Training Center at Shepherdstown,
West Virginia. They have a temporary service, which transcribes them. When they are
transcribed they go in to the archives. And if you’d like to have a copy when it is
completed, we can request that.
MR. CARROLL: Okay, I would. That sounds good.
MS. NORTON: So Jim, what is your birthplace and birth date?
MR. CARROLL: My birthplace was Atlanta, Georgia. And I was born on May 4,
1937.
MS. NORTON: What were your folk’s names? And what was their education?
MR. CARROLL: My father was James M. Carroll. I am James M. Carroll, Jr. My
mother’s name was Rosa Lena Cousins Carroll. Cousins was her maiden name. Dad had
some education past high school. He was a tool designer and draftsman. My mother
went to college for a year, or possibly a little more, but that was it.
MS. NORTON: Did your mother have a job then, after she got married?
MR. CARROLL: No, she stayed at home. I have two brothers, and two sisters.
MS. NORTON: So what was your dad’s job then?
MR. CARROLL: During World War II he worked at the Bell bomber plant. He worked
on the design team for B-29s. He did something to do with the B-29s. I am not exactly
sure what. We moved to Arizona when I was twelve and he had a number of jobs out
there working for mining companies, drafting and such.
MRS. CARROLL: He worked on aircraft too.
MR. CARROLL: He was aircraft also out there when the B-29s were reconditioned for
Korea.
MS. NORTON: How did you spend your early years when you were just a boy?
MR. CARROLL: I was a…even when I was young, I was active in Boy Scouts. I got in
to that as early on as I could in Cub Scouts. As a matter of fact, I have completed my
fifty years as a Scout. I’ve been active in Church all along also. My interest in wildlife
grew out of Scouting.
MS. NORTON: Did you ever have any jobs as a kid?
MR. CARROLL: No, nothing in particular, just odds and ends, but nothing in particular.
MS. NORTON: Did you hunt or fish?
MR. CARROLL: Not much, no. Just a little bit; I went fishing a couple of times with
my grandfather and did a little bit of hunting actually, when I got into FWS but that was
about it.
MS. NORTON: What high school did you attend?
MR. CARROLL: I went to Tucson High School. We had a graduating class of about a
thousand. The school had a population of about six thousand students. It was the largest
in the country at the time.
MS. NORTON: What year did you graduate?
MR. CARROLL: 1955.
MS. NORTON: Did you go to university then?
MR. CARROLL: Yeah, the University of Arizona. I started out in Business and Public
Administration. I had done fire control work with the Park Service during the summer
and found out that I was headed for a desk job with that, so I changed to Wildlife
Management as a major. I graduated in that with a Bachelor or Science in Liberal Arts
with a major in Wildlife Management.
MS. NORTON: When did you get that degree?
MR. CARROLL: That was in 1962. Oh, excuse me; that was in 1966. We got married
in 1962!
MS. NORTON: Did you go on then for a Master’s degree?
MR. CARROLL: No. In fact, I don’t know how you’ve got this segmented, but ….
Well, go ahead with your questions, and I can go back.
MS. NORTON: Who most influenced your education and your career? Did you have
any mentors or courses that especially stuck with you?
MR. CARROLL: Just by experiences in Scouting. Then, a friend and I got jobs with the
Park Service doing that kind of work. When I switched over to Wildlife Management in
college, we had an interviewer come by. I can’t remember his name but he was
interviewing for student/trainee positions with the FWS. So I ended up basically in the
first semester that I was in Wildlife Management, signing up for FWS. I had very little
practical experience in terms of wildlife but I was learning a lot and absorbing it as quickly
as I could. We were married that April of that same semester. Our honeymoon was at
Bosque Del Apache in New Mexico on my first student/trainee job; at least that’s how
we looked at it.
MS. NORTON: Did you ever serve in the Armed Services?
MR. CARROLL: Yeah, I put in eight years in the Marine Reserve, with six months of
active duty out of that. I signed up with my parent’s permission right at the end of
Korea. I was seventeen. I got out about two weeks before the ….because of my
student/trainee program, they were reluctant to let me go to that and not go to summer
camp. I completed my eight years, and rather than “re-up” so to speak, I got out. Two
weeks later, they closed it off for Vietnam and wouldn’t let anyone out.
MS. NORTON: What were your duty stations?
MR. CARROLL: I just went through recruit training in San Diego and then to Camp
Pendleton for the six month advanced combat training; but no active duty other than that.
MS. NORTON: Did the military service relate in any way to your employment with
FWS?
MR. CARROLL: No.
MS. NORTON: Can you tell me when, where and how you met your lovely wife?
MR. CARROLL: We met at our Church Camp when we were in college. My brother
introduced us. Not much grew out of that at the moment. Later on, in the next year in
the…..
MRS. CARROLL: The following December, you asked me out.
MR. CARROLL: I asked her out. I asked her out to go ice-skating in Tucson because I
had some free tickets to the place. The nice part of that was that she didn’t know how to
ice skate very well so I got to hold her hand for the whole first date! That worked out
nicely.
MRS. CARROLL: Three and half years later, we were married!
MS. NORTON: When and where were you married?
MR. CARROLL: It was in Tucson at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church. April 23, 1962.
That year it was the day after Easter, which is about as late as Easter comes. It was a
Monday and it was Spring Break from college. We went up on the Mogollon Rim in
Arizona and just had complete isolation. It was just a wonderful place at that time of
year for a honeymoon.
MS. NORTON: Is that place where you went for your honeymoon right in Tucson?
MR. CARROLL: No, the Mogollon Rim is a geologic line that goes from southeast to
northwest in Arizona. The southwestern part of Arizona is a variety of deserts and the
northeastern is the higher ground with pines and beautiful country northeast of Phoenix.
MS. NORTON: So how many children did you have?
MR. CARROLL: We had three children.
MS. NORTON: What are their names? And what are they doing now?
MR. CARROLL: Kathy was born Katherine Joan Carroll. She is a nurse and she is
married now. They live in Appleton, Wisconsin. She was born during the second
summer that I was a student/trainee at that Cabeza Prieta Refuge. Joan stayed in Tucson
and I commuted on weekends about a hundred and twenty miles from Ajo, Arizona the
office, and there. She was born that summer.
MRS. CARROLL: She works for a paper company in Neenah, which is just south of
Appleton.
MR. CARROLL: Our son David was born also in the summer when we were at Bear
River Refuge in Utah. He was born in Brigham City. A week after that with a one-week-old
baby and a toddler, we came back to school with our little trailer and our car and such.
That was quite an expedition; a real adventure.
MRS. CARROLL: He is a teacher. He teaches music. He is the Band Director at
Marshfield Wisconsin High School. His wife is also a music teacher. They have two
children. Our youngest son, Peter, was born while we were living on a Refuge in Kansas.
So they were all three born in different states.
MS. NORTON: I had that same situation.
MRS. CARROLL: They live here, in Lakeville. They have two children one of which I
am babysitting right now. He works for Best Buy, and his wife is a teacher.
MS. NORTON: Great! So now we are going to move on to your career. Why did you
want to work for the FWS?
MRS. CARROLL: Because I wanted to marry somebody that worked for the Service!
That’s a standard joke!
MR. CARROLL: I liked the out of doors. I liked the Park Service. The FWS sounded
like a good opportunity. I didn’t know that much about it. I had made so applications
for the Park Service. I had sent out seventeen applications for seasonal work, and hadn’t
gotten any feedback. I was happy where I was, but I wanted to get a broader range. The
student/trainee position was an excellent opportunity to get in and find out about FWS.
MS. NORTON: Was that your first job with FWS?
MR. CARROLL: Yes, at Bosque Del Apace.
MS. NORTON: And when was that?
MR. CARROLL: That was in 1962. Then following that I was at Cabeza Prieta during
the second summer. They have it on the list here, as Imperial, but it was a combination of
Kofa, Cabeza Prieta and Imperial in southwestern Arizona. Cabeza Prieta is a million
acres of desert, primarily for the Big Horned Sheep. And the major project there, the
Assistant Manager there was a student at the University of Arizona working on his
Doctorate and studying the Big Horned Sheep so we did water hole counts. That was
quite an interesting project. The next summer we went to Wichita Mountains Refuge in
Oklahoma. A couple of weeks after I got there; no it was the first week; the West Point
Cadets were coming. They came every year for a buffalo barbeque and they liked to see
buffalo. Well, the Refuge staff would herd the buffalo up to make sure they were able to
see them. So they had me do this and I was not much of a horseman. It was exciting,
trying to move buffalo in one direction or another when they’re not that inclined to follow
what you want. At least it was better with them than with long horned cattle, which
were some of the other critters that they had there.
MRS. CARROLL: Didn’t you do a study?
MR. CARROLL: Yeah, I did a public use study there at Wichita that was pretty detailed
and was an important document when they did the first public use master plan for the
refuge. They checked with me on a few items on that. After that we went to Bear River
in Utah the next summer. After I graduated in 1966 we went to Tishomingo Refuge in
Oklahoma for a year. That’s on the north arm of Lake Texoma. Following that I was
Assistant Manage at Quivira Refuge in Kansas. Charles Darling was the Manager there.
He had been the Assistant Manager at Wichita when I was there. That’s a very
interesting area with about twenty thousand acres. Charlie Darling as Assistant Manager
at Wichita had been responsible for having the radio in his house. There was constant
activity on the radio. At Quivira, he wouldn’t allow radios. It was interesting trying to
communicate. From Quivira we went to Horicon Refuge. I was Assistant Manager there
for a year. From there we went down to Ottawa Refuge in Ohio. I was there for six
years. The first two years was as Assistant Manager and then we had the floods on Lake
Erie, the high waters started coming in. They moved the staff off. I was the only
professional left on the staff. It was complexed, so to speak with Shiawassee Refuge so I
was the Resident Manager for two years. The water kept rising and we had interesting
problems as the dikes were broken and people were writing their Congressmen. Art
Hewlett, the Deputy Regional Director came down, and we were talking on TV and this,
that and the other. So that was an interesting time. For the final two years of the six, I
was the acting Refuge Manager.
MRS. CARROLL: The power plant was going in at that time at Davis-Bessy so he was
on TV a lot again because that was on the edge of the refuge also.
MR. CARROLL: Actually, we had a unit of the refuge that was the marshes of Davis-
Bessy, the Nevara marches. Then I went to Necedah Refuge. I was there approximately
ten years. I was Manager there. From Necedah, I came in to the Regional Office. There,
the responsibilities changed a little bit. My title changed three times while I was there,
from Wildlife Biologist to Refuge Manager, the Refuge Operations Specialist. But it was
still pretty much the same areas of responsibility.
MS. NORTON: And you stayed in the Regional Office until you retired?
MR. CARROLL: Yes.
MS. NORTON: When did you retire?
MR. CARROLL: It was May 3, 1994.
MS. NORTON: I retired on April 30, 1994. We went out at about the same time Jim!
MR. CARROLL: Well, it was a buy out and I had considered possible retirement in
several years but this opportunity came along and there was a possibility that if I didn’t
take the buy out, I might be transferred. We are happy in this part of the country, so.
MS. NORTON: I know my children talked me into taking it too. They asked me why I
kept working. It was because I liked the people I worked with. So how did you feel that
the pay and benefits were like when you came to FWS?
MR. CARROLL: I thought they were excellent. It fit in with our lifestyle. We weren’t
on the fast track in terms of going up in wages.
MRS. CARROLL: You have to remember, when we went in, if you earned 10,000. You
figured a years income, and that was attainable at that time. But having housing to rent
from the government on the refuges was really a big drawing point for both of us. We
only applied for positions that had housing.
MS. NORTON: So on all of these different positions that you had, did you have
promotion opportunities when you moved?
MR. CARROLL: Yes, each time. I never changed Grade; well, actually I did. There was
when I was at Necedah; the accretion of duties went from an 11 to a 12 position.
MS. NORTON: Did you socialize with the people that you worked with?
MR. CARROLL: Yes, on the refuge pretty much. We had some fine families.
MRS. CARROLL: Right from the beginning, right from the first one.
MR. CARROLL: Skeet Dart who was one of the real, early cornerstones of FWS and
he’d come in in World War II. Grace Dart was his wife. They were very gracious when
we were at Bosque.
MRS. CARROLL: They had wonderful stories to tell about during the Second World
War and he was called to go into the Service. She had to pack the house and move and do
everything. The van broke down and all of their stuff was put on two different vans.
MS. NORTON: Who was he?
MR. CARROLL: Skeet Dart was the Manager of the refuge.
MS. NORTON: Is he still alive?
MR. CARROLL: I wouldn’t think he would be. He was nearing retirement then. He
was highly thought of though.
MRS. CARROLL: He had wild stories of what refuges were like before they were very
well settled.
MR. CARROLL: What was the question here before this came out?
MS. NORTON: I asked if you socialized with people you worked with.
MR. CARROLL: Oh yeah. The Manager and Assistant there and actually, it would
probably be after….there were little communities on each refuge. That’s one thing we
liked about living there. In terms of Joan and the kids being able to interact with the other
folks.
MRS. CARROLL: Thanksgiving would come and people would invite us to their home
because our family was still in Tucson and out west and here we were a long ways off.
They just sort of took care of you and invited you for supper the first day you were on.
MR. CARROLL: Every refuge we went to, the Manager would have us over the first
evening for dinner. At Ottawa, that was really important because that particular time
we’d moved in, the temperature was bitter, bitter cold. When we moved in to the house,
the furnace didn’t turn off for a day and a half!
MRS. CARROLL: The wind chill was forty below!
MS. NORTON: Oh my gosh, that was pretty cold!
MRS. CARROLL: And with three little kids!
MR. CARROLL: We should have gone to a hotel for the night, but we didn’t.
MS. NORTON: What did you ever do for recreation whenever you were out at all of
these different field stations?
MRS. CARROLL: You were involved in Lions Club.
MR. CARROLL: The Lions Club, Church work and Scouts. That was an introduction
into each community we went to. We were both in Church Choir so sometimes before
we’d join a Church, we’d show up and sing in the Choir. That was an introduction to a
lot of people in the community. Then, with Lions Club you can transfer membership and
you’re in already. And they are always ready and anxious to have volunteers for Boy
Scouts, so you’re in. And after you move in you have all of those connections. Early on
at one of the first refuges Joan had sort of sat back and waited to be asked to get involved
in things. That only lasted for one station. From then on she jumped in with both feet
and enjoyed it ever since.
MS. NORTON: How did your career affect your family?
MRS. CARROLL: Very well, I think. The kids have very good memories of going with
dad to count cars at the deer hunting time, and going out to watch dad band ducks and
different things. They have very good memories of refuges.
MR. CARROLL: Most of their growing up took place at Necedah where they were in
junior high and high school. They actually went to University of Wisconsin at Stevens
Point, all three of them. That was a good focal point there. And it was a good school
system. There were interesting circumstances; the story of how the schools were in an
interesting story in itself. There were a lot of professional people there, having to do
with a Roman Catholic Shrine area. They were quite interested in the education of their
children and our kids benefited from that. We didn’t have the cars where the kids could
go around hither and yon, so we avoided a lot of those problems. Joan worked in the
school so she was aware. The kids didn’t stand a chance! We had them coming and
going. She was aware of any problems that developed. She let a lot of them go by. The
kids actually didn’t know that she was actually aware of a lot of the things that
happened. She’s thinking about telling them now!
MS. NORTON: What sort of training did you receive for your jobs as you started each
one? Was it on the job, or did you go to any formal training classes?
MRS. CARROLL: When we were at Tishomingo you can here for something.
MR. CARROLL: Yeah, I came for Refuge Management training at Arden Hills for six
weeks. Bob Greene was heading that. Then, the second time around also. Lynn
Greenwalt had contact with him several times. That fellow is awesome. I’ve got the
feeling that now, if I went up to him and said hello, he’d know me by name.
MS. NORTON: I bet he would!
MR. CARROLL: It’s awesome! He is such a public speaker. I remember at the basic
training he spoke something on finance. It’s the boringest idea you could get. He made it
so interesting that it was one of the best sessions we had in the training course. I was at
Oklahoma, Tishomingo when I came out for the first one.
MS. NORTON: What hours did you work when you were out in the field?
MR. CARROLL: One nice thing about living on the field station is that you can put in as
much time as you want. A lot of times you are either within walking distance of the
office.
MRS. CARROLL: They didn’t mind you putting in overtime for a long time. Unless
you were doing Law Enforcement; then you had to put in so that if you made an
apprehension or something, you were on their time.
MR. CARROLL: For sure. But you could go home and have supper and go back and
work on whatever it was. Or, you could out and check things in the field and have
somebody in the car with you from the family to check a dike or a water control structure
or that sort of thing.
MS. NORTON: What kind of tools or instruments did you use? Was there anything
different or unusual?
MR. CARROLL: Actually, we had the gauges on the sides of the water control
structures. I think I did get an incentive award for making a mobile, or portable version of
that. A lot of times through the seasons of the year, ice and this that and the other and
circumstances, it became difficult to read those. The mechanic on the refuge fabricated
one to my design and I sent it in for incentive. I got some recognition for it. It collapsed
in the middle. You could take it out and snap it up and drop it down to a certain point
and measure each of the impoundments.
MRS. CARROLL: You worked on the catch cages for Mourning Dove too, didn’t you?
Didn’t you sort of redesign those a little too?
MR. CARROLL: Yeah, at Bosque, my first refuge I sort of did some modifications on
the cages, but that was just for my use. As far as I know, I banded the most doves ever
banded in a summer; over 1,500. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Again, that was something that
you did on your own time because the middle of the day is
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