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Interview with Vernon Byrd by Ed Grossman, May 7, 2001, Homer, Alaska
No full textOral history interview with Vernon Byrd. Ed Grossman was the interviewer.
Mr. Byrd discusses first coming to Alaska with the military, joining Fish and Wildlife Service, and the various refuges he worked at. He also talks about the Aleutian Tern, a boat used by the Service, it's background and shares various stories involving it.
Organization: FWS
Name: Vernon Byrd
Years:
Program: Refuges
Keywords: History, Biography, Aquatic birds, Aquatic environments, Birds, Boating, Boats, Coastal environments, Employees (USFWS), Marine birds, Marine environments, Ships, Shorebirds, Waterfowl, Military, Izembek NWR, Hawaiian Islands NWR, Aleutian Islands, Yukon Delta NWR, Aleutian Canada Geese1
INTERVIEW WITH VERNON BYRD
BY ED GROSSMAN MAY 7, 2001
HOMER, ALASKA
MR. GROSSMAN: I am Ed Grossman and this is Vernon Byrd. It’s the 7th of May in the
year 2001. We are here at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters.
Vernon is an icon here. He has been here for many, many years. The subject that I was
hoping to discuss with him here today is the Aleutian Tern. It was an Army T boat that
was used on the Refuge as support for many years and has since moved on. Now they
have a much bigger, better vessel. We have other T boats in service with the Fish and
Wildlife Service and in the end; hope to interview a number of the skippers and people
familiar with working off of those. So, thank you Vernon, very much for agreeing to do this
interview here today. I guess first of all, for folks that will be reading about this, and
transcribing and such; I know they’d have an interest in some of your background. Could
you give us a little information on where it is you were born and raised, and how you spent
your early years?
MR. BYRD: Sure. I was born and raised in southwestern North Carolina, in a town called
Shelby. I pretty much grew up there. I went away to school at the University of Georgia.
I first came to Alaska in 1968 with the Navy. I got stationed at Adak. So that was the
beginning of my association with the Aleutians. One of the jobs I had there, I was a junior
officer, and I had a collateral duty as a Military Wildlife Conservation Agent. That’s what
we were called. All of the Alaska Command bases had somebody designated to work with
the conservation agencies. That’s how I got to know people on the Refuge; Bob Jones and
Ed Bailey were at Cold Bay then. I got to work with them basically while I was in the
Navy in a liaison way. I ultimately got a job with the US Fish and Wildlife Service after I
got out of the Navy. That was the deal.
MR. GROSSMAN: And Bob Jones, was that “Sea Otter” Jones? Was that his nickname?
MR. BYRD: Yeah.
MR. GROSSMAN: How about your education?
MR. BYRD: I went to the University of Georgia for undergraduate work. And then I did
some graduate work at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks in the mid 1970’s. I didn’t
finish up. I was on leave without pay with the Service [Navy] and then, about ten years
later, I did get leave without pay enough to finish, to do a Masters at the University of
Idaho.
MR. GROSSMAN: I know the Aleutian Refuge has an extensive sea bird emphasis, was
that an emphasis in your education?
2
MR. BYRD: Not originally. In undergraduate work there was no focus on that of course.
But I got real interested while I was in the Navy at Adak. When I went back to graduate
school I really focused first on the Alaskan Canada Goose at Fairbanks and then on sea
birds when I worked at Idaho. I mean, I used data from the Refuge to work up.
MR. GROSSMAN: In your military service you were in Adak. Were you at other
stations?
MR. BYRD: No. I did my whole active duty at Adak. They allowed me to extend twice.
The Admiral wanted to know if I was ‘digging up daisies with a spoon’ out there. They
didn’t have many people request to extend, but I was so interested in the birds and working
with Jones and those guys. It was just a super opportunity for me. I did my whole active
duty at Adak.
MR. GROSSMAN: Wow that is impressive. How about a little bit about your family?
MR. BYRD: I have a wife who I didn’t meet until I left the Aleutians for the first time I
was there. Then we had two sons. Both are grown now. That’s the family.
MR. GROSSMAN: Are both your sons still here in Alaska?
MR. BYRD: One is a senior at the University of Alaska at Anchorage and the other is
married and living in Pennsylvania.
MR. GROSSMAN: Did either one have an interest in the career that you chose?
MR. BYRD: The boy at the University of Alaska is in Environmental Science. Not so
much Wildlife Management, but a general interest in that area.
MR. GROSSMAN: Super. Your career with the Service [FWS], we’ve talked about
mutual friends in the past; I believe you spent some time in Hawaii?
MR. BYRD: I did. I originally started at Izembek Refuge as a ‘seasonal’ with Bob Jones
and Ed Bailey after I got out of the Navy. I ultimately went back and set up the first office
for the Aleutians Islands Refuge. Then, I transferred after working in various places to the
Hawaiian Islands Refuge and worked down there for about three years. I managed the
Headquarters at Kauai and the Tern Island field station. Then I went back to Alaska, the
Yukon delta and on Izembek and Aleutian Island and then Maritime.
MR. GROSSMAN: So, Alaska is really it?
MR. BYRD: Right.
3
MR. GROSSMAN: On to the Aleutian Tern. I really know very little about any of the
history of it out here. I was wondering about the most basic information. Could you tell us
how it came to be in service here on the Refuge?
MR. BYRD: We knew about T boats because of the Surf Bird. That was commissioned to
work, I think Fred Robards first got that. Fred was in Law Enforcement, but in those days
they called it Management Enforcement. Those guys were also responsible for some of the
migratory bird work, including all of the waterfowl banding. In Fred’s case, it was Bald
Eagle work. The Surf Bird was obtained to do patrols and also do this Bald Eagle work in
southeast Alaska. We knew about that. Stockton, I think, is where those surplus T Birds
were. Stockton, California I think it was. We ended up finding one surplus down there. It
was named the Aleutian Tern. Those Army T Boats were coastal patrol boats. They are
exactly the same as a Navy YP class boats, the Yard Patrol Boats. They are exactly the
same boat. The Army called them T Boats and the Navy called them YPs.
When I was in Officer Candidate School, that’s what we trained on, YPs, on the James
River there in Newport, Rhode Island. They are just super boats for coastal areas. They
have a sixty-five foot, steel hull. But, there are a little small, and rolled pretty hard for what
we used the Aleutian Tern for. The other two T Boats, the Surf Bird and later the Curlew
are just perfect for southeast Alaska. And the Aleutian Tern served us well but it was a bit
small. We kept her in Kodiak in the wintertime. That’s where it was home ported. Then
we used in it the Aleutians all summer. Palmer Seccor is actually the one who was the first
project leader to use it. They got it for the wilderness surveys. Do you remember how the
Wilderness Act required surveys of those areas? I think the Wilderness Act must have been
in 1974, and it required that potential wilderness areas be surveyed. It gave the agencies so
many years to survey their potential areas. So Palmer Seccor was hired. He had been the
Assistant Manager to Bob Jones at Cold Bay. He was hired as the Wilderness Biologist for
the Aleutian Islands. He got a chance to use the Aleutian Tern. That was the first time it
was used. In 1972, I think we got it in 1971. In 1972 Palmer used it in the Aleutians for
basic inventory information about the concentrations of sea birds and marine mammals.
Over about a three-year period the Aleutian Tern was used extensively in the Aleutians,
well, it was two years, to support wilderness work. Then, I got hired as the Manager there
in the Aleutians and we used it for another four or five years to support the early Aleutian
Canada Goose work, and all of the Fox trapping work that we did. So it lived in the
Aleutians in the summertime. The crew just basically holed up in bad weather and waited
until we needed them. It essentially lived out there with us, that was the deal.
MR. GROSSMAN: That’s very impressive. So, the actual name, The Aleutian Tern, if I
caught it right, was already on the boat before you guys got it?
MR. BYRD: No, we named it The Aleutian Tern. I don’t know…it probably just had a
number. The Army probably has just a number assigned to it.
MR. GROSSMAN: So it spent it’s summers in the Aleutians and it’s winters in Kodiak?
4
MR. BYRD: Yes, we’d get her back to Kodiak by early September usually. The earliest
we tried to take her out, well, we tried to take her out at the end of March one year when
we were going to take Aleutian Canada Geese down to Agattu. We had them staged at
Attu, and we left Kodiak on March 31st. It took us thirty-one days to get to Attu!
MR. GROSSMAN: My goodness!
MR. BYRD: It was up the down staircase! We just had to run and then hide and then run
and then hide. So we didn’t leave that early after that. We waited a little longer.
MR. GROSSMAN: I can understand that! So how about this; they are notoriously slow
boats?
MR. BYRD: We made about seven or eight knots probably at top speed.
MR. GROSSMAN: Did you have ports of call for fuel and such, like Dutch Harbor or…?
MR. BYRD: Oh man, we’d stop way before there. We had pretty good fuel capacity. We
basically didn’t have much water capacity, because they had converted most of the tanks.
Fresh water was really more of a limitation than fuel. We did fuel at Chignik and we fueled
at Sand Point, Dutch Harbor and Adak. You could get fuel at Adak then. Shimia also, we
could actually get some fuel at Shimia then. We fueled everywhere. And we took water
from everything from passenger ships that would give us some to anyplace we took stop.
MR. GROSSMAN: Your re-supply for food and such, you could get at the same ports?
MR. BYRD: Yep, that’s what we did. And we carried a fair amount of canned goods
aboard. In those days we pretty much just used C rations for the field camps. [Laughing]
MR. GROSSMAN: It’s a little more ritzy now!
MR. BYRD: Yeah, now it’s sprouts and tofu! We couldn’t get guys to eat the stuff we ate
then.
MR. GROSSMAN: So with all of these stops, this boat was probably somewhat of a
fixture, or the face of the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Aleutians.
MR. BYRD: It was, and all along the Alaskan peninsula. We’d spend time in different
places as we came and went. In fact, one of the deck hands named Chris Anderson was
later, and maybe still is, he was a few years ago, worked for the Aleutian Housing
Authority. He would take his slides along when he would go into the villages. They were
the ones that were responsible for the HUD housing and so on. Chris told me that he
5
would go and take his photographs that he took in the mid 1970’s. A lot of these kids that
he took photos of then, are now people that he is dealing with. So it’s really funny. He
said it gives him an “in” to the villages. We knew people all up and down the line. At
Atka we stopped at periodically. We never usually passed one up because we were just
running from place to place. You know, hiding for a while.
MR. GROSSMAN: The projects that you worked on, I know that you mentioned the
Aleutian Canada and such, and obviously early sea bird work. I know today, the larger
vessel you have sees a lot of charter time. Did you have other projects unrelated to the
Refuge at that time? Like charters?
MR. BYRD: We didn’t have much. We did occasionally have somebody that really needed
help with some project, but we didn’t actively seek to charter. Like now, we do that to fill
in holes where we’ve got projects over a span of time and then we don’t have a need for a
couple of weeks. We fill that out. Now the Tekla runs, well she’s got a winter trip in
February/March every year. And this year she went out in April and just came back
Saturday. We’re going to send her out again next week until September. She runs now,
most of the year basically where the Aleutian Tern didn’t. So it was just a core season. We
kept her busy from literally, because she had to come from Kodiak, from April to
September. Then she was just tied up in the winter. The Skipper lived in Kodiak.
MR. GROSSMAN: Oh he did? And your offices were where?
MR. BYRD: In Adak. There was no Maritime Refuge. It was the Aleutian Islands
Refuge. But we also had all of those other little Refuges like Siminov and Boguslov that
were created separately that were aggregated under Maritime. The HQ offices were at
Adak. We talked about, we were planning to maybe set up a bid old float system that we
could keep the boat out there in the winter. The Skipper was thinking about that. But
eventually, she needed major repair and folks decided it wasn’t worth putting a lot of
money into the Aleutian Tern. The idea was to try to get a bigger boat. But for a few
years, there was no boat and we just chartered for short time periods. It was quite a few
years we just chartered. Eventually, we got the Teckla. The Aleutian Tern was not
chartered much. It was mostly our operations.
MR. GROSSMAN: How many years of service did she see?
MR. BYRD: I think we got her in 1971, and I think she operated through the 1978-79
season, so about eight or nine years. That’s when it needed a major engine replacement and
the decision was made not to do that. The idea was; I think they actually had another boat
located. It was a seized shrimp boat or something that they thought we could get. But it
turned out that it wasn’t really rigged for the North Pacific. They had already surplused
the Aleutian Tern when they found that out. I was working on Yukon Delta by then so I
wasn’t directly involved with that process, but that was my understanding.
6
MR. GROSSMAN: Do you know where the boat headed after?
MR. BYRD: I know that it went to Fish and Game. And I don’t know where it worked, I
think around Kodiak. But it showed up in a yard in Seward about six or eight years ago.
The deckhand that was on the Longis, his name is Dave Clemens. He lives in Anchorage
now. But Davey worked as a commercial fisherman and he was living in Seward at the
time. He saw it in the yard there. He figured out that it was bought by some private
person. I don’t know what it’s being used for now. It was still there. It was sitting up on
blocks in the yard and he recognized it because he knew exactly how that one was rigged.
There’s a few T boats around. Clem Tillion’s got one that he runs as a ferry across to
Halibut Cove from here in Homer. It’s the Storm Bird.
MR. GROSSMAN: Oh, it that right?
MR. BYRD: Yeah, so there’s a few of them around.
MR. GROSSMAN: Do you know what the State had named it?
MR. BYRD: No, I don’t. You had a name there that you thought it might have been.
MR. GROSSMAN: I thought it was the Polaris.
MR. BYRD: That sounds familiar but I’m not one hundred percent sure. Davey Clemens
would probably know that if you wanted to talk to him in Anchorage. But that sounds
familiar to me.
MR. GROSSMAN: Did you folks make any specific modifications to it to better assist
you in your work?
MR. BYRD: We converted some of the water tanks to fuel tanks. And I think we
eventually put a different lift system on it. It just had the old capstan with; you just
wrapped the line around it. There was no hydraulics. I think we eventually did put
hydraulics on it as I recall.
MR. GROSSMAN: Did it have a deck crane or lifting skiffs?
MR. BYRD: It just had a stiff leg with the capstan system. So that was the problem. It
was really slow to launch skiffs. We started out with a dory on board. That’s what we
were using for the lighter. But that was really a deal to hoist that thing aboard and drop it.
We eventually went to inflatables.
MR. GROSSMAN: Did you have a Skipper that was full-time?
7
MR. BYRD: No, actually he wasn’t. He was full-time in the summer. I think he was a
career-seasonal or intermittent or whatever they called that appointment at the time. He
didn’t work all winter at all.
MR. GROSSMAN: Did you have somebody who stuck with the boat for the time that
you had it, or did you have multiple people?
MR. BYRD: The same guy was there for all but the last year. George Putney.
MR. GROSSMAN: Is George still around?
MR. BYRD: The last I heard, George was maybe back in Alaska. He is an interesting
character. He was a real strong Bahai. Do you know what that it? It’s a religion called
Bahai.
MR. GROSSMAN: I don’t honestly.
MR. BYRD: I don’t know a whole lot about it but he was involved with that. So once he
got done with us, he went to Belgium I think, as a Bahai administrative kind of officer.
Then he ended up in Yugoslavia. Then, all of the trouble happened over there. Then he
went to Easter Island, off Chile for a while. This guy is really interesting and he’s had
about eight kids. He’d spend time with different kids. I think somebody told me he was
back in Kodiak. One of his daughters is with Fish and Game down there. If you could find
Putney, now he’s the guy to talk to. Not only can he tell stories better than, oh like
Skippers do, but he had been around for a long time. He had been in Unaslaska for years.
He crab fished when they were fishing with the small boats out there. You couldn’t bring
the pots aboard. You just lifted it up and crawled in the pot to unload your crab. He’s the
real deal, that guy. So if you could get ahold of him he would be a wealth of knowledge.
We stayed in touch for years. He actually came to my wedding. He just showed up, I
walked down the road, and there he was. We were really good friends, but I have lost track
of him in the last five years.
MR. GROSSMAN: If I find him, I’ll pass on his address.
MR. BYRD: Would you? Please do, yeah. George Putney. The problem is that I don’t
know what his daughter’s married name is. That’s why I haven’t been able to track him
down in Kodiak. If your trail runs into George, he’s the man to talk to about the Aleutian
Tern. He loved her boy, and he took care of her. He was the Skipper and the Engineer. We
had one deck hand typically. And basically, George just did everything. He’d get our
supplies and haul them to us and take care of us. He was sort of like a mother hen.
MR. GROSSMAN: That sounds great. The other Skipper, for that one year?
8
MR. BYRD: I don’t even know what that guy’s name was. He had been on a different
boat and the last year the boat operated, it was another Skipper. That’s when I was on the
Yukon Delta so I don’t know who he was. But there is a woman who served with us for a
number of years. Marsha McOwen. Marsha is now a Mate with Crowley on one of the
big escort tugs out of Valdez, but she still lives here in Homer. Marsha was on the boat the
same time as this other guy. I never met him. But she could tell you who he is.
MR. GROSSMAN: That sounds great. I am going to skip around a little here on you.
MR. BYRD: Go for it.
MR. GROSSMAN: Back to the name; The Aleutian Tern. How did you decide upon
that?
MR. BYRD: By my recollection, I wasn’t directly involved with it. I was just around.
But I think it was picking a species that occurred in the Aleutians. And I think that it had
the name in it. It could have been the Aleutian Goose. But the airplane, you know, that
super goose airplane that Smitty, (Theron Smith) built for flying in the Aleutians?
MR. GROSSMAN: I heard about it.
MR. BYRD: Well that was the Aleutian Goose. That name was taken so we used Aleutian
Tern.
MR. GROSSMAN: In your recollections of your time out on the Tern, was there any
particular high points or low points from the work that you were able to accomplish off of
that? Or was there any particular experience while you were on the boat in those years that
stands out?
MR. BYRD: That was probably the most exciting time a guy could ever had in the FWS.
Because we were in every way exploring, because the only previous survey before ours had
been Olaus Muries in 1936. So, I was with Palmer on that wilderness survey as a bio-tech
the first year. We were basically going to places that biologists hadn’t been…Bob Jones
had been to a few places in his dory, but he couldn’t get to many. We were literally the
first biologists that were recording data on some of these places in forty years. It was
phenomenal, just phenomenal. How can you beat that? The Tern was perfect because it
could nose right in close and hide anywhere. It could get right in up against the beach. We
poked our way pretty much throughout the Aleutians. We had camps in the western
Aleutians, studying geese, but we also were doing these broader based surveys. We thought
we were Jacques Cousteau. I couldn’t have been better! The government gave us a boat
and told us to go find out what was out there! How are you going to beat that? There’s no
better careers after that! Everything was new and exciting. We were also running a goose
9
propagation facility at Amchitka, so the Tern helped serve that facility. She’d run back and
forth to Amchitka too. We were moving geese from place to place on her. It was just
perfect basically. But it was small, and there were lots of scary moments. My assistant
and I ended up serving on the boat like a deckhand. We’d take turns running it. It was
small for the operations. She did fine, but we put vertical stabilizers on her. That helped a
bunch. But still, there were some awful rough rides.
MR. GROSSMAN: What was your most fr
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