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Photograph Copy of the Will of Grover Cleveland
No full textThis object is a photographic reproduction of Grover Cleveland's original will, which was authored in 1906. Each page measures 8X10 inches, and there are three pages. The will was originally handwritten by Cleveland in script, and black ink. This may have been his own copy, (as the first may have been put into official files in Princeton) since it is embellished. Adhesive silk stripping binds the interior pages together at center and all of the materials are enclosed between two soft embossed leather covers. The cover is brown
INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD MUNDINGER BY JERRY GROVER JANUARY 23, 2002
No full textOral history interview with Richard Mundinger as conducted by Jerry Grover.INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD MUNDINGER
BY JERRY GROVER JANUARY 23, 2002
MR. GROVER: Dick, where were you born?
MR. MUNDINGER: I was born in Burtrum, [?] Minnesota in September of 1927. I
grew up in the little town of Nimrod, Minnesota on the Crow Wing River. That was for
the first sixteen years of my life. Then, my parents moved to Glenwood, Minnesota
where I finished high school in 1945. I went into the Army in January of 1946. I spent
almost two years in the military, part of which was in Korea. This was before the
conflict in Korea. This was in the occupation Army.
MR. GROVER: What did you do in the Army?
MR. MUNDINGER: I was a High Speed Radio Operator. I was part of the G2. We
copied the whole entire west coast of Russia’s net, all of their radio communications in
their military. We sat on the top of a mountain in Korea for, well, I was there for over a
year. It was a real experience. There was thirteen of us who sat up on top of this
mountain. We’d occupied a Japanese radio facility on this mountain. And we lived in
Japanese quarters, which were these typical Japanese buildings with paper walls, and
papered windows. And it was cold that winter I was there. But I never had better
hunting in my life. I went hunting three or four times a week! It was quite an experience.
We worked around the clock, so we had eight hour shifts, then we were off for twenty-four.
And we just kept rotating. About every two or three days you could go hunting.
That was the only recreation you really had. I hunted Pheasants and Deer…
MR. GROVER: With an M-1?
MR. MUNDINGER: With an M-1 carbine. We hunted Deer, Pheasants, and ducks and
fox, and everything. See, the Koreans had no weapons. The Japanese didn’t allow them
to have any. And when we occupied Korean, the Japs left, so there was no weapons for
the Koreans. If I had had a shotgun, we’d have gotten a lot more. We were fortunate.
We had one cook in our group. He happened to be from South Dakota. And he knew
how to fix Pheasants. We lived high on the hog as a military group. We were attached to
a signal group. The Army in its wisdom, you know, has compliments of supplies built
for certain sized units. And the minimum was for fifty people. Well, the thirteen of us
drew rations for fifty. We had more food and things that we didn’t need. We would give
them to the Koreans. We couldn’t use them. We just had too much. We ran an outfit
that had top security clearance so we had no military, I shouldn’t say ‘discipline’, but
nobody bothered us. We had no inspections. Nobody came to see us. We just kind of
sat out there by ourselves. It was quite an experience for a person who was nineteen
years old at the time, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I came back. And went to school
at the University of Minnesota. I had started at the University of Minnesota in 1945, in
the fall. I wasn’t eight until the last part of September in 1945. So I wasn’t drafted until
after that. That was the last draft order out of Minnesota at the end of World War II. I
came back to the University of Minnesota, and enrolled in the School of Forestry. I
graduated from the University in the spring of 1952. I played football with the
University of Minnesota football team. I was drafted by the Chicago Bears so I went to
Chicago in the summer of 1952. I was with them until mid November when I got my leg
all bummed up, so I was released. That was probably the best thing that ever happened
to me, because I would have kept playing football otherwise. And I started with the Fish
and Wildlife Service on December 7, 1954. I, and Ben Shaffer who was in Washington
when he retired, started the same day. We had gone to school together at the University
of Minnesota. So that’s when I first started in the Division of Realty, in Minneapolis.
MR. GROVER: Let’s step back just a bit, Dick. So you graduated from school, and
started with the Fish and Wildlife Service. What lead you into this? What did your folks
do? How did you get interested in [the field]?
MR. MUNDINGER: I’ll tell you how I got interested in the Forestry part of it. I grew
up in Nimrod, Minnesota. And during this time was the CCC days. Right outside of
Nimrod was a CCC Camp. This was during really hard times. The leaders of camp were
Foresters. And they were making big salaries at eighteen hundred dollars a year. At that
time in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s that was a lot of money for somebody. I figured
that if those guys who were basically Foresters…I said, that if I go to school, that’s what
I wanted to get involved with. I had always been involved with the outdoor type things.
I grew up on this really wonderful river in Minnesota. I practically lived on it, summer
and winter. I was hunting and fishing and trapping and everything else, every waking
moment that I had, I think. It was kind of a natural flow. How I came with the Fish and
Wildlife Service was kind of unique. I had accepted a job with the Forest Service at
Crockett, Texas on the Davy Crockett National Forest. I made arrangements to move
down there. About a week and a half before we were to leave, I had an offer with the Fish
and Wildlife Service, right in Minneapolis. So I called up the Forest Service and said that
I wasn’t coming. Otherwise, I would have been down there in the swamps of east Texas
with all of the snakes, and everything else.
MR. GROVER: What grade were you hired at? And what was your position when you
started with the Fish and Wildlife Service?
MR. MUNDINGER: I started as a GS-5. At that time in 1954, the starting salary was
150,000.00. And I think we could have spent five million. At that
time, farmers were begging them to buy their land. The first year, I can’t remember how
many acres of land they bought in central North Dakota, but the average price was $11.00
an acre. We could have bought thousands of acres at that point, if we had had the money.
When we first started, there weren’t many restrictions on the purchases. Sooner or later
it came along that we had to get County Commissioner approval before we could buy
land. This was a process that anybody who has dealt with County Commissioners in
rural counties understands what frustrations we went through. It was a selling job. You
had go to the County Commissioners and sell your program. You really had to convince
those people that you were doing some good. That was difficult to do with a bunch of
former farmers; that you were taking their land out of production and using it strictly for
waterfowl and wildlife.
MR. GROVER: What were the big issues of the day when you went to meet with those
people? Was it taking property off of the tax rolls?
MR. MUNDINER: Yes, and stopping them from draining wetlands. We had an
easement program along with the acquisition where we’d take an easement on their
property where they could no longer drain any of the marshes. It was really tough
because the Agriculture Department was subsidizing them to drain them. So we were two
government organizations in direct conflict with each other for what they were trying to
do. And the irony of the thing today, is that the Agriculture Department is today trying
to pay those people to plug those drains up now, after thirty years.
MR. GROVER: So you were out there until when?
MR. MUNDINER: I left Minneapolis in the fall of 1963.
MR. GROVER: And that is when you came to Portland?
MR. MUNDINGER: I came to Portland, yep. Evelyn didn’t come with me right away.
We were in the process of adopting a child and we didn’t get our baby until November.
So I went back and picked her up in November, and we moved out here. I retired from
the area around Portland. When I first got here, I went to work for Howard Sergeant in
Realty. The Realty office here had four people in it, plus a Secretary when I arrived here
in 1963.
MR. GROVER: So you were still an Appraiser in Realty?
MR. MUNDINGER: Yes.
MR. GROVER: And at what grade?
MR. MUNDINGER: By that time, I transferred out here as a GS-12. I was trying to
think back. That was a level transfer. The moving process then, was not like it is today
in the government. You were kind of on your own. I look back at it though as a great
move. Because I have thoroughly enjoyed living in Oregon, and working on the west
coast. It’s just been a wonderful experience.
MR. GROVER: Dick, let’s step back a moment. You mentioned Evelyn a moment ago.
Can you tell us how that came about?
MR. MUNDINGER: [Chuckling] Well, Evelyn was a classmate of my older sister.
When I came back from the military, my parents had moved up to northern Minnesota,
St. Hilaire. And Evelyn and my sister were seniors in High School. That’s when I met
her. And we got married in 1950. We’ve been married now for over fifty-two years!
MR. GROVER: You mentioned that you are adopting.
MR. MUNDINGER: Yeah, we adopted a son in Minnesota. When we picked him up,
he was nine weeks old. We left Minnesota in a snowstorm, and drove to Oregon. We
stopped along the way in Billings and visited my good friend Bill Sweeney who is a Fish
and Wildlife Service [person]. It was quite an eventful trip coming across the country in
the winter.
MR. GROVER: What that your only child?
MR. MUNDINGER: The only child, yep.
MR. GROVER: Now you’re back in Portland, and still an Appraiser. What went on
after that?
MR. MUNDINGER: Well, I worked in Portland. I was on the Appraisal side, and Bill
Lindsey was on the Land Acquisition side of Realty at that time, under Howard Sergeant.
We were starting a program of acquiring more land in the west and we hired some
additional people in the west. Some of those that we hired were people I had hired in the
Wetlands Program. I scarfed them off of Minneapolis. Tom Smith came out here, and
Bob Miller. Bob went on to be Regional Supervisor out in Boston. Dutch Estimer came
out from Minneapolis. Who else? Jim Shaw, Jim went on to become Supervisor of
Realty here in Portland also. Those were I think, the four that we hired. We started a
Wetlands Program out in Montana after I got out here, in northeastern Montana.
MR. GROVER: That was when Montana was still in Region 1, before it was broke off
into Region 6.
MR. MUNDINGER: Yeah, that’s where we put Bob Miller. That’s right, he was over
there. I was trying to think who we had in Montana. Bob went over there, and then he
went on to Boston. Over the years I’ve had in the Realty side of it, from the Wetlands
Program people, a number of them went on to pretty good jobs in the Fish and Wildlife
Service or other agencies. A lot of them became Supervisors. Rolf Wallenstrom became a
Regional Director out here in Portland. I hired Rolf for his first job. I have been closely
associated with Rolf ever since that time, and we are still close friends. We built up a
staff here in Portland before we could do the job of acquiring a number of new Refuges
that were established, plus the wetlands in Montana.
MR. GROVER: What are some of the notable acquisitions that stand out in your mind,
something that really added to the National Wildlife Refuge System?
MR. MUNDINGER: Oh yeah, in this Region. There were the three Refuges in the
Valley here; Akeney, Baskett Slough and Findley. Findley had been started when I got
here. But we finished up the acquisition on that. Akeney and Baskett Slough were two
of them here in Oregon. Ridgefield and Toppenash were two that were in Washington.
MR. GROVER: Was Ridgefield acquired as part of an endangered species at that time?
I know it wasn’t White-tailed Deer. Was Lower Columbia involved?
MR. MUNDINGER: Later on, Lower Columbia was. I didn’t do much on Lower
Columbia. I think I had left Realty by that time when they really started doing the Lower
Columbia. But we worked on Malheur and California. We were busy in California all of
the time doing not only land acquisition, but doing the appraisal work for the states under
their PRDJ programs.
MR. GROVER: So your relationship with this program wasn’t so much the
establishment of Refuges, but once they had been approved to go out and acquire the
land, get the in-holdings…
MR. MUNDINGER: And doing the initial work on the public relations was a big job.
Like all of the public meetings that you had to go to in order to get these areas approved
by the local jurisdictions. I was involved for one whole summer with Humbolt Bay with
Travis Roberts. That is all we did. All we did was go down there and meet with those
folks and get the different factions and agencies to agree to what we wanted to do. As an
example, I dealt with many of the Indian tribes getting Hatchery sites. That was a fun
job. On the Warm Springs here in Oregon, and Knea[sic?] Bay up in Washington and the
Yacamaw [sic?] Indians on the Toppedish Refuge. That was a fun time. People ought to
all have the experience of dealing with a Tribal Council.
MR. GROVER: Ok, you’ve kind of moved out of Realty, or Acquisitions, and in
1971…?
MR. MUNDINGER: I was asked if I would take the Supervisors job in Contracting
General Services. I replaced Ike Trackenburg. Ike retired and I was asked if I would take
the Supervisors job in Realty.
MR. GROVER: Asked by whom?
MR. MUNDINGER: The Regional Director, John Findley. When John asked me to take
the job, I said, “John, I don’t know beans about this. That job has got some legal
complications that I have no knowledge of whatsoever, especially as a Contracting
Officer, and the responsibilities that go with it. Why would you select me?” He told me,
“One thing Dick, you’ll tell me when it’s right, or when it’s wrong.” I said, “Well, yeah,
I’ll do that”. He told me that he needed somebody in the job to do that. He said that he
would let me go to any school I wanted to get caught up on what I needed to do. Which
he did, I went to a lot of schools that first year. I made a lot of mistakes too. But it was
a satisfying job because here was a Division that provided service to our field people, and
that’s the only thing that they had responsibility for. It was to provide service in the
way of procurement and contracting of all of different kinds of construction jobs that
were going on, or other kinds of contracts such as research or whatever. So, here was a
job where you were really involved with helping those folks finish the job that they had
to do. I got a lot of satisfaction out of it. I had the opportunity to get all over the Region.
I met with practically every Project Leader that was out there. I had some knowledge of
most of the, and especially the Refuges and some of the Hatcheries of who these people
were and what their mission was. Once I got involved with heading up Contracting
General Services, I made it my mission to find out exactly what they were doing so that
we could be of service to them.
MR. GROVER: Is this when you got your GS-13 then?
MR. MUNDINGER: No. I was already a “13”.
MR. GROVER: When you came to CGS?
MR. MUNDINGER: Umhum. It was a good job. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had some
Supervisors that were not the best, but that goes with the territory.
MR. GROVER: Were these Supervisors who were supervising you, or people that you
supervised?
MR. MUNDINGER: No, supervising me, or tried to supervise me, I guess. [Laughing]
MR. GROVER: Are there any names that you’d care to divulge?
MR. MUNDINGER: Well, I had… they sent us an Administrative Officer out here,
which I was under at that time. His came out of the Washington office. He didn’t know
how to supervise people. He didn’t know the programs. He just was kind of sent out
because they wanted to get him out of Washington. I’ll think of his name sooner or later.
Then I had a Supervisor during the era when we went through this change in the Fish and
Wildlife Service of management by objectives. And I worked for Jerry Van Meter. Jerry
was a difficult person to work for.
MR. GROVER: He was hired out of Illinois as I recall.
MR. MUNDINGER: Yeah. He came out from Illinois. He was a very difficult person
to work for because he was more concerned about looking good than getting the job done.
MR. GROVER: He was what, the Assistant Regional Director for Administration?
MR. MUNDINGER: Yes.
MR. GROVER: And under that was the Chief of Contracting, and it would have been
Engineering and Personnel….
MR. MUNDINGER: And Finance.
MR. GROVER: Yes, Finance. Ok. That was the structure at that time.
MR. MUNDINGER: Yep. It was, and it was a difficult period. Because he’d go out in
the field and talk to people in the Field Stations and tell them that they could do things
that the couldn’t do, by law. And I’d have to come along and clean up all of his mess.
Finally, I got the different meetings that I would go to; the Refuge Managers, and the
Game Agents and the Hatchery Managers, and finally I’d tell them, “You know, before
you do some of those things that Jerry tells you, contact me. Because some of them, you
can’t do. We’ll find you a way to do them, but you can’t do them the way he suggested.”
He was difficult, a very difficult person to work for. That was probably the low part of
my career as far as Supervisors [go]. Probably the best Supervisor I had in my life was
Ted Perry.
MR. GROVER: You mentioned that your best Supervisor was…?
MR. MUNDINGER: Dr. Ted Perry.
MR. GROVER: And he was the Deputy Regional Director.
MR. MUNDINGER: Right. I worked directly for Ted. And he was one of these
Supervisors who let you do your job, and only wanted you to come to him to keep him
informed. It was one of the most marvelous working relationships that I ever had because
you were free to do what you thought was right, without having to worry about
somebody second guessing everything that you did. And Ted supported me in
everything that I did. And he was just a wonderful person to work for.
MR. GROVER: But then you went to Jerry Van Meter.
MR. MUNDINGER: [Chuckling] Yeah. First I went to Bob Bosch. He was sent out
here from Washington as the first Administrative Officer. After that period we didn’t
have one. Bob was a likeable guy, but he was way over his head in what he was doing.
He didn’t understand what the Fish and Wildlife Service was all about even, let alone
what his responsibilitie
Grover McCormick, Sr. Letter Unknown Author
No full textA ten-page letter addressed to Grover McCormick, Sr. from an unknown author
Grover McCormick, Sr. Envelope Front Unknown Author
No full textThe front of an envelope addressed to Grover McCormick, Sr. from an unknown author
Jerry Grover
No full textNarrative by Jerry Grover of his career with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Jerry Grover was the first with a number of National Fish Hatcheries that eventually led to the position as Chief of the National Fish Hatchery System. The last 20 years before retirement, Jerry was a supervisor of field operations in both the Fishery program and Ecological Services program Deputy mostly on the West coast dealing with a wide range of contentious issues in fish husbandry of anadromous fishes and their habitats and basin-wide restoration programs.
Organization: FWS
Name: Jerry Grover
Years: 1961-1997
Program: Hatcheries
Keywords: History, Biography, Employee, Biologist, Hatcheries, Management, Fish ponds, Training, Fish husbandry, Department Training Program, Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Tribal lands conservation, Administration, Endangered Species, Young People (YACC), Area offices, Fish production, Klamath River Fish and Wildlife Restor1
Oral History
of
Jerry C. Grover
Retired 1997
Deputy Assistant Regional Director
Ecological Services and California / Klamath Ecoregion
Portland Regional Office, Oregon
Oral History Program
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
2
Oral History
of
JERRY C. GROVER
Date of Interview: November 20, 2000
Final Edit: January 25, 2017
Location of Interview: Tigard, Oregon
Years worked for Fish and Wildlife
Service: 36 years from 1961-1997
Offices and Field Stations Worked,
Positions Held: Fisheries Mgt. Biologist GS-482-5
thru 11 at National Fish Hatcheries at White Sulphur
Springs, WV; Leetown, WV; Craig Brook, ME; Cortland,
NY; Winthrop, WA; Ennis, MT; Coleman, CA; Dept
Mgt, Training Prog, Washington, D.C. GS-11; Manager,
Carson NFH, WA. DS-11; Ass’t. Area Mgr GS-12/13
Jacksonville, FL; Division Mgr Columbia River Fishery
Offices GS-13; Chief NFH System, Washington D.C GM-
14.; Fishery Supervisor CA / Klamath R. Basin / Western
WA. GM-14; Deputy Ass’t. Regional Dir. Eco Services
and Supervisor CA-Klamath Basin GM-14
Colleagues and Mentors: George Balzer, Ray
Vaughn, Paul Handy, Tom Luken, Wally Steucke,
Howard Larsen, Marv Plenert, Dale Hall, Judy Grover
Most Important Issues: Completing the ‘user
pay’ funding agreements with Bur of Recl; implementing
a comprehensive salmon evaluation program;
implementing the Klamath River F & W Restoration Act;
maintaining a coherent family setting and getting 3 sons
thru the university with degrees.
Brief Summary of Interview: A southern
California farm boy completes his university education
and begins a career spanning over 36 years with the
Service. He was first with a number of National Fish
Hatcheries that eventually led to the position as Chief of
the National Fish Hatchery System. With 14 job transfers,
6 times transcontinental, working in a number of
reorganization configurations, a wide range of experience
was gained. The last 20 years before retirement, he was a
supervisor of field operations in both the Fishery program
and Ecological Services program Deputy mostly on the
West coast dealing with a wide range of contentious issues
in fish husbandry of anadromous fishes and their habitats
and basin-wide restoration programs. He did this as a
vital part of multiple organizational changes and
configurations.
Jerry C. Grover
3
4
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW:
JERRY C. GROVER
PORTLAND, OREGON
11/20/00
INTRODUCTION
ood morning, this is Jerry C. Grover dictating
my interview for the Oral History Project.
I’m recording the interview myself. The purpose of this
interview is part of a program to preserve the history,
heritage and culture of the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service
(FWS) through the eyes of its employees. This effort is
supported by the Association of Retired Fish & Wildlife
Service Employees and the Service’s Heritage Committee.
I am an Association Board member and a member of the
Committee.
My name is Jerry Carlton Grover. I was born in
Pasadena, California on July 19, 1936. My father was
Carlton O. Grover, an Iowa farm boy that moved to
California right after high school and worked in a number
of jobs. Mostly, he began as a meat cutter, but later on
mostly as a rigger dealing with cranes and cables and so
on. My mother was Bernice Stratford, [born in Chicago].
She was a real rounder. In her younger days she danced in
the ballet in the New York theatre in a chorus line. Their
marriages, this was both their second marriages. I wasn’t
born until she was thirty-six years old. In 1936 this was
kind of rather old to be having children. She would go on
to have two more children, giving birth to the last when
she was forty-two.
When I was growing up she taught ballet. She
had a small studio in Alta Loma, California, (now Rancho
Cucamonga) on an orange grove. It was her desire
growing up in Chicago that when she moved west she
wanted to live on a ranch or a farm and have all the
critters. We had horses, cows, goats, pheasants, turkeys,
ducks, plus the routine dogs and cats.
EARLY YEARS
lived on an orange grove. We lived at the last
developed place & paved road going up the
mountain hillside. Everything else was dirt roads,
sagebrush. As a young boy I did a lot of hunting, and
when the opportunity and season presented itself I did a
lot of fishing. My other leisure time was exploring in the
pucker brush on my horse. A lot of my off time was spent
doing farm chores, milking the cow and the never ending
task of irrigating the orange grove and while going to
school.
I went to a little grade school. There were
fourteen of us in eighth grade. This class went to a
consolidated high school, Chaffey High School that
represented the entire west-end of San Bernardino County
in Southern California. The school had nearly four
thousand students. There was nearly a thousand in my
graduating class, so taking fourteen young people from a
little country school for a 1 hour bus ride and throwing
them into this was something that was really an eye
opener. It did have its advantages. With the large number
of students they had advanced and specialty classes. Not
only did you have English, but you had English Lit.,
Composition, etc. and you could get into report, technical
writing, chemistry; not only inorganic but organic
chemistry, and so you had a wide array, many of which
were pre-university level classes. The shops, they had all
kinds of woodworking shops, metal shops and automotive
shops so it was a pretty good background for high school.
From there, I went to junior college. Chaffey
Junior College was adjacent to the Chaffey High School
that I attended. I went there for two years and during that
time I was working intermittently in a gas station. I’d
work after hours and on weekends and that provided the
money to keep my car going and the other things I wanted
to do. Then it was to Utah State University, Logan Utah,
where I completed a B. S. degree in Fisheries
Management Biology.
By the time I transferred to Utah State University,
I had met Judy Moffitt who would turn out to be my wife.
We attended Utah State together the first year, my junior
year. By our senior year we were married and she
dropped out of school and to work for Thiokol
Corporation, [a maker of solid fuel rocket engines] clear
on the north end of the Great Salt Lake, near Brigham
City. I’d take her downtown at six in the morning to catch
the bus and pick her up at six at night. It was kind of a
long stint.
G
I
5
wasn’t a particularly good student until right
after I met Judy and got to Utah State. I kind of
calmed down and became focused. My junior and senior
year I really re-knuckled down, with the course work
getting greatly more interesting. Rather than taking
English 101 and Political Science 101 and all those other
basic courses that are required, I started getting into the
fisheries and wildlife management and the ecological kind
of courses that were much more interesting. I made the
Dean’s List for the last two years. I did apply for grad
school and was accepted, but by that time I was getting
schooled out and was looking for an opportunity to go to
work. Also at those times, it seemed advanced degrees
were headed toward a career in teaching or research,
neither of which perked my interest.
During the summer’s, before & after my junior
year and after my senior year I worked for the State of
California as a fisheries seasonal aide out of Chino,
California. Immediately upon graduation I went to work
for California Department of Fish and Game again on a
seasonal appointment. Even though a native Californian, I
had no desire make my career there. In the mean time I
had applied through the Federal Service Entrance
Examination for any number of jobs, whether it was with
the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries or the Fish and
Wildlife Service. I kind of just threw my applications out,
along with a number of select state agencies. Ultimately, I
was to get offers at the Federal level that interested me
and I finally accepted my first job which was with the
Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, later to become
the Fish and Wildlife Service at the National Fish
Hatchery in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
BEGINNING WITH
THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
hen I reported to work at White Sulphur
Springs it was in February 1961. I came on
as a GS-482-5 Fisheries Management Biologist expecting
to do typical fieldwork I did with the State of California.
When I was hired to go there I was told that, “your job
would be the same.” I felt, ‘Well, here we’re going to
little old backwards West Virginia with all the coal mining
problems and acid mine waste issues,” and things like
that. I’d be working out of a fish hatchery. Well, when I
got there my first job was scrubbing ponds and sweeping
fish shit out of ponds, feeding fish and high-tech mowing
grass [powered lawn mower]. This was a little
disappointing, but it took every nickel that we had to get
back there and so there was no turning around. Then as I
got going with my job, it was pretty interesting work. It
was different than what I had expected, but I grew up on a
farm learning how to raise and care for things, so fish
culture was un-different and interesting work. I met folks
in another hatchery and saw where they were going in
their careers and I began to see the opportunities that were
there over all. It wasn’t a bad job.
It was an entry-level job at GS-5, and the guy I
worked for was George Eisenlore. George, I would come
to find out later, had the reputation of being one of the
“unholy three.” There were three managers that were
absolute bearcats to work for. They were just tough old
goats. The experience I had with George is that he didn’t
particularly care for college graduates. He knew
everything, and you know you were here to learn, and so
he told you what you needed to know. I was just another
worker on the place, but beginning to become acquainted
with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
One thing about George, he kept scrupulous
books. Smaller staffed stations generally did not have a
clerk to do the payroll, pay bills, order supplies, and
answer correspondence. George filled this role at White
Sulphur Springs and which he threw me into. I wasn’t
quite his right hand man; I was his ‘pinky’ and had to
learn the current operations and budgeting systems and
besides, I could type better than him. This later would be
greatly appreciated and gave me an advantage in other
jobs.
After a year and a half there, I transferred to
Leetown, West Virginia, over on the Eastern panhandle.
It was a hatchery co-located with the Eastern Fuish
Disease Laoratory. I was acting assistant manager as a
GS-7. Both these hatcheries, White Sulphur Springs and
Leetown, were what are called ‘combination hatcheries’.
They raised trout as well as warm water fishes: bass, blue
gill, and catfish. The trout were generally stocked into
state managed waters, mostly on national forest lands,
while the warm water fish were part of the Federal Farm
Pond Program.
I wasn’t very long at Leetown, West Virginia
when I was transferred to Craig Brook, Maine. This was
an Atlantic salmon hatchery, and it was involved in a
program that President Kennedy had just started - the
Accelerated Public Works Program (APW). It was to help
counter the high unemployment in Hancock County,
Maine, a high unemployment area. The assistant manager
had retired, so I went up there as a GS-7 and worked at
that hatchery in the GS-9 position. We had a lot of APW
make work projects where we could hire lots of labor.
Mostly we were thinning out the forest, the land the
hatchery was on. But the focus there was Atlantic salmon,
the fish culture work was focused on the culture of this
species, trying to get them up to size, and getting good
migration and survival rates once they were released to the
ocean.
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From there I went to Cortland, New York to the
Fish Husbandry In-Service Training School. It was a
research station, the Eastern Fish Nutrition Laboratory in
upstate New York between Syracuse and Cornell. The
Lab developed the Cortland #6 trout diet universally used
throughout all the trout hatchery systems. It was
compounded on-station. It was 50% ground meat – liver
and spleen, either pork or beef – and 50% dry meals such
as wheat middling’s, distiller solubles, cotton seed meal
and similar products.
The focus of the school was nutrition, husbandry
and disease. Basically, it was the Fish and Wildlife
Service’s effort to professionalize their fish culturists, fish
husbandry and provide some technical training specific to
the needs of fish husbandry. When I was hired into the
Fish and Wildlife Service I was part of a wave, a vanguard
of folks that came in with college degrees. Here-to-fore,
hatchery managers were generally selected from the ranks.
You started out as GS-1. If you showed promise, kept
your nose clean and could work hard and all that, you
could end up as a hatchery manager. Well, in the
professionalizing they were wanting to keep pace with the
states with the monies that the Dingell Johnson Act was
providing to the states. It was a general
professionalization of the Fish and Wildlife Service. I was
in this vanguard group of folks that came in about that
time with college degrees and while we knew the good
biology of things, we were grounded in the university
education. The more practical aspects of raising
salmonids were accomplished through this school in
Cortland, New York.
By this time we’d had two children. One was
born at White Sulphur Springs when we were there, our
oldest son Jeff, and our second son Joel was born in Craig
Brook Maine. After completing the course in Cortland,
New York, we were heading off and going west. Here I
am a western person finally getting an assignment in the
west.
I was assigned to the Winthrop NFH, Washington
in 1966 where I was introduced to the culture of Pacific
salmon. This was a hatchery on the Methow River, just
below the Canadian border by about thirty miles. I was
there not too long when a GS-9 Assistant Manager job at
Ennis NFH, Montana, came up. I applied and was
selected. This hatchery was on the Madison River in the
heart of the Madison Valley just outside Yellowstone
National Park. It was an important rainbow trout
broodstock station. Here I not only got back into trout,
entirely trout, but I got into a different aspect of it. The
Ennis strain of trout was a major egg source for other
National Fish Hatcheries, state hatcheries, and if we had
any left over, for the commercial trout farms. We even
shipped eggs to South America – Chile. They could get
eggs from the Feds at that time.
ome stories that you remember were
humorous. I meant to mention that certain
things that happen to you, stick with you, and this is all
part of the learning process. I was ordering supplies for
the Ennis National Fish Hatchery. It wasn’t very big. We
only had a staff of six or seven people there, and you
know, GSA, you could buy writing tablets, pens, typing
paper, tools and whatever you needed from the GSA, the
General Supply Schedule. It was really much cheaper
than what you could get out in the boondocks like at Ennis
and the quality was excellent. So I’m at work preparing a
routine order through the GSA catalog. They had these
standard issues, these standard packs. I looked at them
and said well…here’s a standard packet…it was a pack of
one hundred and forty-four, and I said well, one hundred
and forty-four writing tablets, they’ll probably last about a
year. So I order one hundred and forty-four. Going to
typewriter paper…we don’t type that much. You know,
with carbon paper and stuff…maybe twelve. Well, being
out in the boondocks, thirteen miles from town down a
dirt road, whenever the GSA supplies came in, they were
usually dropped off at the hardware store or somewhere
and they let us know so when we were in town to pick up
the mail we picked up the supplies. But, I knew we were
in trouble one day when all of a sudden I saw a delivery
truck heading out our road. When he backed up at the
station, those one hundred and forty-four tablets I ordered
actually were one hundred and forty-four cases. It filled
up our coffee room and then we had to back the truck up
to the garage. I had ordered more damn paper, I had
ordered more of this and that…it was an embarrassment.
The Manager, Bill Baker was so embarrassed that he
wasn’t going send it back and get his money back. So
what we did, we started packing this stuff up and putting
labels on it. We sent them to every fish hatchery that we
knew and kind of got rid of it that way. When I left there
we still had gobs of paper and their probably still using it.
But, that’s what happens when you’re still learning if you
don’t have your wits about you and when you take a look
at a standard pack.
It was in June 1968 that my third son Jared was
born. It wasn’t very long after that another job opened up
and I applied. I was selected as a GS-11 and went to
Coleman NFH, California as the Assistant Hatchery
Manager. We packed up in September 1968 and headed
for California, our home state. Coleman National Fish
Hatchery is on the Sacramento River in northern
California between Red Bluff and Redding. It was there
that I again got reacquainted with Pacific salmonids. They
had basically three, four stocks of fish that they were
raising. One was the regular fall Chinook, they had a late
fall Chinook, as well as the steelhead trout and then there
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was a big effort to establish a Kamloops fishery into
Shasta Lake. This latter fish is a landlocked variety of
Sockeye salmon.
Coleman NFH was the largest hatchery in the
National Fish Hatchery System. It was a Central Valley
Project mitigation hatchery associated with the
construction of Shasta Dam and one of the most important
program responsibilities in the Fish & Wildlife Service.
WASHINGTON D.C. - DMDP
After 3 years there I was selected for the
Departmental Management Development
Training program in Washington DC in 1971. So in
September I reported as a DMDP trainee as a GS-11 at
that time. There were twelve of us from the Fish and
Wildlife Service. I think there was like thirty over all
from the Department of Interior representing the Park
Service, BIA, Mines and others. During this yearlong
orientation and training program there was an opportunity
for a number of work assignments.
As a Departmental Management Development
Program (DMDP) trainee I had two assignments I thought
were quite notable. I had a stint with the National Park
Service. I worked for Bernie Hartzog who was the
Director of the National Park Service. The focus of my
effort at that time was assisting in addressing the people
problems in Yosemite Park in California. Plans were
being developed there that would ultimately lead to fewer
cars, fewer camp grounds, and what they would do is have
a tram or a bus system that would take people into the
park. This was in 1971, and it wasn’t until November of
year 2000 that there was finally a plan that had been
introduced and that the Secretary was expected to sign off
on. This plan would encompass many of the same ideas
that were being floated around and developed during this
training assignment. And here it is, twenty-eight years
later, twenty-nine years later that this is finally a plan.
That was my first lesson that things don’t always move
quickly in Washington, no matter who the power is behind
it.
One of the things I remember about Bernie
Hartzog is a story that he relayed it to me, so I believe it
was factual. He had a pretty steadfast policy. He told his
national park superintendents, “Any of you guys fib on a
performance evaluation or a recommendation…,” you
know recommending a turkey to one of your fellow park
superintendents. If he found out about it that person
would be coming back and “he’d be working for you for
the rest of your career.” No matter where you went the
guy was gonna transfer with you. And I think he put the
fear of God in them -- he did have a fairly open
performance evaluation. I don’t know of anybody that
ever ended up with one of these people. If you got a
problem you don’t transfer him. Bernie Hartzog’s motto
was “You take care of it.” “You hired him, you take care
of it, but you don’t pass him on to someone else.”
Another assignment as a DMDP, I thought was
really a good one. I worked up on the Hill for about forty-five
days. I worked on the Senate Interior Subcommittee.
I worked on Allen Bible's staff…he was a senator from
Nevada at that time. That was really kind of exciting,
working with the Congress, and seeing the Senate at work.
It was a very interesting assignment. Two big issues that
we were working on - - one was the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act, and the other one was expanding rivers
and having hearings on adding river systems to The Wild
and Scenic Rivers Act. One of the river systems was in
Northe
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