940 research outputs found
Grover C. Smith Oral History Interview
No full textOral history interview by Mary Heers with Grover C. Smith, Topics include: Living in several U.S. States in his youth; Studying math and physics in college; Employment with a multi-national oil company studying seismic activity and international travel; Learning on the job and rising in the ranks; Tectonic plate movement; Mapping the earth through seismic data; Visiting family in Hyrum and making it home; Helping his father upholster furniture in his youth; Retirement and retirement work projects such as working at the L.D.S. Temple and getting book published; Being an introvert, taking a speech class, and participating in theater; Joining the Army to pay for college and returning years later to finish his education; Being introduced to geophysics by his oil company job; Places he would like to visit; Not letting little blips on a seismographs keep him from living a normal life; A power grab by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the 1980s and U.S. oil companies going bankrupt; Waiting in line for fuel at gas stations; Interesting projects in the Dominican Republic, at the Great Salt Lake, and in Indonesia.Mr. Grover Smith lives in Hyrum, Utah, but was originally from Muskogee, Oklahoma. He has lived all over the country during his career as a geophysicist, doing seismic surveys and data analytics, primarily for oil and gas companies. He tells lots of interesting stories of seismic activity and oil drilling
Grover C. Smith
No full textThe Oklahoma A&M College World War I Veterans collection captures the memories and experiences of the men and women of Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College who served in World War I. In 1919, a project headed by Maude Cass, the editor of the 1919 Redskin; Professor Maroney of the Department of History; Margaret Walters, Librarian; and J.W. Cantwell, the College President, was undertaken to survey these veterans. The surveys were returned along with photographs, letters, and newspaper clippings documenting these veterans’ experiences during World War I
Oral History Marvin L. Plenert Office of the Directorate
No full textMarvin L. Plenert oral history interview as conducted by Jerry C. Grover.
Mr. Plenert was the former Regional Director of the FWS Pacific Region.
Organization: FWS
Name: Marvin L. Plenert
Years: 1961-1994
Program: Refuges, Land Acquisition, Regional Director, FWS Pacific Region
Keywords: History, Biography, Work of the Service, Wetlands, Public policies, Wildlife refuges, Employees (USFWS), Endangered and/or threatenedOral History
MARVIN L. PLENERT
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTORATE
Interviewed by:
Jerry C. Grover
Oral History Program
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Name: Marvin L. Plenert
Date of Interview: February 1, 2002
Location of Interview: Oregon City, Oregon
Interviewer: Jerry C. Grover
Years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service:
1961 – 1994, 33 years
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions
Held:
Jamestown, North Dakota – Wetland Program
Montana – Land Acquisition
Lewistown, MT – Wilderness Studies
Anchorage, AK – Refuges, Native Claims Act
Denver, CO – ARD Refuges & Wildlife
Washington, D.C. – Dep. AD, Refuges & Wildlife
Portland, OR – Regional Director
ABSTRACT: In a 33+ year career ending with his retirement
in 1994 with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a common
theme developed. It could be best described as cutting edge,
contentious, adversarial but always successful as he came to
know and understand the real biology and political aspects of
some of the most controversial and contested issues and
programs of the day. Some of the highlights described in this
narrative begin with:
The acquisitions of prairie wetlands at a time when one
Government program was paying farmers to drain the
land while another was trying to preserve valuable
habitat for the Nation’s waterfowl.
In Alaska he was in the middle of the Native Claims
Settlement Act on conflicting claims of selecting
Native lands vs. land set aside as National Wildlife
Refuge areas.
The identification and acquisition of numerous land
areas to be entered in the National Wildlife Refuge
System in a climate of competing land use controversy.
As the Regional Director for the Pacific Region
embroiled in some of the more controversial
Endangered Species Act listings [read spotted owl,
California gnatcatcher, and seeming like everything in
Hawaii], Klamath River Basin and California’s San
Francisco Bay / Delta water and wildlife issues, all at a
political level reaching to the White House.
Throughout, he kept and maintained a sense of the value of the
career people, a sense of fairness of values and an outspoken
and a clear willingness to make a decision based on the biology
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and facts at hand. This ability earned him the Department of Interior’s highest awards and the respect of his fellow Service employees.
The Oral History
MR. GROVER: This is Jerry Grover, a retired Ecological Services & Fishery supervisor in the Portland Regional Office to do an oral history on Marv Plenert at his home in Oregon City, Oregon, regarding his career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. With me is my wife Judy, formerly Marv’s Administrative Assistant, and his wife Carol. Marv, for the record what was your job when you retired?
MR. PLENERT: Well, for the last five years of my career with the Fish and Wildlife Service I was the Regional Director for Region 1, which is the Pacific Northwest. It included the states of California, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and the Trust Territories of the Pacific. It was quite a large area.
MR. GROVER: Marv, tell us a little about yourself. Where were you born? And how did you get interested in, or get started in fish and wildlife?
MR. PLENERT: Well, I grew up on a farm in Kansas. I probably got interested in fish and wildlife resources and management because I liked to hunt and fish. I guess that was probably everybody’s dream way back then. So I ended up going to Kansas State University. First I went to a small college in my hometown for a couple of years. That was Taber College in Hillsborough, Kansas. And then I went into the Army.
MR. GROVER: Was that your hometown, Hillsborough?
MR. PLENERT: Yes, Hillsborough was my hometown. That’s where my wife Carol is from too. She’s from Hillsborough as well. Our families knew each other when we were growing up. I went to college there for two years and then I went into the Army for a couple of years. Then when I came out I went to Kansas State at Manhattan, Kansas, and got my bachelor’s degree in Biology and then my master’s in Wildlife Management. I graduated in 1961 with my master’s degree.
MR. GROVER: How did you and Carol get together?
MR. PLENERT: Well I’ve known her all of my life, I suspect. And I guess when I got out of the Army we kind of got serious in the late 1950’s and started dating. Then we got married in 1958. We had two children, a boy and a girl. She worked and helped me get through college. You know how it was in those days. Of course I had the GI bill but still, she helped me get through.
MR. GROVER: What did you do in the Army?
MR. PLENERT: I was stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas believe it or not. I was in the guided missile program. It was kind of the first ground to air missile program. It was in the late 1950’s, 1956 I guess. Then we got shipped over to Germany. I spent a year over in Germany and then I got discharged from there. I was in for two years that’s all.
MR. GROVER: After Kansas State, did you go right to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service?
MR. PLENERT: Yes I did. After I got out of school I had several job offers. In fact, they weren’t very plentiful in those days and were really few and far between for anybody in wildlife management but I was lucky and had several. You’d have to work for a state or for the federal Government; they were the only ones with those type jobs. There wasn’t any body in the private sector that was hiring people. So I had a job offer with the State of Kansas. I had applied with the Fish and Wildlife Service and got a call from Region 3, headquartered in Minneapolis. The call came from Goodman Larsen who was the Personnel Director there. Goodman T. Larsen, I’ll never forget him. He offered me a job in North Dakota. Well, I had a choice of North or South Dakota. It was with the Wetlands Program, and I’ll get into that in a little while. So I just went right from College, to Jamestown, North Dakota. That’s where they offered me the job. The pay wasn’t very much but in those days it was better than nothing. The federal job was probably one thousand dollars more that what the state had offered me for a year.
MR. GROVER: Were you started as a GS-5?
MR. PLENERT: A “7”. I started as a GS-7 because I had a master’s degree. We moved to North Dakota in a little U-Haul trailer from Kansas. We hauled everything we had, which wasn’t much. At that time Jamestown was just a small town. There were probably seven or eight thousand people. There wasn’t any place to rent. There were no houses, apartments or anything. We finally conned some guy into renting me a little house. We lived in a rental house because I couldn’t afford to buy one. We rented the whole time we were there.
When I started off, the issue was the Wetlands Drainage Program. It was the government’s USDA subsidized drainage that they paid farmers a cost share to drain wetlands off of their agricultural lands. Of course this was in direct conflict with the Fish and Wildlife Service, which wanted to protect the wetlands. It’s another case of two agencies in the federal government having separate mandates and having both of them different. I mean, here we are dealing with Agriculture doing away with habitat, and we’re trying to protect it. They came up with using Duck Stamp money to preserve and protect the small Wetlands Program. My job when I first went there was to look at what they called drainage referrals. The farmers would fill out a little sheet. They would go at that time to the ASCS, the Agricultural Stabilization Committee. It was separate from the CSC, which did the technical work. They would fill out a little map. We’d get the map in Fish and Wildlife and we would go out and look at what was there.
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There was probably twelve biologists hired at that time in Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota and we’d go out and look at these wetlands and if they had high values to wildlife, we’d tell them that we didn’t think they should be drained. And they would just take it with a grain of salt and drain them anyhow. It didn’t matter. The only way that you could protect them was to buy them or… So then the Fish and Wildlife Service came up with a wetland acquisition program. They would either buy them or take easements on wetlands. This was in the prairie pothole region, the glaciated country and there were potholes everywhere. There were large ones, small ones, both temporary and permanent. So the theory was at that time to acquire a major permanent one in one or two per township and then take easements on the rest. That way the land would stay on the tax roll. At that time land was selling for between six and eight dollars an acre. You could buy the whole countryside in that glaciated country for six to eight bucks an acre. That was in the early 1960’s. Our job was to define the wetlands that were being considered… go look at them if they were going to drain them, or delineate which ones we thought the Service should buy.
Then they set up an acquisition program in Jamestown as well. The key people that were there was Harold Benson who was a long time Realty guy in Region 3 and 4. There was Tom Smith who was in Albuquerque when he retired. They were there as the first acquisition biologists in Jamestown. We worked together and identified areas that should have been bought. If we’d have had money, or cash, we could have bought the whole county. But we didn’t have it. We had to borrow money from the wetlands, Duck Stamp funds and there was only so much money available. The program was really a success. They called it the Accelerated Wetlands Program, and I think it’s still going on.
MR. GROVER: You didn’t have the money, but how many acres, roughly, were you able to set aside?
MR. PLENERT: I can’t remember. There were millions in all of the states. We had a problem too, that if we bought too many acres in a given county the County Commissioners would get up in arms because it was land taken off of the tax roll. We paid, or the government did, three quarters of one percent of in-lieu taxes. But it still wasn’t as much as if there was a farmer living on the land. So we had problems with the County Commissioners. And we had to go meet with the Governors. In some of the counties we did really well. We preserved a lot of habitat. It was really a good program. In fact, Dick Mundinger who was in the regional office in Minneapolis and later moved to Region 1, was instrumental in the Program too. Actually when I transferred from North Dakota to Montana, Dick was instrumental because Montana was in Region 1. He helped get them in the program and they weren’t a part of the original acquisition program. Then I left Jamestown.
MR. GROVER: When was that?
MR. PLENERT: In 1966. Dick [Mundinger] was instrumental in getting a position in Montana for wetland acquisition and to look at drained wetlands. It was because the moraine glaciated area extended into two or three counties in Montana. And these were just as good as wetlands or just as many, but we didn’t have a program there. So I started the program there and did all of the delineations of all the wetlands. We hired an appraiser. Bob Miller was, I think, the first guy and he ended up retiring in Boston, in Region 5. We started the program and preserved lots of wetlands there too.
MR. GROVER: What was your grade at that time?
MR. PLENERT: I was a “9” when I was first there. Then I got promoted to GS-11. When I was in Montana I received the first and only reprimand I ever got from the Fish and Wildlife Service. It was for what I thought was doing a good job. But I didn’t realize the difference between Regions. Region 3 was very, very assertive on wetlands and acquisition and waterfowl management. Region 1, which Montana was in at that time, before they reorganized, was very conservative. If it wasn’t in Oregon, or along the coast, they really didn’t get any approval. Dave Marshall was the wildlife biologist that really did all of the approving of wetland acquisition. I had an opportunity on the north shore of Flathead Lake, which is in the Flathead Valley; the whole north shore was undeveloped. It had values other than just waterfowl. It was a big staging area for probably all of the Redheads and Canvasbacks in that area. They had Osprey and Eagles as well. I found out that the people wanted to sell it. So I went over and talked to them. I reported to the regional office that it was for sale. It was cheap. It was a hundred bucks an acre or less. The first thing I got was a note back saying, “We’re not interested”. Well, I couldn’t accept that so I contacted Senator [Lee] Metcalf. He was the senior Senator for Montana. Well no, I guess the other guy was, I can’t remember his name. [Mike] Mansfield and Metcalf were very, very instrumental in conservation efforts. In fact, Metcalf was Chairman of the Migratory Bird Commission that approved land acquisition for the Service. He was a prime member. At that time, John Dingell from Michigan was too. So I contacted Metcalf and told him about this area. I even took him out there and showed him. The next think I knew, the money showed up in Region 1’s budget. They kind of tied two and two together and found out that I had done this. Of course I got a reprimand for it. But they ended up using the money. The bought the area and it’s a fantastic area. But that’s kind of interesting, how things happen. I really didn’t think about doing anything wrong. I thought about preserving the area.
MR. GROVER: Is that area part of a National Wildlife Refuge now?
MR. PLENERT: Yes, it is.
MR. GROVER: What is the name of it?
MR. PLENERT: There’s a wetlands complex out of Kalispell that manages the north shore area of the Flathead Valley. Really, it’s a complex under the National Bison Range, which is in the southern Flathead Valley by Paulson. The Manager has an assistant in Kalispell who does the wetland work. There is the Flathead, and the Nine Pipe National Wildlife Refuges that are all one complex. But it’s a fantastic area. What they were going to do was dredge the area and fill the beaches and build houses. I decided that I didn’t think that was a good idea. I 4
proposed it for acquisition and it didn’t go very well in the regional office. But at that time Vernon Ekedahl was the Assistant Regional Director, which is Refuge Supervisor. I guess that’s what they called them at that time. And John Finley was the Regional Director. They were a pretty conservative bunch. They didn’t think that some GS-11 should be proposing things like that.
Then after we kind of finished the wetlands program, I was asked to do the Wilderness Studies for Region 1. So I stayed right in Montana. And after the Wilderness Bill was passed, I think this was in late 1968 or something like that, so for two years I did wilderness studies on the major, large National Wildlife Refuges in Region 1. I worked on the Desert Refuge, Sheldon and Hart Mountain in Nevada, and C. M. Russell and Medicine Lake in Montana.
MR. GROVER: Were you stationed in Montana the whole time while you were doing this?
MR. PLENERT: Yeah, I was in Lewistown. I worked out of Lewistown at the headquarters for the C. M. Russell range. Oddly enough, one of the things that is kind of interesting; as I said, about like the Wetlands Program, the guy that was instrumental in blowing the whistle on the Agriculture for draining wetlands was a guy by the name of Fred Staunton. He was the Manager at Waubay Refuge and Wetland complex in South Dakota in the late 1950’s. He saw all of these wetlands being drained and people were getting paid to do it. He got a Field and Stream magazine editor out there and they took some pictures, and wrote an article in Field and Stream. That really started the work of putting a stop to the cost-share drainage and that sort of thing. Fred ended up as the Refuge Manager at C. M. Russell while I was there. He was the Manager of that million-acre refuge. And issues there were another set of issues that we worked on, not only in conflict with the Department of Agriculture, but with our own Department of the Interior. That was BLM [Bureau of Land Management]. In those days when it was originally set up, the criteria was that BLM would manage the grazing under the Taylor Grazing Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service would manage the wildlife. They were just incompatible. There were conflicts just one after the other. Fred was right in the middle of that. Then in about 1970, the Secretary of the Interior, Wally Hickel,, gave the whole National Wildlife Refuge to the BLM. He signed an order, abolished it and gave it to the BLM. Well then, the conservation organizations got up in arms and raised all kinds of heck. Then Congress passed a law that turned it all over to the Fish and Wildlife Service and got BLM out of there. Then the Fish and Wildlife Service managed the whole thing. So it was kind of a real fight with an agency within in the Department of Interior again. My whole career was kind of dotted with those kinds of conflicts, I think, from the time I started to the time I retired.
After Montana, I applied for a job in Alaska in 1971. Dave Spencer was the long-time Alaska Refuge Supervisor. He was up there his whole career. He flew there during World War II, and just stayed in Alaska with the State. Well, it was a Territory then. But Dave Spencer was the Refuge Supervisor and I worked as his Assistant in 1971. Then about 1973 or 1974 they passed the Alaskan Native Land Claims Settlement Act, which required that the natives had a chance to select lands around their villages. There was a township or two or three, depending on the size of the village. Now you had to enroll back to those villages so they’d be eligible for land and the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] was involved in getting the enrollment. They were enrolling people back to villages that didn’t exist. They just weren’t there. They were just names on a drainage [report] or something. and they called them a village so they would get land; like up to a full township around each one of these so-called bogus villages. I went to Gordy Watson who was the Area Director as it wasn’t a region yet, we were still under Region 1, and I told him about this. And I went to the Solicitor. The same Department of Interior Solicitor who represented the BIA represented us, and I got nowhere with him.
So on my own, I filed a protest. I just did it. I wrote a letter. It was in the enrollment provisions that you could protest. So I filed a protest, and signed my name. The next thing I knew, I got a called from [Lynn] Greenwalt who was the Fish & Wildlife Service Director at the time. He asked me what I thought I was doing. I said, “well, they’re taking lands that don’t belong to them,” and I told him, “I’m filing a protest.” Well, I didn’t know anything about the law, and when you do things in a legal way you’re supposed to serve notice to both parties and I didn’t. I didn’t send the other lawyers a letter. I did it all illegal. But anyway, they put a stop to it. Again, John Dingell who I mentioned earlier, got involved. I contacted him. He was a friend of ours and he put a stop to this, and made the Department of the Interior assign a separate Solicitor to Refuges to work with me. I had to work with the Solicitor to put a stop to these bogus villages. We had hearings and they sent out federal judges and we had to line up witnesses. They gave me a Solicitor in San Francisco to work with. He was a young man. I can’t think of his name now. We built a heck of a case. There must have been six hundred thousand acres that we were successful in keeping in the National Wildlife Refuge System, or we’d have had to buy them back at a later date. So it was very positive and it all turned out pretty good. These villages didn’t exist and we showed it -- they just weren’t there. That was one of my interesting Alaska [experiences]. Then I got involved in selecting new refuges.
MR. GROVER: Did you get promoted when you went up to Alaska?
MR. PLENERT: Yeah, I did. I got promoted to a GS-12 at that time which I thought was a pretty good deal because you got a twenty-five percent cost of living adjustment. It wasn’t that bad up there. It was a fun place to live. There were great people. I got involved in day-to-day Refuge activities. I got to fly around the whole State. Then we got involved in looking for new lands under the Land Claims Act to go into the Refuge. I felt I had a part of selecting all of the new Refuges as well. That was very gratifying.
I got a chance to witness the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. I saw all the pipe lying there, and they put it in and that was a kind of an historic event. You know, to open up the big oil field up there, and pump all of the oil down to Valdez and haul it away in tankers. Also during 5
that period of time in Alaska, the Fish and Wildlife Service embarked on a program management system. Rather than manage by functions, or get your funds by function, they embarked on this system. I don’t know, the people that devised it, the Lynn Greenwalts of the world, the Directors probably liked it. But for the people in the field it was really difficult to manage your functions by program. In the c
The Impact of Annotation on the Performance of Protein Tagging in Biomedical Text
No full textIn this paper we discuss five different corpora annotated forprotein names. We present several within- and cross-dataset proteintagging experiments showing that different annotation schemes severelyaffect the portability of statistical protein taggers. By means of adetailed error analysis we identify crucial annotation issues thatfuture annotation projects should take into careful consideration
Nomination for President for the Democratic Party of 1884
No full textUnique document composed by the Nominating Committee of the National Democratic Party 1884 presented to Grover Cleveland during his term as Governor of New York. Official presentation took place in Albany, NY in the Governor's Chambers. Signed by representatives from every state and territory within the nation.Courtesy of the State of New Jersey Division of Environmental Protection, the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Historic Site, Caldwell, New Jersey.New York City - July 28th 1884 - The Honorable Grover Cleveland of New York. - Sir - In accordance with a custom befitting the nature of the communication the undersigned, representing the several states and territories of the Union, were appointed a Committee by the National Democratic Convention which assembled at Chicago on the eighth day of the current month, to perform the pleasing office, which by this means we have the honor to execute, of informing you of your nomination as the Candidate of the Democratic Party in the ensuing election for the office of President of the United States. A declaration of the principles upon which the Democracy go before the people, with the hope of establishing and maintaining them in the government, was made by the Convention; and an engrossed copy thereof is submitted in connection with this Communication for your consideration. We trust the approval of your judgment will follow an examination of this expression of opinions and policy; and, upon the political controversy now made up, we invite your acceptance of the exalted leadership to which you have been chosen. The election of a President is an event of the utmost importance to the people of America; prosperity, growth, happiness, peace and liberty, even, may depend on its wise ordering. Your unanimous nomination is proof that the Democracy believe your election will most contribute to secure these great objects. We assure you that in the anxious responsibilities you must assume as a candidate, you will have the steadfast cordial support of the friends of the cause you will represent; and in the execution of the duties of the high office - which we confidently expect from the wisdom of the nation to be conferred upon you - you may securely rely for approving aid upon the patriotism, honor and intelligence of this free people. We have the honor to be with great respect. - Nicholas M. Bell [sig.] Secretary; Wm. F. Vilas [sig.] President; D.P. Bestor [sig.] Alabama, [illegible] W Fordyce [sig.] Arkansas, Niles Searles [sig.] California, M S Waller [sig.] Colorado, Thos. M. Waller [sig.] Connecticut, Geo. H. Bates [sig.] Delaware, Attilla Cox [sig.] Kentucky, James Jeffries [sig.] Louisiana, Ch. H. Osgood [sig.] Maine, Geo. Wells [sig.] Maryland, J.G. Abbott [sig.] Massachusetts, Daniel J. Campan [sig.] Michigan, Thos E. Heenan [sig.] Minnesota, Chas. E. Hooker [sig.] Mississippi, David R. Francis [sig.] Missouri, Patrick Fahy [sig.] Nebraska, D. E. McCarthy [sig.] Nevada, J F. Cloutman [sig.] New Hampshire, John P. Stockton [sig.] New Jersey, John C Jacobs [sig.] New York, W.D. Chipley [sig.] Florida, M.P. Reese [sig.] Georgia, A E Stevenson [sig.] Illinois, E.D. Bannister [sig.] Indiana, L. G Kinne [sig.] Iowa, C. C. Burnes [sig.] Kansas, Wm. E Haynes [sig.] Ohio, L.L. McArthur [sig.] Oregon, James P. Barr [sig.] Pennsylvania, David S. Baker Jr [sig.] Rhode Island, Wilson G. Lamb [sig.] North Carolina, Jos. H. Earle [sig.] South Carolina, Wm A Quarles [sig.] Tennessee, Jos. E. Dwyer [sig.] Texas, Geo L Spear [sig.] Vermont, Rob Beverly [sig.] Virginia, Frank Hereford [sig.] West Virginia, W.A. Anderson [sig.] Wisconsin, S T Hauser [sig.] Montana, W.B. Childers [sig.] New Mexico, G H Oury [sig.] Arizona, M.S. McCormick [sig.] Dakotah [sic.], Ransford Smith [sig.] Utah, N. B Dutro [sig.] Washg. Territory, John M Silcott [sig.] Idaho, E.D. Wright [sig.] District of Columbia - [last line has stricken out signature of John C Jacobs
Portrait of Grover C. Bigham wearing a drum corps fez
No full textBigham, Grover C.--Portrait in Drum Corps Fezhttps://mavmatrix.uta.edu/specialcollections_wdsmithphotography/2957/thumbnail.jp
Johnson C. Smith University basketball team with Coach Joyner
No full textPhotograph of JCSU Basketball team posing in the gym. Back is labeled in pen ""1990-91. Row 1 (sitting) Ron Boyd, Columbus Parker, Reggie Torrence, Ed Joyner, Steve Settle. Row 2 Grover Melton, Kevin Jackson, Diron Ford, Welcome T. Moten (asst. coach), Steve Joyner (head coach), Tim Mitchell, William Bullock, Kevin Reid. Row 3 Ed Joyner (asst. coach), Terrance McAden, Gerald Garvin, Mark Sherrill, Joel Jordan, Larry Dixon, Chris Hicks, Shawn Jackson, Andrew Mitchell (asst. coach
Oral History Bruce Cannaday Fishery Resources Program - Hatcheries
No full textBruce Cannaday oral history with wife Pauline interview with Jerry C. Grover as interviewer.
Bruce Cannady played a significant role in the siting, funding and construction of major new and reconstructed fish hatcheries located on Indian reservations in the Pacific Northwest. He also played a major role in the professionalization of the hatchery manager cadre.
Organization: FWS
Names Bruce and Pauline Cannaday
Years: 1939-1971 (Bruce)
Program:Deputy Assistant Regional Director, Hatcheries
Keywords:History, Biography, Personnel, Fish hatcheries, Fisheries management, Salmonids, Carson National Fish Hatchery, Leadville National Fish Hatchery, Coleman National Fish Hatchery,
Fishes, Columbia River Basin, Pacific Salmon, Steelhead trout, chinook, Coho, sockeye, Pacific RegionO R A L H I S T O R Y
BRUCE CANNADY
FISHERY RESOURCES PROGRAM - HATCHERIES
Interview
by
JERRY C. GROVER
March 23, 2000
Portland, Oregon
Oral History Program
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Bruce Cannady at age 95ABSTRACT: Bruce Cannady played a significant role in the siteing, funding and construction of major new and reconstructed fish hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest. These hatcheries located on Indian reservations and along major water courses doubled the annual release of Pacific salmonids to enhance Tribal benefits and meet mitigation objectives of Federal water development projects. He also played a major role in the professionalization of the hatchery manager cadre in the selection of college graduate fishery biologists and developing a training program for the entry level personnel into the National Fish Hatchery system. He retired as a Deputy Assistant Regional Directory for the National Fish Hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest with 32 years of service. Notable, as of January 2009 his 32 years of service has resulted in 38 years of retirement as he approaches his 97th birthday.
Oral History
Interview with Bruce Cannady (age 89) (and his wife Pauline – age 92)
At his home in Portland, Oregon
Interviewed by: Jerry C. Grover
March 23, 2000
Jerry Grover: I’m talking with Bruce Cannady, retired Deputy Regional Supervisor for Fish Hatcheries for Region 1, the Pacific Region, and his wife Pauline.
Bruce Cannady: I was born in 1912 in Central Park, Nebraska. I went to high school in a small school at McGrew, which is in the country. Dad was a farmer
Jerry Grover: How did you meet Pauline?
Bruce Cannady: Another gal and I had split up is the best way I can say, and I went back over to McGrew and I knew there was a dance, and I went to the dance, and there was a girl there and I met her.
Pauline Cannady: She was a teacher he knew. First we went to the church, didn’t we?
Bruce Cannady: No, we were at Albertine’s Place.
Pauline Cannady: Well, they said that they were going to have a dance afterwards, so we went there. I went with another fellow, but I got there and I kept dancing with Bruce. I thought he was the one that brought me.
Bruce Cannady: And then she was surprised when the dance broke up and Aldin showed up, and he said, “Well, we’re ready to go,” and Pauline looked at me kind of surprised. I liked her.
Pauline Cannady: Bruce lived in town, but Aldin lived out in the country and he’d come in to see me, and Bruce would come right over.Jerry Grover: So after that it didn’t take long I take it, that the love birds kind of got in you...
Bruce Cannady: She moved to Scotts Bluff. I was in the town of Bayard, and that’s where she had graduated from high school. I worked at the sugar factory there as a chemist. And then I finally decided she was right for me in 1934, and boy things are really, anyway, I’m trying to think. I went to Scotts Bluff. I was at the factory for five years at Bayard, and then I was up there for two years. Oh, I was still at Bayard after we got married because I stayed with her mother. We only saw each other at the weekends because she was working in Scotts Bluff and I was working in Bayard. So we got married.
Pauline Cannady: He’s younger than I am, and I didn’t want to marry a younger fellow.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, we got married, 65 years of it. We got married when I was only 21. I tell you, the reason, one of the reasons I got married is it was right in the middle of, I got a job over here and she had a job here, and we, and I had to walk about eight blocks, and we’d get together in the evening, and I’d walk home, and I finally said along in the spring, I said, you know, this is the silliest thing in the world. You know, in these days you just shack up and let it go at that. Well, those days you didn’t do it that way. So I said one day, “You know, this is silly. We’re both paying rent and maybe we ought to just get married and move together, and we would have more money and not be spending it for rent.” Pauline surprised me. She said, “You know, that sounds like a pretty good idea.” We waited, remember, we waited until the Fourth of July.
Pauline Cannady: Yeah, we both got days off. We got married the third of July in the evening
Bruce Cannady: We waited about six weeks, and we both had the time off on, lets see, what was it, Saturday and Sunday. We got married on Friday evening so we could go somewhere over the weekend, which we did. Well, we didn’t want to wait until the fourth.
Jerry Grover: How long was it then you started, the kids started coming along then?
Bruce Cannady: Seven and a half years, one. No, she had told me, I believe it was before me, when we began to think about, you know the future, and she advised me that there would never be any children because she had broken, had her back broken the year she got out of high school.
Pauline Cannady: The doctor told me be sure and tell my boyfriend if we got engaged, think of it to tell him that I may not be able to have any children. So I did. Well, we didn’t want any children then anyway.
Depression time!
Bruce Cannady: So we went along and then, and then when I went to work for the government, we’d been here two, two and a half years and we made a trip out West and that was the first time we’d never been on the West Coast, and so I said, “Why don’t we move out to Washington?” And I managed that, got all set up, moved in out here in the spring. We’d come back to Leadville and things were beginning to get to where I was getting to be moved, and then she said she was pregnant.
So we left Leadville and got out here, and he was born in May. We landed out here in November, and Mike was born in May.
Jerry Grover: Did you have lots of sisters and brothers? Did you grow up with sisters?
Pauline Cannady: Yes, I had five sisters and two brothers.Jerry Grover: What about you, Bruce?
Bruce Cannady: I only had one brother, and he’s seven and a half years younger than I am. We both started out in Nebraska. I wound up with the Federal service, wandering around and finally landed in Portland. He got a job out of Nebraska with Boeing up here at the end of the war. When he got out of that, he got his degree at the University of Washington and went to work in Seattle; wound up finally as Assistant Planning Director here in Portland for the City of Portland. And so we both wound up a few blocks from each other. We started in a different place and wound up in the same place doing different things.
Jerry Grover: You were living in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, and you’re applying for a job with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bruce Cannady: I was expecting an answer, and here I am reading this letter about Fish and Wildlife Service, and I don’t even understand what I’m trying to read . I just figured, well, I’d forgotten about it. But as it happens, I was caught, when was it, about in March. Didn’t really have a job. So I said, well, what shall I do? Pauline says, “Why don’t we go over and just ask for a job, and maybe we can go over to Denver or somewhere.” She was working at the time at Woolworth’s in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. Wound up with that idea when we went up to Leadville, Colorado that if after three months, if we didn’t like it, we’d go back to Denver to look around.
Jerry Grover: Are these summer months or winter months?
Bruce Cannady: We went up on the 4th of April, 1939, and I wound up getting a job for 32 years instead of three months, and stayed at Leadville National Fish Hatchery for about two and a half years. They sent me out to Carson National Fish Hatchery, Washington. It was a beautiful little place, but I tell you, they couldn’t raise fish there at all, really, because they didn’t have any ponds. So we were there one year, sent to California to Coleman National Fish Hatchery. We were there five and a half years. My first year there, I was at the old hatchery, Battle Creek substation that they finally closed. Then I went up to the main Coleman station and stayed there until 1948, and then they sent us to, back believe it or not back to Carson again. Pauline had no more idea of wanting to go back to Carson than the man in the moon. But then we were there one year, and then they sent us to Cortland.
Jerry Grover: What grade were you hired in at when you went to Leadville, Bruce?
Bruce Cannady: When I was at Leadville, and an unknown thing at that time, I think they called it the Apprentice Fish Culturist.
Pauline Cannady: Apprentice Fish Culturist.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, Apprentice Fish Culturist, and I was in that, what, two years.
Pauline Cannady: And they, they could have you leave after what, six months if they weren’t satisfied.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, the old probationary period. And then when I landed back at Carson, I was called a Junior Fish Culturist, and then when I went to Battle Creek, what did they call it then? They called...
Pauline Cannady: Assistant Superintendent.
Bruce Cannady: No, Senior Fish Culturist, I don’t remember exactly. I wasn’t in charge. I was working for......, he died, and then I was acting manager for three or four months.Pauline Cannady: He was dying of cancer, and so Bruce...
Bruce Cannady: Can you remember his name? Isn’t that awful? That is my problem anymore. And then I was there, oh, about a year when I went up to Coleman, and I worked then as a foreman, something like that, foreman fish culturist? No, it wasn’t that. Foreman what? I was in charge of, they had this thing all cut up in some fashion and I don’t really remember, but I was... Anyway, I was there, what, five years. Then they sent me as the manager at Carson. I felt pretty good because I’d, come in and not knowing anything about what I was getting into, and nine years later I was manager, and most of the fellows around there had either never made manager or they made it later.
Jerry Grover: Were those GS grades at that time, with Manager?
Bruce Cannady: I was a 6 I think, at that time. Yeah, I know I was a 6 because just a year or two later they moved us, and we had to do it twice. We moved from a 7 and then to a 9, and that was about, well, I’d been at Carson, I’d been to Cortland [,New York Training School] and back. I went as a 6. God, that ís what everybody was, GS-5 or 6. Then we come back as a, and I come back as a 9 about a year later. Well, a 7 and then a 9, and I was there from 1948 to Cortland and back...
Pauline Cannady: 1957.
Bruce Cannady: And in 1957 I came..and in 1957 I came...
Pauline Cannady: We came to Walker.
Jerry Grover: Where were you between 1950 and 1957? Were you at Carson or at Cortland?
Bruce Cannady: Seven years...
Pauline Cannady: They remodeled it all for them ponds and...
Jerry Grover: In Carson?
Pauline Cannady: He was heading up all that remodeling.
Jerry Grover: Okay, they had just the three houses that were there.
Bruce Cannady: Oh yeah, but they built the other houses and put in ponds. That was done when I was there.
Pauline Cannady: And all those ponds.
Jerry Grover: Okay, and then you came, in 1957 then you came to the Regional Office in Portland, Oregon.
Bruce Cannady: I came in as Assistant Regional Supervisor in 1957.
Jerry Grover: What grade was that?
Bruce Cannady: It was a GS-12. Well, I came in as 11. Let’s see, again, I was a 9. I had to wait a year, got my 11, and then another year to 12. But that is what practically everybody was having to do if they moved into the office, because you know, they’ve always had this little problem of when people are promoted, and I held there until, well I was a GS-13 when I retired.Pauline Cannady: You had gone to Washington, DC between that time.
Bruce Cannady: 1950, after I’d been there three years, they sent me to Washington, DC in a training program. I was here, well first they called me in about September and kept me in Washington until December. Then I came home; I was home 17 day. They sent me back in for a training program, middle management training from January until June, and then I come back to Portland and they...
Pauline Cannady: He wouldnít stay there.
Bruce Cannady: Now, let me tell that story in my way. When I come back to Portland, they wanted me to go back to Washington and stay there and take my chances on wherever I wanted. I felt I had a couple of things that was wrong. First, I didn’t have a degree which was never, I always figured that was going to always be three strikes on me anyway because practically, well I think everybody had.
Jerry Grover: You didn’t have a fisheries degree or you didn’t have a college degree?
Bruce Cannady: I didn’t have a college degree.
Pauline Cannady: Some college classes but……..
Bruce Cannady: Oh, I had some here and there, and even when I was in Washington, DC up there in that middle management I picked up six credits in George Washington University. And anyway, people, including Abe Tunnison and Ray Johnson, Bill Hagen all wanted me to come back there, and I was a little reluctant, very reluctant in fact, because the more I thought, the more I’m probably going to wind up with a Washington office career. And I liked it here. I had a home here.
Pauline Cannady: But there was, you also liked the hatcheries and they weren’t so interested in hatcheries.
Bruce Cannady: Well, you spent your time in Washington, DC, and you know that it’s different.
Jerry Grover: I had two trips, yes.
Bruce Cannady: It’s a different climate.
Jerry Grover: Yes, it is.
Bruce Cannady: Completely different climate.
Jerry Grover: Well, the people at the time, did Bill Hagen have a college degree?
Bruce Cannady: Oh, yes. Everybody had it.
Jerry Grover: Everybody. The people that were back there then, so you were, you felt out of place?
Bruce Cannady: Well, when I was in Portland, the Assistant Director, I mean, Assistant Regional Director Barnaby had his masters and he begged me to go to Washington, and I kept telling him I could go and I’m sure I’m smart enough, but I know a few people in Washington that would resent the hell out of anybody that would even think they should have any kind of a promotion, and I’m not going to get into this, and I didn’t.Pauline Cannady: And so when he come home, they called me and talked to me, tried to, said, “Get him to come to Washington.”
Jerry Grover: Who was that? Is that Barnaby or was it Bill Hagen?
Pauline Cannady: No, I don’t know.
Bruce Cannady: Bill Hagen sat, stood in my house one evening, told Pauline, “Goddam it, you’ve got to get him to go back there or he’s just going to sit here and rot.” So I sat here and rotted.
Pauline Cannady: And he enjoyed it.
Jerry Grover: Okay. So now you’re out here. You were, you said you came out when you came back from Washington DC under the training program. You came back as what, essentially the same job?
Bruce Cannady: When I came here, see, when I came here in 1957, Ned Tuttle was the Supervisor of Hatcheries, and I was the Assistant, and that was it. There was two of us was all. Just before I left in 1960 to go back to this, that, and the other, Marv Smith came in. I approved him in fact. He had to have my approval because we’ve got to have a man; “what would you think of Marv Smith?” I thought he would be great. Anyway and then he came and I, I had to leave, and I was gone about eight months or so, or nine. So the two of them handled it then. So when I come back for the first time, we had three. Well a little later, (I don’t remember just when) Ray Vaughan came in and worked for us a couple of years, and then Paul Handy. Galen [Buterbaugh] was here. Oh, we had a lot of nice people going through here and going up, and up, and up. Paul Handy and John Miller were here up until the time I retired. I was the, somewhere in there, I became a, the Deputy, it isn’t Deputy, what do they call it? Anyway, Tuttle was the Supervisor of Hatcheries, and I was the Assistant, and that was it.
Pauline Cannady: You were working with then.
Bruce Cannady: Well, this, this was a little different. This, about five years before I retired, which would be about 1966, Kimmerick, when I came into Washington. He said, “one of these days I’m going to be going, and I’ve been into building hatcheries. Whatever has been going on, and you better kind of watch and do whatever you have to do as you go along because this is going to happen.” Well, he was right because about 1960, I don’t know, mid-í60's was when we had, began to build things like the big one out at Spring Creek.
Jerry Grover: The rebuilding the Spring Creek.
Bruce Cannady: And the one out at Dworshak.
Jerry Grover: Dworshak Hatchery. Before that, Kooskia NFH.
Bruce Cannady: Well, I also was into it for the State of Oregon here at Bonneville Dam. I was into some of the work that was being done in the Warm Springs reservation, down in California at the spawning channel at Red Bluff. I had Quinault and Makah Hatcheries up in northwest Washington, that was, Dan Slater agreed to have that. Well, and then I kind of helped out here and there on that, and anyway...
Jerry Grover: So you were basically into the construction money bag, organizing?
Bruce Cannady: That was the last five years I was working; I had a hand in, and one of the reasons I retired. We began to, we planned to move on these hatcheries that where were beginning to be constructed or were already half finished or wherever we were. One day the Corps of Engineers called me from Walla Walla and started telling me about the hatcheries that they were going to have built in eastern Washington, what they called, oh what was the name of these?
Jerry Grover: That would be the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan.
Bruce Cannady: They wanted me too, they said. I said, “good Lord, this will take five years just to get the thing lined up and get people thinking it would be a good idea, and I’m not going to wait that long to retire.” And they kept bothering me so I retired, and it was never built. It was not planned. It would have been if I had been there, I think, but I don’t know, because I didn’t stay long enough.
Interviewers Note: The Lower Snake Compensation Plan hatchery system was built and is operating as a joint venture between the Federal Corps of Engineers, the construction agency, the Fish & Wildlife Service, the budgeting & technical administrative agency and the States of Idaho and Washington, the operating entities.
Jerry Grover: So you retired then in 1971.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah. I was 58 years old. 32 years of service, and I had planned to wait until I was at least, well, maybe even 62, certainly 60, and the day that I went down to tell John Finely that I was going to retire, you wouldn’t believe it. We ate lunch, John and Gib Basset and a little group of us, and one of them said, “Hell, you’re not going to retire because we don’t even have any word about that.” The other one said, “Oh yes, we did.” It just fell on his lap just about 20 minutes ago.
Pauline Cannady: You .
Bruce Cannady: Oh, that is another hatchery.
Jerry Grover: Lahontan, in Nevada.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, I was in on the end of that one too. I was into, I suppose I could sit down and probably count, there was probably eight of them, at least.
Jerry Grover: And if they weren’t built brand new they were reconstructed, like Spring Creek.
Bruce Cannady: Yeah, but some of them were new. Quinault was new. And Makah, yeah. And so was Warm Springs for the tribe. And the one in California was new, Tehama-Colusa, the spawning channel. The Russian River. That was one that California ended up operating. It was a Corps of Engineers project.
Well, most of the time I knew who was going to operate. The one that finally come out that I thought was going to be built by the State, fell apart and we wound up with Spring Creek [National Fish Hatchery]. It was just one of those things. Because I was working with the states and we all knew what the policies were, and we might argue and talk about it, but when we got down to talking finally, like Bonneville Dam, there was no question about where it was going to be and how much it was going to be. But they were expecting one person to kind of carry the ball.
Jerry Grover: They, the Corps?
Bruce Cannady: When I began working with the Corps, hardly anybody was speaking with the Fish and Wildlife Service. It took me three years to get some fences mended, and when I finally got the fences mended with a lot of other help, guess what? --you just stood back and got out of the way, because they were going to build places like Dworshak whether you wanted it or not..Jerry Grover: Well, Dworshak, as I understand it, was going to be a state operated hatchery until halfway through and then Idaho backed out. Was that a surprise?
Bruce Cannady: Not really, because I was almost sure that the Federal Government was going to build it because I had been talking along with the Corps, and we were talking about the State. We had
Dr. Robert J. Shallenberger
No full textDr. Robert J. Shallenberger oral history interview as conducted by Jerry Grover.
Dr. Shallenberger joined the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1980, and would retire in 2002. He would eventually become Chief of Refuges before returning to the field to work on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. After retiring from Fish and Wildlife, he worked for the Nature Conservancy, and spends time with two Friends’ Groups.
Organization: FWS
Name: Robert J. Shallenberger
Years: 1980-2002
Program: Refuges
Keywords: Biography, Employees (USFWS), History, Biologists (USFWS), Management, Wildlife refuges, Work of the Service, Aviation, Habitat conservation, Conservation, Endangered species, Migratory birds, Hawaii and Pacific Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex, Midway Atoll National Wildlife RefugeOral History
of
Dr. Robert J. Shallenberger
Interviewed by:
Jerry C. Grover
Oral History Program
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Years worked for Fish and Wildlife
Service: 22 years
Offices and Field Stations Worked,
Positions Held:
Refuge Manager, Hawaiian and Pacific Islands
NWR Complex, Honolulu, HI
Departmental Manager Development Program,
Washington, D.C.
Wildlife Biologist, Division of Migratory Birds,
Washington, D.C.
Wildlife Biologist, Division of Refuges,
Washington, D.C.
Deputy Assistant Director, Refuges and Wildlife,
Portland, OR
Deputy Assistant Director, Refuges and Wildlife,
Albuquerque, NM
Chief, Division of Refuges, Washington, D.C.
Refuge Manager, Midway Atoll NWR, Hawaii
Deputy Refuge Manager, Hawaiian and Pacific
Islands NWR Complex, Honolulu, HI
Most Important Projects: Midway Atoll,
establishing the CARE Group; Refuges 2003.
Colleagues and Mentors:
Dick Smith, Jim Gillette, Marv Plenert, Dave Olsen,
Dale Coggeshall, Joe Mazzoni, Robert Smith, John
Doebel, Mollie Beattie, Jerry Leinecke, Bob Streeter,
Don Berry, Dan Ashe, John Rogers, Rollie Sparrowe,
Ken Grannemann, Dick Myshak.
Most Important Issues:
Habitats on Midway, Refuge System organic legislation
Brief Summary of Interview: Dr.
Shallenberger talks about early life, going to college,
and figuring out what he wanted to do after he
graduated from Whitman College. After deciding to go
to graduate school at UCLA, he started his own
company, consulted on various projects, and the Corps
of Engineers before joining the Fish and Wildlife
Service in 1980, which he would retire from in 2002.
He held many different positions with the Service and
would become Chief of Refuges before returning to the
field to work on Midway Atoll National Wildlife
Refuge. After retiring from Fish and Wildlife, he
worked for the Nature Conservancy, and currently
spends time with two Friends’ Groups. He says the
two constants in his life have been flying and
photography, and feels that he wouldn’t have gotten
certain jobs without the support of various Fish and
Wildlife colleagues.
Dr. Rob Shallenberger, February 2016
2
THE INTERVIEW
February 3, 2016
Jerry: This is Jerry Grover, a retired Ecological Services & Fishery supervisor in the Portland Regional Office and representing the Association of Retired Fish & Wildlife Service Employees. I am at the home of Dr. Rob Shallenberger on Kamuela, Hawaii to do an oral history on his career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 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. Joining me today is my wife Judy, also a FWS career retiree.
Rob, could you start off with your full name, when, where you were born
Rob: I was born Robert J. Shallenberger on May 14, 1945 in Worchester, Massachusetts. We moved to the west coast when I was two, so I’m a west coast boy growing up; lived in Palo Alto, California.
Dad was a professor at Stanford and so we spent a lot of time around the campus; he was an avid striped bass fisherman, which is how I got into the critter kind of thing.
I have three brothers and two of us really got into natural history and two of us didn’t. So I did a lot of camping in the Sierras with my dad and one brother.
Jerry: For the record, when did you retire and what was your position; where were you?
Rob: I retired in 2002, and I was in Honolulu. My position scenario is a little convoluted, but I started with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Honolulu as a refuge manager in Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Refuge Complex. Spent four years in Honolulu in that job and somebody convinced me to go to Washington D.C., which is a story in and of itself because my wife was born and raised in Hawaii and she had no desire to go to D.C.
Jerry: We can get into that. So what was your position at retirement and your grade?
Rob: My grade was GS 15 and I was the refuge manager at, or assistant; see at that time they called it Deputy Refuge Manager for the Hawaiian Complex.
Jerry: Okay, and then your boss was the Pacific Island Administrator?
Rob: Yes.
Jerry: Okay, that’s good. Let’s go back to your Palo Alto days that led you to go to school where?
Rob: I went to school at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, where I had visited the area because my grandfather was a rancher in Washington state. And also I had heard that Whitman had better pheasant hunting than the other schools I was looking at, which makes me not a very credible source of guidance for my kids on where to go to school.
Jerry: Did you get your Ph.D. there?
Rob: I got my PhD at UCLA. When I got to UCLA with its 25,000 students after leaving Whitman with about 900; it was culture shock!
Bad enough to go to L.A. but I did it because I followed a major professor who I had worked with at various projects and he helped me get in. So I did my doctorate on seabirds in Hawaii.
Jerry: After UCLA, where was your first assignment? It was here in Hawaii with the refuge system?
Rob: Actually, I got my PhD in 1973, and I started a natural history film company. I did consulting 3
work on various construction projects and highways. My first federal job was with the Corps of Engineers, believe it or not, as an ecologist in the Pacific. I traveled all over the Pacific. It wasn’t until 1980 that I actually took a job with the Fish and Wildlife Service. I think I was able to do that because I got on the Federal Register for the Corps job and that made it possible for me to be selected for the refuge manager position in Hawaii. I stayed in that job for four years.
Jerry: What did they hire you as?
Rob: Refuge manager.
Jerry: Refuge manager, not a refuge biologist?
Rob: No.
Jerry: Okay, and what grade?
Rob: I started as a 12. I didn’t have a lot of history with the Service prior to taking that job but I had hunted on a few refuges and I’d done a lot of birding and photography but frankly the idea of being able to work on the land was exciting to me.
When I had done that for four years, I began getting a lot of pressure from within the Service to go into Washington and go to the Departmental Manager Development Program (DMDP). And it was an interesting decision because we were perfectly happy in Hawai’i. My wife’s father was a cattle rancher, so I had free meat. My brother was a fisherman so I had free fish. And I lived in a house that I had paid off the mortgage and so it was real hard to pull me out of here, but I did it.
So I went into the DMDP Program, a year-long program, and a really good opportunity to find out not only what’s going on in the Service but other agencies and on the Hill and so on.
I did that for a year, and then I did a position in Migratory Birds in D.C. for a year and then I did a year in the Refuge Division; Jim Gillette was the Chief at the time. With the help of some people well established in a position including Marv Plenert and Dave Olsen and Jim, I was able to get the Deputy Assistant Regional Director, Refuges and Wildlife position in Portland
Jerry: Let’s go back one moment. When you were going through the DMDP Program, some of your assignments that you had, what were they?
Rob: When I was in the DMDP, I did three or four months on the Hill with the Environment and Public Works Committee. Then I did an assignment with the Audubon Society working on their Adopt a Refuge Program. And I did assignments in Endangered Species, and I can’t remember what else.
Jerry: Who was your mentor in D.C. for that?
Rob: Dick Smith. Dick was really interesting. I appreciated his candor and we worked really well throughout my whole career. And we fished a lot together, were in a car pool together and so I got to know him well and he was a big help.
Jerry: That’s interesting because you came out of refuges as a refuge candidate back with the DMDP, and Dick Smith was head of the Research.
Rob: That’s right. Well, I had been doing research in the Wildlife Management Branch for that year before I worked, after the DMDP and before I worked in Portland. Yeah, Dick was a big help.
Jerry: Let’s go back one other step. When you were hired into the federal position, who hired you here in Honolulu?
Rob: That was Dale Coggeshall.
Jerry: Dale, okay. Let’s go back, the connection with D.C. and the Flemming Award.
Rob: Dale had encouraged me to sort of broaden my sights; I would have been perfectly happy to stay in Hawaii, my wife wanted to be there, I was having it good, making a lot of progress, but he put me in for the Arthur S. Flemming Award, which is 4
given to ten government employees under the age of 40.
Jerry: Is this an Interior award or is it government wide?
Rob: No, it’s government wide. And I went back for a big ceremony and it was just kind of a big deal for me; I had never even heard of it. I think I was the first Fish and Wildlife Service person to ever get it, so it gave me an excuse to get back there and meet some people and I could be a little more objective in terms of what my options were. The Departmental Management Program has changed over years, as you know, but it’s still a great opportunity to get out. Dick was insistent that I take on projects outside the agency.
Jerry: Okay, that’s good but then you ended up back as the Deputy Assistant in Portland for Refuges, and if I recall, you lived up on Bull Mountain.
Rob: I did, in Tigard.
Jerry: How long were you in Portland?
Rob: Three years. Including a bit of time going out to Malheur NWR to deal with the Hammonds.
JUDY: Guess who’s back?
Rob: I know, it was interesting to see that happen. I can recall being asked to do some tough assignments including holding a meeting at Bonners Ferry about listing the Selkirk caribou. But the Hammond one, everyone got to know; “Rob, it’s your turn, you go try to do something.”
Jerry: Who was manager at Malheur NWR at that time?
Rob: Well, Forrest was there, Forrest Cameron for a while.
Jerry: Yeah, but that would have been before Forrest.
Rob: Yeah, it was before Forrest.
Jerry: The guy with the Italian sounding name.
Rob: Oh, Mazzoni.
Jerry: Was Joe Mazzoni there?
Rob: Mazzoni, yeah. When I left Portland, I went to Albuquerque as Joe’s Deputy. I remember this Hammond thing; I called him before I went out there because I knew he had had experience with it. And I remember walking through the Hammond’s living room and seeing all the elk heads on the wall wondering if there was room on the wall for mine, because nobody made any real progress with them.
Jerry: Dealing with the Hammonds, what was that particular issue; was it all grazing or was it land issue?
Rob: It all had to do with grazing a portion of the refuge when they move their cattle from their ranch to the BLM areas, and they were just leaving their cattle on areas too long and just being ornery.
Jerry: Were they the only ranchers that had permits that were leaving their animals on? What about the other?
Rob: No, as I recall, the other ones were setting a good example, but they weren’t following it.
Jerry: The Hammonds weren’t.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerry: How interesting, giving today’s situation with the refuge, and there’s still four of them left there.
Rob: Really? I haven’t followed it in the last few days.
[Break in tape]
Rob: ….because the job I really wanted, the Chief of Refuges, came up when Bob Karges retired.
5
Jerry: Chief of Refuges, D.C.?
Rob: Yeah. So I went from Albuquerque to that Regional Chief of Refuges job and stayed there for seven years.
Jerry: Wow, okay, I guess you bought a home and settled down?
Rob: Yeah.
Jerry: Did you have any family, Rob, any kids.
Rob: Well, I had two kids that were living with my ex-wife in California. And then my son, Matthew, was living with us and so he went from school to school and ultimately wound up at the end of my D.C. stint getting into William and Mary, so he stayed.
Jerry: So you were seven years as Chief of Refuges, then what? You were still a 15 then?
Rob: Yeah. And then I came up to a tough choice, because I had a chance to sort of put together a project on Midway Atoll. And then actually go out and be the first official refuge manager at this closed Navy base. That was a challenge because we established a partnership with a private company to run the operation jointly - the Midway Phoenix Corporation.
Jerry: Midway Phoenix, and they built the Captain Brooks house and some of the newer facilities out there?
Rob: Yes. That was a tough thing, and you’ll hear about it, I’m sure, when you talk to Robert Smith because he was my supervisor; he and John Doebel were sort of jointly supervising me at that time and they both were behind the selection and knew I had a lot of experience out there and could make this project work. But it didn’t work as well as anybody expected and ultimately they were kicked off the island. But the project was terrific in terms of what we were trying to accomplish and opportunity for people to visit and dealing with the environmental issues and dealing with the Navy.
Jerry: Some of those environmental issues were what? I know about the lead paint on the buildings and there were batteries that were just dumped into the ocean there.
Rob: The military spent a lot of money trying to leave that place in a better state than it was when they closed it in 1993. So the estimates were they spent over 90 million dollars, I never really documented that but in terms of the number of people and the kind of equipment and the barge trips and all that sort of stuff, I’m sure it was a lot of money. The deal with Midway Phoenix was, and it was in the agreement, that they would operate the facility at no cost to the government. Well, that didn’t turn out to be very realistic, even though everybody, I think, gave it a try; it ultimately didn’t work.
Jerry: What year are we talking then?
Rob: In ’93 there was an executive order that closed the base, or the Naval Air Facility. In ’96, the executive order transferred it from the Navy to the Interior Department, that’s when we officially got it. The agreement with Phoenix was also signed in ’96.
Jerry: And the reason that Phoenix did not operate this at no cost to the government was what, just lack of people coming out there? I understand they were offering expeditions or trips through National Geographic or what?
Rob: Well, they had a number of angles, but the ultimate issue was unless they could fill an airplane, and a big airplane; they started with a small one, but unless they could fill it and dependably fill it, they couldn’t earn money off that visitor program to compensate for the expenses of running the facility. A lot of things turned out to be more expensive than they anticipated.
Jerry: Did they also, in the agreement, were they also responsible for the power plant, and sewage, and maintenance of the roads, and buildings?
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Rob: Yes!. And they sent some engineers out there to look at the facility before they signed the co-op agreement, so it wasn’t as if they didn’t know, couldn’t anticipate all the unforeseen expenses, but we knew it was going to be spendy. And they did put a lot of money into it, but they would have liked to amortize that expense over a longer period of time, but the relationship just deteriorated and ultimately they left.
After the Midway project….[break in tape]…..project as a refuge manager. And here after Midway, after being the Chief of Refuges, I wound up going back to the field as a refuge manager at Midway.
Jerry: But as a GS-15.
Rob: Yeah, but the only reason it’s a 15 is I said I wouldn’t take the job unless they guaranteed I keep my grade. It was funny. I have a file somewhere of all the emails and letters that people sent me when I made the decision to go from the Chief’s job to the field. About half of them lined up saying, “What were you smoking? What a stupid thing to do, you work your whole career to move forward, and then you go backward.” Well, if you knew what other people said, “You have the guts to do that and be really happy that you could do it,” which is really what the Park Service does a lot. People come into the Park system and they work up through several parks and then they go to Washington for four or five years and they come out as a superintendent at Yosemite or Yellowstone.
Jerry: Yeah, but Yosemite is an SES.
Rob: Well, it wasn’t at the time, but it is now. But there was no great equity in those manager levels, well, you know that. But Midway was a fascinating place for me; I’d been out there several times as a student and as a researcher and when I first got the refuge job in Honolulu.
Jerry: But your focus was solely on Midway, you didn’t have rest of the refuge or the Hawaiian Complex, Johnston Atoll or any of the others?
Rob: Well, I didn’t until I came off Midway, and then I moved back out into the Deputy Refuge Complex Manager.
Jerry: Okay, let’s back up. When you were on Midway, who was the one that signed your performance evaluation?
Rob: Robert Smith.
Jerry: Robert Smith, and he reported to?
Rob: John Doebel.
Jerry: And then you went back to Honolulu as a Deputy to—?
Rob: Jerry Lienecke! He had filled my job when I left in 1984, so he had been there forever. So frankly, this has a lot to do with why two years after I got off Midway and got back into Honolulu and found myself doing what I did 20 years before that I decided to take a job with the Nature Conservancy.
Jerry: How old were you at the time then? Were you able to draw your retirement or was that something you postponed?
Rob: Yeah, I did when I went to the Conservancy; that was in 2002.
Jerry: So you retired as opposed to resigning?
Rob: Right.
Jerry: And how old were you then?
Rob: Well I’m 70 now, do the math [chuckling].
Jerry: Okay, we can work that out later. So now you’re on another career after Fish and Wildlife Service, you have one with the Conservancy.
Rob: Yes, I was the Director of Programs on the Big Island, and I did that for seven years and then retired from that.
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Jerry: Retired from them, when did you retire from them?
Rob: Let’s see, it would have been 2012.
Jerry: Okay, so you’ve been three years without anything to do.
Rob: Well, the irony of that, as you probably know from most of your interviews, is it’s hard to stop doing what you were doing.
Jerry: So you’re doing TNC things?
Rob: Well, I’ve done a little contract work for TNC and the Kamuela schools and so on, but most of my time is spent working two friends groups. I’m on the board of the Friends of Midway Atoll and Friends of Hakalau Forest. And I’m, at least according to my wife, much too busy, not playing enough. But those are both projects that I was intimately involved in their evolution, so it’s fun to still stay involved but not have the responsibility on a day to day basis; you get along real well with the managers and so we have, what I consider, to be very effective and hard-working people trying to support these two refuges.
Jerry: Yeah, I see that the Friends of Midway Atoll, there is another Fish and Wildlife retiree; Bob Fields is on that group isn’t he?
Rob: He is, he was the director or president for a few years; just came off that.
Jerry: Are there other Fish and Wildlife folks on the friends group?
Rob: Linda Watters is on the Midway one, and at Hakalau Forest, Dick Wass and Jack Jeffrey are both on the board. Yeah Dick, he retired many years before that. When I first was in D.C. we were trying to wrap our arms around how these friends groups have evolved and in some cases they were just terrific relationships and they found a nice niche where they could provide financial or other help. Other cases, they weren’t so friendly, it was just a ruse for getting into the board room to make decisions for the Fish and Wildlife Service. So I ran into managers with bad experiences and others that had great experiences. Ours, the ones we have now, are really quite good. We just started an endowment funding refuge projects on the Hakalau Forest refuge to deal with the vagaries of funding that go up and down, up and down.
Jerry: Were any of your people in these friends groups, did they attend the friends training session back in West Virginia last week, the week before?
Rob: Yes, they did.
Jerry: So they got stuck in the snow - from Hawaii to the snow.
Rob: Yeah, it was funny because we had some people visiting from New York, who were here; they had left New York the day before it stormed. So it works both ways. [break in interview.]
It was all about trying to effectively manage the northwestern Hawaiian Island and trying to create protective regulations and some of that would really improve the way that area’s managed and the results. And we were pretty successful and I think we did ultimately lead to the establishment of the Marine National Monument that is unique.
Jerry: That’s the one that I can’t even begin to pronounce.
Rob: Papahanaumokuakea. It helped to clarify responsibilities of three agencies - NOAA, Interior and the sta
William F. Shake
No full textWilliam F. Shake oral history interview as conducted by Jerry Grover.
Bill Shake talks about the various jobs that he held curing his career with the Service including working for Animal Damage Control/Wildlife Services, the Departmental Management Development Program, and being ARD for various programs of the Service.
Organization: FWS
Name: William F. Shake
Years: 1967-2004
Program: Refuges
Keywords: History, Biography, Employees (USFWS), Biologists (USFWS), Endangered and/or threatened, Fisheries management, Columbia Basin Ecosystem-Refuges, Michigan Wetland Management DistrictOral History Cover Sheet
of
Name: William F. Shake
Date of Interview: February 10, 2008
Location of Interview: PortlandTigard, Oregon at the home of Jerry Grover
Interviewer: Jerry C. Grover
Oral History Program
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
National Conservation Training Center
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife
Service:
37½ years from 4/17/1967 to
12/31/2004
Offices and/ Field Stations Worked, Positions
Held:
Started outBill Shake began his career with the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service in Region 3 Minneapolis with as a temporary
appointment with in the Animal Damage Control ,( ADC)
program, in Lafayette, Indiana. His first permanent then got
permanent position was as a field biologist in Region 3 with
ADC . Then and was assigned to Ohio, few for several weeks,
to help the Wildlife Services program on Lake Erie., W when
finished , he with became the Assistant State Supervisor with
ADC in Lansing, Michigan. He then wWent to the Regional
Office in Minneapolis as a staff biologist with ADC/Wildlife
Services and, was the acting Endangered Species Biologist.
His next move was to Washington, then went to D.C., for the
year-long Departmental Manager Development Program (
DMDP) Program. Part of his training assignment was
withWorked for Dick Myshak, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Fish, Wildlife & Parks on a task force to implement the Alaska
Native Clams Settlement Act. NextAt the completion of the
training program, he served as Wwaas staff biologist with the
Division of Program Plans in D.C. ,
in In 1982 he transferred to Region 1 Portland was as the
Assistant Regional Director (ARD) for Endangered Species
and Federal Aid, from there he went on to become then became
the Assistant to the ARD for Ecological Services, the Deputy
ARD for Fisheries eventually becoming the, then ARD for the
Fisheries Program of the Pacific Region. He then moved on to
become the multi-program Became was the Geographic ARD
for the Columbia River Basin. He and then becamecompleted
his career as the Special Assistant to the Regional Director for
the Columbia River issues.
Colleagues and Mentors: Dr. Hank Sather (professor),
Dick Smith, Dick Myshak, Fred QuartzelCourtsel, Wes Jones,
Jack Hemphill, Bob Herbst, Jack Berryman, Ed Verburg, Mike
Spear, Ed Chamberland, Wally Steucke, Joe Blum, Sandy
Wilbur, Wayne White, Gail Kobetich, Dave Riley, Fred
Vincent, Jim MorinWarrien.
Most Important Issues: Bill was intricately involved in
dDeveloping a wildlife resources restoration and management
plan for the Klamath River Basin in NothernNorthern
California, was the Service policy represenitiverepresentative
on the Pplanning process for the Columbia River dealing with
operations of the hydro-power system which is operated by the,
Bonneville Power Administration, Corps of Engineers and the
Bureau of Reclamation. He aAlso dealing represented the
Service on the with Snake River water rights adjudication
which involving involved the tribes, the and Bureau of
Reclamation and private water interestswater issue in Idaho.
The and NOAA Fisheries listing of the Pacific Salmon was also
a factor in the negotiations.
Bill and Deanna Shake - 2010
Brief Summary of Interview: Bill tTalks about where
he was born, growing up near the college he went to, becoming
interested in the outdoors and the Fish & Wildlife Service. He
talks about when he met his wife, going to college and graduate
school, getting a job with the FWS, getting married and having
two daughters. He talks about the various jobs that he has had
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with the Service including working for Animal Damage Control/Wildlife Services, being in the Departmental Management Development P Program, and being ARD for various programs ofr the sServices. Bill talks about high about the high and low points of his career, things he thought were good ideas and others that he would consider doing over. He also talks about people who influenced him, and the good and bad changes or decisions that have occurred in the FWS. And he mentions some of the fun times that he has had working for FWS and he gives his final thoughts on his career, the accomplishments that were made and the people he worked with.
Insert
a
Picture
THE ORAL HISTORY
Jerry: This is Jerry Grover a retired Ecological Services & Fishery supervisor in the Portland Regional Office. This is Jerry Grover I’m doing an oral history today with, with Bill Shake regarding his career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The purpose of this interview is part of a program to preserve the heritage and culture of the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service through the eyes of its employees. Joining me us is Deanna Shake and Judy Grover. Would you state your name for the record, please.
Bill: This is William F. Shake. e…I was born in Macomb, Illinois on January the 20th, 1942.
Jerry: What is Macomb, Illinois like? Is that farm city?
Bill: It’s, kind of a dichotomy - it’s both a, a farming community and the home of Western Illinois University, where I went to kindergarten all the way through a master’s degree; 22 years at the same campus. iIt’s in west central Illinois about forty miles from,and equal distance from the Mississippi River and the Illinois River. It’s a very rich farming country. and it also is the home of Western Illinois University, where I went through kindergarten all the way through a master’s degree; 22 years at the same, same campus.
Jerry: (Inaudible) What got you interested in the Fish and Wildlife thingsresources?
Bill: Well I think my parents really helped me learn to enjoy the, the out doors. My, both my parents were avid fishermen 3
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and I started it you know as soon as I was able to hold a cane pole fishing rod and when I was finally old enough, my dad would take me duck hunting. This was, even way before I could even carry a shotgun but I’d go, go out to the duck blinds with him and his friends.
Jerry: And you had to swim out for the ducks?
Bill: No, I’d (chuckling) I didn’t have to do that but I really enjoyed watching the birds and the hunting the experience and from there I just sort of progressed. We had a friend that had a cabin out on the Mississippi River and we bought a little runboat and motor about (unclear) and then I started trout line fishing on the river for catfish and catch snapping turtles and enjoyed just poking around in the marshes along the, the river. I and just had a wonderful, wonderful childhood enjoying the outer doors.
Jerry: What’d your parents do?
Bill: My father was affiliated with the Western Illinois University. He originally taught physics there and then eventually moved, as part of the facilityfaculty, moved intothen, he was in charge of the physical plant at the University so you know which included all the heating, cooling, electricityal , everything;and maintaincemaintenance work. hHe managed all of the, the folks that made the, you know, the physical plant work at the University.
run.
Jerry: Okay, so you were living a pretty good life!
Bill: Yes, we lived right across the street from the campus from, the street from the campus. I literally walked, you know, a couple blocks to school and to the University. My mom was originally a schoolteacher and then after that she had me, she was a stay at home mom.
Jerry: During those early years, as you were growing up and got into high school, did you have jobs, school, after school jobs?
Bill: I, itt seemed like I was always working. I, aAs soon as I was big enough to ride a bicycle I started delivering newspapers. I remember I had like 80 people on my newspaper route and I’d deliver papers seven days a week and I remember on the holidays you knowwhich had big sale editions on a Sunday paper; I’d have to make two or three trips with my bicycle to be able to get those papers delivered. Also, you know I worked in a grocery store, I mowed yards you knowand all the usual types of things that, that kids, types of jobs kids had back then.
Jerry: Did you have any time for hobbies?
Bill: Hunting and fishing , you knowwere my main hobbies. I was also active in Boy Scouts and I earned the Eagle Scout rank. .
Jerry: Okay.
Bill: Then mMy folks really got me started doing that; those were probably my major hobbies. I enjoyed playing with my neighbors and friends and kids.
Jerry: Let’s jump into something, you mentioned, that you went to Western Illinois University.
Bill: Yes.
Jerry: And yYou said you had (inaudible), gotrecievedreceived a masters degree. What year were your degrees? And what was your major?
Bill: I majored in Zoology. T and I, wethe University didn’t have a wildlife management or fisheries management curricularum, and it was either zoology, microbiology or, botany, nature. I got my Bachelors of Science in Zoology in 19’64 and I got my Masters of Science in Zoology in 19’67. I did my master thesis on a wood duck nesting study and how the impact of starlingss at that timewhich were taking over wood 4
2
duck nest boxes and really causing a lot of wood ducks to abandon their nests. and not raise broods during that particular year by taking over the box and they wanted, w
We wanted to see if they starlings were having the same affect in natural cavities in trees. so I, I spent two years, two summers gathering data and then the final year I wrote my thesis.
Jerry: (Unclear) dDid it go up to the jJournal of Wildlife Management or anything like that?
BBill: Yes it did, yeah it was published.
Jerry: Published there so…
Bill: Yes.
Jerry: …it was a good piece of work then.
Bill: Yes.
Jerry: Okay. What, sSounds like you were getting pretty well prepared if you were doing your masters on wood ducks. Was that wherewhat, led you to your first job?
Bill: Well it, yYes it was. I, I really, I knew I wanted to go to work for either the state or a federal fFish and wWildlife aAgency and back at that time Illinois had an opening,the Illinois Department of Conservation, had an opening. and I applied, and as luck would have it, and this really is was torturous fortunate that the secretary lost my application. T and they found it after they had already selected somebody. ; I found out later. But in order to cover themselves they had to go through the process of interviewing me so under the pretense that the job was still open. I went to Springfield and they interviewed me and unbeknownst to me, the guy that got the job was sitting out in the you know the foyer waiting to come in and talk to the guys that were doing the interview. So it was good news that I didn’t get hired by Illinois Department of Conservation because I wouldn’t have had the, the great career I’ve had with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And it just happened that my, my major professor, my advisor who at that time the was Dean of graduate school, Dr. Hank Sather he knew Goodie Gordon Larson. H really, really well in Minneapolis he was Personnel Director for the rRegional oOffice in Minneapolis. He put me in contact with Goodie Mr. Larson and on April 17, I was, of 1967, I was hired on as a four 4-month temporary GS- 5 because of a job freeze for permanent hires.
Jerry: You had graduated by this time?
Bill: Yes I had graduated. So this temporary appointment was with the ADC, Animal Damage Control program, Wildlife Services at that time I think it was, and we moved to Lafayette, Indiana. and I think my annual salary at that time was less than $5,000. back in 1967.
Jerry: That would have been your GS 5 then?
Bill: A GS 5 starting out and sSo I did my four4-month assignment and the job freeze or whatever you know ended. I was able to resign from that position and then they picked me up the very next day as a permanent, full-time employee.
Jerry: Okay.
Bill: And bBecause I had my masters degree I was eligible for a GS- 7, so I got a raise.
Jerry: Were you able to avoid the military? or did you…
Bill: No. I… went up to Chicago, back when we had draft cards, and I had to go up for a physical. And I’ve always had a high blood pressure problem. A, as a kid I couldn’t play football in high school because of my blood pressure but I could play basketball; I never did understand that, but anyway I went up to Chicago., wWhen they checked my blood pressure it was high so the procedure was they put you up in a room overnight and took take your blood pressure twice. then tThe next and day it was still high so they gave me a 1-Y status on my draft card, which means if they go to war and they really need a warm body they would of drafted me but otherwise I didn’t get drafted. I and was able to complete college and, and go right to work for the Service.
Jerry: Deanna is with us today. When does she come into the picture?
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Bill: Well she and her brother and their folks moved to Macomb probably when I was a high school semaphoresophmoresophomore, freshman.
Deanna: You were a Junior.
Bill: She’s telling me when I was a junior twhen they moved here.
Deanna: OH!
Bill: No, no they moved to Macomb before that.
Deanna: I moved when I was in 7th grade.
Bill: Yes, so Deanna was in 7th grade when she moved there and I was two years ahead of her in school. And her brother and I were in the same grade and so I always walked to school with him and Deanna. B (someone saying something in background) being the little sister, she would always walk up ahead of us and you know like I said it was only a couple blocks to the school and you know she was really attractive (unclear, chuckling) in 7th grade, I thought she was pretty. (inaudible). But aA year or so later I, I did ask her to go out and her folks asked their son, my friend Ron, you know what kind of guy I was and he gave me a glowing report and so I was able to take Deanna out on our first dDate and… a long story short we’ve been going together and had been married for 46 years.
Jerry: Been a long time and been married and yYou had children, I take it.
Bill: We have two daughters; Chantal Shantel and Jennifer, both of those girls were born after we were transferred up to Lansing, Michigan.
Jerry: The daughters are on the west coast now?
Bill: Yes Chantal Shantel lives here in Portland and Jennifer lives up in a suburb near SalemSeattle.
Deanna: Seattle.
Bill: Or Seattle I mean, I’m sorry.
Jerry: Okay. Let’s, let’s take a jump back to start on your career now. You got have your temporary appointment; you now have been hired as a GS- 7 Biologist in Region 3. in Minneapolis office. What was that job?
Bill: It was a, I was field biologist with Wildlife ServicesAnimal Damage Control and basically what we were doing is when people were having problems with depredating birds or, or voles in apple orchards, roosting birds you know in cities or whatever, they would, would call our office. and wWe’d come out and provide assistance on showing folks how to, how to reduce the, the affects of the animals; whether they’re groundhogs and (someone speaking in background)in pastures or you know blackbirds birds eating corn , or eating fruit off of commercially grown fruittrees
.
Jerry: In other words as a biologist you are now all of a sudden your killing things.
Bill: That’s correct. We were, we were quite good at it actually.
Jerry: And the division you were a wildlife biologist, wWhat was the division? It was Predator and Rodent Control that then they went to Animal …Jerry and Bill: …Damage Control and then they went to…
Bill: …Wildlife …Services!
Jerry and Bill: …Services.
Jerry: And you started out…
Bill: Then back to ADC, I think it was…
Jerry: Animal Damage…
Bill: I think it was Animal Damage Control when I…
Jerry: (inaudible, speaking at same time). That’s when the federal government had taken on…
Bill: Right.
Jerry: …The Service waswe were doing coyotes in other parts of the country. But you were working primarily on bird depredation?
Bill: Yeah eExactly.
Jerry: But you were, you would sayworking primarily on bird depredation? Which is… 6
2
Bill: Yeah we,Yes cCoyotes hadn’t become really a problem in the mid-west like they are now. I know Tthey’re more, certainly more prevalent now thaen they were when I was a field biologist. then but wWe dealt mostly with rodent control,and bird control. things like that. We even had a program, at that time, where we would, cities would or municipalities, counties would call us that if they had landfills and if theythat were overrun with rats. and wWe would go out and make a survey of the dump the at night before and, you know with flashlights, and count the number of rats we’d see. and tThen we’d go buy cases of canned dog food and mix up the dog food with a chemical called zinc phosphide. and then wWe’d go out with these buckets of this mixture and we’d plop it all around the dump. And then we’d come back to the dump about three or four days later do another survey to see how effective we were. And…
Jerry: Were you?
Bill: We were.
Jerry: Who was your first boss?
Bill: My first boss was Fred QuartzelCourtsel; he was athe sState sSupervisor in Lafayette, Indiana. We also hasd a bait station at Lafayette where we mixed up lots of thesebait compounds and then supplyied those it to county extension agents and, to other wWildlife sWServices offices around the country. So it was kind of a, you know,a combination field office and a bait station.
Jerry: How long were you at Lafayette then?
Bill: Ten months.
Jerry: Ten months, tThen what happened?
Bill: Well I had been assigned to over to Ohio and to help out the Wildlife Service’s Office over there do some corn depredation surveys up on Lake Erie. And aAt the time Dick Smith was the State Supervisor at Columbus and so I went over there for several weeks and, and did corn damage assessments. W and then when I got back from that, and this was in the late summer/fall, and when I got back from that assignment I got a call to come over to Columbus. and I took Deanna with me and walked into Dick Smith’s office. Before we saw Dick the secretary said, “Oh you must be the new person going to Lansing, Michigan.” Well this was all news to me. So she kind of let the cat out of the bag.
but…
Jerry: What year was this?
Bill: That would be 1968.
Jerry: ’68.
Bill: So, you knowI, talked to Dick, and he offered me the job as Assistant State Supervisor in Lansing, Michigan. and iIt was a one person station and then I’d be in charge of all the ADC work in, in Lansing and I remember…Michigan.
Jerry: Did you get a promotion?
Bill: Yes I got arecievedreceived a GS 9 out of thatpromotion to GS-9. We went out to Dick’s house for lunch and Dick put the sale on, ontalked to Deanna about moving to Lansing. and we lived in, iIn Lafayette we lived in this this one hundred year old… farmhouse and it was on about 360 acres and it was great; had a small mouth bass stream in the back yard and pheasants and quail you know and it was pretty nice. We raised bird dogs at the time and so it, we really enjoyed Lafayette. B but Michigan was, waswas also a really a nice place to live as well so.
Jerry: WOkay again, what was your, what were your daily activities? You’re a one-man office.
Bill: We worked a lot up there with orchardists, either blueberry growers orin their apple orchards showing them how to control voles, which would you know girdle the fruit trees. Some of the species of voles would actually eat the roots and really reduce the vitality of those trees and the amount of fruit 7
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that they could produce. and of course tThe birds physically were causing damage and also lo loss to cherries, and blueberries. So we were working, we did a lot of work with the Service’s Denver Research Lab. and tThey had a bird group out there, a bird depredation group and so we would run a lot of field tests using various noise makers, using spray- on repellants and of things like that to …ssee if we could finds ways to, to reduce the depredation.
We also , in Michigan, gotwere involved with an endangered species - issues the Kirtland’s warble warbler. They only nest, only in jack pine stands in central Michigan, north central Michigan. And tTheir habitat tree age was really specific it would beand the birds would only nest in stands that were only seven to fifteen, seventeen years old. and fFire was the you know the you know the regenerative factor for these, these habitats. and a lot of it was on a national guard base. The birds were, were not doing well at all there’s just you knowwith the population level down to a few hundred birds I mean less than like two or three hundred. I think, if I remember right. And we found out if you; they were having problemsThe reason for the decline was with cowbird parasitism. where The cowbirds would lay an egg or two in the Kirtland’s warblers nest, they were a ground nesting bird, and then the of course the cowbird fledgling nestling would take over the nest and, and eat all the food and the Kirtland’s nestlings wouldn’t make it. And so this was a big reason why they were, were not doing well. So wWe found outdiscovered that if you trap the cow birds that we could significantly increase the, the fledgling rate for Kirtland’s,. significantly, really significantly.
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