Did you meet Mr. Lange as a result of that CCC reunion (41)?
I made an extra effort to find any CCC alumni. This is just coming back to me now, I believe he was living some place in California.
Yes, Vacaville.
That is it. I don’t believe he came up for that event. I tried to generate a good bit of publicity and I was hopeful that we would get more people to turn out. I remember that he came up and he told me about the sign that we still have at Vidae Falls. He is the only one that I recall of the CCC alumni.
I was reading some of the annual reports that were done during the time that you were superintendent. One had to do with the onset of computerization. How did that go?
As far as the first steps the Park Service was taking with computers, I think they had some hotshot’s computer salesman that sold them a bill of goods. One idea was that they would be able to have the same kind of computers in the regional office as in the various park offices, and thereby have a link to the monthly balance of funds. Computers were envisioned mainly for budgets at that initial stage. I was all for anything that could streamline them, but this entailed Mount Rainier, Olympic, and us getting a special kind of computer that matched what the regional office had. At that point we had to dedicate on room for the computer, and assure that it was smoke free and had outside ventilation. We had some administrative staff who smoked, and at that time smoking wasn’t regarded as taboo. We had the non-smokers quite adamant about the smokers bothering their health, so I had a little tizzy going. The smokers were the one that would be using computers at that point in time, so the room had to have this special ventilation. The computer system didn’t realize the potential we had expected in getting results that first year, but within a few short years it began to be more productive (42). With the establishment of our resource management program, things began to come of age. We were then able to get better computer systems and modems.
