I had one question about John C. Merriam. I’m not sure if you would have known him, but maybe his sons Charles or Lawrence.
Lawrence Merriam was the regional director of the Western Region [Region IV] at one time, I’m sure you know.
Yes.
Yeah, I knew him, but not very well.
Let’s go into the “C” section with your assignment as a ranger, and superintendent in the Park Service during the nineteen fifties and sixties.
Well, you ask how a ranger moves through changes from park to park. Well, what happened is I was on reserve status and I got called back into the Service as a First Lieutenant and changed from field artillery to the Corps of Engineers on October 15 of 1950. So, we left here, I mean with tears in our eyes. Course this was the first park we had been at. After you moved several times, why, you’re looking forward to the next park. But you see, I was going back to the Service, I wasn’t going to another park.
Yeah, your situation would be slightly different, I guess, than some employees in that you are from Roseburg, I mean so close….
Right, well you see, this was one thing about Crater Lake is that we were only about 113 miles away from home by going down and going across through Trail, and Tiller, going down South Umpqua River into Canyonville and then home. So even with the lousy road that we had you could get home from here in two and a half hours or so three hours I guess, something like that. So it wasn’t too bad of a situation. People down there were ignorant about Crater Lake, “You actually live up there all year round? How do you get in and out?”
Jean: There are people down there who still haven’t seen this place.
That’s right. Anyway, I was fortunate that I only had to spend about three or four months in Korea when I finally got there. I got back by a War Department Directive. I had been I in the reserve at the time, but not in an organized reserve unit when the War broke out, so I got back in 17 months. We got out. When I came back to San Francisco, why Jean and the two boys that we had then were waiting for me. So I went to the Regional Office and saw Merriam at the time, and I don’t know who else, the Administrative Officer down there and one of them said, “Well, you can go back to Crater Lake if you want to but we have a District Ranger job for you up at Olympic, and do you want it? Now, there is a little problem up there with the water, once in a while it gets dirty.”
Jean: No, they said you had to haul your drinking water. They didn’t say it got dirty.
