Transcript of interview with Clark Crocker by Monica Lehman, March 3, 1978

UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker i An Interview with Clark Crocker An Oral History Conducted by Monica Lehman Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker iv Abstract On March 3, 1978, Monica Lehman interviewed Clark Crocker (born 1920 in Westfield, Massachusetts) about his experiences while living in Nevada. Crocker first talks about his family and educational background before describing his experiences from going to school in both California and Massachusetts. Crocker then describes what he knows about the building of Hoover Dam and later talks about his career as a teacher and school principal. The two also discuss Crocker’s hobbies and volunteer work, including that for the fire department in Pahrump, and they later discuss Crocker’s experiences as both a frogman and navigator for the United States Navy during World War II. The interview concludes with some of Crocker’s thoughts and philosophies on how curriculum should be structured in schools. UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 1 Narrator is Clark Crocker. The date is March 3rd, 1978. The place 2571 Vegas Valley Drive. The time, eight p.m. Interviewer is Monica Lehman, 2571 Vegas Valley Drive, Las Vegas. The project is Local History Project, Oral Interview. The project: Life of a Las Vegas Old Timer. Clark, where were you born and what’s your present address? Oh, I was born in Westfield, Massachusetts in 1920. And how long have you lived in Las Vegas? Well, I should say I first came to Las Vegas in 1932. And I liked it here, and then later I moved here; in 1957, I moved with my wife, and I have been here ever since in (unintelligible). So you’ve been here since 1957—? Seven, right. Okay, can you give me a little bit about your ethnic ancestry? Okay, my father was born in Newfoundland, and my grandparents were born there also, on my father’s side. My mother’s background goes back to the pilgrims. The first governor of Massachusetts was Carver, who was on my grandmother’s side, and then my mother was born in Massachusetts. I was born in Massachusetts, my grandparents on my mother’s side were born in Massachusetts. How long did you stay in Massachusetts? Until I was nine years old. And then you moved out west? Right, I moved to California. What type of education did you have when you were growing up? Well, the ordinary things. I went through the fifth or sixth grade in Massachusetts, and then I came to California, I stayed in the same grade because their education was a little ahead of ours UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 2 in Massachusetts. I went from grammar school to junior to high school to junior college to college and so on, (unintelligible). Do you remember anything significant about your growing up experiences in school, such as an old time school or something different about the places you went to school? Well, not in the Las Vegas experience, but in Massachusetts, I remember my first elementary school. It was a brick schoolhouse, and it had two rooms on the first floor, two rooms on the second floor, and there was a stairway up the middle, and you graduated from one together on the first floor, and then you went up the stairway to the third grade then the fourth grade, and it was only a four-grade school. And it had statues or Lincoln and Washington and so on and (unintelligible) around, it was pretty neat. Principal’s office was at the head of the stairs here—sent to the principal’s office, you had to walk up the stairs and you had a chance to think about it all the way up the stairs. What happened to you when you went to fifth and sixth grade? Did you go to a different school altogether? Well, yes, that was rather interesting, I think. It was a rather traumatic experience for me because we had moved out of the neighborhood, and we had to go to another school; it was called the Green Street School in Westfield, Massachusetts, and that was in the fifth grade. And it seemed like in my first four years of—well, five years including kindergarten—but my first four years in the grade school, they were small classes, and it was kinda neat. But I went to this fifth grade class, and I entered in the middle of the school year. And I was about number fifty-six in the class, and I say in the far back corner from the teacher. And the class was so big that I didn’t feel I belonged to it, you know. And I always tried when I was in the first four grades—in fact, I skipped a grade. I skipped the third grade because I was (unintelligible). (Laughs) UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 3 (Laughs) I really did. They gave us an IQ test or something, and anyway, I graduated from the second grade through the fourth grade without knowing how to multiply, which was neat because in the fourth grade, we were doing long division. Now, you can imagine— (Laughs) (Laughs) Anyway, so when I got in the fifth grade, I was sorta lost, and I had moved into a new neighborhood and everything, and my folks were getting ready to move out to the west coast, and I knew it was sort of a temporary situation, so I wasn’t applying myself too rapidly. And I was sort of in a daze. I don’t remember too much about it except the building burned down, and that was the end of my fifth grade education until I got to California. You burned the school (unintelligible) down? I didn’t burn the building down, no ma’am. (Laughs) (Laughs) We went out on a fire drill, and it was the same style building as we had in the other building. The lower grades were on the first floor and the upper grades were on the second floor, and being in fifth grade, I was on the right hand corner as you came up the stairs. And we went down the stairs, and I noticed this was not any ordinary fire drill. There was smoke coming up between the stairs, and I thought, well, maybe it’s the dust, you know, from the—the janitor hasn’t been doing his job—and we went out on the grounds. And, at that time, the kids filed out and stayed in line, and they lined up and faced the building. And the big thing I remember about the school thing is, I didn’t like that school anyway, right? So the big thing I remember about that school fire was, the janitor came out of the door just flying, closed the doors, ran down the steps, and UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 4 the building collapsed. It all went (unintelligible), and that was the end. (Laughs) My fifth grade education in Massachusetts—I picked it up in California. How long was it between the fire and your schooling in California? Well, let’s see. It wasn’t much. I was probably there about a month because, I remember, we left Massachusetts in October; school would start in September and we left in October, which was my brother’s birthday, October 5th. And we left, and my brother always hated to ride in the backseat, and we rode out in a Model A Ford, and he said, “What a day, my birthday and the beginning of my headaches,” because, in the Model A Ford, the exhaust system wasn’t too good, and we got headaches (unintelligible) in the backseat, I remember that. But then, I suppose, you know, a few weeks later, we arrived in California, and then I took up the fifth grade there. But I was behind because, you know, Massachusetts wasn’t up to California education at that time. So when you moved from Massachusetts, you found the California schools a little harder to study, or was it? Well, they were different. There wasn’t—apparently, the new education system hadn’t arrive in Massachusetts, although it had in California. But they were more, let’s say, they were more progressive. They had separate classes for music, and we’d go to another teacher’s room and so on, and I wasn’t used to changing around classes. In Massachusetts, everybody taught the same—the teacher taught everything to us. Did you like living in California? Well, being uprooted from my Massachusetts home, I resented moving to California, and I remember there was a state song starting, “I love you, California,” and we would sing the song in the class, and when we sang it as a class group, I’d say, “I love you, Massachusetts,” and I’d say that because I was homesick. UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 5 So did you finish the rest of your schooling through high school in California? Yes, through high school, right, and junior college. I finished two years of junior college in California. Where did you go for the rest of your college? Well, let’s see, you mean after junior college? Mm-hmm. Okay, La Verne College in California, I went four years. And then I went to (unintelligible) University, and then I studied in Claremont Graduate School, and I went to Los Angeles State Teachers College. And the University of Southern California—(Laughs)—graduate work (unintelligible). What type of degree do you hold? Well, I have an engineering degree in aeronautics, and then I have a bachelor’s degree in English and education. And I have three master’s degrees: I have one in counseling and guidance and one in industrial education and one in school administration. While you were growing up, do you remember any places, a residence in particular, other than Massachusetts or a travel that you and your parents went to when you were a youngster or when you got married? Oh, well, I got married in Yuma, Arizona. And of course, I remember travelling through many of the states in the United States—I’ve been in thirty-two of the forty-eight—or fifty, now—but it was thirty-two of the forty-eight then. And then, of course, in the war I was in the South Pacific (unintelligible) down here, and I’ve been travelling down. But if you’re referring to Nevada—are you referring to Nevada? No, anything you want. UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 6 Well, in 1932, we came to Nevada on the trip to Las Vegas, and at that time, it was quite different than it is right now. I remember the adults playing slot machines, and of course there were many penny slot machines on Fremont Street. The Strip didn’t exist then; Fremont Street was the only thing. But I remember Fremont Street as being a rather narrow, two-lane highway, probably paved, I mean, it seemed to be paved at that time, but there were these Matt Dillon sheds over that street that had roofs down over the sidewall in front of the casinos, and the slot machines were in the street, they were out in front of the stores—out in the street. They weren’t inside the building; there were more inside, but there were some outside, sort of a sucker bait system. (Laughs) And actually there were rails along the street where you could tie your horses. And there was a hitching rail along the street that separates you from the street—you parked the car out there, you had to crawl over under the rail to get to the slot machines. Many penny slot machines were different than they are today. They had the so-called one-arm-bandit, which had a gun in his hand, and that was the lever you pulled. And the slot machine was a man wearing a hat, maybe an eyepatch or a man’s face or something, and my mother won pennies, and she was so thrilled. How long were you in Las Vegas when you passed through here? Oh, when we passed through, we were here for several days. We visited Boulder Dam before it was there. And I remember my mother just got onto my dad something fierce because we ran—my brother and I ran—down through one of the diversion tunnels, which is now maybe a hundred feet below the lake level, down there throwing rocks and so on, there about sixty feet down there I suppose, around in the Arizona side and Nevada side. We ran through the Nevada side down through the tunnel just looking around. But at that time, the coffer dams were across the Colorado River to reduce the water flow to the point where they could go through the UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 7 diversion tunnels, leaving the dam area dry. And they were pouring the dam base, and what they had down is stopped back the river, and they built the coffer dams up to the point where the river, if it overflowed or if it would tend to overflow the coffer dam, go through the diversion tunnels and down into the California side. Did you have any idea you were going to come back to Nevada and stay when you came through? No, I liked the desert. At the time I was twelve years old, I had a fascination for cactus, and I collected different kinds of cacti and we found many of them here in Nevada that I took back to California and planted in my cactus bed. But I had no idea, no, that I would be back. There was one interesting thing. Henderson was a tent city at the time, had just barracks for the dam workers, and of course the diversion was found at Searchlight; that was where the ladies of the night worked. And Searchlight used to be a real—I guess that Searchlight was probably red, flashing red lights. Searchlight, Nevada was the place where men went for diversion at night. Boulder City was just a place to live for the men; it was the barracks. Oh, the trucks that worked on the dam had solid rubber tires; they didn’t have pneumatic tires. Solid rubber? Solid rubber, and they had holes in them drilled through the sides of the tires, so to make the (unintelligible)—the wheels were solid cast iron or cast steel—spokes, the rims, and everything were all cast in one piece. What kind of people did you meet? Did you get to meet any of the people that worked on the dam while you were here? Yes, I talked to one guy that was—when the dam was put on, they had to work the canyon. See the dam was originally, the reason it was called Boulder Dam in the beginning was because it UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 8 was to go in Boulder Canyon, and they found that wasn’t adequate. The canyon wasn’t appropriate. And so they moved down the river. And they found the place where they built it, eventually, and they scaled the rock down on the side of the canyon to what they call the living rock, the really—it wasn’t weathered. You had to take all the weathered rock off, and they had these guys come down from the top of the cliff on lines, and they scaled with jackhammers, air hammers—took air hammers down on lifelines hooked to their belts on the side of the cliff and just knocked the rock loose and the rock fell down in the canyon, and they made sure nobody was down below them and so on. And each guy had an area to work, and sometimes you’d get ahead or, you know, down lower than the guy that was working in front of you. And I talked to one man—my father was talking to him, actually—who had saved a guy’s life—this later turned up on This is Your Life or something, Art Linkletter—but anyway, he talked to this man that had saved a guy’s life. And the man that had done this was a circus high wire man, and he was out of a job, his circus job, and he took a job scaling the cliff, which is very, very dangerous work—very dangerous. Anyway, he was down on his cable, and this man above him fell, and the circus worker counted to three and swung off from the cliff and caught him. And my dad talked to the man who caught him and saved his life because his belt had broken, or his rigging had broken, and his life was saved by this man that just happened to be below him that was a circus worker. Did you see this? No, I didn’t see it happen, no. No, my dad was just talking to him. He was down, they’d happened to be down (unintelligible) at the time. He later turned out on Art Linkletter’s program, This is Your Life, and they had the guy there that had caught the fella and the other guy that dropped. And he caught him—he just counted to three and kicked off the cliff. What stages (unintelligible) when you (unintelligible)? UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 9 What? What stages? Oh, the dam wasn’t there. They were pouring the foundations of it, but you realize, they have to build a coffer dam across the river, just close off the river. And then the diversion tunnels are now being used for pipes. They got to the turbines and generators. They house the pipes. If you’ve ever toured the dam—have you ever been through the dam? Yes (unintelligible). Okay, well if you’ve been in the tunnel—did you ever go into the tunnel on the Nevada side or the Arizona side? They took you through where all those pumps or the generators are. No, where the big pipes are. The big pipes? The generator room—well, anyway, they run the water through these diversion tunnels now in a large pipe, it’s about thirty feet in diameter—it’s big enough to run a railroad— Oh, yes. They have a room setting over on top of it? Right. And they tell you it’s— The rivets are two inches in diameter or whatever, you know, in the pipe. Right. Okay, well those are the ones my brother and I walked through before the pipes were there, because the river wasn’t up to that level yet. So the dam was below the coffer dam; the coffer dam was to hold the river back, okay? Mm-hmm. UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 10 And they were working their big equipment. Now, these big cables—I don’t know if they’re still there on the dam—there [are] big towers that kinda lean out over the canyon, and they have the cables across. Mm-hmm. Well, they were using those to unload railroad cars that came down on either side—Arizona side and Nevada side—but we were interested in the Nevada side. But anyway, they’d take materials down, you know, concrete or whatever, down off the railroad cars down and right into where they were building the dam. And of course, when the dam was being poured, they were—I found out later, when I toured the dam as a schoolteacher—that they had ice water flowing all through that to cure the concrete, and it was still being cured, still is, to this today. Is that why there’s that cold air blowing through all the time? Well, actually, I think maybe the air has something to do with it; however, the dam was built as a project, and I claimed that that dam was well-built, and that if they built another dam, it wouldn’t be that well-built. It’s quality workmanship, it was (unintelligible). They engineered it. So, did you ever get a chance to go back through when the dam was completely finished? Oh yeah, yes. I’ve taken my schoolchildren through there later. When you moved to Las Vegas, what was your first occupation? What did you start out as and then finally (unintelligible)? Oh (Laughs). Well, when I first moved, I was a school principal when I left California, and I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore; in fact, I decided I didn’t want to teach school anymore. And so when I moved to Las Vegas, I hired on as a carpenter, which is what I was before I went to teaching school. And I worked as a carpenter for quite a while, but—well, it’s the first time—my wife brought my lunch down to me every day. We were working the UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 11 summer—actually, it was during the summertime because it was before school started—and my wife had started school because we both, basically, were schoolteachers. And I was shingling a roof one day, and she came down—and it was the only day I’ve seen it in Las Vegas where it was raining mud balls. We had a thunderstorm, and the raindrops were coming down and the dust was catching in the raindrops, and it was just actually raining small mud balls all over the road. I was so disgusted when she brought lunch down that I went down—I was eating lunch with her, and she said they had a job opening for a teacher (unintelligible) school. And being working on the roof and shingling as I was, I was pretty disgusted at noon. I went and told my boss that I was going to teach school that afternoon, so I went home, showered—(Laughs)—because I was out of the mud ball rain. How long did you work as a carpenter before you went back into teaching? Oh, well I had worked as a carpenter before I taught school. I worked as a carpenter for many years, from, oh, 1937 I was working as a carpenter, and then I worked in the aircraft industry for a good many years until the war, World War II that was, December 1941. I joined the Navy, came out in 1945, and I worked as a carpenter again because I didn’t want to go back into the aircraft industry because I was working in the side and I got used to living in the fresh air in the Navy. And so I worked as a carpenter until about, oh, 1945, somewhere around maybe (unintelligible)—somewhere around 1950, I’m sorry, I just don’t remember exactly. But then I worked as a carpenter, and my brother and I went in and we built houses until about—it’s hard to recall. Did you finish teaching—was that your last career when you came to Las Vegas? Yes. Well, then I retired, I retired teaching. How long did you work for the Clark County School District? UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 12 Well, I taught for twenty-seven years, I’d say it’d be ten years in California, I taught, and then seventeen in Las Vegas. Do you remember anything important or something that was outstanding about our school district here or the school district in California? Well, except that anybody would know that rapid expansion. When I came to work for Clark County schools, it was Las Vegas High—that was it, period. There was only one high school, and I think we had one or two junior high schools, about seven elementary schools. And then we had a few out in Goodsprings, I think, we had one (unintelligible). But it was such a small school district then at the time—and no smog any night. Any night, you could watch the sunset on Sunrise Mountain. When did you notice the smog? Well, let’s see, it just gradually creeped up on us. I don’t know—I would say, I can’t give you a year for that. I know that Forest Duke, you know, used to be the visiting fireman, and the Las Vegas Review Journal used to refer to L.A. as smog-ville, and just at one time there in history, he stopped referring to L.A. as smog-ville because we had our problem here in the valley. What year did you stop teaching and do something else for a living? Well, I retired—I can’t think of the year right now. Well, how long have you been retired? (Laughs) We’re getting into difficulties—about four years, I suppose. (Laughs) And you guys have been living in Pahrump for ten years, so you and your wife— I would say, yes, we commuted to Las Vegas for several, a good many years, I would say (unintelligible). That was 150 miles a day. So now that you’re a retired schoolteacher, what do you do for a job? UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 13 Well, I’m a volunteer for everything. I’m a reserve deputy sheriff, and I am now not a member of an ambulance group, but I used to be a certified ambulance driver and EMT. And a firefighter. Firefighter? Firefighter. And I enjoy that. I mean, if you enjoy other people’s fires, I enjoy being able to, where our thing is to save lives and protect property. That’s our main thing; if you can’t save it, at least you saved lives or tried to. Have you had any interesting experience in fighting fires in Pahrump? Well—(Laughs)—boy, that’s a goodie. (Laughs) Because it seems I always get squirted in the rear by somebody coming up behind me. I’m a nozzle man, and I’m in the fire first. And I remember one very vivid experience we had when—I remember a couple, but I’ll tell you the first one—we ran a house, a small residence, and this new firefighter was in behind me, and he was handling the hose, and I had the nozzle, and we heard these explosions. And he said, “What’s that noise?” And I said, “That’s canned food exploding— [Recording cuts out, tape ends] I said, “That’s canned food exploding in the cupboard in the kitchen,” and I said, “When it heats up, it just blows up all over the place,” and he said, “Is there any danger there?” And I said no, and we were watering down this, it was just sort of a small file cabinet—it was on fire, file cabinet. (Laughs) But anyway, it turned out, at the end of the fire when we got everything out of the house, it was burnt down (unintelligible) we have never lost a foundation yet. Our fire department has a terrific (unintelligible). We never lose the house foundation; we may lose the house, but the foundation’s still stand—(Laughs)—anyway, it turned out that this locker was full UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 14 of ammunition, and what the explosions were was ammunition blowing up inside this steel locker. The thing is, we found out later on that ammunition, when it burns in a fire, is not particularly dangerous to anyone because it has no trajectory. It just blows up and it doesn’t go very far—shotgun shells or anything else won’t really hurt you, but it was a hairy experience. And of course, then, one night I went through a roof down to the main floor, but they needed firefighters down there, too, so I had my house right down through the roof right with me. And yes, there had been a few hairy moments in fighting fires. It’s supposed to be the most dangerous occupation in the United States, but of course deputy sheriff’s supposed to be the second most dangerous, so I’m living on top. (Laughs) (Laughs) Where does Pahrump get their main water supply to fight all these fires? Well, we don’t have any city fire system or hydrant system. Everybody has their own well, so we carry our water in our own trucks. You have enough to put down—? Yes, we have five fire engines; four of ‘em are tankers and we run ‘em in. We have a ladder truck; we don’t have anything too high in Pahrump. Anything over two stories, forget it, you know, we don’t have anything more than two stories high. We have a high school gym that’s about three, but you can get up to the top of it. Other than being a volunteer firefighter and a volunteer paramedic, what other special interests or hobbies or skills do you have? Well, I like art. I do drawing and painting, things like that. And I have a great love for music. I like to cook (Laughs)—just love it. And I have a, of course I love animals, we have twenty-three dogs and four horses and (unintelligible), two cats. (Laughs) And I just enjoy reading; I love to read when I get a chance. I’m busy, but I like to read. Oh, I don’t know, I collect things—belt UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 15 buckles—and gee, I suppose there are other things. I have a collection of antique carpenter tools; I have about almost a hundred (unintelligible). How long have you been a paramedic? Oh, about five years. What did you have to do to become a paramedic? Well, actually, now you’re giving more than—I am, really, an EMT, which is under a paramedic. The difference between EMTs and paramedics is about, oh, I don’t know how many hours in college—I think it’s eighty-three hours, eight-five hours, something like that. I went to the community college down in North Las Vegas to become an EMT. Oh, so you got that through North Las Vegas? Right, right. We were sent there, and I paid for mine—now they get it free if you belong to the fire department or whatever. But I paid for mine. They say you can apply for a refund, but I never got anything back. (Laughs) (Laughs) It was worth it, though; it was well worth it because they taught us life support. And I’ve had many good experiences in the ambulances where we really helped people out; I had a few sounds where I’ve lost a person or we really worked on them, but I think sometimes it’s out of your hands. Am I to understand that both you and your wife are AMTs? EMTs. EMTs. EMTs. No, Ida isn’t; she held down the fort while I took the education. We’re education-prone, I think. I used to be a professional student; I think I probably still am. UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 16 (Laughs) Professional student? Mm-hmm. How long have you—well, you’ve lived in Pahrump for ten years, so— Yes, about ten. It’s within ten, seven to ten, something like that. Have you belonged to one church in your whole life, one certain denomination, or have you changed? Oh, yes, I’ve changed. I’ve gone from congregational church, which is what my parents went to when we were in Massachusetts, to a Methodist Church in California, a Methodist Church in Las Vegas, to a Baptist Church, and I guess I’m a Baptist now, Southern Baptist, I believe. I don’t know what the difference is, but (unintelligible) the Baptist Church. Do you attend church on a regular basis? Yes, every Sunday when I can. Lord willing. When you can. (Laughs) (Laughs) I was ill for a while, I couldn’t, but yes (unintelligible) when we can. What type of membership do you have in any other organization besides being a fire chief or assistant? I belonged to the Lion’s Club out there in Las Vegas, the Search & Rescue organization, which is part of the sheriff’s department, and the American Association of Retired Persons—(Laughs) (Laughs) I don’t know what being retired means because I’m certainly not retired. If I ever get retired, I’m gonna die, I know that for sure. (Unintelligible) Yes, I’ll be too sick to work. UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 17 Well, you have a nice little place of your own to take care of (unintelligible). Oh, we have five acres out there, and it gets ahead of us. I can imagine that. What do you do? Like, what’s one of your main interests in your whole life? What’s a key point factor, you know, is, like, seeing the dam built? You know, did it hit you as something that was going to be monumental for the rest of your life? Well, my dad was a great guy; he’s passed on now, but he was really a man to educate us kids. I didn’t really appreciate it, you know, when I was growing up, but I realized that he was taking us everywhere and seeing everything that we can see. And he would explain things that were going on to us. He’d take us out in the woods and show us the moss growing on the north or the south side of the tree—I forget which—but anyway, how to find your way out of the woods, you know, get on a stream and follow the stream, because you could get out of the woods and so on. And of course, from then, it led to scouting, any my parents always backed us on everything we did. I felt a real tie to my parents, and my mother, of course, is still living and I feel a real tie to her, but she’s already cooperated with us in any project we had going, and I went through Boy Scouts, and I was a Scout Leader for a long time when my boys were growing up, we have sons. And I don’t know, I’ve always felt a real—I’ve been to the top of Mt. Whitney four times with the Scouts. Once I made it twice in twenty-four hours, which is good. And I did another thing when I was younger—I can’t do it anymore because I’m too old for that, I mean, my body wouldn’t stand it, but I went from the south rim to the north rim to the south rim in twenty-four hours—the Grand Canyon, which is quite a thing. And they had a special patch that you sewed on your Scout rim, Scout uniform that’s rim to rim to rim. How exciting. UNLV University Libraries Clark Crocker 18 Well, I took some scouts with me, and we went on the mule trail, but we didn’t have mules. We packed our own gear. I have a special love for nature. I really like to be out in the open. And I enjoy flying; I really enjoy flying. How long have you been flying for? Oh, I started flying in 1937, and I flew for several years, and then when I joined the Navy, I wanted to go in as a flyer, and they said, “Do you fly?