Russell K. Grater interview, March 15, 1995: transcript

An Oral History Interview with Russell 6rater 1995 '-(1353/ 33 Yf P h o t o g r a p h s following page 1. Grater family, ca. 1932 3 2. Russell Grater at Sequoia National Forest, ca. 1968 3 3. Russell Grater, 1933 7 4. Russell Grater at Grand Canyon, ca. 1934-35 9 5. Russell Grater at Zion National Park, ca. 1942-43 9 6. Lost City, Nevada facing inundation by Lake Mead 16 7. Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours, Inc. tour boat, the Paiute 20 8. Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours, Inc. tour map 20 9. Colorado River near Black Canyon, 1929 24 10. Lake Mead rising, 1935 24 11. Lake Mead inundating St. Thomas, Nevada, 1938-39 25 12. Eldorado Valley and Dry Lake, 1991 44 13. Eldorado Valley Fairy Shrimp 44 14. Russell and Evelyn Grater, 1995 50 15. Books authored by Russell Grater 58 * * * * ii A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s I'd like to thank Russell and Evelyn Grater for their patience through the long interview sessions, and for their hospitality in allowing me to visit their home and borrow photographs to include in this oral history. The staffs of the Boulder City Library, the Special Collections Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas library, and the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society at Lorenzi Park in Las Vegas were helpful in compiling the annotations. I would particularly like to thank Leslie Peterson of the National Park Service in Boulder City for use of her transcribing equipment and of the Service's library and archives. The excellent photo reproductions were made by Ihla Crowley at Desert Data in Boulder City, Nevada. * * * * iii Boulder City Library Oral History Project Interview with Russell Grater conducted by Dennis McBride March 15 and 28,1995 This is Dennis McBride talking with Mr. Russell Grater at his home at 1102 Arapaho Way in Boulder City, Nevada. Today is Thursday, March 15, 1995. I'm going to be talking with Mr. Grater about his educational background and his association with the National Park Service before he came to Boulder City, and then after he came to Boulder City and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. First, Mr. Grater, could you tell me when you were born, and where, and a little bit about your family? Birth date is November 16, 1907. Born in Indiana on an Indiana farm. Grew up there. Did you have brothers and sisters? a hree brothers and one sister. They're all gone except my sister now. My oldest brother was quite a basketball player. Coached basketball in high schools for years. My next brother was quite a basketball player, and they tried to teach me how to play basketball when I was kid, so I learned enough that I played high school, and some in college. But they're all dead. One brother was killed while I was in Yosemite.l He was working as a flying instructor for the air force down in Texas. He had the misfortune of having a young pilot up taking a lesson on his own, flying his own [plane]. He dove his plane and flew right into the tail assembly of my brother s plane. My brother escaped by parachute, but it opened too late. So, [I] lost him. My oldest brother just died of heart complications? My youngest brother died of bone cancer they call it now.5 My sister is now 92.4 She lives in Indiana. 1 talked to her and told her she better keep going, I'm hot on her trail, I'll catch her up if she doesn't hurry up. I'll be 88 next birthday. Your dad was a farmer? Yes. We had about a hundred-acre farm not far from the town of Lebanon, Indiana.5 Close enough that 1 went to school in Lebanon, high school. Used to be a problem getting there because you could either walk in—they didn't have buses or anything like that. You could either walk in or you could ride an inter-urban [train] which you could get on about two miles away [from our farm]. That'd take you into town. How far was it into town from your farm? Five miles. So you walked five miles? Sometimes. Yeah. But I'd ride that inter-urban if I could. But in case I needed to, I'd just walk straight in. There was a railroad track that ran right through our farm led you right straight into town. Sometimes it was just as easy to walk that five miles to the high school where I went to school, or walk two-and-a-half miles over to get the inter-urban the rest of the way into town. I got my exercise, all right. Later on you became involved in the Park Service as a naturalist. Did you have tins interest that early in your life, as a child or in high school? Well, 1 can tell you one or two things that might be of interest. My mother made a naturalist out of me unwittingly. She loved birds and she loved to be out of doors. She liked birds to the point where she'd actually get out on our back porch and whistle and a cardinal would come there and land on the railing and whistle. That intrigued me no end, and I got interested in that when I was just a kid. She'd promote that interest by going to the library in Lebanon, and anything she could find on ... natural history and the out of doors, she'd bring out there. I learned to read those things before I went to school. I could read very fluently long before I went to school. So I grew up knowing pretty much all about the wildlife in our area. We had a big woods area, virgin timber, never been cut. Lots of birds, lot of mammals, things like that, so I learned a lot from there. Then that interest just stuck with me all through school, and when I got to college, I took a lot of biology. I graduated with my degree in psychology, but I had more units in biology than I did in psychology. Why did you do a major in psychology rather than biology, then? Because I expected to be a teacher, and a teacher ought to know something about people. What kind of teacher did you want to be? I was going to teach in high school. I was going to teach all the subjects I would take a lot of in college. I had all this biology, and I had quite a lot of math, English. The upshot was that that's what I was going to do and it worked out very beautifully. I had a good teacher in psychology, an old-timer, much loved as a teacher. This was at Wabash College, incidentally, in Crawfordsville,6 Indiana, boy's college. Well, in any event, I would have stayed in teaching—I was a graduating senior in 1930, and I had a job all laid out to teach and coach basketball. I used to play a lot of basketball—you couldn't grow up in Indiana without it. So this psychology professor called me in and he wanted to pick seven psychology students, send them down to a newly-formed state park, the Top Photograph Standing, l-r: Glen Tar man |husband to Jura Grater|; Ku Grater; Lizzie Grater (mother); Harley Grater; Byron Grater; and John Grater kneeling, l-r: Lura Grater T'arman; |im I arman; and I'at larman, ca. 1932 [photo courtesy of Rattoll Grotor] Bottom Photograph Russell Grater at Sequoia National Forest, Ca. 1968 [photo courtesy of Russell Greter] first one in Indiana, to see what a graduating senior would do with his time if he went to a place like that.7 So, I went down there. They hadn't begun to develop much about it, [there was just a place to stay overnight, that sort of thing. No lodge or anything like that, really, yet. I did my work that I needed to turn in, any thesis-type of thing, an I d then spend a little time just seeing the region. Beautiful country, beautiful region, marvelous forest, stream running through there, big stream. I liked that very much, it just fit right in with all my interests. And the last day I was there, I thought I d take a trip on a new trail that led around quite a bit through that area. I went through that area, and on that trail there was a small waterfall, not much higher than this ceiling right here. It was in a beautiful setting. I sat down on a rock to look out. I was just looking at this thing and suddenly the thought just came to me—and don't ask me where it came from, it was just like a voice said to me, "Russ, what do you want to teach?" Of course, I had a teaching job offered and a coaching job offered, and I thought, "That's a good question. What do I want to teach? What's wrong with this that I'm looking at?" So I went back and got in touch with the newly-selected director of the state parks of Indiana, the state parks system, and asked him, "How about when I get out, how about a job out there?" It was a beautiful park, wasn't developed yet or anything. And he said, Mr. Grater, I'll you what I'll do. I'll give you a job out there if you'll do one thing." I wondered what that thing was. He said, "We're starting to develop this park and other parks in this state, patterned after the National Park Service, and the way they handle their parks and how they work them and so forth. If you'll go to one of those national park areas, and get a job for the summer just to get some idea of how they run these things, find out what the national park is about, come back and I'll give you that job." Well, that's all I needed to know. The next thing I needed to know [was] how to get a job in the National Park Service. A graduating senior, I knew of only three national parks: Yellowstone,8 Yosemite,^ Grand Canyon. 10 So I wrote to the director of national parks in Washington and asked for the address of superintendents of the national parks. When I got [my answer] I found out there were 24 areas that the national Park Service administered, so I wrote to all these superintendents, told them what I wanted to do with the information, I wanted the experience, I was interested in parks, and so forth. This was in 1930, the Depression days had hit dead-on. They all wrote beautiful letters back that they were interested, but couldn't help. No money. But I got a letter from the superintendent at Yosemite. He said, "We don't have anything we can offer you, but we do have a training center here, newly-established, called the Yosemite School of Field Natural History. If you're interested, you make application to that, and if you're selected, you'll spend the summer in Yosemite taking training in how to be a naturalist." So I made application and lo and behold, I got it. They took 21 students from all over the country to come in there and take that training. My problem, of course, was to get out there. Heading out was not as simple as it sounded. My dad had an old Model T Ford that had seen better days. My uncle had one, the same model, that had also seen better days. So I put those two together and had a good-running Model T. Took off with a lot of canned goods with my mother's help, got to Yosemite. In those days, you know, you worked for a dollar a day and your board on a farm. I managed in off-time to make up a little, pay for gasoline, stop along the way as you go and see if you can't get a day's job somewhere. I got to Yosemite, floored by what I saw. I'd never visualized what Yosemite looked like. Those water falls and that canyon were something. So I stayed there all summer, getting my training there under people who knew what they were doing. But then I had to go back at the end of that summer, back to Indiana and pick up a job working on a farm. 1 figured that this [the national park] was more what I was interested in than the state park, so I didn't apply at the state park. I'm sure I could've have gotten in [if I had]. Then I figured the best thing to do to get a job in the National Park Service, which is essential, was to visit the superintendents, not to write them. A personal application's worth a heck of a lot more than a written [one]. I was in Yosemite in the Field School in 1931.1 bought a little old car and took off to make a loop of the [national] parks: Grand Canyon, Sequoia,!1 up to Yosemite where I knew everybody. It was an early spring—I wanted to get in there as early as possible, might run into something. Yosemite was getting in the snowy season yet in the spring, early spring. I went up to Mt. Lassen.!2 Funny thing happened there. I went in to see the superintendent and he must have [had] a bad night or something. He listened to me for a little while, very short little while, as a matter of fact, then he informed me that he was busy. It made me mad. You know, when you're mad you say things you have no business saying. I told him, just like some kid making a boast, which I was, obviously. I told him I would be in the Park Service after he was out! I'd have gone straight back to Indiana at that time to get there in time for the spring jobs, but something told me I had to go on anyhow. Two reasons. I d met this lady 13 when I was a junior in college. She was working in a dime store and she'd promised me that on this trip around she d try to send a few dollars ... ahead of me to help pay for the trip. So I thought, OK. I went on up to Crater Lake. '4 Twenty feet of snow. I had to camp out because it was too early in the spring. Superintendent was gone, I couldn't see him. Park naturalist was gone back to Missouri somewhere. So I was a little bit discouraged in a way. I went on to Mt. Rainier,13 went in to see the superintendent. He was an ex-major in the army, so I expected anything then. But on the contrary, he was a very congenial sort of man and encouraged me and he said, 'Trouble is, Mr. Grater, I don't have anything for you and I can sympathize with your efforts. But you know what? I can go down to the University of Washington down here and get some of these football players to fill out my uniform." Of course, I'm not very big. Again, [I] made a boast I had no business making. I asked him, "Have you ever hired anybody for what he might have under his hat?" He thought that was funny as heck. Well, it wasn't too funny to me. I would have left, but I went down to the inn to see if there was any mail from [Evelyn] and there was. And just about shortly after I got in there I asked them if there was a possibility of a job for two or three days to get some money to head back East. About that time the dining room door flew open and a man came out of there yelling bloody murder and waving a butcher knife. Everybody scattered. The clerk I was talking to said, "I know what the trouble with him is. He's the cook." [The cook] was yelling in Italian, which I couldn't understand. And [the clerk] said [the cook] said something about a bear. I knew something about bears. They'd taught us in the field school there in Yosemite about bears. So I took out after him and he went just exactly where I thought he'd go. He went to a cooling room where he had pies and cakes and things like that. There was a bear there having a ball. I chased this bear out and he took off. This cook then, oh, was he pleased as punch at that! Very grateful, and what could he do for me? At that time I only had some loose change in my pocket and I pulled it out and asked, "What can you feed me for thirty-eight cents?" He fixed me up with pork and beans enough that'd last an army, I think. So I decided to stay over, might as well see the park naturalist. That was the type of thing I was interested in. Went to see him, man by the name of Frank Brockman. Brock had been at Yosemite He told me he was tickled to death to see me there, but he said, "I can't give you a job this year, but 1 can give you a job next year for sure. You're the first one that's ever applied from the field school down there. Look around, get acquainted with this place because you'll need to know." Well, this was wonderful, cause, you see, I'd achieved a job—had to wait a year to get it but I'd achieved what I'd started out to achieve. So I thought well, 1 m just lucky, 1 might just as well go over to Glacier National Park16 on my way East, it s right across the country there, see what they have, what they could tell me. They were just as good, that they didn't have anything then, but they'd keep me in mind. So I thought, well, I might as well push it, so I went down to Yellowstone. And Yellowstone were just as nice. They said, "When you get back to Indiana, be prepared to return because we always lose a uniformed man or two before the season hardly gets started. If you want a job here, you can have it. Just come back." I thought, Gee whiz! So I went down to Rocky Mountain National Park17 to see the park naturalist there. And he couldn't understand why I would want a job in those colder parks. He'd put me on earlier than any of the rest of them could, and that would mean quite a bit, a month or so. So I got ready to go back to Indiana, started to get in my car, and he came out of the office yelling, waving a sheet of paper. I didn't know what in the heck I'd forgotten. What it was was a telegram from Glacier National Park saying they had a job if I wanted to come back and get it. So I went back to Glacier National Park, spent the summer at Two Medicine as a naturalist on my own—they didn't have enough naturalists to go around anyhow. So I was in charge of the naturalist program, interpretive program [it's] now called at Two Medicine. In charge of my own talks, hikes, things like that. So I had that experience. I went back to Indiana, got my job for the winter. [Evelyn] and I decided that the following year, 1933, she'd like to go with me up to Glacier. I'd promised them I'd return to Glacier. So in the spring of the year we got married. I wanted her to see where I got my training, so we went over first to Grand Canyon, then up to Yosemite. And there things happened which we hadn't anticipated. The park naturalist who I'd worked under in this training program called me one morning and said, "Russ, I'm sorry to say this but something happened in Washington you didn't know RusseM Grater 1933 [note the United States National Park Service pin on his laprfj [photo courtesy of Russell Greter] about. The Economy Act has gone into effect." The Economy Act,18 of course, was to cut down here, here, and there. He said, "We just got a telegram from Glacier saying your job doesn't exist because they had to cut it out." So it was kind of interesting: newly-married, not a dime, and no job, and a long way from home. So we got along as best we could for two or three days, and then this man, Burt Harwell, the park naturalist, called me in and said, "Russ, there's a lady come in here from Hollywood. She wants a private guide and we can't furnish a private guide. Can't do that. So I told her we have a fellow here who knows this country around here. So if you want to take that at five dollars a day—that was wages then, and then some—why, she'll be here tomorrow." I got a job showing em around. Then another thing that happened. Harwell called me [to say] I had a letter from Stanford. They wanted someone to collect frog eggs, Yellow-Legged Frog eggs, f°r their laboratory work. Five dollars a day. So I hiked out above Yosemite Falls, up in that country, where I knew there was some low-lying areas, to get frog eggs. Take off your shoes and wade into that icy water and look for frog eggs, 'cause that's when they laid them, in the early spring. So we got that sent out. Then about the time that we thought we'd had it, Harvard University wrote in and they wanted somebody to collect vermileo. You know what a vermileo is? It means worm lion. Verm is worm. Leo is lion. Lion worm, if you want to call him that. They make these cone-shaped holes in the ground. So I collected those and sent those in and I got paid for that. Then one morning we came back and the chief ranger was there at our tent. He'd been quite interested in what we were trying to do and he said, "Russ, I know that everything isn't turning out as well as you thought it would, but we have a man that will not be on the job tomorrow. He's quitting. If you'd like to be a ranger for the summer and help run the upper end of the control roads out of Yosemite Valley to Tuolumne Meadows and on up above, be up there at that station tomorrow morning." We packed that night and went up. So for the rest of the summer we were in that control station. Traffic moved up the grade on the even hour, down the grade on the odd hour. You had to control them. At the top of that grade [Evelyn] went to work helping out on a nature exhibit. These people had to stay there for awhile, we thought we might as well just cash in on some of the training I got. So that was the summer. We went back to Indiana and I got a letter from the superintendent at Grand Canyon. He said, "I remember two years ago you were in here looking for a job. Now I have one." He told us when he could put us on, and that [it] would be early. I had to go out in the very early spring—[better] climactic conditions farther south than going clear up to Yosemite or up to Glacier. It was then to Grand Canyon. The park naturalist I got to know [there] so very well, his name was McKee. Edwin McKee, a geologist, crackerjack at that. Had his doctorate. He was the authority on the Grand Canyon geology. My job there, then, was to take people coming out to Yavapai,19 which is the geologic observation point out there, give them talks on the origin of the canyon, the geologic background, and so forth, of the Grand Canyon. That was great. Then about the time I thought that was going to disappear, the park naturalist was sent to Washington for several weeks. We lived in his place and ran the interpretive program there for awhile, naturalist s program. To make a long story short, he'd have to be back sometime in late winter, so that let me out of a job. Then I got a telegram from the director's office in Washington saying, "How about changing types of position for the summer? We have an opening as a field biologist in the Wildlife Division of the National Park Service. How'd you like to take that, stationed at Grand Canyon, and work that?" That was a gift. Fortunately, it so happened I was acquainted with the man who was the head of it, George Wright.20 So we stayed at Grand Canyon. We'd live on the south rim in the winter, go to the north rim in the summer. I had the job on the north rim of primarily trying to get a pretty good idea as to the carrying capacity of the north rim—we were getting too many deer over there. They were eating up the country, literally. But you see, their natural controls had been killed off in the forest around there. Mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats. And then to add to the problem a bit, there was a lot of grazing through that country, and the food the deer ate, also the cattle liked, too. The deer were running out of food. I'd go into an aspen grove and see young aspens starting to grow up, eaten off right against the ground. And the other leaves of the aspens browsed off as high as the deer could stand on its hind legs and reach. So I had to find out how many deer were on that rim and what we could help do about it. I run census counts, tried to figure out how much food there was. In case you're interested, you take a meter chain with you out in the field, measure out where you want to make an examination, stick the chain down and Top Photograph Russell Crater at Grand C anyon, ca. 1934 - 1935 friift t u r t i t / , ! 6nt,r/ *»**"> n,u,r,pl) Russell Grater at 7 * Zion National Pe Park/ ca. 1942 - 1943 e„ltr! make a metered circle Iniirla . and pu, ,ha, in a bag. Then yo'u take " T*^ d°Wn ,0 ab°U' S° Wsh no weight in there to speak of f 6 P md air~dry " S° there'S , , from moisture. Then you look at these Hants eTetbTlTZT S° yHU Ca" ,e" Wh£" ^ ?°u're dea^tng with, srrrir r^rr:^ res and ,ws spel md , ' abundant, this is practically gone You ran several of those out across counby about eve^ half mile. The upslT. Had f 7S a eS hke that they they had to take off several thousand head of deer. So tn the fall, I would go to the hunting camps-,hey were in the ::z::r;radiacent ,o us-Humers pernuts „ hunt forest area. You could get two^ de er, one of them h-aPd Sto wbei ,ah ,°ej. ., C. dOWn the P°PuJation in a hurty. They couldn't dress them out in the fields they had to bring them into camp. So when they came into camp, my job then was to check their stomach contents, collect the stomach contents just to make sure what they were eating. Air-dry all that, check it against what you're finding out, then apply a chart the University of Iowa had worked up on deer. Characterized the food requirements. You could get a pretty good figure then ow much food you had and how many deer there were. So I would attend all these things in the fall, during hunting season. From Grand Canyon I was transferred to the Denver office of the Wildlife Division. This proved to be a good move and soon I was offered my first full time permanent job as Junior Naturalist at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in March 1938. While here I got a notice from the Director's office that Yale was giving out fellowships. If I was interested, I should apply. This I did and was selected. So we packed up and went to New Haven, Connecticut. The scholarship was for 1939 - 1940. It was there I took some valuable courses in field geology under Dr. Chester Longwell,21 a man who carried on extensive studies in the region around the Hoover Dam site. When I finished at Yale, I thought I would go by Washington, then to my home in Indiana while enroute [back] to Lake Mead. While in Washington, the Director's office told me about a position open in Grand Teton.22 "Why don't you go by Grand Teton, see all about it? If this develops, you'll have the job as park naturalist at Grand Teton." They were just in setting up a staff. They didn't really have a staff. It was practically new at that time. It'd been developed, lands bought out and given to the government, and so forth. Well, at any event, we went through there, and we rode back then prepared to go to Grand Teton. Fortunately, we didn't buy better clothes. Just about two weeks before we were scheduled to go to Teton, I got a wire from the director's office saying, Change your plans. You're going to go in as a naturalist in Zion National Park."23 This would be a permanent job, my first permanent job. So we went there in the fall of 1940. We were there when the war broke out. Then I was asked why not go to [Yosemite] as Assistant Naturalist, they needed help there. Service men were coming in there needing rehab time. So we went to Yosemite. There's where the training that I got in psychology came in. You re dealing with people coming in there—especially submarine people. That canyon worried them to death, might fall in on them. So you take 'em on a trip up to Glacier Point where they can look down in all this and you could tell them the story of that big canyon. Its great resistance, even glaciers couldn't move it. And so on, you see. Then about the time that I thought maybe this was going to [last] awhile I got a notice that Air Service Command wondered if I wouldn't transfer to them in Sacramento, McClellan Field, take over the running of a training center there for supervisors. I didn't know anything about their supervisors, but it sounded good. War effort, in a sense. So we went there. I was sent back to Tennessee to do some close-up work on the course they wanted me to teach. A course that was designed by some forty universities and business houses, about what a supervisor should know and how he should act and so forth. I came back, I had supervisors on the field then to train. We were losing supervisors because they couldn't get along with their staffs and their new employees. New employees didn't know the job, and the supervisors didn't, either. And this was the place where all the stuff dealing with the South Pacific war was coming in. Bombers for rehabilitation, fighter planes, all sorts of things. They had assembly lines that even Ford would have loved. They'd set a fighter plane in one end all shot up a bit, came out the other end all new parts, ready to go again. Well, that was interesting. Then one day the commanding officer there on the post—it was a field post— came in and said, "Russ, what were you doing before you got into this?" I told him I was with the National Park Service. "Would you like to go back?" I told him, "I'd love to go back." He said, Well, I'll tell you. You write to the director, and if there's a job available, you accept it." 1 said, Look, 1 promised I would stay here on this training job doing all this kind of work for a long time to come yet. They need it." He said, "Why don't you let me handle that?" Well, he was a colonel and I didn't argue with him too much. So I got a notice from Washington that, yes, there was a vacancy in Rocky Mountain National I'ark. Report there on such-and-such a date if you can make it. So I took this in and gave it to this colonel and I said, "Now what?" And he said, "Leave it to me." 1 ook him just 48 hours to get me released, and I'd had to take special training and 1 wasn't barred from everything on that field, but mostly, because I needed to know the supervisors. So we went to Rocky Mountain National Park. Before we left I asked this colonel, I felt bad leaving because the war was going on. 1 always remember him saying, "It won't last much longer." And I asked him how he knew, and he said, "I know." We were at Rocky Mountain then when Hiroshima was blown up.24 So I knew what he was talking about. Then immediately we got a notice from the director's office that the war was coming to a rapid close and everything. "We'd like to send you back where you were once before—to Zion." As park naturalist this time, not as an assistant. So we went back to Zion. I'd been after the Park Service [San Francisco Regional Office] to do better training [of] their supervisors and their staffs, so I got a notice from the director saying, "Hey, we have just the job for you. We want you to go to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia and establish a training center there on how you do a job as a naturalist, running a naturalist program. What does the supervisor need to know [about] these things, and so on." In the meantime, Id been giving this supervisory course through the parks, three or four days here, three or four days there. So back to Harper's Ferry we went. I had the job of setting up a training program. They'd never done that before. That was a challenge. So I set this up on the basis of things that Vd experienced and what I knew others had experienced in trying to run a naturalist program. Then they gave me the privilege there of selecting the first class. I selected seventeen men I knew about in the field. I wanted them to come in here, take a look at this program that I d set up. I set it up first and all the details and said to them, "Come in here now and ets glVe thlS ng a Practical tryout. We'll establish a hypothetical park and program and so forth." We had everything in the vicinity we could work on. So t ey came in, we run that program, couple of years, three years on that. One day the superintendent of Sequoia, whom I'd known through the years, got in touch. He was in Washington. He said, 'Russ, why don't you come to Sequoia. We have a vacancy." So I told him I had a job near Harper's Ferry, and he said, "Well, we could use you. So 1 suppose about a month later he was back in Washington and he called me and said, "Russ, this job's still open." Sequoia was the park I'd always wanted to go to. The big trees, the Sierras. So I asked the director whether I should take it, [and he said] why not? And he said, Do you know of anybody in the field who could come in and rim this thing?" I told him I knew half a dozen guys could run this program I was trying to run there. OK. We go to Sequoia. I was there then until 1969. In 1969 I retired from the National Park Service. Thirty-three years of it. Then there was a choice during that time of where to retire to. We'd been here [southern Nevada], liked this country, we knew the people, we knew the countryside, and we knew things pretty well. Close if you wanted to go to Zion or Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon25 or somewhere. So I came in here. Then when I retired from Sequoia, we decided we'd come back here, retire here, because we knew people. So when I came back here it was a matter of first, seeing how they run the [naturalist] program, what they'd done to it, what they've added to it, how they've improved it, and so forth.26 So while I've been here, 1 got interested in seeing if I could fill one or two of the knowledge gaps, someth