"30 Years of Commitment Combined with Second Generation Appreciation"
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"30 Years of Commitment Combined with Second Generation Appreciation"
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Please enjoy the stories of the men of NACCCA #13 that have appeared in newsletter. He traded a jackhammer for a paint brush and stylus - Published July 2005 Author: Frank J. Kuhn, Jr. Lawrence I. Baird - (Larry) - A quick biography - Published June 2005 Author: Larry Baird Notes: FS Anniversary and important phases in conservation history- Published May 2005 Larry Baird - "Screw-top Lessons" - Published May 2005 Author: Larry Baird Larry Baird Writes His Story - Published April 2005 Author: Larry Baird Double Daring - Published March 2005 - Author: Ned Slagle The CCC to the Rescue - Published February 2005 - Author: Ned Slagle NACCCA Wasn't the First - Published - February 2005 - Author: Ned Slagle He
traded a jackhammer for a paint brush and stylus by Frank J. Kuhn, Jr. Late in 1939, while living in
Philadelphia, Pa., I joining the Civilian Conservation Corps and was
assigned to a camp in Flagstaff, Ariz.
My parents were then separated and later divorced.
Although my father had a good,
steady job, the monetary support he gave mother was not sufficient for
a family of four children. Though
the Great Depression was ending, jobs and money were still scarce.
In order for the welfare income to continue, I was required to
enroll in the CCC. I had never been away from
home before, and this was an assignment way across the country.
I felt that I would never again see my parents.
I was the elder off-spring in the family.
I wrote a letter stating the circumstances in our family and
requested an assignment closer to home.
They changed my assignment to Camp Lost Creek, Norton VA., a
region of deep poverty. A
company truck picked up our group of 40 newcomers and drove us to
camp. The commander, who had a deep
southern accent, was 1st Lieutenant Granville Bussey.
First sergeant was Joe Marinangelli. Both were reasonable.
We worked hard but had no complaints about our treatment.
On arrival, we newcomers were restricted to camp and told we
could not go to Norton, which was at the bottom of the hill on which
our Forest Camp 2348 was located on. We were challenged by the old
timers who told us greenhorns, “Don’t go to town.
The people do not like the CCCers.” At the time — during
the first week in camp — I did not know this was a big lie!
We were told that when we go to town it must be in pairs . . .
That if the town people saw a CCCer alone, they’d attack him with a
knife. Of course, I was a
tough guy in those days. I
was not afraid of anyone! So about the third day in
camp, right after the last meal, what do you think I did?
I walked up Main Street n Norton, curbing away from the
buildings. This, I felt,
would give me time to protect myself. As I was walking bravely, yet
cautiously, I saw the company commander’s vehicle coming towards me.
I had no time to duck. It
was driven by the company clerk who was returning from the post
office. He saw me.
But the town people waved to me and were very friendly. When I returned and entered
the company area, it seemed that everyone knew I goofed up.
Someone said, “The first sergeant wants to see you!” But it
was Lt. Bussy, though very friendly, said softly, “Kuhn, you are
restricted to camp for another week.”
About the third or fourth day
at reveille, before going to breakfast and then off to work (we were
in the process of cleaning the woods for what later became the
Jefferson National Forest). The first sergeant asked, “Who in the
company is a sign painter?” No
one responded. So I raised
my hand and said, “I went to art school when I was in the 5th
grade.” Kuhn,” he
said, “step out. You are
now the company sign painter.” So after spending a few days using a
jackhammer on High Knob Mountain on cold winter days, I spent the rest
of my CCC career painting signs. I had no boss, and as one of
the overhead, I was not required to stand formations.
My first assignment was to make a sign three feet high and
eight feet long. It was to
have the company designation as it would be stretch across the Norton
main street. Fortunately,
I was given all the time I needed, because I had never painted signs
before. After I completed the sign, I
painted smaller ones — all the time working in the nice, warm supply
room. I thought of all the
men at the mountain top, cutting trees and building roads in cold,
snowy weather! In addition to making signs, I
was designated the company artist.
I painted pictures on the mess hall walls and everywhere else
the first sergeant ordered.
One day he told me to make a
cover for the current newsletter “The Lone Star.”
There were no copy machines at that time and there were only
two ways to reproduce copy.
One was the thermafax, a burning process, and the second by
“cutting a stencil” and using a mimeograph machine.
The cutting process meant using a pointed tool called a stylus
to cut out letters and pictures on the stencil, which was then placed
on a drum and turned with a crank handle to allow ink to cover the
stencil and transfer to the paper.
It was not easy to draw
pictures on the stencil, and because stencils were not in abundance,
we had to be careful not to make mistakes.
For small mistakes, we used a small brush to fill in the cuts
(corresponding to today’s “white out.”)
The first sergeant told me to draw a picture of new men
arriving at camp. I
offered that it was impossible to draw something like that on a
stencil. He suggested,
“Kuhn, try!” I did. He
seemed happy with it. I departed camp by Christmas. About a year later, I joined the Army and was assigned to the Corps of Engineers. After 22 years I retired as a major. The CCC was the starting point of my life and career. Lawrence I. Baird (Larry) - A quick biography I
was born in Los Angeles, CA on
October 25, 1916. At
age 8 years my
family moved to Boston, Mass.
Summers were
spent on a
New Hampshire farm with
relatives—kerosene lamps, horse & buggy transportation, party
line telephone. While
there I learned to handle farm
horse, milk cows, harvest the hay, etc.
At 16 years of age I
went to live with an
uncle in Rosslyn, Long Island,
N.Y. I
drove there in a 1917 Model T
Ford acquired at auction for $5. In
April, 1934 sold it for a 20% profit and enrolled in CCC.
I
was sent for a
medical exam in NYC
with hundreds of others.
After the
exam we
were issued a
mess kit, got
it filled with beans & spaghetti
and filed toward mess tables
along a
roped off path under outdoor
canopy. Many men on the
other side of rope were
hoping for a handout.
Some kids disgusted with chow gave it to them. This
was my first realization of
what the depression had done to wage earners.
We
were bused to Ft. Dix, N.J. for
3 weeks isolation
and then by train to Tennessee.
Camp was located about 40 miles North of Knoxville, near the
crossroad town of Loyston, was operated by the Park Service. We
built overlooks atop hills with
views of future Norris Lake, with rough quarried stone requiring six
men with crowbars to move. These
made sloping walls 10-15 feet high, filled behind to a level platform.
At the
end of 6 months the Park
Service clerk departed for home and I got the job
which was the best in camp.
I
had much leisure time to roam
hills, observe local people still living in
15th century conditions, in log
cabins
and many had
never having been farther than
Andersonville, 8 miles away. An
old women had kept fire going
in fireplace since childhood. When
moved by the TVA from the
areas to be flooded,
the fireplace with the
fire still
going and woman tending it was
loaded on a
flatbed truck and driven to her
new home in model village with
all modern fixtures. The
next Park Service project was
construction of massive
concrete dam, 60 feet
high, 150 feet wide, and
across a
creek to form a
lake for Big Ridge State Park,
plus cabins, trails, etc. Busier now with clerking job, keeping track
of materials used, man hours, etc., but still with time to help new
Mess Steward with paperwork. He
was an LEM
and former WWI Army field cook,
semi-literate and baffled by monthly Army report forms
breaking down daily cost of meals served, to tally with total
invoices. This experience
paid off later on.
When
the
dam was finished,
camp was vacated
as the
area would be flooded.
We were loaded on a slow train to Yakima, Washington, then by
truck into the mountains past Rimrock Dam to
Clear Lake. Years before a
area
with Grand Fir 4 to 7 feet in
diameter. The trees died, the
dam was opened, and we arrived to clear them away from the lake bed,
under the Bureau of Reclamation
with the
guidance of 16 LEM lumberjacks.
Five sound trees near center were topped and rigged to haul cut
timber in to form a conical stack that would be burned when the fall
rains came. As the
work-service clerk I was required to stay at the telephone in camp all
day to get messages that never came.
A couple of weeks of that were enough; I went to work bucking
timber that the felling crews took down.
Eight hours on a crosscut saw builds muscle! Logs too big to
saw were split with dynamite, by the LEMs.
One
day the Captain and Mess Steward were summoned to HQ,
never to return-hanky
panky with mess funds. A
LEM
who was a former restaurant
cook was appointed Mess Steward.
I was drafted to take over
the menus and invoices for the
time since
my arrival,
produce the monthly reports and all other paperwork needed to
pass inspection (cover-up).
An inventory of food on hand was needed in which I found a new
shortage of 7 sides of bacon. The
Mess steward went back to logging and the hot-shot lieutenant sent to
clean up the problems acted as Mess Steward while I continued
the paperwork drill. When
the lake job neared completion, an advance cadre was selected to start
a new camp, with me as Mess Steward.
We shipped to Kanona, New York,
near
Lake Kauka. Fortunately
the cooks were old hands, needing no direction from me.
In
late winter, I took off for home on the rumor that the family could
get me into a Naval Academy prep school.
It was a pipe dream and I returned in a week, out of the Mess
Steward job, but into the Army office as assistant clerk.
Come springtime,
the dusty Army office was too boring so I went on a tree planting crew
under the Soil Conservation Service.
The crosscut saw muscle went to work.
It was sink the mattock to the shaft, pull back to open a space
for your partner to stuff the seedling
root bundle, lift up the mattock, step forward with the rear leg
and jam the heel into the dirt hard enough that the foreman coming
behind could not pull up the seedling,
take a second step, sink the mattock, etc. The crews made it a game to
plant the most trees each day. Before
long we were moving so fast
the foreman had to trot to keep up.
Scores for the crews working in different places were posted
and bets made. In
September the canteen Steward departed and I took over that Job.
A short time earlier I had hitch-hiked to Buffalo and applied
to enlist in the Navy. I
passed all checks except chest expansion; an inch too little for my
height. Back at camp I
began pushups and some other kids joined in for competition.
By Thanksgiving we were quitting after 100 pushups, from
boredom, not fatigue. Back
at Buffalo I passed the chest expansion requirement
Dec. 16, 1936. I was
enlisted in Navy and began a 30 year career. Until
I talked to Jim Murphy last July I had never given any thought to CCC
days. Since then I have
realized what a broad education I received, not just in the jobs, but
in the human contacts, initially with kids from the Italian section of
New York City who enrolled with me, and those already in the camp,
mainly from Polish settled areas in upstate New York; the Tennessee
hill people contacts that erased any city-bred notions about “Hillbillies”;
the Washington state LEMs and others in that sparsely settled region
who valued each person as an important individual, and the Army
Reserve officers from varied professions who ran the camps.
And, of course, the work-service engineers—what a varied crew
they were! It was a great
experience and the country would be better off if the CCC existed
today. [Editors
Note: This biography was
submitted to NACCCA Chapter 13 upon application for membership in
September 1995.] Notes on the FS Anniversary and important phases in conservation History: The
display material will be informational for all so it you don’t mind
I will share with you the basic material in the display.
The main display focused on the 100th Anniversary of the Forest
Service. The activities of
the huge conservation agencies, have played a major part in our
perception of modern conservation and how we enjoy our nations parks
and forests. Woven into
our regional USDA National Forest history are four main historical
points that have affected how National Forests were developed and
systems evolved. Each of
these points have great impact on our public environmental
conscientiousness. Formation of the National Forest Service within the Department of
Agriculture—1905: With
the blessing of President Theodore Roosevelt, innovative thinkers had
long pondered the preservation of forest land.
As America’s wilderness areas were devastated by commercial
development it became clear that land needed to be protected for the
public good. Visionaries
like Gifford Pinchot took the first steps to manage forest reserves
and in 1905 he became the first chief of the newly created Forest
Service of the Department of Agriculture.
The Weeks Law—1911 The
“Weeks Law” authorized the federal government to purchase lands to
be “permanently reserved, held and administered as national forest
lands”, for the protection, development and use of their natural
resources. The
great National Forest Reserves of the west were created in the later
part of the 19th century from the vast amounts of “public” land
that had not yet been purchased by private individuals.
The landscapes of the east had been populated and heavily used
for many generations leaving the land unable to protect itself from
nature’s elements and continued human intervention.
This
barren mountain top land, sometimes called the “Forgotten Land”,
became the nucleus of the National Forest System east of the
Great Plains. The first
government purchase of private land under the Weeks Law was made in
the Massanutten Purchase Unit of about 385 acres, June 27, 1912, from
H.H. Rust of Page County, VA.
If you look at a modern map you will notice that National
Forests of the east are only in mountain terrain. The Warden System—1913 The
fire marshal system was the first large scale volunteer cooperative
effort between government and farmers to protect the land from forest
fires. It is said to have started in Shenandoah County, VA, and spread
through the Forest Service systems in the South and East.
The Emergency Conservation Act—1933 Well, I don't’ think I need
to add anything about this. The
great legacy of the “Boys” says it all Larry
Baird writes another story - 2nd segment Screw-top
was the bootleg liquor locally made in “dry” Union County,
Tennessee were only 3.2 beer could legally be sold.
Our first day at camp the Captain had warned us that it was
dangerous stuff, so of course there was some inherently rebellious
individuals determined to test it.
“Sailor” was one. Sailor
kept to himself. I never
saw him in conversation with anyone, not that he was shy as soon
became evident. He was of
medium height and build and had only one noticeable feature, a mouth
full of broken, discolored teeth that seemingly had never known a
toothbrush. The
mess hall was equipped with tables seating eight, and with attached
benches. At mess call we
filed in and seated ourselves at places already set with plates and
cutlery. Food was brought
by K.P.’s trotting from the kitchen with platters in each hand.
By chance one evening I was seated at a table with Sailor on
the other side. A K.P.
arrived and placed a platter with eight meatballs on the table.
Sailor grabbed the platter and tilted its contents onto his
plate, then began wolfing it down. We others were flabbergasted
speechless at this display of aggressive bad manners, but before we
could gather our wits to react the K/P. arrived with more meatballs
and other supper items. We
ate in silence, and I, for one, avoided sitting at a table with Sailor
although I couldn’t avoid him entirely as we shared the same
barracks. One
summer event near dusk we noticed Sailor at the foot of the camp road
where it joined the country road that passed by.
He was leaning against a Model T Ford, in animated discussion
with the driver. This
attracted attention as a novel departure from his usual sullen
silence. Soon it became
clear that a bottle was being passed back and forth.
This continued for some time; then dark clouds and thunder
ended the conversation. Sailor
staggered up the hill to the barracks and collapsed onto his cot, only
to soon get up and go out the side door toward the latrine through the
falling rain. A few yards
from the door he fell face down on the gravel and lay there.
Half a dozen of us were watching from the windows.
A couple of minutes passed with no movement.
Someone commented that he was “stacking”, short for the
slang “smoke stacking”, a ploy to fool observers.
Now the rain became heavier and chilly, but Sailor never made a
move. When five minutes
had passed it was apparent that he was in real trouble.
We picked him up and ran to the latrine where under a hot
shower he began to regain color and tried to move out.
We ran him back to the barracks, stripped off the wet clothes,
and rolled him into bed, with a bucket beside, which he soon made use
of to empty his stomach. Screw-top’s
hit on Sailor rippled through the gossip channels and put a lid on
experimentation for many months—until the following spring.
Runoff from the hills into the Clinch River alley had raised
the water level to flood stage, then during a spell of clear warm days
the level began to recede. The
bridge for the country road was about half a mile from camp.
The bright weather emboldened four out for a Sunday walk in
that direction to tipple on a bottle of screw-top; however it was
acquired was never revealed. One
of them drank the lion’s share.
Upon reaching the bridge he announced that he was too hot and
going for a swim, whereupon he shucked his shoes and jumped in.
The swift current quickly swept him out of sight.
This sobered the others, who ran back to camp with the news.
A few boys ran toward the bridge, an obviously useless move.
I took off for a spot atop a high cliff at the wide bend of the
river well downstream thinking to perhaps throw him something as he
came past. The receding
water level meant that the center of the river was dished lower than
towards the banks, which would make it hard for even a good swimmer to
reach the bank. But, no
luck—he never appeared. In
midsummer, with the river low, some Sunday explorers found the body
tangled in the brush a little upstream of my cliff top lookout site
and on the opposite bank. I
suppose he had used all his strength to fight his way to the bank
where partly submerged brush had entangled and defeated him. This
was the ultimate screw-top lesson for Co. 297; no one was foolhardy
enough to test it again. The initial group of enrollees at camp
TVA-P1, Loyston, TN in 1933 were from a narrow band of farms and towns
along the shores of Lake Ontario; a mix of Polish farm boys and town
boys with similar educations and viewpoints.
About half returned home after 6 months and were replaced by
enrollees from New York City with widely varying characteristics. I
had left a hard-scrabble farm in New Hampshire at age 16 to stay with
an uncle working in the town of Roslyn on Long Island, NY.
Early in April, 1934 my uncle told me he was fed up with his
job and shore life and would return to this former occupation as
merchant seaman. He would
give me train fare to go back to the farm.
That was very unappealing so I applied at the local welfare
agent for enrollment in the CCC. He
gave me a paper naming me as a qualified candidate for enrollment, a
train ticket to New York City, and directions to the Battery Park Army
station. CCC enrollment
was contingent on passing a standard physical exam for Army recruits.
By mid-afternoon, that day’s crop of new enrollees was packed
onto buses bound for Fort Dix, NJ for three weeks of contagion
isolation, immunization shots, and issue of WW-1 Army clothing.
Then about 90 of us were put aboard a train to Knoxville, TN
where Army trucks met us for the long ride to camp and Co. 297. A
more diverse group could hardly be imagined.
About half were second generation Italians from immigrant
families, who spoke Italian at home and frequently among themselves at
camp, although they were profanely fluent in English as well.
The other half had nothing in common.
A very few were mature and well educated; some gravitated from
far flung places to NYC to find work and in desperation had enrolled
in the CCC to avoid starvation. There
were some reform school graduates from the city’s slums, and some
from small New York towns who, like me, had come to Battery Park to
enroll. At
roll call after breakfast the next morning the Army Reserve Captain in
charge of the camp welcomed us and gave a cautionary talk about local
customs. We were in Union
County which had voted to stay “dry” when the state had given the
counties the option of going “wet” or “dry” when Prohibition
was repealed. This meant
that only 3.2% beer could legally be sold, a highly desirable option
as it preserved the county’s only industry – making bootleg
alcohol, typically sold in clear glass bottles with a screw-on top,
hence known a “Screwtop”. Predictable,
some of the new arrivals privately resolved to check out
“Screwtop” at the first opportunity despite the Captain’s
warning that under its influence people were likely to do crazy
things. For example, two
local boys were sharing a bottle over a friendly pool game in Loyston
when they got into a drunken argument and threw pool balls at each
other. Some permanent
facial rearrangements resulted. The Italians put a spark of life, many sparks
I should say, into camp happenings.
They quickly hung a nickname on anyone with an identifiable
characteristic. “Bluebeard”
had such dense and dark facial hair that he would wait until nearly
lights-out to shave in the latrine washroom so he could be sure of
having hot water and being undisturbed as be wielded his straight
razor. But by morning his
face would be blue where stubble was sprouting.
“Sailor” was named for his civies, a vaguely nautical
collection acquired from a second-hand store no doubt.
The “Geep” was named for the fake wild man seen in a cage
in circus sideshows to gibber and rattle the bars at the onlookers.
The “Geep” was tall and thin with a head too small for his
body. Rather than joints
he seemed to be held together with rubber bands; arms, legs, and head
loosely flopped as he walked. He
was foulmouthed and given to mean practical jokes, such as pouring a
bucket of water in the bed of someone out at the Rec Hall shortly
before lights out. When
the victim crawled into bed in the dark and found it soaked through
the mattress it meant borrowing blankets and sleeping on the floor –
not funny! The Geep was
not a popular person. One night Bluebeard had not returned from shaving by lights-out. The Geep pulled a foot locker across the aisle a few steps from the door Bluebeard would enter. It was a pleasantly balmy evening and Bluebeard was softly humming as he came in. He was a big and brawny person, as most heavily bearded people are, and when he tripped over the foot locker and fell to the floor the crash seemed to shake the room. A stream of enraged Italian clearly promised murder for the Geep, who precipitously decamped for parts unknown, to resurface only at breakfast the next morning. The day’s routines left no time for a confrontation, and since he had suffered no more than a few minor bruises Bluebeard elected to let the matter drop. The Geep was notably subdued for a time and when he resumed his pranks he was careful to pick victims who were not likely to resort to violence. Larry Baird Return to the Top At about 6:30 on the evening of
March 21, 1936 a drunken LEM enrollee named George Morgan went
into one of the barracks at CCC Camp Mount Madonna in California
carrying a rifle and started shooting at the light bulbs. He
then loaded and cocked the rifle and pointed it at the head of
Enrollee Clayton Eckles who was in the barracks, telling Eckles that
he was going to "...shoot him right between the
eyes." Seeing that Morgan really intended to shoot, another
enrollee named Melvin R. Sanders grabbed the gun and forced the muzzle
toward the floor. When the gun discharged the bullet missed
Eckles but grazed Sanders in the leg. Sanders then took the gun
away from Morgan. It was the second time in less than a month that Sanders had displayed bravery and quick-thinking in the presence of danger. At about 10 o'clock on the morning of February 25, 1936 another California LEM named Leonard A. Bugby was sprayed by gasoline while attempting to fill the tank of a compressor from a 50-gallon drum of gasoline. The gasoline also erupted into flames when it came into contact with a supposedly dead fire which had been lit earlier to preheat the spark plugs for the compressor. The fire ignited Bugby's clothes, burning him extensively. Ignoring the danger to himself Sanders, who happened to be nearby at the time, took off his own jacket and wrapped it abound Bugby, then threw Bugby to the ground in an attempt to smother the flames which were enveloping Bugby. Unfortunately Bugby died four days later as a result of his burns. The CCC to the RescueAt about 10:30 on the evening of November 30, 1934 CCC Company 324 at Camp Muskegon (SP-5,) located at Muskegon Michigan, received word that the freight steamer Henry Cort was sinking at the entrance to Muskegon Harbor. The leaders and assistant leaders were given the few details about the situation that were known initially, and were ordered to make the necessary safety preparations and to take their field work details to the scene of the accident. The enrollees were transported by truck for 1 1/2 miles. They then had to walk for another 1 1/2 miles along the beach, in the face of a biting-wind and sand-storm, to reach the point on land nearest to the scene of the accident. Knowing very little about the status of the situation the leaders first distributed the enrollees in groups of three along the beach to pick up survivors or bodies. As the company received more define information from the Coast Guard enrollees were assigned such jobs as patrolling special areas, manning the beach cart, guarding the Coast Guard equipment, and getting hot coffee and equipment from the camp. At 2 pm the remainder of the company returned to the camp to get dry clothes and to await further calls. Relief crews were sent to the scene at dawn with additional instructions. The surviving crew of the ship, twenty-five in all, were taken off of the ship by the Coast Guard; and with the exception of two who were taken directly to the hospital they were met at the beach by men from the company, who gave them blankets and took them in company trucks to Camp Muskegon. There they were given coffee and put in beds in one of the barracks. The company was given recognition for its meritorious conduct under difficult conditions. NACCCA WASN'T THE FIRSTAlthough the National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni, which was established in 1977, was to become the largest organization for veterans of the Civilian Conservation Corps, it certainly wasn't the first of its kind to be proposed. In the summer of 1933--almost as soon as the CCC had been established--the Office of the Director began to be bombarded with letters from individuals and groups suggesting that societies or bureaus of various sorts be created for veterans of the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1934 the official CCC newspaper Happy Days, which had also been receiving numerous letters to that effect, proposed the creation of what it called the "Conservation Corps Reserve." While that proposed organization may have received more publicity than did any of its competitors during the life of the CCC, there were many other such proposals as well. In 1936 an organization called the "Civilian Conservation Corps Reserve Officers association" was formed in order to protect the interests of reserve officers on CCC duty. In the following year an organization in New Orleans created the "Veteran Civilian Conservation Corps of America." In 1939 a society under the name of "3-C Men of America" was established in Mobile, Alabama; and during that same year an incorporated body known as the "American Conservation Association," organized by a group of reserve officers and located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, began to recruit members. That organization sought to obtain its members from enrollees, and to work for the creation of a permanent CCC supervised by reserve officers. For the most part Director Fechner discouraged the formation of such organizations. As Assistant CCC Director Charles H. Taylor wrote to a proponent of one of these organizations, "I do not believe an organization of honorably discharged CCC enrollees could offer substantial inducements to its members to develop a sound foundation on which a permanent organization can be built. The corollary of this thought is that unless there is some undoubted and distinct service to be rendered to former CCC enrollees by an organization such as you propose, the organization should not be started."
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