PORTER, Don FS 1953? - 1978 01-19-05 03__Corrected 2 U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Region Five History Project Interview with: Don Porter Interviewed by: Gerald Gause Location: Dana Point, California Date: January 19, 2005 Transcribed by: Christine Sinnott; February 2005 Corrected by: Linda Nunes WRITTEN INSERT: I was born and raised in Southern California in the Glendale-La Canada area. La Canada is in the foothills and on the edge of the Angeles National Forest, and between Pasadena and Glendale. In my youth with friends and Boy Scouts [I] camped and hiked over many trails. Went fishing for many, many years in the Inyo National Forest in the Eastern High Sierra. The local mountains and the High Sierra were my early education to the Forest Service and its National Forests. DON PORTER: I graduated from Glendale High School in 1944 and attended Glendale College and then attended the University of Montana Forestry School in 1946 and 1947. In 1942, I was fifteen years of age and worked in a fishing resort that my father and I used to go to up at Bishop Creek on the Inyo National Forest. Kind of got my introduction to resource and so forth at that time. In 1943, the next year, I’m sixteen years old and started my career – not my career but my summer career – with the Forest Service on the Eldorado National Forest on the blister rust control (BRC) program during the summer. We were all teenaged high school students and spent our summers digging up Gooseberry bushes. GERALD GAUSE: Oh, you were one of the grubbers. PORTER: One of the BRCers. GAUSE: BRCers, right. Don PORTER, page 2 PORTER: In 1944, the next year, I was out of the service. I had no military experience. I tried to get in all services, but an athletic heart – that’s how they talked about it at the time – prevented me from going in, so I fought forest fires instead! In 1944, I was seventeen years old, I was a patrolman on the Angeles Forest at Charlton Flats and Chilao. GAUSE: You were a patrolman and your duties were to…? PORTER: Mainly working with the public. We had a kiosk or a center station at Charlton and we issued fire permits there, also served as lookout at our peak in the Chilao area. Then went back to school again. In 1945, Tanker Foreman at Clear Creek. That’s in the Angeles N.F. Then they were called tankers, they are fire trucks today. Captains now instead of tanker foremen, but that’s what we were in 1945. The war, the summer of that year, the Japanese war was over and we celebrated the war being over by blowing the siren so much at the fire station that we wore our battery down. And the lookout up above us wanted to know what was going on and we told her. The war was over. That was Josephine Lookout Tower. The next summer I continued going back to school. In 1946 I [was] a tanker foreman at Tie Summit. That’s still on the Angeles Forest. At that time Arroyo District was on the Angeles Forest Highway, just up from Palmdale. Next year, I’m going to school in the winter, then working again in summer when I got a job as a tanker foreman again at Big Tujunga Canyon on the Angeles Forest. And that was the year of the Bryant Fire, which burned up Mount Lukens. And it was the first use of a helicopter on a forest fire by the Forest Service. It was an open cockpit and I forget who operated it, but it was a well-known guy that was in the helicopter business. GAUSE: Did he have a bucket underneath? Don PORTER, page 3 PORTER: No buckets, no dropping water. It was just transportation and scouting. We had camp crews, so they told me to be a crew leader. I was the one who got a helicopter ride up to the top of Mount Lukens. At that time the helicopter could not land, or did not land, so you threw out your tools and then he’d move over a little bit so you wouldn’t jump on your tools, then you’d jump out of the helicopter about five feet off the ground. The crew would then hike up and work our way down the fire line. GAUSE: You had to walk your way out of the fire. PORTER: We walked downhill, working the fire line all the way down. But that was the first use, I believe, of helicopters on a fire. GAUSE: That was . .? PORTER: 1947. In Big Tujunga Canyon. But then I could not continue on with the Forest Service. Had to go back to work because I didn’t have the money to continue at the University of Montana Forestry School. Worked with engineering for a while on the Angeles and one of my jobs was to read rain gauges after every storm. I hiked by myself through different canyons, and then read the rain gauge and then record it and empty it, set it up for the next rain storm. Sometimes with the elevation the water would be frozen and I’d have to build a fire and thaw out the water in the rain gauge before I could read it. That was all part-time work. And I thought, well, I can’t get anywhere in the Forest Service without a forestry degree. So I went to work for the county, L.A. County road department, found myself back in the forest though, as a rodman and chainman on a survey crew for a mountain crew. GAUSE: What do rodmen and chainmen do? PORTER: They hold up the rod so the transit person can read the elevation, and the chainman is you pull the chain, which is the same as a steel measuring tape, it was a hundred feet long. But it Don PORTER, page 4 was a big job. It was for the Upper Big Tujunga Canyon Road, which is very steep, and they were building a road at that time. WRITTEN INSERT: I always wanted to get back in resource management work so I took a state test for State Park Ranger. I passed the test and received appointment to Cuyamaca State Park in the mountains of San Diego County of California. Moved my wife, Gloria, to a small one-bedroom ranch house nearby the state park in the town of Descanso. Lloyd Britton was District Ranger there and Ed Heilman was Assistant Ranger. It was later in my career [that] we all would pass again up the career ladder in the Forest Service. After one year as State Park Ranger at Cuyamaca State Park [I] was transferred to a permanent position at a state beach at Dana Point, California, still in Southern California; after three years was transferred to a State Park at Lake Tahoe. One winter, I get a call from the Angeles Forest in Pasadena [asking] if I would be interested in a new position as Fire Prevention Officer back on my “home Forest.” Since I had been shoveling snow and battling 20-foot drifts that winter, and wife Gloria, 2-year- old daughter Ann and I were living in a 1930’s 1-bedroom “A” frame cabin. I said, “I will take the job and be there next week!” I credit Ranger Ed Corpe and Forest Supervisor Dick Droege for my return to the Angeles NF in 1958. This was the beginning of a 25-year career with the USFS! I was 10 years in the Information position on the Angeles National Forest. We started the Fire Information position on fires, served as FS liaison to the Smokey Bear campaign advertising agency, Foot, Cone, & Belding. [We} helped promote forest fire prevention and “Smokey Bear” via Pasadena Rose Parade to all national TV networks for many years. Dick Johnson was on the San Bernardino NF doing the Fire Prevention work also. We worked together on the Fire Information program in the country, wrote the first Handbook on the Don PORTER, page 5 subject in the Forest Service and established the service-wide interagency fire information center on forest fires. Another person that affected my career in the FS was local Pasadena newspaper columnist Russ Leadabrand. He gave me much advice and counsel in the news media business. We became lifelong friends over many years. PORTER: [Being in the] Los Angeles area, the television industry would call if they were having a problem about a forest fire or a ranger in the script where they would ask for help to get it correct. So in addition to the “Lassie” shows, we did two or three other shows that included teaching an actor on how to be a Forest Service lookout and teach him how to use the Osborne fire finder or maybe even how to drive a fire truck in a mountain area. Dick Johnson and I were sent all over Region 5 and other states to do fire information and set up fire information centers to do teaching on the fire prevention program. GAUSE: So your two efforts caught on and you ended up expanding this program. PORTER: We did, really, and not only fire information, which other regions and so forth decided to do too; we did training sessions and ran them at the training center in northern California and other states, to train people on how to be fire information officers, what to look for, what to do.