Interview With Hammond M. Salley

Posted on 08/30/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Hammond M. Salley (Major, USA ret.) of Anaheim, CA conducted by phone from the Fort Worden History Center on July 20, 2010 by Patience Rogge.  Mr. Salley is the son of Colonel Henry M. Salley (1901-1994); his family resided in Quarters 11E on Officers Row in Fort Worden from September 1947 to August 1949.  Here he recounts a couple of  his misadventures as a child on the post:

“Right behind our house there were steps leading up the little slope to a greenhouse where they grew all the plants to plant on Post…I don’t remember why we did it, but we came out of a Cub Scout meeting and somehow we wound up beside that greenhouse and started throwing rocks at the greenhouse and broke a lot of windows.  So we all got caught.  We all embarrassed our parents and we had to pay for it out of our allowance, but they fixed all the windows .  In another incident– even though the big coast guns were gone by the time we were there, the powder was still in those magazines up on the hill—we were up on the hill and one of the older boys decided we ought to break in and see what was inside because we really didn’t know.  So we broke open one of those things and went inside and saw all the stuff.  Of course we got caught on that too, and so after being severely punished, we were told we couldn’t go past the military police station unless we went to the MP station and got permission to go past.  The unfortunate thing was that the PX with the soda fountains and stuff was past the MP station.  So every time we wanted to go to the PX, we had to go to the MP station and get permission.  Again, very embarrassing for our parents.

My older brother, Ernest Meres Salley, was president of his senior class at Port Townsend High School.  He had an old car called an Essex, I think vintage 1925.  It had wooden floor boards, and he would drive it to school.  I don’t know where they got the idea, but he and a friend went to the junkyard and got a lot of old car parts, gears and things like that.  Then they drove through the main street of Port Townsend where the guys collected at the soda fountain…My brother and his friend drove by them and pulled up some of the floor boards.  The guy in the back started dropping all these gears out of the bottom of the car as it went down the street. “

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Interview With Robert C. Petersen

Posted on 08/24/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Robert C. Petersen of Long Beach, WA conducted by phone by Patience Rogge on January 4, 2007 from the Fort Worden History Center.  Mr. Petersen served on the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission from 1991 to 2007.  Here he discussed one of the most challenging issue he dealt with during his tenure as a commissioner:

“There have been lots of them and it’s hard to pick out any one, but one of the most difficult decisions I think we had to make was whether or not that park rangers should carry firearms.  Because they are commissioned police officers and they are out there.  Up until a few years ago they didn’t carry guns.  We kept getting requests that it’s a changing world out there and that they’d find themselves in very hazardous situations.  They have to make traffic stops once in a while.  Somebody’s speeding or driving recklessly within a park.  You have to pull them over and stop them when you never know when you approach that car, maybe it’s somebody who has an outstanding warrant against them or something like that.  They can react very violently because they don’t know whether that’s a policeman  or an unarmed ranger.  There’re all sorts of terrible things that can happen.  But on the other side of the coin, there are terrible things that can happen if a ranger does have a gun.  It can be used accidentally causing injuries or death, to all kinds of unintended consequences.  So we really struggled with that decision.  We took , it seems a long time, but it took us a couple of years of listening to testimony and getting information and studying up what the rules would be if we did go that route.  One of our biggest concerns was, aside from the things I’ve already mentioned, is that once you have somebody carrying a gun– everybody’s an individual out there– and some individuals develop what we term or call the police mentality.  They become a cop and they can become more of a cop than a ranger, and we didn’t want that to happen to our ranger force.  We wanted them to continue to be the good people that the kids enjoy talking to and are there to help you and not just to enforce the law.  We were really worried about what it might do to the status of rangers and the kind of people rangers are.  So, in our training for all new rangers and for our refreshment training each year and everything, they have special courses to cover what being a ranger is and how to continue to be a ranger, even though there is more emphasis on law enforcement.  I must say it has worked out very, very well.  We have not had one single tragic incident with a firearm.  None of the rangers had to shoot anybody  or have not been shot at or anything like that.  I’m not thinking it will ever happen but it hasn’t because these guys are so conscientious and so well trained that they’re working hard at carrying out what we wanted to make sure they would do.  Like I say, it was a tough decision but I’m sure we did the right thing reluctantly.  I guess we didn’t want to face the reality that the world has changed that much, but you have to change with it.  It has worked out very well.”

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Interview with Carl F. Baswell

Posted on 08/15/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Colonel Carl F. Baswell of Heber Springs, AR conducted by Tim Caldwell at  the Sheraton Hotel in Seattle on May 28, 2003.  Col. Baswell served for three years at Fort Worden as commander of Company B of the 532nd Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment.  Col. Baswell’s service to the United States took him to Panama and Korea, as well as many European destinations in World War II. He received the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart Medal, the Legion of Merit Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Air Force Commendation Medal.  The student union building of his alma mater, Arkansas Tech, bears his name. Here he discussed his role in rebuilding the Autobahn in Germany after World War II and how he got promoted to Captain:

“After my R&R I went back to Europe and commanded F company of the 333rd Engineers Special Service Regiment as a lieutenant.  My company rebuilt five large bridges on the Autobahn, at Karlsruhe, Pforzheim and the Stuttgart area.  They had all been blown out, not by the American Air Force, but blown out by the Germans to keep us from advancing.  As it turned out, there was only one man in the company younger than I, and that was the company clerk.  Generally, the company commander is normally “The Old Man”. I was known as “The Young Man”. The bridge near Karlsruhe was a big structure, 674 feet long, about 200 and some feet high.  We furnished the heavy equipment and transportation, the labor was all done by the Germans.  They had an old German construction firm, Gruen and Belfinger, that provided our engineering, but I provided them with all the equipment and the gasoline, the heavy equipment operators, and what have you.  It took 14 months, we ended up putting a steel structure in and putting a concrete deck on it.    In the middle of this, the Constabulary Commander came down to my job site one day in September of 1946 with a Russian general from Berlin.  The Russians wanted to see what we were doing over there and the American brass thought they’d go down and show them where we were constructing.  I got to ride around in a car with the two generals, and I was just a lieutenant. … They checked my job site and left. Apparently, the general went back to his headquarters in Heidelberg and turned to his aide and said, ‘Why isn’t that young lieutenant a captain, he is a company commander, apparently doing a good job and working hard, and the job’s getting done on time?’  They picked up the telephone and called my regiment, the 333rd up in Pforzheim, and asked why I wasn’t a captain. You had to have time in grade at that time, so they said ‘He’s not eligible.  He won’t be eligible for promotion until the 30th of November 1946.’  The commanding general said, ‘Well, you go back and tell them that on the day that he is eligible, I want him promoted.’ …I didn’t know anything about this until the paperwork went in. On the 30th of November that year, I got a telephone call from Personnel.  He said, ‘You’re not supposed to tell anybody, but I want to tell you you’re a captain.’  I said, ‘Get off my back. Leave me alone. I’ve got enough to worry about.’  And I didn’t believe it….At the end of December in 1946, all promotions for officers in all services were frozen by the Secretary of Defense….This was just a case of being in the right place at the right time, and I was real fortunate.  Had it not been for the general and the situation, I probably would not have made captain until three or four years, probably in the Korean War.”

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Interview With Gary Cummins

Posted on 08/10/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Gary Cummins of Port Townsend conducted by Patience Rogge at the Fort Worden History Center on January 3, 2012.  Mr. Cummins is the chair of the Fort Worden Advisory Committee, he retired from a long and varied career with the National Park Service in 2005.  Here he describes his perception of the role of the Fort Worden Advisory Committee:

“We’re at a time of tremendous change at Fort Worden in terms of management, the use of facilities, its organization, everything.  This is going to be a pretty exciting year.  I think the Advisory committee has an important role to play primarily as a conduit or avenue of information both to the Park and to the Public Development Authority (PDA) and the public.  We have the opportunity I think  to be a little more aggressive, a little more active, in soliciting information from the public, particularly our locals.  I know there are a lot of concerns as to what’s going to happen and will their access be hindered in some way.  Is Fort Worden going to become just an elite place only for people who can afford it?  What about the general public that has been using the park for years and years and see it as an asset? Or is it going to be something that is better for everyone where access is unimpeded  as much as possible and there is a greater menu of activities that can involve local people in a positive way?  We need to take these concerns to the PDA and to the Park and be able to respond to the public and act as an honest broker.  I think in some cases we may be bringing concerns that we personally may feel are not valid, but they need to be voiced, they need to be heard.  When an organization changes as much as this one is going to, transparency is really important.  In the absence of transparency, the rumor factories go into overtime and we can spend an awful lot of time putting down these false allegations and concerns that don’t have any basis to them.  But by being open and being seen as again an honest broker between the Park, the PDA and the public we can allay a good deal of that, I really think that’s our primary job.”

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Interview With Carmyn Shute

Posted on 08/10/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Carmyn Shute of Port Townsend conducted by Patience Rogge at the Fort Worden History Center on April 14, 2011.

Ms. Shute is Conference Coordinator 3 at Fort Worden State Park Conference Center, where she has worked for 12 years.  Here she describes how her work has changed and evolved over the time she has been with State Parks:

“When I first began with Fort Worden I was working in the camping office and was kind of bored with it and tried to learn a little bit more about the conference end of things.  I took a few classes on my own, did a lot of listening and learning, and a position opened up as a Customer Service Specialist 2 working under Susan Thomas at that time.  I did that for a few years and soon decided that again I wanted to learn more.  So I worked with Steve Shively, the conference Programs Manager and took some more classes to get more educated, and then started working more and more on conferences on my own.  Then Mr. Shively wanted to start a program called the Complete Meeting Package Program(CMP), which means that people make conference reservations online.  There are a lot of factors that go into that, a lot more working one on one with clients to make their programs and their conferences work.  That was really intriguing for me.  We went to State Parks and said that I wanted to become a conference coordinator and that this was the line of work we wanted to go into and it really fell within the Lifelong Learning Plan and the mission at Fort Worden.  After a couple of years of wrangling they gave it to me and now I am the only official conference coordinator here at Fort Worden.“

About changes at the Park:

“I’ve seen a lot of upgrades in the housing and some in the dormitories.  I’ve seen changes in policy.  It used to be that we would never allow anything to happen on the Parade Grounds, and now we are—like the tribal canoe journey event and different things like that.  I’ve seen greater participation from the Partners here at Fort Worden and things they’re trying to do.  Centrum was kind of struggling there for a little while, they’re losing money from the Legislature.  What we’ve done to relieve them of some of that pressure and let them put on the programs that they do so well is that I am now doing all of their housing and meal arrangements as a CMP program for their four largest: Fiddle Tunes, Jazz Port Townsend, Blues, and Voice Works programs.  They’re not having to hire extra people and have that extra expense.  It is all being done through my office and online.  So, that Partner is able to do more with the people they have and really concentrate on programming.  Madrona Mind/Body is putting on more classes and more overnight accommodations.  I fully expect Third Ear to start doing the same. [Note: Third Ear is no longer located at Fort Worden]  The Port Townsend School of Woodworking has folks in house right now.  One of the biggest things I’ve seen is that all these Partners coming into Fort Worden are now utilizing a lot of the housing and food services more within the last year than ever in the past.  So, that’s one of the nice things.”

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Interview with Richard G. “Rick” Martinez

Posted on 08/03/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Richard G. “Rick” Martinez of Port Townsend conducted by Patience Rogge on May 24, 2011 at the Fort Worden History Center. Mr. Martinez’s father Master Sergeant Fermin C. Martinez was stationed at Fort Worden with the 536th Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment from 1948 to 1950.  Although he has many fond memories of living in NCO Row at Fort Worden, Rick here recounts a dark moment in life on the post:

“”My little brother Ken was coming home from school.  The school bus dropped him off in front of the old NCO club.  He and another boy walked past the NCO club and saw a man and woman arguing.  He knew the man, I can’t recall his name but everyone knew him as Shorty.  His wife was Dotty.  The CO had kicked them off the post. They lost quarters and were living in town because she was alleged to be promiscuous.  My brother came home very excited and said, ’I saw Shorty shoot Dotty and then he shot himself.’ His little companion went next door and was screaming and incoherent.  At six or seven, they were old enough to know what happened and were horrified.  I called the MPs and reported that my brother had seen the incident. Soon, everything was abuzz on the post, and about a week later a fellow from Criminal Investigation Command came by, my mother wasn’t there, and he wanted to talk to my brother.  I called my mother who said it was OK, but that I should stop it if Ken got too upset.  We sat in the little kitchenette while they talked. The investigator was really good, he didn’t lead the little guy or upset him.  He got all the information out.  My brother was able to identify the number of rounds that were fired, the type of pistol (a war souvenir) that Shorty used, and where he shot Dotty and himself.  I was incredulous, I still am.  The investigator thanked us and we didn’t hear any more about it officially.  My brother completely forgot at the time, but 50 years later I reminded him and he started coming up with details.  Somehow, he had completely blanked it out after having told this officer.  So, that was the worst thing I can remember that ever happened on this post.”

 

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Interview with Eleanor B. Anderson

Posted on 08/03/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Eleanor B. Anderson of Bainbridge Island, WA conducted by Oran DeBois at the Fort Worden History Center on September 9, 2002.  Mrs. Anderson came to Port Townsend as a caseworker for the Jefferson County Welfare Department in 1940. She met her husband Alistair R. Anderson, American Red Cross Field director at Fort Worden and the couple married in the post chapel in 1942.  Here she described life as a young single woman in Port Townsend:

“My friend Fran McMahon and I shared an apartment over the pharmacy in town.  She worked for the telephone company.  Between the two of us we knew everybody in town, because I knew those who couldn’t afford a home and she knew everybody who could.  It was certainly an interesting and amusing place for young ladies at that point because there were the Coast Guard, the Army, the Navy all stationed in and around here.  There was a dearth of females, so I enjoyed a new popularity.  It turned out that I had some cases in conjunction with personnel at the fort.  Sometimes it was because the young man may have impregnated a girl whose family were on my caseload, and there were other reasons, too, that we got involved in an unofficial way with Fort Worden. I came out here on business a few times.  There was one time when I was asked by Colonel (later General) James H. Cunningham to review the troops with him.  I believe I was standing in for his wife.  We stood saluting the men as they went by on Battery Way.  It was a windy day and I remember the feather on my hat blowing around.  I’m sure part of the reason I was chosen to stand beside the colonel was that I wore a hat and gloves, which social workers were expected to do at that time.  The colonel was a little bit of a man, I might have been an inch or two taller.  I’m sure his wife was taller than he.  She was certainly larger, a high bosomed woman who, like so many officers’ wives, took her role quite seriously. It sticks in my memory because it was a unique experience to stand and watch the men marching by as we saluted.

Fran and I would often hop into the car in the evening and go out to the Fort to visit her cousins who were soldiers. We would get waved in very casually.  I didn’t even have to present any kind of identification.  Here we got to meet many of the soldiers because they were basically just a bunch of homesick kids who were just sitting out the draft.  They were just putting in their time, not going to make a career out of the Army. Then Pearl Harbor happened and immediately the whole situation was different.  You couldn’t get anywhere near Fort Worden.  There was no way that we could just go out there, and the fellows had very little time away from their duty.  There was also the situation where the soldiers were involved with the internment of the Japanese-Americans who lived in the area.  I had a stenographer in the Welfare Department whose folks were from Japan.  They had to leave.  I thought it was a strange situation and I still feel that way, there was no point to it.  In fact, they found out that they didn’t have that many spies around as they expected.  I think it was an economic thing.  They wanted to get a hold of land that the Japanese had made into very nice farms.

There were still some occasions when my work necessitated going out to the fort.  It was there I met my husband, actually regarding a case.  He was 4F, so he joined the Red Cross.  He had a pretty responsible job as field director not only for Fort Worden, but Forts Casey, Whidbey, and  Flagler, and the Coast Guard and Navy facilities here.  He had an office at Fort Worden, wore a uniform, and lived in the Bachelor Officers Quarters.  I met him in May 1942 and we were married the day after Christmas.  The chapel was beautifully decorated with flowers and plants for the season.  The officiating clergyman was the Catholic chaplain, who was from Chicago and spoke with a Chicago accent.  We had one problem: the sergeant who was supposed to play the organ had celebrated Christmas too much and couldn’t make it, so we had to recruit someone else at the last minute.  It was a small wedding, but very, very nice.  We left the Port Townsend area in spring 1943.”

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Interview With Mancel May

Posted on 07/27/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Mancel May of Olympia, WA conducted by Hazel Hatfield on June 10, 2003 at the Fort Worden History Center.  Mr. May was employed by Washington State Parks Development Team as Supervisor of Concessions and Leases from 1967 to 1981.  In this role, he was management  liaison with all federal and state agencies that dealt with Parks. Mr. May died in 2009 at the age of 90.  Here he described the early development of Fort Worden as a Washington State Park:

“When we finally got the first part of the Fort—the top of the hill and the waterfront, we had just started trying to come up with a management, a development, plan for that when Governor Dan Evans turned the rest of the park over to us.  Before that time, the park had been a Diagnostic and Treatment Center for juveniles and the developed part of the park was owned in fee by the Department of Institutions; we just owned the other part.  Parks Director Charles H. Odegaard (1928-2007) wanted a management team to come up with a use plan for Fort Worden State Park.  I was on that team because of my experience dealing with concessions and leases.  We knew that if we turned it into anything, the first things we were going to have would be a food service and motel/hotel type service.  After we made the decision to go ahead and turn it into a recreation and recreational  housing project, we had to get  operators to furnish those services. We came up with a family that had the Discovery Bay Lodge and Restaurant at that time to provide food service, and we were fortunate enough to have Gus Lindquist, who had been the superintendent of the Diagnostic and Treatment Center take over the motel end of it as we put in all these services.  These people took these jobs on a gamble, because there was absolutely no assurance that this thing at that period of time would be a money making proposition.  But with their help and dedication and commitment to the Fort and the fact that we discovered there was a tremendous demand for the type of facilities we proposed to come up with for the use of Fort Worden, it all dovetailed and came together.  From there we came up with what you see today here.  It was a slow start financially.  Getting appropriations from the state legislature was a big problem year in and year out until we started making enough money that we convinced  them that this was a going concern.  Then they started being a little more liberal with us as far as finances.  I was involved completely on every phase of the management area of the park and keeping all of the feds happy with the reports and compliance requirements.  It was a personal pleasure to be involved with Fort Worden at that time.  I had the pleasure of working with the first park manager Ang Taylor who eventually wound up as Region Three supervisor, then Glen Bellerud who was here for many years and was probably the most responsible person in the entire Parks Department for the management and actual building of Fort Worden as we know it today.  His successor was Jim Farmer who also did a super job during his years as manager of the park.  So, I had the pleasure of knowing all of them, working with them, and I am just really, really proud of what we came up with.”

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Interview With Brian Huseland

Posted on 07/10/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Brian Huseland of Spokane, WA conducted by phone by Patience Rogge from the Fort Worden History Center on July 14, 2011.  Mr. Huseland is the great-grandson of William Brinsmead, the last military caretaker of Fort Townsend (now a Washington State Park).  Here he relates the story of William’s coming to America from England as a child, and how he began his Army career:

“He was born in London, his family had lived there for several years. His mother passed away when he was 10 or 11 years old.  His grandfather and his brother had a piano manufacturing company, the name Brinsmead was well known. In 1879 or 1880 the grandfather sold the rights to use the name to his brother. William’s father had been working in the company and lost his job, then his wife died in childbirth. She also had bronchitis.  At the time she died in the winter of 1880, London had a very bad black fog caused by all the coal burning in the houses.  This contributed to a 300% increase in deaths from bronchitis.  The father couldn’t provide for five children, so he asked the grandparents to take three of them.  He took two of his children, my great-grandfather William and his brother to New York to start a new life in America.  A year later, the father surrendered them up to an orphanage and walked away.  The boys were cared for the Children’s Aid Society in New York.  At the time, their strategy for helping kids was not just clothing and feeding them; but putting them on a train and sending them out to rural areas where farming families could adopt them and, hopefully, give them a better life.  William and his brother were sent to Iowa.  Their experience was pretty good.  After joining that family and working on the farm in southwestern Iowa, he finished high school and joined the Army in 1887 when he was only 18 years old. So from the time he was 18 until he was in his 40’s, he was on active duty in the Army, and then when he was older he was a caretaker at Fort Townsend.  He was a caretaker, but actually the Army took care of him.  The Army had been a very stable influence in his life, it had allowed him to build up something for himself, a new life in America.  Being part of the military was an obvious choice for a young man who didn’t  know what to do. It was a great benefit to him, I’m grateful for that.”

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Interview With Bayly Miller

Posted on 07/06/2012 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Bayly Miller of University Place, WA conducted by phone by Patience Rogge from the Fort Worden History Center on July 12, 2011.  Mr. Miller is the son of Marshall E. Miller (1927-1999), who was the chaplain at the Fort Worden Juvenile Diagnostic and Treatment Center from January 1962 to September 1971, when the center closed.  Here Mr. Miller describes boyhood adventures exploring Artillery Hill and what he found several years later when he returned:

“I never went inside the structures when I was a kid there because I thought that would be the worst place in the world to be caught because there’d be no way of getting out.  When I went up with Tim Nolan (son of Norman Nolan, the lighthouse keeper), we didn’t walk the roads.  I’d stay to the side of the road because I was scared to death all the time. But the place was so fascinating, you felt like the guy who discovered Machu Picchu.  Six years later, I finally got to go up and take a look around. I went up the old donkey trail that was later converted to a jeep trail.  It was still intact but rotting. There was a wood bridge on the part of the trail overlooking the beach, getting eaten by beetles.  You could still walk on it, although I don’t know if it could have been able to hold the weight of a car.  When you came out on the top of the road there used to be two officers’ houses.  I remember taking that trail and seeing those houses when I was a kid.  Then, I only got to spend an hour or two with Tim because his parents limited how much time he could go out and play. We would walk down a little bit of the battery row where all the main guns were.  You could still see all the buildings were intact, the ones that held the range firing equipment.  There was a dormitory behind Battery Benson that the Navy had converted into a mess hall.  The stoves and everything were still inside, it had a whole kitchen set up in the back. I think that one of the stoves later was taken down to the Kitchen Shelter on the beach.  A little building was next to the mess hall that apparently originally was a bathroom and a shower room for the dormitory.  It got converted into a boiler room—when I looked in I could see the pressure gauges, everything still operational although it had been abandoned for a couple of years.  You could get it up and running if it was necessary. There was an officers’ mess that had been converted to a dormitory for the enlisted men.  Right behind the main battery row, situated just behind the main gun line, there had been four buildings that were the old field kitchens for the enlisted men who had the tents there in the field. One or two were still there. The radar building that housed the radar for Battery Tolles was all intact. It had been converted into a storage building.   The windows were all still in place, when you looked into the windows, you could see the tile floors.  The old National Guard  Armory had been converted to a PX for the Navy guys who were there. The only building left there now is that storage building.  You could see its roof from down on the parade ground. They converted it to a movie theatre for the people who were up there.  There were about 20 buildings in all, and it all ended up being torn down.”

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