Larry Dunkeson oral history transcript

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INTERVIVEW WITH LARRY DUNKESON

BY JERRY FRENCH MAY 16, 2001

MR. FRENCH: This is an oral interview with Larry Dunkeson, in his home. Today is

May 16, 2001 and it is about a quarter to two in the afternoon. Larry, this is not a formal

thing. If you would care to just tell us your story, or any aspect of it. And tell us any of

your favorite parts of the Fish and Wildlife Service. You can begin with your schooling,

and your first assignment if you wish to.

MR. DUNKESON: O.K. It doesn’t seem possible, but when I retired, I retired with

thirty-three years in. That’s the part that doesn’t seem possible, because the thirty-three

years went by so quickly. And they were so enjoyable, and so memorable to me. I really

feel old when I think about the fact that I was in the Service for thirty-three years. I went

to school at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I went down

there to study, I didn’t know what, for sure. But I looked at the Course Catalog for the

University, and there was a heading for Wildlife Management. And I said, “That’s it, I’m

gonna do it”. That’s what I studied during the years at New Mexico State. I graduated

with a bachelors in Wildlife Management. I didn’t know for sure what I was going to do,

although I went home and finished the requirements for a teaching certificate. Even

though I wasn’t sure I was going to do that. My wife was going to be a teacher and we

thought that it would be nice if we were both teachers. Before I actually graduated in

teaching, I got a call from my major professor, Dr. John Wood, who is now long gone.

He told me that a friend of mine from school had just quit his job in Albuquerque with

the Fish and Wildlife Service. He was working for what we then called, Predator and

Rodent Control. He told me that I might think about that. I did, I knew immediately that

I wanted to do that. So I called Albuquerque, which is two hundred miles away. I set up

an appointment to go interview with the director of the state Predator and Rodent Control

division. I went up to Albuquerque and interviewed him. What he wanted was someone

to go out and trap Coyotes, which was fine, except that I didn’t know anything about

trapping Coyotes. I knew what a Coyote looked like, and that’s about as far as it went.

He hired me anyway. They gave me an area to work in, and to run trap lines in. Most of

it was east of Albuquerque, where there were small ranchettes. The people were being

bothered because their pets were disappearing to Coyotes. So I went out and set up trap

lines, as I had been instructed to do, or in the manner in which I was instructed to do. I

didn’t catch anything! It was a long time before I finally caught my first Coyote. And I

was so proud of myself, even though the Coyote was dead, that I went into town,

Moriarty, for breakfast. I had that dead Coyote in the back of the International Scout that

I had been issued. I thought that people might ask me about that Coyote lying back there.

Nobody cared. All they really wanted to know was that it was dead. It’s gone. That was

an introduction. I staid with trapping Coyotes for about eight months, and pretty quickly

came to the decision that I didn’t want to spend my whole career trapping Coyotes, and

setting out “Coyote getters” which we used at that time. So I made a trip across the street

in downtown Albuquerque to interview with somebody, I didn’t care who, about maybe

getting over into Refuges. I wanted to spend some time in Refuges. As it turned out, the

first person I talked to was the lady who was in charge of the office. Her name was Mary

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Bolivar. She is long gone now. I told her what I wanted. She led me to the back, down a

corridor to an office where I had never been before. And she introduced me to a man

who was at that time, the assistant regional supervisor for refuges. His name will be

familiar to most people. His name was Lynn Greenwalt. Later, he became the director of

the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And Lynn was very nice to me. He interviewed me

and knew that I didn’t know a whole lot, because I had just gotten out of school. But, he

said, “Where in the U. S. would you like to go with Refuges, geographically”? I said, “It

doesn’t matter, I just want to get on a refuge”. He asked me what kind of refuge would I

like: migratory, breeding, or winter stopover. I told him that it didn’t matter. “I just

would like to get on a refuge”. He said asked me if I had any children. I told him, “No,

we haven’t been married too long. We’ve been in school we don’t have any children”.

He then said, “Well, I have a place for you”. Two weeks later, after lining up the moving

truck, my wife and I arrived at Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, which is out on the

salt flats in Utah. It seemed like, at that time, a really godforsaken place, but it was a

refuge, and it didn’t matter to me. That’s what I wanted. An interesting story is that, on

the way in there, Fish Springs is a long ways from anyplace, and we drove, and drove,

and drove. Finally, we came around the last corner, and saw the headquarters. At that

point, my wife, Pat, thank goodness she’s here, burst into tears. And I don’t mean little

wet spots around her eyes. I mean alligator tears that ran down her cheeks! Her

comment was, “ I’m going back on ‘the Pill’ “. That was a good plan, but as I’ll tell you,

it didn’t work out. We were at Fish Springs. We had arrived at a refuge, and that’s what

I had wanted. That was the beginning of my career with Refuges. Of course, I was

already an employee with U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. From Fish Springs, we

traveled, literally, all over the country. If I can remember all of it, we went from Fish

Springs to Mackay Island in North Carolina. That was a long way. It was a big

adventure to go all the way across the country. From there, we went to Mason Neck in

Virginia. It becomes a blur after a while. At Mason Neck, I went into what used to be

called the Departmental Training Program. I think it’s called something else now, but I

was able to go through that. From there, I switched over to Ecological Services because

there was an opening in Ecological Services in Washington, state. I can’t think of the

town. Any way, it will come to me. We transferred out there to Olympia. That was it,

Olympia, Washington. We staid there for about two and a half years. That’s a beautiful

place, we enjoyed that assignment. After that, an opening came up at the Desert Game

Range, down in Las Vegas, Nevada. I applied for that. And I was able to get it. The

Desert Game Range, it was then called “Game Range”, it was so big. It was one and a

half million acres, much of which we couldn’t even get on, because it was a bombing and

gunnery range for the Air Force. A lot of it, we couldn’t even go on because there was

live ordinance lying around. We staid here for about a year and a half, then I had a

chance to transfer back into the Washington office. {D.C.] Which meant that we made

another move, back into Virginia. I worked in the Division of Refuges, there, in the

Washington office. I worked in the Division of Migratory Birds while I was there, also.

That was a good assignment. There was a lot of science going on there. It doesn’t sound

like it, but there was. From there, we had a chance to move, again, to Albuquerque,

which is where we started. We always thought that we would like to get back to

Albuquerque. I applied for the job, here in Albuquerque in the Division of Realty. I was

selected, and we moved back to Albuquerque. Our kids made one comment when we got

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back to Albuquerque, after living in Washington, and seeing all that there is to see in

Washington. They said, “This is a nice place to live, there aren’t very many museums

here for us to see”. Although my youngest boy was somewhat afraid to move here,

because he was sure that he was going to be the “Anglo” in all of his classes. And that he

would have to wear a sombrero, like all of the other kids were probably wearing. He

found, when he got here, that this wasn’t the case. I staid in the Division of Realty, for

about fifteen years. Those were good years. I got to see a lot of country, and I got to

meet a lot of people. We bought a lot of dirt that eventually ended up in national wildlife

refuges. We even bought some land for fish hatcheries. Then, after being in Realty for

fifteen years, things changed. Supervisors changed, the job changed, and it became clear

to me that retirement was probably the next step I should take. And I did that. I retired

from the Fish and Wildlife Service in July of 2000, which is about, almost two years ago

now.

MR. FRENCH: It’s right at one year.

MR. DUNKESON: One year ago. Time flies when you’re having fun.

MR. FRENCH: Larry, you were, as I understand it, one of the first managers at Mason

Neck. Is that correct?

MR. DUNKESON: That is correct. I opened up Mason Neck.

MR. FRENCH: Would you care to discuss what it’s like to open a new refuge.

MR. DUNKESON: It’s difficult, because Mason Neck was established for the Bald

Eagle. It was established because of pressure from local residents who wanted that area

preserved. They used the Bald Eagle as their reason for preservation. I think that the

more overlying reason was because with a refuge established there, there wouldn’t be any

more building. Since they had homes out there, this would protect them [the residents]

from being overrun by Washington’s sprawl and people. They were taking care of

themselves. The refuge was established, and I did a lot of “kibitzing” with people, even

doing news stories with the local television stations. That was part of setting Mason

Neck up. The other part was getting out on the ground, and trying to see what it was that

we had out there. We established some trails. I put in a bridge over a ditch. In this part

of the country we call it an “unroyo”, but it was a ditch caused by the rain. Then the

refuge manager from Blackwater, whom I worked for, came over and saw that bridge, he

said, “No that won’t work because it’s too flimsy”. So I had to rebuild the bridge. And

as far as I know, that bridge is still there today. The trails are still there. We really didn’t

have any money, being a new refuge. I had enough money to buy gas for my used

pickup. I got a used pickup that was going to scrapped I think. That’s what I used to go

back and forth to Blackwater. We built a visitor contact station. And subsequently,

somebody who didn’t like the refuge got out there one night and burned it down. I got a

call from a local friend, and he said, “Larry, your refuge in on fire”! Which caused me a

lot of concern. So I ran out there, and the fire was out by that time. But that was the end

of that visitor contact station, which I think they have rebuilt since. Mason Neck has

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been added to several times. Both by purchasing land that went into the refuge, and by

picking up excess land from the military that was added to the refuge, even though it was

disjoined from the refuge. Mason Neck gets a tremendous visitor visitation now, and it is

a very popular spot in the Washington area. In fact, from the refuge itself, you’d stand

out on the Potomac River, a lot of the refuge fronts on the Potomac River. If you look up

river on a clear day, you could see Mount Vernon. That gives an idea of where it is. It’s

right down the river from Mount Vernon.

MR. FRENCH: Larry, through your interview, you’ve worked with Animal Damage

Control, Refuges, Ecological Services, a tour in the Washington regional office. Would

you care to comment on these varied experiences? Your experience is certainly different

from what many of us have had. Many of us get in one place and stick there. You’ve

had the courage to venture out. Would you care to discuss how these things added to

themselves or possibly detracted?

MR. DUNKESON: That’s been one of the high points of my career. The chance to see a

lot of different places, and work on, not only refuges, but lands within the Fish and

Wildlife Service in different places. Our tour in North Carolina, which was at Mackay

Island National Wildlife Refuge, was a fun place to be. And it was interesting because of

the people who lived there. Many of which were descendents of the original settlers of

the Outer Banks who came in from England. They spoke with a very heavy early English

accent. Some of them, I couldn’t even understand. But I got to know them and became

friends with them. That was an advantage to moving around like we did, to all of the

different places. My children, who are now grown and have families of their own,

remember a lot of those places, even though they don’t remember exactly where they

were. They remember having been there. And they remember people from being there.

We moved a number of times. And that was back in the days when the Fish and Wildlife

Service had enough money to move people. It was an adventure for us. I would

recommend, having been through it, taking the opportunity to see all these different

places, and experience all these different locales. From Gettysburg, on to the Outer

Banks in North Carolina, to Olympia, Washington, which was a beautiful, and fun place.

Once you got used to the fact that in Olympia, no matter what you did, it was going to

rain. Once you accepted that, you were ok. My tours, and time in the Fish and Wildlife

Service have done a lot, I think, to broaden my perspective on life. It certainly it gave us

the chance to see a lot of places that we probably would not have seen otherwise.

MR. FRENCH: You’ve done a lot for my career. Long ago, you got me interested in

collecting old refuge signs. And I know that you have been interested in the heritage of

the Service for a long time. Would you care to expand on how you got interested in that

particular aspect of the career?

MR. DUNKESON: Well, beginning to gather old things happened pretty much at Mason

Neck. On the private land at Mason Neck, there were a lot of old trash piles, and outdoor

“johnnie” sites. We found that digging into an outdoor johnnie was a good place to find

old bottles. Many times, men would go out there, and drink in the outhouse, and drop the

bottle down the hole. Of course, over the years, all of that rotted, so it wasn’t a bad

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experience. But there were a lot of trash piles on the private land, if you could find them.

Sometimes that was difficult, and sometimes it wasn’t. I started to collect old bottles out

there, and I got into an antique bottle club. That was fun for me because it provided me

with bottles from other members of the club. From then on, it was just a natural jump to

start collecting refuge boundary signs. Being in the Division of Realty, later in my

career, I was able to visit a lot of refuges. The people who worked there said, “We use to

have those old signs, and they’re still out there on posts. But they are all Interior

boundary signs”. They don’t do anything. They get shot at. So, occasionally, I would

pick up a boundary sign from an old refuge. The old refuge maintenance man always had

a pile of old signs somewhere, if you could just get him to remember, or admit where that

junk pile was. Every refuge has a bone yard and often times, the pile of old signs would

be down in the bone yard. They were not being used anymore, or they were outdated, or

whatever. They ended up being junked, down in the bone yard. After starting on old

bottles at Mason Neck, like I say, it was a natural jump to go to old signs. I collected

boundary signs for a long time. I had quite a full collection of metal signs, as far as I

knew. Those have all been donated to the Fish and Wildlife Museum, back in

Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

MR. FRENCH: Larry, I thank you very much. If there is anything that you care to add,

we’ll just kind of close this thing up. And for the benefit of the transcriber, my name is

Jerry French I failed to put that in at the first. That makes it easier for the transcriber to

know what’s going on. I appreciate very much your thoughts, and remembrances.

MR. DUNKESON: There is one thing that I’d like to point out. This just occurred to

me. And I think that Jerry will go along with it: We did so much moving around, and

each move was an adventure, and each move was strongly gone along with by my wife.

She wanted to see other parts of the country. And wanted to meet other people. For

those people who are still in the Fish and Wildlife Service, and who are in jobs that are

going to cause them to move around, or see different places, if you can find a life partner

who is also interested in doing that, and enjoys doing that. I would sure recommend it,

because it makes moving, and new jobs so much more enjoyable if you’ve got somebody

there to talk to, and who encourages you, and enjoys doing that.

MR. FRENCH: I can’t agree more with you. As my wife says, “We’ve never made a

bad move”. We lived in some strange houses. We got the kids in some strange schools.

It wasn’t until my daughter got into college that she said “This is the longest I’ve ever

staid in one school”. But we gained a great deal from it. The two daughters got to

“sample” more than just one community, and more than one way of life. O. K, Larry, I

thank you very much.

MR. DUNKESON: You are quite welcome. It was my pleasure.