INTERVIEW WITH DAVE MARSHALL
BY MARK MADISON 09/16/2006
PORTLAND, OREGON
MR. MADISON: Dave, tell us a little about William Finley.
MR. MARSHALL: Okay, William L. Finley was a friend of my family on my father’s side. He
was the first President of the Oregon Audubon Society which my family was very active with.
He was President for a number of years. The Audubon Society in Oregon at the time was only
about 100 people, compared to 10,000 today. I would go to Audubon gatherings as a child and
William Finley would be there very often. Then, when my family would put on a big Christmas
program on Christmas night he and Irene would come to the Christmas program. So I got to
know him just as part of my boyhood. I never gave it much thought, except that I loved to go to
his lectures. His lectures thrilled me because of the subjects that were covered. I was a birder as
a kid. I liked to listen to his stories. He was very dramatic with his stories. He held an audience
glued to their seats as to what was going to happen next. Many of his lectures were with slides.
They were old lantern slides that were hand colored on three and one quarter by four inch film.
Then, subsequently, there were movies. But I soon learned from my father that William Finley
was a little too absent-minded to be a good photographer. He would forget to pull the dark slide
or pull off the lens cap. He’d get so excited about what he was doing. Herman T. Bohlman, his
partner from boyhood, was really the photographer. Finley on the other hand, was an animal
behaviorist. He was amazing at getting animals to do things. The two of them really fit.
Bohlman was the technician and Finley was the behaviorist. Bohlman was a plumber by trade.
But they were friends, as I said. Bohlman had a car, such as they were in those days. It took a
mechanic in those days, to take a car into the back country. Bohlman fit this too. The two really
made a beautiful partnership for many years.
One of the things I can think of about William Finley was him having discussions with
Stanley G. Jewett about wildlife issues in the state of the day. I would kind of sneak around and
stand beside them and hear what they were saying. It sounded very interesting to me. They
would make decisions on how they were going to attack a particular problem politically. Finley,
as I understand it, did not have to work. His parents owned a mortuary in Portland, which did
very well. For some reason, he didn’t have to do anything else but go on trips to promote
wildlife causes.
MR. MADISON: Lucky for us!
MR. MARSHALL: That’s right, lucky for us. One of his big efforts of course, was to get the
first National Wildlife Refuges established on the west coast. This is where his pictures paid off
and started a contact with Theodore Roosevelt. We know he was a guest at the White House and
showed his photographs to Roosevelt. Three Arch Rocks, the Klamath area, and Malheur
became National Wildlife Refuges through Presidential Proclamations.
One of my Dad’s stories, which I can’t back up in any way, was when Roosevelt paid a
political visit to Portland. There were the usual political dignitaries there to meet the train.
Roosevelt looked out over them and said, “Where’s Bill Finley?” They were all embarrassed.
They had to go find Bill Finley, who was at his photo studio. Finley, according to my Dad,
ended up sitting next to Roosevelt in an open car touring the town!
MR. MADISON: That wouldn’t surprise me. We know that Roosevelt was a big birder himself.
MR. MARSHALL: And he was very outspoken. I can just see him standing over the crowd and
saying, “Where’s Bill Finley?”
MR. MADISON: That’s a great story!
MR. MARSHALL: I always thought it was a great story. But it’s one of my Dad’s stories about
Finley. I don’t know what else to say, except that he just thrilled people with his narrations. In
later years, he became kind of sad because he began to loose his mind. He had Alzheimer’s or
something similar. Irene, his wife, had to prompt him from backstage. I can always remember
some of the last times I saw him. He would start to talk, and he’d wind down and say, “I can’t
remember.” It was kind of sad. “I can’t remember”, that’s what he would say. He’d try to tell a
story and it was gone.
MR. MADISON: You mentioned Stanley Jewett.
MR. MARSHALL: Right.
MR. MADISON: Tell us about your relationship with him.
MR. MARSHALL: Stanley Jewett was what was called Regional Biologist for the Biological
Survey when I knew him when I was a boy. Prior to that, he was in charge of animal control in
the state, predatory animal control. Then, Ira Gabrielson was in charge of rodent control. They
developed quite a partnership between the two of them.
MR. MADISON: You said, “In the state”. What that in the state of Oregon?
MR. MARSHALL: Yes, the state of Oregon. That’s right. They developed a close partnership
which lead eventually to the writing of Gabrielson’s and Jewett’s Birds of Oregon. They really
finished that up in 1936. It was published in 1940. Jewett was around the Audubon Society. He
was very shy at first. My Dad was Program Chairman for the Society and he would finally get
Jewett to talk. Jewett took kind of a liking to me because I was a kid, and a birder. One of my
favorite trips where he was involved was to the Malheur Refuge for a whole week. He led most
of the trip and he’d point things out to me. Apparently, I would ask the right questions and he
started inviting my father and me to his home. I wasn’t old enough to drive. His basement was
full of specimens. They were study skins of birds. He was a great collector of birds. He started
me to taking notes on my field trips. Then I met a boy named Tom McAllister. He was the
boyhood friend we discussed earlier. Tom would join us too.
MR. MADISON: He is the Lewis and Clark historian!
MR. MARSHALL: Yes. Then, there was a third boy named William Telfer. The three of us
bicycled around much of the state on various birding and camping trips. Jewett would say, “I
want to see your notes!” Then, we had lots of questions because in those days we didn’t have
good field guides. We’d say we had found this or that, and Jewett would say, “That sounds
reasonable.” Another one of his expressions was, “Possible, but not probable.” He was very
outspoken man, which was kind of his downfall, because he was so outspoken and blunt. He
presided over the Christmas bird counts and determined what went on the list and what didn’t.
Because again, we didn’t have good field guides in those times. This was in the 1930’s. We
didn’t have good field guides and people couldn’t afford them if they did. They didn’t have
good optics. So Jewett kind of passed on everything. He gave very good lectures, which I got a
lot out of. I got to know Jewett very well because of visits to his house. Like I say, he was very
outspoken. When Ira Gabrielson went to Washington, D.C., Jewett kind of assumed he’d be
appointed Regional Director. If you look in Ira Gabrielson’s memoirs, you’ll see that he felt that
Jewett didn’t have the personality. He was so blunt and outspoken. He was the farthest from a
diplomat you could find. He was an excellent scientist, yet he’d never been to college. That’s
one of the things. He was self taught. It was an amazing thing about him; how knowledgeable
he was. Jewett and Gabrielson made many trips about the state together. I don’t know what else
to say about him except about how I got into the Fish and Wildlife Service.
MR. MADISON: Tell us that.
MR. MARSHALL: Jewett kept advising us that if we wanted to work with FWS, which was
then the Bureau of Biological Survey, we should get a summer job where there was trail building
or whatever. Some summer job in the out of doors. When Tom McAllister and I were seventeen
years old and still in high school they came around recruiting boys to work in the forest. Tom
and I wanted to be Forest Fire Lookouts. So we signed up and were sent to the Fremont National
Forest. Tom was put on a lookout called Hager Mountain. I was put on one called Coleman
Point. Seventeen year olds, all by ourselves. No visitors in those days, and no travel because of
the war. We both went through it. We kept bird notes. Jewett looked them over and told us,
“This would make a good article for the Auk (the scientific journal of the American
Ornithologists’ Union).” So as seventeen year olds we had a paper published on the birds of
Fremont National Forest in a prestigious journal. Thanks to Jewett.
MR. MADISON: That’s very cool.
MR. MARSHALL: He thought we should do it. He hardly helped us at all. We did it and it
went through! I went to work after the war back with the Forest Service for a couple of
summers, and then with the National Park Service. Then between my junior and senior year I
wondered how I could get into FWS, because that is really where my interests lay. So I called
Jewett and asked him, “How can I get into FWS?” He said, “You come down to my office!”
That was his response. So I went down to his office. He showed me a Form 57 and told me
about student assistant positions on Refuges, of which there were three in Region One. There
was one at Malhuer, one at Tule Lake and a new one at the newly established Stillwater Refuge.
So I filled out the forms. It looked like I was going to get the job. He introduced me to the
Regional Refuge Supervisor, Kenneth F. MacDonald. It looked pretty favorable and then
nothing happened…and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and April was showing up. I
had to get a job for the summer. So I called up Jewett and asked, “What do I do?:” He says,
“You come down to my office!” So I went down there and he marched me into Kenneth
MacDonald’s office. He says, “Mac, have you got this boy a job, or don’t you have a job, which
is it?” I told you how blunt and outspoken he was! Mac kind of chewed on his cigar and kind of
grunted a little bit and decided he had a job for me. I understand now that he didn’t want to
follow Jewett’s instructions. What’s more, Jewett told Mac that he should put me on at
Stillwater Refuge because it was new and I could do great there because it was a brand new
refuge and nobody had done any real work there. Anyway, I ended up on the Stillwater Refuge.
In the middle of the summer J. Clark Salyer showed up and he asked me if I wanted to come to
work for FWS permanently. That was a surprise too. That’s about all I can remember about
Jewett.
MR. MADISON: Okay, well let’s talk a little about Gabrielson now.
MR. MARSHALL: Okay. Gabrielson was Secretary for the Oregon Audubon Society for a
number of years. But his time as Secretary was just before when I can remember. I was
probably about nine or ten years old. I really don’t remember him except that I know my Dad
would talk about him, and how he was always getting called back to Washington to meet with
Ding Darling. I never got to know him really. My folks knew him well. My father insisted that
I should know him because he used to dangle me on his knee. I don’t remember any of that. But
in later years when I was at Malheur and Gabrielson showed up to give a speech along with a
local Congressman Al Uhlman. I introduced myself. He knew my father so he knew who I was.
By then he was out of FWS and head of the Wildlife Management Institute. So I met him and he
obviously knew of me.
What happened next was that I got into trouble over the William L. Finley National
Wildlife Refuge establishment and the establishment of the Basket Slough Refuge because the
General Accounting Office didn’t like the fact that we had purchased so uplands with duck
stamp money. This was not illegal but it was, according to them, not the intent. But I remember,
we had to buy the land and the owners would sell either all or nothing. This delighted me in a
way because I wanted to see some rounded out refuges with not just wetlands. I wanted to save
some of the native oak trees and oak grasslands, which were rapidly disappearing. Anyway, it
was splashed across the Oregonian newspaper about the GAO investigation and the Regional
Director was not the least bit happy with me. I was the main line of defense against the GAO.
Well, after it got in the press and was spread all over, Ira Gabrielson showed up! He came out
from Washington and said that he wanted to see those refuges. He had just one day. We put him
in our airplane and took him down there. We showed him the Finley Refuge and the Basket
Slough Refuge and what the situation was. I asked him, “What are we going to do about this?”
He answer was, “Nothing!” I asked him what he meant. He said, “Don’t worry about it! To hell
with them!” “To hell with them”, he kept saying. That’s all I could get out of him. The whole
issue just died. I don’t know what he did! But the issue just died!
MR. MADISON: Well, he had a lot of respect in Washington.
MR. MARSHALL: Oh, I know!
MR. MADISON: It may have been that he was able to quash it.
MR. MARSHALL: He must have done something! I asked John Gottschalk about it years later
and he said that it came up at an Interior hearing and Julia Butler-Hansen said, “What are you
going to do about this Mr. Gottschalk?” And he said, “I told her, ‘absolutely nothing’!” Her
reply to him was, “Well, I guess that’s that!”
MR. MADISON: Oh, the good old days!
MR. MARSHALL: Then, I got to know Gabrielson really well. He found out that I was being
transferred to Washington. Again, I don’t know how could have known that; or how he could
have cared one way or the other. But he found out. He called me on the phone. He said, “I hear
you’re going to be transferred. You’re going to be back here. A neighbor of ours is going on
sabbatical for a year and wants to rent his house.” So I talked to him about the house and I told
him I would take it. We didn’t have anywhere else to go. So I lived two doors from Gabrielson
and I really got to know him then. His stories and all…The biggest thing he talked about was
how when he was Director he was left alone to manage the Service without any political
interference from anybody above. The Secretary told him that he didn’t know anything about
wildlife and that he [Gabrielson] was to run things as he saw what was correct. If he had any
problems, he was to let the Secretary know. But otherwise, he would be left alone. He didn’t
have to deal with any Assistant Secretaries or Under-Secretaries. He was just to operate. He
was very intent on keeping politics, and partisanship out of the FWS and the wildlife issues. He
really worked hard at that. And it was his great disappointment, I learned after I really got know
him, was that it had become political and he didn’t want to see wildlife as a Republican or
Democratic issue. He was very strong on that even though his brother was the Chairman of the
Republican National Committee. He talked to his brother all the time. I don’t know how many
times I was in the house and he was talking to his brother. Maybe that’s how he knew a lot of
things were going to happen. He was very close to his brother but he would never claim to be a
Republican or Democrat. You couldn’t tell.
MR. MADISON: He was wise that way. Did he talk about anything else that you can
remember when you were neighbors?
MR. MARSHALL: Oh, he talked about all sorts of things. One of his interesting stories was
about how he became Director of FWS. He was continually called back to consult with Ding
Darling. Darling relied on him for so much information. Ding told him one day that they were
going to go and see the Secretary. Gabe said that he had no idea why they were going to do this.
He got in the office and Darling said, “Mr. Ickes, this is the new Director of FWS.” He wasn’t
even asked, he was just told!
MR. MADISON: What was his reaction?
MR. MARSHALL: He was kind of set aback, I can tell you! He really didn’t want to make that
move. He liked it out here in Portland and the west. But he was called back there so much.
MR. MADISON: It probably cut back a little bit on his travel. But he was a great Director
anyway!
MR. MARSHALL: Oh yeah!
MR. MADISON: Are there any other reminiscences you want to share about Gabe?
MR. MARSHALL: No that’s about all I can remember.
MR. MADISON: What about J. Clark Salyer? Did you know him at all?
MR. MARSHALL: Oh yeah.
MR. MADISON: Tell us a little bit about Salyer since we have a few minutes left on the tape.
MR. MARSHALL: My first introduction to Salyer was, as I said, I was just a student on the
Stillwater Refuge. He came to inspect the refuge and talk to the local sportsmen. He was taken
on a tour of the refuge during the day. They used my assigned vehicle since I had the only four-while
drive vehicle, a jeep pickup. The Refuge Manage borrowed it so he could take Salyer
around. There was just room for Salyer in the front next to the Refuge Manager. The Refuge
Supervisor from the Regional Office Ken MacDonald was a very fastidious person. He had to sit
on the box in the back. I can’t imagine it. It must have been a terribly dusty trip. Anyway, that
evening after they came back from their trip, I happened to walk into the Refuge Office which
was upstairs in an old bank building in Fallon, Nevada. I walked in there and there was this big
guy standing in his shorts! Tom Horn, the Refuge Manager says, “Dave, meet J. Clark Salyer!”
So I shook hands with the head of the Refuge System, standing in his shorts! He was changing
from his field clothes to his business clothes. I don’t know why, or how it happened, but Salyer
said, “Fine, how would you like to go to work for us permanently?” How or why he took a
liking to me, I don’t know. Tom Horn always insisted that he didn’t say anything to him, but
that’s the answer I got. So I ran onto him off and on. He was always backing me up on things of
a biological nature. He was a good Biologist and he seemed to know everything that was going
on. That’s why when the Duck Stamp loan came about in the late 1950’s, they asked for
nominations for wildlife refuges. I nominated the area that is now the William L. Finley Refuge
and Basket Slough. Typical Salyer, unbeknownst to me, he drove around the country in his big
Buick. He wouldn’t fly. I was in the Regional Office a year or so later and he said to me, in the
presence of the Refuge Supervisor, “I like that Muddy Creek area, buy it!” It was just like that!
I found out that he had sneaked in there on this private land with his Buick and looked at it.
Even though it wasn’t during the winter season when things are wet and waterfowl present, he
said he liked it. He said, “Buy it!” He always remembered me, and I guess the things I said.
One time I went out with him and some Realty people to look at Deer Island, which was
a potential refuge along the lower Columbia River. And typical Salyer, we drove out there in a
government car. We drove out there in this car to this area with a No Trespassing sign. We ran
into the owner. I found out later that it was the owner. I know one of the owners today. Salyer
said, “We’re from the Corps of Engineers, we’re out looking at the dikes!” That was his
statement! We had a nice little talk with the guy, and a little later Salyer said, “Well boys, I
guess we’d better be getting on to Astoria.” We were no more going to Astoria than we were
going to New York City!
MR. MADISON: That’s a great story!
MR. MARSHALL: That was one of my great experiences with Salyer.
MR. MADISON: Any other experiences with Salyer?
MR. MARSHALL: Not that I can think of right off. I’ll probably think of some more tonight.
MR. MADISON: Well, this has been great Dave.
MR. MARSHALL: Yeah.
MR. MADISON: Thank you very much for doing this.
