Oral History Cover Sheet
Name: Art Hawkins/Betty Hawkins
Date of Interview:
Location of Interview: ??
Interviewer: Mark Madison
Approximate years worked for Fish & Wildlife Service: 30+
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held:
Most Important Projects:
Colleagues and Mentors:
Most Important Issues:
Brief Summary of Interview: two brief snippets of conversation between Art and Betty Hawkins and Mark Madison. Basically covering Betty’s meeting Art; her family farm, nesting studies; the three children of Art and Betty Hawkins; spending time between Canada and the US; Aldo Leopold.
Proper names that I couldn’t confirm are in red font w/ a question mark -- Gilbert Ziegler [?]. Overlapping voices occasionally made the conversation hard to hear. These times are noted in brackets and in blue font w/ a question mark – [indecipherable – (what I think I might have heard) ?]. 1
Various fragments of an oral history/conversational with Art Hawkins and his wife, Betty Hawkins. Interviewed by Mark Madison.
AH -- … was one of his few things that… and he thought the Service was not doing so much a… doing what they could, and that they’d gone… leaned too far toward the DU philosophy.
MM -- I think he sort of felt, the times that… when I talked to him, that maybe DU had [it’s] hand in the Service’s back pocket.
AH -- Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. And he even thought that I was on the liberal side. And everybody else thought that I was ultra conservative.
MM -- Ultra conservative, yeah. Yeah.
AH -- But he was… well, he was the… very nice. Like, one time, on my birthday, we had breakfast, and he came over and said ‘this is for you.’ And it was a nice little painting, ‘bout that size.
MM -- Oh, my gosh.
AH -- A pothole.
MM -- Yeah.
AH -- He’d been over visiting pothole country with us, and this was a… so that’s still in our prize…
MM -- Yeah.
AH -- … pictures, you know.
MM -- The first year… when our first daughter… he sent down a little color… he called it a ‘Baby Canvasback for Baby Emily’. It was just a picture of, you know, a baby canvasback…
AH and BH -- [Indecipherable – overlapping voices ?]
MM -- Yeah. Yeah. And quite… you know, she doesn’t appreciate it, but I sure do.
AH -- Uh huh.
MM -- I think…
AH -- We got… Pete Ward’s are…
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MM -- Oh, sure, you bet it is.
AH -- Pete is working on… we were… when we were up there -- not last summer, the summer before -- we went up two summers in a row there, but one summer we spent a week or so, right at Delta,
MM -- Uh hum. Uh hum.
AH -- …and got reacquainted with Pete and his family. And Pete took us out and showed us… Amy is quite talented herself, you know, in artwork… and so, she was… and [indecipherable – Joe (?)] took Amy downstairs down in their basement and showed her… she’s left it the same as it was when Al left it.
MM -- Uh hum. Yep.
AH -- And [indecipherable] that was especially… a special event, particularly for Amy…
MM -- To get down there.
AH -- Yeah, she…
MM -- Joe finally took me down.
BREAK/JUMP/CHANGE IN TAPE
BH -- Well, my father’s farm was one of ten that were part of the Faville Grove Wildlife Management Area.
MM -- Okay.
BH -- That Art -- and some of the other students -- worked on, while they were with Leopold – graduates.
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- And I think there were about 2000 acres in all. And that included up on the crawfish prairie…
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- … while there were still partridges, at that time.
MM -- Okay.
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BH -- And one of the things that Art, and Gilbert Ziegler - Danny Ziegler [?] - he was one of the grads, stayed around the neighborhood. They would stay with us, or with some of the other neighbor families…
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- … and get their meals, when they came out to do field work.
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- So they had this experimental winter feeding, and nesting studies, and… planting… they planted where the gulleys had…
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- … washed out, they planted shrubs and trees and so on. Overall, a nice improvement for the whole neighborhood. A lot of the neighbors were interested in it, and they liked Professor Leopold. And the students -- they were just very fond of these students who came. Especially Art! And Art had a room in the old house next to our house -- it was part of the farm.
MM -- Okay.
BH -- And that was at Faville Grove…
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- … about 20 miles or so, east of Madison.
MM -- East of Madison, okay. Uh hum.
BH -- And so, it was fun to have Art around the farm there. And he would get… Mother would provide his meals and do the washing…
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- … when he had something that needed washing. And we took care of his dog, Gus, when he was back in town, in Madison.
MM -- Uh hum. Uh hum.
BH -- So that’s how we got acquainted with Art.
MM -- Okay. Okay.
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BH -- And he came in the early spring of… 1935, Art?
AH -- Uh hum.
BH -- So that… that was… and I remember seeing Art drive in the yard. We had a measles sign on our house -- a red measles sign… we were quarantined, at that time, and we watched out the window as Art drove in, in his little Ford, Model A, with a… rumble seat.
MM -- Uh huh. Uh huh.
BH -- And my father came in and said ‘well, that young man has a good handshake.’
MM – Hummm!
BH -- Liked his handshake.
MM – Okay.
BH -- And I remember when he brought him in the kitchen door and we got to shake hands with him too.
AH -- Did I come in the house even when the…
BH -- I think you did -- eventually. You came to the back. So that was fun. But one of the things they did -- Art and Danny did -- was put up a blind so we could watch the prairie chicken booming grounds.
MM -- Uh huh. Uh huh.
BH -- So, for the first time, in all those years, my grandfather, and my mother - who always talked about ‘in the old days’… at least grandpa said that you could hear the prairie chickens, and there must have been at least two miles across country up to the crawfish prairie, and they could hear them, in the early years. But there, for the first time, Grandpa got to go up there and sit in that blind…
MM -- And actually see them.
BH -- … before summer ends. And one or two… one of the two of them, I’m not sure whether Papa did or not, but they all were very thrilled with all these different things that they were close to, after Art and the others came around to the neighborhood. And that was fun.
AH -- There were a lot of other people that lived around…
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MM -- Sure. Well, there’s so many things we take for granted in the natural world. Yeah.
BH – Oh, yeah. In high school… I had a teacher in the high school… science teacher brought some students out. And Art started a little wildlife…
AH -- Club.
BH -- … club at the high school. And those kids got to come up to… not a lot at a time, just three or four, at the most.
AH -- And they do help on nesting studies you know…
BH – [] … so there we would cruise…
MM – Okay.
BH -- … cruise the hayfields after… looking for [indecipherable], keep track of what we found. And Art would get us a reward -- a nickel for every nest, I think it was. Or he’d buy us a cone at the Big Boy shop in Lake Mills.
MM -- Oh.
AH -- Double-decker for a nickel in those years.
MM -- Wow. Wow.
BH -- So, all around, it was a great fun for quite a few years.
MM -- What was your maiden name?
BH -- Tillotson.
MM -- Oh, okay, T I L L O T S O N?
BH -- Yeah.
MM -- Okay. Okay. There’s a Tillotson from Benson, Minnesota, too, apparently…
BH -- Oh, is that so? From Benson?
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- Oh, I wonder where……..
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Break/Jump/Change in tape
BH -- … nothing there but wild prairie hay…
MM -- Uh huh. Uh huh.
BH -- … stacks and the [indecipherable] would fly over…
MM -- Oh, sure.
BH -- [indecipherable] plovers would be there in spring. My father would come home and say ‘well, the plovers are back’ and, of course, I liked the plovers and it was wild…
AH -- April the 14th, that’s when they came…
BH -- … quite wild and nice up there.
AH -- April 14th
BH -- On my birthday. We kind of look for that date to see the plovers back.
MM -- When were you married?
BH -- July of 41.
MM -- July of 41. Okay. And I …
BH -- Two months after Art had gone in the service.
MM -- … had gone in the service. Okay. Okay.
BH -- He was stationed at Camp Grant, so he could come home on weekends once in a while.
MM -- Well… where’s Ellen live?
BH -- She lives at [indecipherable]. Out on [indecipherable]…
MM -- Oh, okay.
BH -- … on the sawmill trail…
MM -- Okay. Okay.
BH -- … on the north shore of Lake Superior.
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AH -- Works for the Forest Service.
MM -- She works for the Forest Service.
BH -- And her husband too, Rick Vandenberg.
MM -- Uh hum.
BH -- And they have a little boy.
MM -- And then Amy…
BH -- And Amy lives [indecipherable – overlapping voices]
MM -- And Tex, yeah. [indecipherable – overlapping voices]
BH -- Yeah [indecipherable – overlapping voices].
MM -- Yeah, those three… Okay. Okay.
BH -- Yeah.
MM -- Well, you must have had a pretty rewarding married life, I’m sure. A lot of traveling and maybe a lot of time spent by yourself too.
BH -- [indecipherable – several voices] wonderful and I was so glad that we had gone to Canada. Because that was… Art didn’t want to stay down in Illinois where you never got up to the breeding grounds.
MM -- Uh huh. Uh huh.
BH -- And he was so thrilled at the prospect at getting up there. And that was really a wonderful experience -- all of it, for us.
AH -- We were spending roughly half the year in Canada at that time.
MM -- And then… Betty you and the kids would go with, too.
BH -- Yes, we did.
MM – Okay.
BH -- And when Tex… well, he started school… I don’t know, whenever he started school…. He did go to school at Delta to finish out a year -- in the first grade I think.
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MM -- Okay.
BH -- ‘Cause Al Hochbaum arranged that.
MM -- Uh hum. Uh hum.
BH -- And we never paid for it or anything. It was just included in the… Mrs. Rutledge’s class, at the little school right there at Delta.
MM -- Okay.
BH -- Wasn’t that nice?
MM -- Yes. Yes.
BH -- And then…
[indecipherable – overlapping voices]
BH -- In the fall, when Tex had to get back to school, I drove home a little early…
MM -- Okay.
BH -- … with Tex and Ellen. But, we didn’t have Amy then. But Ellen was just a baby
MM -- Uh hum. Uh hum.
AH -- One interesting thing about Leopold was that, at the time we had that conservation club at the high school… at Lake Mills, we had a little contest for… well, essay contest… and Leopold himself came out and graded the papers.
BH -- Essays.
AH -- And as busy as he was, with national affairs, you know, big time… do things like that. Then he’d come out there… and another time, to speak to the men’s club. And he gave the students… or… support that way, you know. If they had special things going on in their little community – why, he spent some time getting acquainted with them… the people. And I thought he was the…
MM -- He sounds like he was just a down to the earth guy.
AH -- Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was. I never saw him really get mad. The closest to it was in relation to Ducks Unlimited, I think.
MM -- Uh hum. Uh hum.
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AH -- Where he was quite mad about the way they were handling their property [indecipherable].
MM -- Uh hum. Uh huh. Well, they still do.
End of taping
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