John Winship oral history transcript

              INTERVIEW WITH JOHN WINSHIP

APRIL 25, 2003 BY DOROTHE NORTON

Also present Mrs. John Winship (Barbara)

MS. NORTON: Well good morning John.

MR. WINSHIP: Good morning.

MS. NORTON: It’s good to see you, especially in Albuquerque!

MR. WINSHIP: Well, I’m glad to see you. It’s wonderful that you could come.

MS. NORTON: Yeah, I’ll probably come more often now too because my son got

transferred to Colorado and it’s only about a seven hour drive! The first thing I want to

know is where you were born and when.

MR. WINSHIP: I was born in Alba, Michigan on June 16th. Do you really want to know

the year?

MS. NORTON: Sure!

MR. WINSHIP: 1930.

MS. NORTON: Well see, that’s not too bad. What were your parent’s names?

MR. WINSHIP: My father’s name was William Eortt Winship and my mother was Ida

Lelo. We gave that name to our daughter and she hasn’t forgiven us yet.

MS. NORTON: What were their jobs an education?

MR. WINSHIP: My mother was a housewife all of the time. She stayed home with the

kids all of the time. My father worked for the railroad in Saginaw for years. I don’t

remember what railroad it was. He had pretty bad asthma and finally decided he had to

get somewhere else. Somebody told him he should go north. So he went to northern,

lower Michigan from Saginaw. He worked in the lumberyards up there where they were

cutting timber out in the swamps for several years. Then he finally opened up a grocery

store. That’s what he did for the rest of his life.

MS. NORTON: In the Upper Peninsula?

MR. WINSHIP: No, in the northern, lower portion; just about 40 miles south of the

Mackinaw bridge at Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.

MS. NORTON: So you spent all of your early years then in Michigan?

MR. WINSHIP: Yep.

MS. NORTON: What did you do in your early years? Did you do anything special like

bird watch or hunt or fish?

MR. WINSHIP: Oh yeah. People talk about taking guns to school now, which is of

course a no-no. But I always took my gun to school. I handed it to the Janitor at the

door who was ringing the school bell. He’d put it in his furnace room. After school, I’d

pick my gun up and walk out the back door and into the woods and go hunting. I always

liked to hunt and fish and just be out in the woods. Fishing season, in the spring when

the Trout would start running; the Rainbow Trout in the Jordan River, which is now a

wilderness river. I used to have a Model A Ford, 1929-30 or 31. I’d jump out of the

second story window of the school, jump in my car and head for the river.

MS. NORTON: Did you have any jobs as a child other than working at home.

MR. WINSHIP: No. In 1941 the Second World War started and there wasn’t any guys

around. They were all in the military. So at 14 I was driving a big semi truck hauling

potatoes. I didn’t have a license. But it was twenty miles away. I’d haul potatoes over

and we put them on a railroad car in Gaylord. Yeah, I did a lot of…of course you tell

your kids now that you worked for a dollar a day. I hoed Asparagus on my hand and

knees for a dollar a day for many days. I always had a job driving a truck and hauling. I

used to shovel coal off of railroad cars into a flatbed truck and haul it out to the

farmhouses, which burned coal in those days.

MS. NORTON: You were busy!

MR. WINSHIP: I was busy. I worked hard. When I wasn’t doing that sort of stuff, I

worked for my father in the store.

MR. NORTON: Did you have any hobbies or books or events that you really enjoyed?

MR. WINSHIP: I didn’t have any hobbies other than just my love to be out in the

woods. I spent all of my time fishing or hunting or just…I’d get out of school and lots of

times on Saturday and it was about six miles from where we lived to the Jordan River. I’d

run through the woods or jogged through the woods, cross-country, no roads, no nothing.

But I knew the way. I had been there so many times. I’d run all the way to the Jordan

River.

MS. NORTON: Well good for you! What High School did you go to?

MR. WINSHIP: I went to the Alba High School and I was one of …in 1949 there was 13

in the graduating class.

MS. NORTON: Oh my goodness! So 1949 was when you graduated?

MR. WINSHIP: Yes.

MS. NORTON: What University did you attend?

MR. WINSHIP: I went to Michigan State University after the Navy.

MS. NORTON: Okay, so you were in the military first, right after High School?

MR. WINSHIP: I went right after High School practically. Yeah, in 1949, later 1949 I

went into the Navy. I got out of the Navy in 1953. Then I went to Michigan State

University.

MS. NORTON: When you were in the military what duty stations did you have?

MR. WINSHIP: Well, I was in the Navy and I had actually enlisted for three years.

Coming back from the Mediterranean, President Truman awarded everybody another year

because the Korean War was still going on. So we all enlisted for three and got four out of

it. I was on a destroyer most of the time. There were several different destroyers. The

Ishawood, and the Perry in Cape Perry. And then, because I was in underwater sound

and sonar, and submarine detection they had a program at that time where they were

cross training. They took submarine guys and put them on destroyers and took destroyer

guys and put them on submarines. So I was back and forth on several different boats.

MS. NORTON: Did you do any service over seas?

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah, I was actually out of the United States a little over three years of

the four that I was in the Navy. I was mostly in the Mediterranean.

MS. NORTON: Did you get any decorations when you got out?

MR. WINSHIP: No, you know I had some ribbons from the Korean War, but not a

personal decoration. It was just a theatre decoration.

MS. NORTON: So when you got out of the Navy you went back to college?

MR. WINSHIP: Yep, I started college in 1953.

MS. NORTON: What degree did you get?

MR. WINSHIP: I got a degree in Wildlife Management and Biology. I graduated in 1958.

MS. NORTON: Did you go back for a Master degree?

MR. WINSHIP: No, I didn’t go back. I had a wife and three children and needed to go to

work. So I went to work for the Michigan State Conservation Department.

MS. NORTON: When and where and how did you meet your wife?

MR. WINSHIP: Oh boy, I ought to let her tell you that story I guess. Another friend of

mine, a Navy guy, we were in Boston having repairs at dry-dock when the ship was in.

We were out on our way to Church [wife coughs in background] and saw these two

young ladies. The guy I was with hollered at one of them whose name was Phyllis. We

stopped and got to visiting with them. He made a date with Phyllis and I didn’t get a date

at that time. But I went out with Barb’s girlfriend. Later on I started dating her. That’s

kind of it…we met on the streets of Boston.

MS. NORTON: When and where did you get married?

MR. WINSHIP: I got out of the Navy in 1953 and went to Alaska to make a million

dollars quick. I didn’t do that of course. I spent the summer of 1953 up there and then

came home and we got married that fall in Alba.

MS. NORTON: So you’re going to have your fifty-year anniversary soon?

MR. WINSHIP: On September 20th it will be fifty years.

MS. NORTON: That’s wonderful!

MR. WINSHIP: Yep!

MS. NORTON: So you have how many children?

MR. WINSHIP: We’ve got three children; two girls and a boy.

MS. NORTON: What are they doing now?

MR. WINSHIP: Both of the girls are nurses. Barb is a nurse. Our daughter in Salt Lake

has been in the Labor and Deliver Unit for years and still works there. She’s married with

three kids. Our other daughter is in Seattle. She works as a nurse in Seattle. She worked

in Intensive Care for years and the Emergency Room. She has a daughter and a son.

They are all grown up now. [Grandchildren] They are all in college.

MS. NORTON: Where is your son now?

MR. WINSHIP: Our son is here in Albuquerque. He moved here three years ago and

he’s remarried here. He has a nine-year-old stepdaughter.

MS. NORTON: What does he do for a living?

MR. WINSHIP: He is a sales person for Albuquerque Reprographics. They deal with

engineers and architects and that kind of stuff on big building projects. He is doing well.

He loves the weather in New Mexico.

MS. NORTON: Oh, that’s what Cambry always says to me, ‘when are you going to

move down here? What do you like those winters up there for?’ So now, we’ll go to

your career, okay? Why did you want to work for the FWS?

MR. WINSHIP: I was working and very happy in Michigan. I was working for the State

of Michigan Conservation Department and they had budgetary problems and were laying

off, mostly in the Biology Department. So they transferred be in the Law Enforcement

Division as a pilot. So I started flying for them out of Marquette, Michigan, as a Law

Enforcement Officer. I worked there for about eight months and the Game Division chief

from Michigan called me up and said that Harvey Nelson from, no actually it was Bob

Burwell called. He called Harry Ruell who was the Game Division chief in Michigan. He

said that there was a job in Minneapolis for a pilot/biologist. I don’t know why they

called Harry. I guess Harry was talking to Mr. Burwell. Anyway, he said, “I don’t want

to get rid of him but we’ve got a guy flying for us in Marquette who is a pilot/biologist.”

Harvey flew over and interviewed me at Marquette. I don’t think there was a lot of

hesitation. I decided to do it. It was a job that I could combine both things with, you

know. So I went to work in 1962 in Minneapolis as a pilot/biologist covering eleven

states. That’s where I ended up meeting so many of the Game Agents.

MS. NORTON: What did you think the pay and benefits were like compared to what

you had been making with the State?

MR. WINSHIP: As I recall they were not that much more. It was more, but the

potential was greater. There was a career ladder that was quite more diversified that

staying with the State.

MS. NORTON: Where did you go from there? You were the Regional Pilot for many

years in Minneapolis.

MR. WINSHIP: I was there for twenty-two years. I flew the eleven states and then I

think they changed the boundaries of the Region a little bit and we dropped off a couple

of the western states.

MS. NORTON: The Dakotas and Nebraska.

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah. Then, Ellis Clatt, who I was working for at one time in

Minneapolis; he was an ARD there. He moved back to Albuquerque. He got down here

and he kept calling me and calling me. He said that he wanted to put together an aviation

program because they didn’t have one. I don’t how long that went on. It went on for a

long time; months and months. It was probably in access of a year. Finally one day I

was on the roof in Minneapolis shoveling about four feet of snow off of my roof. A cold

front had just gone through and the wind chill was 70 below zero. Barb came out and told

me that Ellis was on the phone. I got down off my roof and he says, “When you coming

to Albuquerque? I’m thinking about going and playing a round of golf.” This was in

January. Anyway, to make a long story short, we moved to Albuquerque in 1984.

MS. NORTON: And you continued your career here until you were eligible to retire?

MR. WINSHIP: Right.

MS. NORTON: So you had promotion opportunities with FWS when you started?

MR. WINSHIP: Yep, everything worked out good. We built the aviation program up

good. I think we got into a lot of, actually, I’m not bragging at all, but Don Riley was a

photographer that I was able to hire. He was an ex-military guy. We got a lot of excess

military equipment and generated an aerial mapping program, which had never been done

really as far as the FWS was concerned. So we started doing that. Don was very

instrumental in getting the equipment. He had the expertise and the dark room

capabilities. We ended up with a dark room in the Regional Office, which was a first, I

think, of anywhere in the whole FWS. We started doing photography. We went to

Alaska and did some of the first photography out on the Yukon Delta. We ended up later

going up there with much better equipment and did some of the first, if not the first

photography, on the Artic Game Range and the Yukon Flats and the Kenai Refuge. Then

we went out on the Yukon Delta Refuge, which is about 450 miles west of Anchorage.

We got the photo program going full steam and it’s still going, only more sophisticated

now than it was then.

MS. NORTON: It’s spread out to the other Regions now, I’m sure.

MR. WINSHIP: It has! Region 3 is still….they’ve got a similar camera. After we

bought this three hundred thousand dollar camera, they bought one up there and started

doing similar things. A lot of the photography, I did some of the first stuff on the

Whooping Crane and things up in the Northwest Territory and up in Canada and the

Artic. It’s going big guns!

MS. NORTON: Did you ever socialize with any of the people that you worked with?

MR. WINSHIP: I socialized actually, just during the work encounters. I wish I could

remember all of the guy’s names. There was Gus Bondy. I am trying to think of the

guys in North Dakota.

MS. NORTON: Bill McClure?

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah. McClure and Dave Fischer, Glenn Orten. I ended up working

with these people and quite often I ended up in their homes in the evening. I had dinner

with them and their wives. An interesting thing, or, I always thought it was interesting; it

was kind of weird maybe, but because of budgets, and everybody had a budget; Law

Enforcement had a budget and Refuges had a budget and it wasn’t really very popular for

me to spend much time Game Agents that didn’t have money to pay for the flying. But

anyway when I was out there, I always flew all of those guys. If they needed to look at

something, why, we went and looked at. Don’t tell Forrest Carpenter that though!

MS. NORTON: That’s good! Well, Forrest Carpenter is no longer with us.

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah I know.

MS. NORTON: Did you ever do any of the recreation things that they did in the field

like play ball, or bowl or golf or anything like that?

MR. WINSHIP: No, I never did. We had one airplane, and it was me, and there were

eleven states. I would leave, as my wife would tell you on Monday morning, and get

back at the end of the week usually; sometimes not. I never had that kind of time.

MS. NORTON: How many hours a year did you fly? You had to keep a log didn’t you?

MR. WINSHIP: Oh yeah! I actually had, I think I flew more hours than anyone ever has

in the FWS. The biggest year I ever had was 1120 hours in one year. That’s approaching

a hundred hours a month. I averaged, or it was common to get up to 800 to 850 or 900

hours so I ended up with over 25,000 flight hours.

MS. NORTON: Wow! How did your career affect your family?

MR. WINSHIP: Well, I think mainly because of my wife; she held the fort. If it hadn’t

have been for her, why, I think it could have affected our kids. I wasn’t home. I was

gone. She held things together. I’ve have said many times I don’t, well, I suppose if I

was going to be selfish, which maybe I was at the time; I may do it all over again because I

love to fly to much. I didn’t necessary like being gone, but that was part of the job. We

had to eat, but I missed a lot. When I think of sports and plays, and everything our kids

were in, I was never there. I mean virtually, never.

MS. NORTON: So your college degree was in Wildlife Management and Biology, so

how and where and when did you learn to fly? Did you take lessons to do that?

MR. WINSHIP: As soon as I got out of the Navy. My brother had an airplane. And we

had a mutual friend who as a flight instructor. The airplane burned about three gallons an

hour and I putzed around in that thing while I was going to college. While I was going to

college I got my private license, and a commercial license. Then, when I moved to

Albuquerque, with the Department of the Interior, I got an instrument rating there and

finished off that, plus a multi-engine rating.

MS. NORTON: That’s good! So you left the FWS then when you were eligible to

retire?

MR. WINSHIP: I was actually eligible a little before I left. I probably, kind of hated to

give it up.

MS. NORTON: When did you retire?

MR. WINSHIP: 1995.

MS. NORTON: When you came to work for FWS, did you have to have any kind of

training for your job?

MR. WINSHIP: Not really. I guess I did take a little training. I went out with Art

Brasda. He was there at the time Ross Hansen was. They were both in the Regional

Office. They were both Flyway Biologists. He went out with me one day and I made

half a dozen landings with an airplane that I had never been in and he said, “Okay, you’re

on your own.” Well, actually, I went with him to North Dakota and did some duck

counting and things like that. That was the training.

MS. NORTON: What hours did you work? I know there were certain times when you

can’t fly, and when you have to get up early and that sort of thing.

MR. WINSHIP: Typically, you’d be in the air about daylight every morning. In the

summer time you’d get up at four o’clock in the morning and get out there and get in the

air by 5:30 or 6:00. They were long hours.

MS. NORTON: What day to day duties would you…would have people from other

Divisions along with you, or were you the only one in the plane?

MR. WINSHIP: I usually picked people up. It varied, like I said earlier, I flew a fair

amount for Law Enforcement people, especially during the hunting season if they had

baiting situations coming up. Or, if they just wanted to look at pre hunting situations. I

did a lot of flying like that. Most of the time my assignment was with the National

Wildlife Refuges. I would go to the particular refuge and pick the Manager up or his

assistant, or his Biologist and flew those people. Typically, I’d go cross-country alone

and then I’d go to a station and do whatever they needed to do. At that time we did a lot

of hand held photography; just shooting out the window of the airplane in a big speed

graphic 4x4 format. Mostly it was people who were working on the refuges, I flew them.

MS. NORTON: What kinds of tools, and instruments did you have to use to do that?

MR. WINSHIP: Well, you know, I think with the tools, there was always the argument

on how many ducks you counted or how many geese you counted and we always said

that if you didn’t like it you could go out and count them yourself. But I spent a lot of

time, like in mid August; I’d go to North Dakota when the ducks started to migrate in to

the grain fields. We did a lot of hazing; chasing the mallards out of wheat fields. And it

was the same way over at Oracon, you probably remember that. There were all of the

fiascoes when we would try to make the geese leave when they didn’t want to leave,

which was very unsuccessful. But we were trying. And there were a lot of depredation

situations and problems there.

MS. NORTON: Did you ever witness any new FWS inventions or innovations? Did

you ever help with anything when you started this photography project?

MR. WINSHIP: Well, we certainly came rapidly and all of a sudden. I mean, for a long

time we were in the dark ages when it came to photography. When I first went to Alaska

I had an old K-19 camera, which was an old military camera. I was doing it all by myself.

There was no navigational equipment. I had maps that weren’t very good. Since then, we

went to these three hundred thousand dollar cameras. The greatest thing has been the

global positioning systems so we can get all of our information off of the satellites, and

now, it’s programmed into the airplane. Now, we can fly transects very precisely so you

never miss anything. The camera equipment has been just unbelievable; the technology

that has come forth on the cameras. Everything is automatic; the light exposure, and you

can fly at 160 mph and the camera automatically sequences it so the overlap is perfect.

There has been big advances.

MS. NORTON: Did they have graphic lenses too? I’ve seen some when they take the

pictures from up above it’s like it’s on a graph paper.

MR. WINSHIP: Are you thinking of contour maps and stuff like that? Yeah.

MS. NORTON: Did you ever work with any animals?

MR. WINSHIP: We did a lot of mostly radio tracking. I think we did some of the first

stuff up at Agassiz Refuge. We had radios on moose and did some stuff in Alaska. They

had the Caribou. I worked with Alaska Fish and Game and did some stuff with the

Canadian Wildlife Service up in the Arctic and up in the Hudson Bay on Polar Bear stuff.

It was mostly tracking. Now, they’ve got radios on birds and fish and anything you can

put them on, they’ve got it.

MS. NORTON: How did you feel about the support you received, locally, regionally,

and federally for your jobs?

MR. WINSHIP: You mean from the people that I worked with or my bosses?

MS. NORTON: From the people you worked with and from the people in the areas that

you were working if they knew what you were doing.

MR. WINSHIP: The support as always good. We had a lot of interchange like going to

Canada. You can remember, I’m sure when all of the agents were going up there and

banding birds. They were doing it. They spent the whole summer up there banding

birds. I think we did a lot of good public relations work by being so involved with other

agencies.

MS. NORTON: And in the communities that you work in, you felt that they were glad

you were there?

MR. WINSHIP: Oh yeah! We got great support from the Canadian people and did some

survey work in Mexico with the government. That was very good. They welcomed us of

course. We were footing the bill on most of that stuff. They weren’t paying any money.

Maybe that’s why they were happy. We got…the states; I don’t think there was ever

any kind of confrontation with the states activities. We blended in with them and worked

real well with them.

MS. NORTON: Were you ever involved in any special projects?

MR. WINSHIP: I think probably the Bald Eagles projects were more of the specialty

nature. We in Region 3 in fact, started doing some of the first studies looking for nests.

That was in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. We, being Region 3 in cooperation

with the states, we did all of that initial Bald Eagle work. And of course, that’s a great

success story in itself.

MS. NORTON: My son lives in a Redwing on the [unintelligible] River and they see

Eagles come. We get out in the yard and we look for them because we are so happy when

we see them. Were there ever any major issues that you had to deal with?

MR. WINSHIP: I don’t recall any. Not really.

MS. NORTON: Do you feel that there was ever a major impediment to your job, or

your career?

MR. WINSHIP: I don’t think so. I wouldn’t say there was. I always had great support

from the Regional Director, and every Director that I worked for. That was starting with

Bob Burwell and Jack Hemphill and Harvey Nelson; I can’t remember all of them. They

were always very progressive.

MS. NORTON: I know they were very glad to have you because you were doing such a

good job! I never heard anything bad John! And I know that the agents, when they had

to fly with you, they were happy that they had you to fly them!

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah.

MS. NORTON: Who were your supervisors?

MR. WINSHIP: Well, Forrest Carpenter for years, and Joe Mazone, Ellis Clatt. A lot of

the times I reported either to the Regional Director or his ARD. Probably one of the

greatest guys; and I don’t want to make one better than the other particularly, but Mike

Spear was a tremendous guy. He had the vision of, and maybe I prompted him a few

times, but he had the vision to go after money. Jack Hemphill was another one, for

example. Under Jack Hemphill we had the first big float planes other than the ones in

Alaska. We were the first ones to go to a twin-engine airplane, which served a couple of

different purposes. Safety wise, you had an extra engine; if something went wrong you

weren’t going to go down. And the other thing was that we were able to expand our

operation and be more efficient at it because I had an instrument rating and I flew many,

many hours in the clouds cross-country to get to jobs and get home, rather than sitting

out somewhere waiting for the weather to improve. I just went. That made a big change,

and since then we’ve got a number of twin-engine airplanes.

MS. NORTON: Who do you think the individuals were who helped shape your career?

MR. WINSHIP: Well, I think Harvey Nelson would certainly have to be one. He was

very receptive on new things, and why we should be doing things differently. I

mentioned Jack Hemphill and the aviation. Not just for my career, but for the direction

that the aviation program was going, I think Mike Spear made a big impact on that.

MS. NORTON: Do you remember any of the Presidents, Secretaries of the Interior, or

Directors of FWS that you served under?

MR. WINSHIP: I think I appreciated one of the guys, the Directors, who was Lynn

Greenwalt. And I probably appreciated him more because he grew up in the system and I

think he understood it more and better than maybe most. Dave Olsen ended up out in

Washington. Of course, he has since passed away, but he was very progressive. I’ve

kind lost track of the Secretaries.

MS. NORTON: There’s James Watt. Wasn’t he Secretary?

MR. WINSHIP: Yes, James Watt.

MS. NORTON: I can’t really remember too many myself, John!

MR. WINSHIP: Every time the Administration changes of course, they change.

MS. NORTON: Did you feel that the changes in Administration affected the work?

MR. WINSHIP: I don’t think it did. I could never detect that. There are some people

who think that one administration was better than the other. As you probably have

talked to people who think that under the Democrats you get more money, or that under

the Republicans you get more money; but I never noticed that. I honestly cannot say. I

think that we always had…the may have been some lean times, but the program seemed

to go on. And the money that was allocated to the Region then became the responsibility

of the Director to determine where he was going to put it. I never felt that.

MS. NORTON: In your opinion, who do you think the individuals were who shape the

FWS?

MR. WINSHIP: There’s probably a lot of people but I guess I would go back again to

Lynn Greenwalt. I think he had probably as much influence as anybody; mainly because

he knew exactly, all of the programs. I think the guy was not, although he grew up on

Refuges, I don’t think he was prejudiced against Law Enforcement or anything else.

Maybe some Law Enforcement people would say differently.

MS. NORTON: Didn’t Lynn work in Law Enforcement, or with Law Enforcement?

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah, I think he did.

MS. NORTON: And it was in Portland wasn’t it?

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah, he was the Chief. So Lynn could, I think see the whole picture

better than anybody I could pick out. Harvey Nelson is of course another one. He had

vision for Law Enforcement and Wildlife Biology and Refuges and Eco Services and so

forth. But I think Harvey would be another good example. Harvey and Lynn and Mike

Spear.

MS. NORTON: What was the high point of your career? And I don’t mean how high

you ever flew in the air!

MR. WINSHIP: Well, I think the high point was when we were able to go with probably

the best survey airplane that we’ve ever done and we’re still doing it. There are major

surveys on all the ducks and geese and swans and whooping cranes and you name it! So

when we went to a high winged twin engine, Italian airplane with an all glass nose, you’d

just slide you seat up and it was like sitting in a bubble of glass up there. That

platform…to me, I had more fun with that airplane. It was a wonderful airplane. It was

relatively fast, yet it would slow up so it was the best tool as far as doing surveys that I

had ever had. It was fun to fly. I suppose the high point could have been that.

MS. NORTON: Did you ever have a low point? And if so, what was it?

MR. WINSHIP: I don’t think I ever had a low in my career. I mean I got up every

morning with the desire to fly. I was happy in what I was doing. So no, I don’t think I

ever had a downer.

MS. NORTON: Did you ever have a dangerous or frightening experience?

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah, there were a number of those. I guess I always operated on the

philosophy that I would always have plan B in effect if plan A went away. I almost

always did that. I say ‘almost’, I came out of Prudhoe Bay up in the Arctic one time and

I had a camera and a full load of gas and a lot of other stuff in the airplane. I was going to

Anchorage. I got into something over the Brooks Range at about 13,000 feet. I was in the

clouds and the ice was building up on the airplane and on the propellers. It was throwing

her off. I knew that if I had lost an engine up there, I’d had it. Yeah, there were some

scary things. I lost an engine on take off once, over Oklahoma. I had two other people

with me and I was able to feather the engine and shut it down and turn around and get

back in and land.

MS. NORTON: That’d be frightening!

MR. WINSHIP: Yeah! Then coming in one time with Dave Meech, we were coming

from doing some wolf surveys; I had an engine failure on a 206 just north of Nanoka

County airport. I dead sticked it in on the taxiway. So yeah, there were a few scary

times.

MS. NORTON: What was your most humorous experience?

MR. WINSHIP: Well, probably…Jim Thompson I think his name was. He was a Clerk

at Agessiz. I was up there doing to goose nesting studies and flying around in the

evening. I picked him up on the road. He wanted to go out and look at the geese with me.

It wasn’t very long after circling around that he got sick. So I handed him this big sick

sack, which was held about….Jim was a big man. He was probably six foot four, two

hundred and forty pounds. I hand him this sack and he had just had dinner. He filled that

sack up and then he squeezed the top tight and the bottom fell out. It all ended up in his

lap. So I landed on the road and made him clean it up, or we tried at least. I don’t know,

I guess it wasn’t funny at the time, but as I think back at it, it was. I’ve had a number of

those situations.

MS. NORTON: What would you like to tell others about your career with the FWS?

Not people who work for the FWS, but friends, neighbors and others.

MR. WINSHIP: If I was going to…and I have encouraged other people to go into the

service. I think it’s a wonderful organization. I think earlier, and maybe it’s a factor of

age, but I think back when I first came to work, it seemed like more of a close knit family

type situation. Maybe it’s because it was a little smaller, I don’t know. I think we’ve

kind of migrated away from that. We used to have picnics and people from the Regional

Office, everybody would kind of get together, and you knew everybody a lot more; rather

than just in an office. With the pay, you don’t get rich, but you can certainly make an

adequate living. The benefits are good. For the most part, the people throughout the

Service, I think, are good people. I’ve suggested a number of times to young people,

especially if they wanted to fly to get a degree and go for it.

MS. NORTON: What are some of the changes that you have observed in the Service

during your career, like in the personnel or in the environment?

MR. WINSHIP: Well, I think it’s become more of a challenge. The encroachment of

people and businesses and industry. When I flew on the Texas coast I was almost

amazed that anything could survive over there. The pollution was too me was, I mean, I

don’t know much about what is put into the waters, but there was so much smoke and

stuff being put in to the air and waters, practically everywhere you look. It isn’t only

Texas, but you could look at a river up from a pulp mill up in Wisconsin. There are big

challenges; endangered species is one. I my personal opinion, I think we’ve gone a little

overboard on that. We’ve alienated a lot of people from the outside the government

because we’re so…I don’t think we make totally logical decisions on some of the

endangered species. But there’s a lot of pressure from…it’s just a lot more going on. It’s

not simple anymore.

MS. NORTON: What do you think of the future? Where do you see the FWS heading?

MR. WINSHIP: I think the Service is headed in a direction where it’s going to be

beneficial to more people. I think we are going to be more aware of the people who are

coming up. We’re going to be more aware of the environment and trying to take care of it

more properly than we did. So I think it’s only going to go in one direction, and that’s

going to be good for the general population. Young people are going to see it long after

we’re gone.

MS. NORTON: I hope so. We’re just about to the end here. Do you have an

photographs or anything like a document that you would want to share to go into your

file? See, these will be transcribed and then they go into the archives.

MR. WINSHIP: You know, I think I do, but whether I can put my hand on them. I will,

in fact, I ran across some pictures the other day and as I recall it was a guy from

Missouri; Heffleman? He was a conservation officer/pilot from Missouri. There was

Glenn Orten and myself down in Missouri. I don’t know if we were chasing geese. We

probably were. I’ll look those up.

MS. NORTON: Yeah, when you locate them you can send them to me. So, whom else

do you feel we should interview? Is there anybody that you can think of that we

shouldn’t miss? We’re working with about 1800 names, but they are not necessarily all

on there. I’ve done Evie Donovan, Kim Dibsiter, Bill Swanson and quiet a few refuge

types too. Not just Law Enforcement. I just enjoyed working with you in the

Minneapolis area for so long. It’s just great to see you again when you’ve moved to

another Region.

MR. WINSHIP: It was hard to leave Minnesota. Through a lot of prayer I guess, before

I left. It was difficult. Barb had a lot of friends there, as did I. So it was very difficult to

move, but I think in the long run that probably it was a good idea.

MS. NORTON: I have done Harvey Nelson and John Ellis too. I am trying not to miss

anybody.

MR. WINSHIP: It’s too bad you couldn’t catch up with Mike Spear. He’s in Santa Fe.

MS. NORTON: He is!? Well, we will certainly try and do that! And I want to thank

you John for having the time today to do this. It was just really good to see you in

Florida, and then to see you again here!

MR. WINSHIP: Well your welcome! Where are they going to have the next one?

MS. NORTON: At Shepherdstown. At the National Conservation Training Center.

MR. WINSHIP: Oh really? I thought they were talking about….

MS. NORTON: That’s just for Law Enforcement. Now, the one for all of the FWS

could be here at Roswell, New Mexico or, in the northwest. It also could be at

Shepherdstown. As soon as we know, I’ll let you know.