Fred Jacobson oral history transcript

              ORAL HISTORY

Of

Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent (Retired)

Interviewed by

Dorothe Norton

On April 18, 2005

Oral History Program

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

National Conservation Training Center

Shepherdstown, West Virginia Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

DN: Today is Monday, April 18, 2005. This interview will be with Fred Jacobson and Dorothe Norton. Thank you.

DN: Well, thank you so much for the good directions you gave and also, then, for letting Helen bring me out so I could find your place. But, I’m glad you have the time, Fred, to be able to do this interview, and it’s just so you will never be forgotten. And I’m sure that you’ve made enough contributions to the Fish and Wildlife Service that you don’t want to be forgotten. So, let’s start out trying to find out a little bit about you, like where and when you were born.

FJ: Cumberland, Wisconsin on November 26, 1917 – Thanksgiving Day.

DN: Okay. And, did they have an education or what did they do for a living?

FJ: Their education wasn’t much because they got here in the 1880’s and my dad was a jeweler.

FJ: Watch repairman and a jeweler. He went to jewelry school down in Winona, Minnesota. He was a fine watch repairman. He ran his little jewelry store and sold a lot of jewelry and repaired watches until he was 82 years old.

DN: Okay. So, did you spend most of your early years, then, in the Cumberland, Wisconsin area?

FJ: My dad and my older brothers were very much interested in hunting and fishing and I became that way too and…

DN: So they took you hunting and fishing then. Taught you how, huh?

FJ: Yes.

DN: Well, that’s good.

FJ: I learned a lot. We had a good time and I loved the out of doors. I majored in Forestry. The nearest forestry school was the University of Minnesota in the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. There was a reciprocal agreement between Wisconsin and Minnesota. I went to University of Minnesota, worked my tail off and got my Bachelor of Science degree in four years.

DN: Wow. 1

Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

FJ: I put out my efforts in all the civil service examinations for the State of Wisconsin and for the Federal Government and finally got a notice that I was appointed to a job as a fishery aid in Spooner, Wisconsin.

DN: For the State of Wisconsin.

FJ: At that time it was a brand new walleyed pike hatchery and noted as the world’s largest walleyed pike hatchery. I worked around there and I ran into a big young fella who was a game warden. I helped him during the spring spawning against spearing and trapping and netting of fish illegally. At the same time they were looking for more recruits for the warden service. The Wisconsin Conservation Department gave an examination. I applied and was accepted on the basis of the application and had to go through a physical exam. They held that at the University. They had an Olympic-sized swimming pool and you had to swim the length of the pool. You also had to climb a rope and chin yourself and all kinds of things. You had to be in good shape to get by that one, and I did.

They had an oral examination and I was selected for a job and went to work in August of 1940 as a temporary warden, and stayed in the Wisconsin Conservation Department as a management aid. During the winter months I was trapping pheasants on a research project, and after that was completed they put me in the fish hatchery at Madison, and I was spawning trout and rearing trout. In the summer of 1941, I was appointed as a conservation warden and assigned to Meadow Valley. That happened to be in the center of the state and adjacent to the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge along with a vast holding of land from the Resettlement Administration. It was all forestry and flowages and drainage districts. They tried to drain this big vast area and could not do it decently, so through some public works program they build a lot of flowages with bagging up these low spots. Part of my job was just to maintain the water level on it. And I did that and learned an awful lot about law enforcement from the surrounding wardens and in 1956, I transferred to Wisconsin Rapids as a warden in charge of Wood County. From there I went to the supervisory level and served in undercover work until the Federal exam for U.S. Game Management Agent took place in 1950.

DN: Oh, wow.

FJ: And I took that and cracked ‘er right on top and I met Federal Law Enforcement Supervisor Flick Davis. He said “As soon as you can get out of here and as soon as we get the authority, we’ll put you to work”. And I says, “Fine, where”? “Well”, he says, “I haven’t settled that yet with Washington, but we can let you know in several days”. And he did, and found it was in Michigan, Lower Michigan.

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Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

FJ: My headquarters was to be in Marshall, Michigan.

DN: Okay.

FJ: The agent in charge of that state was an old timer by the name of Steve Creech. He lived up in East Lansing.

DN: Okay.

FJ: I didn’t learn much from him because there was a serious baiting problem in the Lake Erie marsh areas down in Lower Michigan. It was an offshoot of one that had been well developed in Northern Ohio along the marshes between Sandusky and Toledo. But I didn’t get a chance to work that very much because Flick Davis sent me down to work with Jack Carlson. Carlson from Minnesota. A former Minnesota state warden. He was the agent in charge of Louisiana.

DN: Okay.

FJ: And I learned a lot down there because it was intense work and a lot of violations. I got home just in time for Christmas Eve, with a big load of handpicked pecans.

DN: Oh, sure. And did…

DN: …you bring mistle too?

FJ: And two frozen blue geese.

FJ: I’m sorry, I can’t remember his name.

FJ: Early June? I was sent to Alaska to work law enforcement on the Alaskan waters. We spent our time aboard the patrol vessel called Blue Wing, after the blue-winged teal. I stayed at Craig, Alaska, as a home base for that vessel. And I really had a lot of activity there. All the time something was going on. I found out when the season first opened up, that the agent that I was assigned to work under was lacking experience.

DN: Okay.

FJ: He’d never made an arrest and he didn’t know how to so I went ahead and handled all of that stuff. And the cases that we made we took before a United States Commissioner on the island there. And they were whopping them big fines. The canning companies were operating big trap nets along the coast and the salmon pirates were stealing from them. It was quite a deal. There have been books written about that whole stuff. I had one entanglement that resulted in a

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Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

“not guilty” plea and they were going to go to trial and did go to trial. And they went for a 6-man jury and the entire jury was commercial people that lived on the island and sold fuel and fishing supplies and everything else to the fishermen. So, in spite of overwhelming evidence, they let him go. But then the government couldn’t stand for that, so they appealed the case, and I was slated to go back up to Alaska the following spring and the parameters of the time it was gonna be held for appeal bridged two or three weeks and when it was getting close I got a cablegram from the regional director in Alaska saying that the case had been settled and it wasn’t necessary for me to come to Ketchikan. And I found out later that regional director up there was a pilot in his own right and did a lot of aerial work in connection with the law enforcement program there, and he turned up missing in a crash in the mountains of Alaska.

DN: Oh my.

FJ: The airplane and the bodies of he and his companion were never found. So that was quite a sad thing to have happen. But then I went back to Ohio and I picked up Helen in Cumberland and drive down to Marshall, Michigan. We leased the place that we had leased before right on a nice lake. No sooner got moved in there, Flick called and said he wanted to meet me at Grand Rapids, Michigan. I picked him up there and he was a little nervous when he got off the plane and he says, “Let’s get to a restaurant, Jake”. And I said, “Sure”. I stopped at a restaurant and he had to have a cup of coffee. He was a coffee fiend.

DN: Oh, yes.

FJ: He really had to have it. Anyway, while we were having coffee he alerted me to the fact that they had selected me to go down to Ohio and take charge of that state. He said that the present warden down there, or the agent, was somewhat of a crook. He was really in trouble with the law and government regulations and service policy. They wanted me down there as soon as I could get there, if I’d take the job. I said “Sure”. “Doesn’t that rate an accelerated promotion for me”? He said, “Yes.” “We’ll make you a grade 9 and we’ll see what we can do about that later on”. So, that was a two-step from a 7.

We spent the night at the Michigan Conservation Department Training Center where I was introduced to the head law enforcement officials. And a good bunch of guys they were. Flick and I went down to Toledo and I don’t think we saw that agent then, but we did hook up with John Anderson. He’s an educated manager for the Winous Point Shooting Club, and then went down to Columbus and met the chief warden for the State and his assistant.

I took Flick back to Toledo and he flew back to Minneapolis. Flick said I could stay on per diem until further notice. I lucked out and soon rented a room from a 4

Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

barber. I was in there to get a haircut and told him what I was looking for and he said, “I’ve got just the place for you”. A place to park the car and a room.

So I moved in and then my work really got serious. I got a list of the prominent duck shooting clubs and the people in charge, or the owners of them, and made it a point to contact them all and visit them all. I had three or four to visit with in the Cleveland area and two in Toledo. And I made appointments systematically. I got the two in Toledo in one day. One was the president of the Owens, Illinois Glass Corporation and had a big new building that was the highest building in the area. He was on the top floor, and the carpet in his office was probably and inch and a half into my feet when I walked on it. I’ll never forget that big, thick carpet in his office, coming off the corridor where it was less plush. But I told him I was there to enforce the law and left a few copies of the regulations. And I asked where his… a few questions about his layout and by that time he was getting leery of me and he didn’t give me much in the line of information. The same thing happened to a fellow who also had a much smaller club in the same area. And I took a trip down to Cleveland after lining up, I think, solid appointments with two… three of the five that I wanted to talk to and I went down there and first thing I did was shop around for a room that I could afford. When I first went to Marshall, Michigan I found out that I was out of my realm. We had, I think it was… the per diem rate was $6.00; $7.20 or something like that. That per diem amount was about half of what was needed.

DN: Yeah.

FJ: $7.80. And I couldn’t live on that, but the guy that I stayed with in Marshall, Michigan knew that I couldn’t handle it and he cut it down to $5.00 a night instead of $12.50 for that bed and breakfast place. Anyway, I had to find myself a cheap place to stay in Cleveland. I was down there for two nights and I did talk to all five of these people, and some of them were welcoming me with open arms, others were rather surly about everything and reluctant to answer my questions, but I left regulations and left it in no uncertain terms that everybody was going to be subject to the law, and that was about it.

Flick came back out again. I reviewed everything with him and we established a working relationship with this Frosty Anderson, John Anderson, who was a good friend of Flick’s from National Waterfowl, 5-way council meetings and things like that. That paid off. He was a good friend. The agent in charge was suspended. He had a nice big home out in western Toledo. I got to know him a little bit. We were cordial to each other, but there were some hard feelings between us. Anyway, the connection with the regulations didn’t come up. I didn’t lean on him for anything and he didn’t lean on me except after he found out that I wasn’t rancorous about this whole thing. He came down to the house and asked me if I’d like to join him in selling aquatic plants so these people could put in 5

Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

good duck food. And he had a big brochure from some of these aquatic nurseries in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I looked it over and looked the prices over and didn’t see anything at all, and I says, “Good luck with your project. I don’t have anything to do with this at all”. Anyway, that was that and…

Oh, I met the United States Attorney on a subsequent visit with Flick. He knew what he was doing. He was an old timer but wasn’t a hunter by any means. He didn’t appreciate what was going on out in the marshes and was ready to help prosecute, and he did. So we issued a lot of warnings that fall because he had the half mile restriction on placing the food out and they couldn’t hunt within half-mile of a baited area. I made one arrest. We warned a few people and they hung onto that, but they did stay a half a mile away even though at times that was helping them kill ducks, and we figured that we could prove that, but we decided not to go into it the first year. Anyway, Flick sent other agents in to help me out. The state people were told absolutely not to help that Federal agent. The next year they took out the Federal baiting regulations they had always had referenced to and included it in the State regulations. They removed that restriction out of the State regulations, and that’s the way that went for awhile.

We started to select cases, good strong cases, and take them to court. And I’d go up and work with Rex Tice. He came into the picture then, in Lower Michigan, and we made some real good cases up there. And we used the airplane a lot. It was piloted at that time by Rod Brevig, and Rod was a good pilot and was a former Minnesota warden pilot, so he knew what he was looking for and things like that, and we got along fine and did a lot of good work in Lower Michigan with that airplane, and Northern Ohio. And then he had a bad fall and took a disability retirement in the Fish and Wildlife Service. Ross Hanson filled in as a pilot. Ross was doing the same things that Rod Brevig was and with his help we made some real good cases.

Chuck Kniffen was working with me then too, and he moved to Fremont. That was in 1953, and then he was working with me full-time. We arranged with Flick to get him sworn in as a deputy, United States Game Management Agent, And he got the credentials for that and then he had authority to arrest under Federal law too.

It happened that the Chief of the Division of Wildlife for which Chuck worked was very much in sympathy with the Federal regulations, and he was at odds with his Board of Natural Resources of course and… but he hung in there. He was a Ph.D. and he professored at the University of Ohio. He ran their research program too and Eugene ______ was the research leader at the university and he was a good fella. I used to stop in and shoot the breeze with him a lot and he’d give me his assessments of what was happening in the politics and that in Columbus and things like that.

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Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

So, Al Day was director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, but he was bounced right off the bat. They appointed a man by the name of John Farley and he was a nice enough guy, but he didn’t know anything about the baiting regulations and all that sort of stuff, but he tried to keep things on an even keel and to help out the marsh owners who had a big pool of money that they used and hired big attorneys and they lobbied in Washington. Tremendously hard, expensively. They tried to set up a test case. I met Chuck Lawrence, Flick Davis, and an attorney from our Fish and Wildlife Service office, the Attorney General, the United States Attorney General for the northern district of Ohio in Toledo and they talked about setting up a test case with the marsh owner’s attorney doing most of the talking. I sat there and listened, of course, and our attorney from the Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington was trying to modify a lot of things for him and they were about ready to work on framing it in language that could be used to set this thing up and have a few ducks killed under some sort of a permit, even though it would be of questionable legality.

Well, I listened to that long enough to know that it was a bad idea and it would be extremely difficult to set up without being full of holes and just got up in the meeting and I said what I thought about it, and that is if you want to go ahead with that, intend to go ahead with that, let me know because I’ll not participate. And I left, went home to Helen in Fremont. Chuck Lawrence stayed overnight in Toledo and talked with Dan Janssen and some Washington people and decided to drop the idea completely. That test case was never gonna be used and we continued to enforce the law. By that time Washington removed all the posting that the Federal agent was supposed to do and then enforce after the posting of the property against baiting. Well, they dropped that part of that and we decided to get serious with the basic law.

DN: You were stationed then in Ohio, right?

FJ: Yes, we had bought one of these tract houses. It turned out to be a nice little spot and we had some good neighbors. We had a lot of fun in the off season there with the neighbors and block parties and things like that.

The biggest offenders on this baiting business was Elmer Clemmens and his brother Al. Al and Elmer. Al Clemmens. He had a separate marsh and he started a test case of his own, that he was going to test the Fish and Wildlife Service and Joe Linduska and Flick were out there and Chuck Lawrence was with them and had a meeting with this guy, and I was there too. And he looked over at his place and he had a baited hole about 50 yards from the blind. There was no way in the world they could legally shoot there without killing baited ducks. So, the way that went, he was gonna shoot it the first day and wanted to know where I was gonna be and I says, “I don’t know”. Well, he said, “I’d like to have you, if there’s

7

Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

gonna be an arrest made, make it the first day because that’s when I’m gonna be was with me. We went out at night and checked and it was freshly baited. Oh, we were out there the next morning and nothing was going on. They weren’t hunting in the marsh at all. And the next day the same thing, but they had fed during the day again. And then nothing happened. And we kept watching it. And I had a little aluminum boat concealed out there. And we’d swing by their blind close enough to know if we had any shooting. Chuck Cadieux was with me then. Charley was the new agent that had just come aboard. He used to be a warden for South Dakota. Anyway, we went in and found them hunting. The shooters were gone out of the blind to the north. We then went down to the other blind and one guy ran and the other guy didn’t. I tackled the guy that ran and we took them into court.

FJ: Elmer Clemmens was hunting in the lower blind. Al was in the north blind. Anyway, the guy that ran and I took after him. I stayed right with him and he got tired before I did and I got ‘em. Anyway, we took our notes on this. I wanted to go in and let the United States Attorney know what had happened out there. We drove right to Toledo and I got in to see him and told him what was happening. He says “I want to know if you get any telephone calls from Washington regarding what the facts really are about what happened out there”. And he thanked me for doing that.

At the arraignment, Elmer pleaded guilty, and his partner, and the judge rapped them. That took care of that case. We never did get to catch Al. But later on, the following year, we got him and Chuck was with me then. And he pled not guilty and had a map made of his area there by some surveyor, put all the distances in there as to where he fed and where he didn’t feed. They held a jury trial on that. A jury trial and not just before the judge. Somebody, one of my cohorts and advisors and informers, told me, “Jake”, he says, “you’re never gonna win this case. Not with Allen’s money. He’ll control enough of the jury to get him off or, and at least hang the jury”. And I says, “Well, we’ll give her our best shot”. And we did, and damned if the jury didn’t come through and find him not guilty. Then we found out later that he had taken care of 4 or 5 of the jurors with a little gift. Anyway, that was supposed to be his test case. He had somebody from… some attorney from Washington who had talked about the first test case that the Fish and Wildlife Reserve refused to join in on, so this gentleman made his own. But, it was an interesting trial, ‘cause he didn’t know what he was talking about when he talked about being a specialist on ducks.

FJ: That testimony is in the court transcripts.

DN: Okay.

FJ: So that is a matter of historical documents, you know, in that book.

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Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

DN: Okay.

FJ: I got a call from one attorney and he said he sure enjoyed reading those cases in my book. He said, “You had quite a life out there, Jake”. Anyway, that just about culminated the thing, because a lot of the marsh’s quit operating. Those small ones, they couldn’t hold any ducks in there without our knowing it and they couldn’t shoot ‘em there. There was two or three or four of those commercial places where they were selling a blind for $10 an hour, or something like that. Chuck and I made a lot of cases and stopped that quick. By that time I had a good informer. Lists, not a list, but people around the various parts of the area that didn’t have to travel out of it to know what was there and would surreptitiously give information. Of course we had the airplane a lot down there to help spot this stuff too. So that was it then.

DN: Were you still stationed in Ohio when you retired? Or had you…

FJ: Pardon me?

DN: Were you based in Ohio when you retired?

FJ: No. That last fall of 1955, Flick was out there towards the end of a public relations trip and I took him back to the Toledo airport and I says, “Flick, I got something to tell ya”. When we were waiting at the gate, I says, “I’m not gonna be here next year”. “Jesus Jake, are you in trouble?” I says, “No.” I says, “I have got this whole situation in Ohio well under control and all you have to do is just hold the line on it now”. And I says, “It’s anticlimactic for me to stay here and I’d just as soon move out of here”. And he says, “Where ya going?” I says, “I have job offers from corporations around Toledo and Detroit like you wouldn’t believe in security measures and things like that. But I’m sure that there’s places in the Fish and Wildlife Service that are still having big trouble in both Maryland and California and maybe they can use me there. “Jesus, Jake, it hit like a blow to me”. He says, “Well”, he says, “are you sure you… you’re not gonna be here next year”. And I says, “You bet.” So he flew to back to Milwaukee or Minneapolis and two days later, or maybe just one, I got a telephone call from Andy Meyer. He said that they had just received appointing authority through grade 12 and also the authority to fill a position of personnel officer. “Would you be interested?” They were sending out flyers of all vacancies. “Yeah”, I says, “I saw that. When I didn’t meet the qualifications, I threw it in my wastebasket”. “Well”, he says, “We’ve been working with the Civil Service Commission and we have devised a plan with their help that, because of your education and experience, we can get you in there on an accelerated promotion plan. Would you come in here and talk to us about it”. And I says, “Sure. I’ll be there tomorrow morning”. And, you know, I was. And Dan Jansen just visited with me briefly and Audrey Berg and

9

Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

Andy told me about what they had decided with the Civil Service Commission and they documented it pretty well. So I says, “If you get this thing squared away and approved by them”, I said, “I’d like a copy of this stuff that you’re showing me. If you can get this approved”, I says, “I think I’d take the job, because I’d like to be in the regional office and see if I can stop some of those crazy memorandums coming out of here”. And he said, “Okay. We’ll let you know”.

The following week they let me know it was all set, so I accepted the job and left Helen to clear things up in Ohio and sell our home. I flew into Minneapolis with my suitcase and rented a room in a rooming house. It was within walking distance of the office, about a block and a half away at 1006 West Lake Street or whatever the number was, and moved in. I started to learn how to be a personnel officer. From there I worked hard at that and got to know Andy and Audrey and to do the personnel office business pretty well. I also got into the administrative inspections they used to run on all the field stations. Andy and I went on a few together. I came into the office one day and was told they’d just got a call from Wes Corbin. He was a high-powered chief of administration in Washington. He wanted me to come in to talk about a transfer out of Minneapolis. I flew to Washington and they had somebody pick me up at the airport. One of the employees brought me into Corbin’s office and he got his personnel officer in there and told us that there was a job up in Boston.

DN: Oh.

FJ: The administrative officer in Boston had resigned. And he says, “We’d like to have you take that job up there if the regional director was willing. So, will you go up there and visit with that regional director and then come back after you see him. I flew up there, and his name was Al Gasgoine, a Frenchman. Anyway, he welcomed me with open arms and he was just tickled to death that he’d heard enough about me to know that he’d like to have me as his administrative officer. So I accepted the job and, and lined up a two week stay out there so I could be on per diem. While there I also could find a place to bring my family. While I was in the office, I learned the ropes and at the same time was looking for a place lease. I leased a home in Melrose about 8-10 miles north of Boston on the commuter rail line. We could move in right away so I left my car there. I drove out to Boston to cover that assignment because I had to have a car.

DN: Right.

FJ: Yeah. I think it was a Pontiac of some sort. Anyway, the house had a basement garage, and no sooner got set and the kids were in school and Helen was busy and I had that car in the basement garage and a snowstorm hit. It was on the 18th of May or something like that. 60 inches of snow fell and everything came to a standstill in Boston. The office was not open and I had to shovel my way out. I

10

Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

finally got into the office in another day or two and that was it. Then I started looking for a house to buy. I learned my job fast and bought a new house under construction up at Peabody, the leather capital of the world, and we moved in as soon as it was occupy-able. It had electric heat in the floor. Nice place. Good view. I worked there as an administrative officer and spent all my spare time looking for land in New Hampshire and bought some and bought some more and I wanted a little pond on it. I used the Soil Conservation Service and their cooperative help to land owners. Proper dam and a dike and a water-control structure. I built a cabin on the edge of it, on the pond. And that was it. Going along and the next thing you know they made me a grade 14 as an administrative officer and they changed… John Gottschalk was regional director. When the Democrats went out of office they had to replace him, so he named me as acting regional director. So, it was almost a year before they found somebody who was politically suitable and I was no longer acting regional director. I found out within a matter of days that I couldn’t work with him because he was a flat-out liar. I couldn’t tolerate that.

I received a brochure in the mail from one of my warden friends in northwest Wisconsin. They reorganized the state government of Wisconsin in 1967 or 68 and combined all the law enforcement except the wardens and the state patrol under one division of criminal investigation. They advertised nationwide for people to apply for that job, so I got my application in, and a little while later I was called in. Now, my boss came into my office after hours when I was still working at my desk and he says, “Jake, did you apply for a job in Wisconsin?” And I said, “Yes”. “Well”, he said, “I think you’re gonna get it”. And I said, “What happened?” “Oh”, he says, “there was an FBI in my office and they’re running a background check on you”. I said, “Well, we’ll see what happens”. I said, “I don’t know whether I’d take it or not”, but four days later Helen called from New Hampshire. “Got a letter for you from the Bureau of Personnel. Can I open it?” And I said, “Sure”. She opened it up and she said “It’s a notice of examination results and your grade is 90, 99.5, or something like that”. And my rank was number one. And that took care of that until the next day I got a telephone call saying that they’d like to interview me in Milwaukee. So I flew out to Milwaukee that weekend and met them at the hotel dining room and they had came from someplace and interviewed me. The next day I flew back to Boston and the following day they called me up and said that you’ve been selected and we’d like to have you report for duty as soon as possible. I listed our property for sale and I’d handled that as we had bought a house in New Hampshire. She took care of everything else. I had rented a new apartment in a new apartment building. It wasn’t finished but we moved into that and put our furniture in storage and that was fun. And of course I was up to my ears learning about all kinds of other laws. The drug scene was coming on fast and the student riots were rampant right in Madison, one of the worst in the nation, and Kent State, that’s

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Oral History – Fred Jacobson

U.S. Game Management Agent

Interviewer: Dorothe Norton

Interview Date 04/18/05

where five or six students were killed by police officers in a riot. And they blew up the Army Math Research Center.

I was up here fishing for trout when that happened. They called me up and said to fly down, so I caught the DNR plane and flew to Madison. When I got over there, it was still smoking. We worked our tail off trying to get the culprits that bombed that building. My agents were up to their ears in that along with the FBI. We finally located two of them and got ‘em. Anyway, the drug scene was going on. Governor Knolls was ineligible to renew his governorship and they tried to get the Attorney General, who was my boss. He was an elected official.

Anyway, I took a break. My brother called me and I met him in Duluth and went up to a fly-in camp in Canada and fished for four days and came back. I got back to Madison on Sunday and one of my men told me that they had made a drug bust. Far too soon. They should never have made that. The guy I left in charge couldn’t hold off the pressure from the Attorney General and his cohorts so he made a drug bust in the Fox River Valley. I think 13 people were arrested. They were street level pushers and they got them with just possession. I was madder than hell because I had been working with the FBI in Milwaukee and Chicago and Kansas City and we were getting awful close to getting the big guys. I had a discussion with the Attorney General and his hatchet man and his Deputy Attorney General and told them I couldn’t handle this and I… “What are you gonna do”? I says, “I don’t know”. “I’ll see after lunch”. So I left the office. After lunch I went back in there and they were waiting for me. I told them that, “If you guys get four pieces of legislation through, and signed into law, I’ll resign”. I’d take my early retirement under a hazardous duty position. They looked at each other, and … the three of them… said… and… one guy just nodded and he says, “Okay”. He says, “It seems like you, we can go along with that”. He says, “I’ll call my secretary and we will document this arrangement”. I got up and I walked over to the door and I said, “Forget it. If you guys can’t take my word for this one shot matter, I don’t want any part of it. You can forget my proposal”. “Oh geez. Come on back in here, Jake”. So I stood there for a second and they were paging the boys and they said, “Okay, okay. We’ll go ahead without any documentation”. So they did. And just about almost four months later they had all four of those things into law. And when that happened I submitted my application for early retirement and they approved it and threw a big going away party for me and Helen and I left.

This ends the saga of Fred Jacobson as to his experience with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Finus

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