Rod Davidson:  

Those of us raised by strong parenting have been taught to work for what we hope to achieve in life and thus to appreciate what we have. We would not be given a free ride to our dreams – nor should we offer a free ride to others and destroy their opportunity to appreciate. It’s the dreaming and striving for those dreams that adds great value to our accomplishments and imbues us with an appreciation for our property and that of others. These basic values are deemed TRITE, silly, or even meaningless by many young members of today’s society. In my youth I considered myself a part of the family business of hard labor to produce a needed product. As I grew older I came to realize that the family business was a small part of a much greater society. Logging in Alaska I had the good fortune to be born into a family that had strong family roots across many generations. One Grandfather was an Army Major in World War I. My father served oversees in World War II. He came home after the war to assume leadership of his father’s logging operation in the Pacific Northwest. In my pre-teen years, Dad was contacted by Alaska-based Ketchikan Pulp Company (KPC) to become one of their first contract loggers on the emerging 50-year timber sale on the 17,000,000 acre (69,000 sq-km) Tongass National Forest. The 50-year contract came about because, in 1948, the Regional Forester for Alaska and future Territorial Governor, B. Frank Heintzleman, issued a report of the timber volume and value on the Tongass National Forest. [See “TREES: The Yearbook of Agriculture 1949, pages 360-372; (81st Congress, First session, House Document #29).] That study resulted in the Chief of the Forest Service initiating the 50-year timber harvest contract in 1952, to produce pulp, for Ketchikan Pulp Co. (KPC), at Ketchikan, and for Alaska Lumber and Pulp Co. (ALP), at Sitka. This offered my father a secure profession compared to the piece-meal operations of finding new timber sales around the Puget Sound. So in 1954, he loaded his logging equipment onto a barge outside of Bremerton, Washington, coordinated the supporting families to move “North to Alaska” and relocate our lives to the fascinating environment of the Territory of Alaska – the Inside Passage and Alexander Archipelago. Our lives in Alaska were full of outdoor experiences influenced by the growing timber industry in its boom days. Dad’s company grew from one high-lead side to three high-lead sides and two cold-decks with trucking and road building operations to transport the logs to the dump, access new allotments each season and accommodate migration of logging operations from one year to the next. Dad was a very successful and respected company administrator and was one of the organizers of the Alaska Logger’s Association serving as its first president in 1957. He had almost 100 employees in his company at the peak of operations and handled all hiring and firing very personally. THE WORK ETHIC Five years after our big move north, Alaska obtained statehood in 1959. This felt like a very secure condition for businesses all over the former territory. When I became old enough to work in the woods, I was aware that I was the “boss’ son” and was perceived that way by many co-workers. But dad didn’t give me any short cuts and I soon understood why. I began my high-lead training as a whistle punk (before the days of the Talkie-Tooter), then as a choker-setter. I was present at the early morning hours to ride to the woods in the crew-truck (the crummy) as part of the working crew. This avoided any lazy morning attitudes, no excuses, be prepared with today’s lunch bag, be dressed with hard hat, “tin” pants, and “caulked” boots and in the crummy before sunrise. This was the daily routine for years of seasonal work until severe weather shut us down for the winter. RESPONSIBILITY There were no substitute employees to take your place if you were ill. I remember many days being out there to perform even when I was not feeling top notch. Eventually I was advanced through jobs of second-loader, chaser on the landing, and then rigging-slinger to coordinate the crew of choker setters. In these roles I learned to splice, coil and string cable, work mollies, shackles, turn-buckles, throw an ax and to identify safety hazards around heavy equipment and rolling logs in real-time. I was occasionally a member of the road construction crew driving gravel truck, and other jobs including serving as powder-monkey (packing dynamite and blasting stumps from the road construction right-of-way) often ending the day with the typical nitrate headache. In 1957, other KPC and ALP contract loggers were having difficulty negotiating prosperous contract with their mills. So they organized the Alaska Logger’s Association (ALA) with my father as their first president. Over the years, I watched ALA grow and become a thorn in the side for the mill operators, so, gradually, the mill operators became sponsors and contributors of ALA until they were embraced as associates, and soon members. By the early 1980’s, the mills had diluted Alaska Loggers Association by remolding its objective as a public advocate for forest management and away from strengthening the logger’s negotiating stance with the mills. The ultimate demise of ALA and its objective was accomplished when the name was changed to the Alaska Forest Association (AFA). This was, of course, met with public acceptance and adulation because of the (apparent) greater mission to the public eye – but loggers lost their strength for influencing contract negotiations with the mill. This was, to me, a lesson in Big Administrator’s manipulation of the little guy and how public sentiment can be used to overshadow more urgent objectives. Living and working in the remote logging camps in Alaska meant having no access to a town or city during the week. There were no connecting roads – only 40 miles of waterways along the Inside Passage to towns or other camps. For everyday transportation in this lifestyle, dad flew his private floatplane to and from camp for many years. So it was natural that I, also, should learn to fly. When I acquired my pilot’s license in High School, I did not yet have a driver’s license for driving a car. For the next 26 years flying provided me a convenient means of transportation as well as many wonderful recreational opportunities - scenic flying and fishing excursions. [An opportunity, potentially, for a whole manuscript in itself.] When I was financially able, I bought and flew my own floatplane, and any weekend that brought decent flying weather found me exploring incredible mountain ranges, river valleys, glaciers and lakes, camping, fishing or just counting bears, moose, sea lions, ice bergs, whales, and enjoying each new discovery. THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTION All the logging tasks, performed together as one crew, were aimed at the production of Hemlock volume for pulp and Spruce saw-logs for lumber. We measured our production by the number of truckloads delivered from the woods to the dump each day. We were motivated by comparing the number of loads per day with other crews (sides) working a neighboring hillside. But we knew the end objective was to enable the mills to deliver pulp and lumber to the American public for whatever demand existed in the free marketplace. As Gifford Pinchot envisioned in the creation of the National Forest Reserves, in 1905, “The prime object of the forest reserves is use”. The 1905 Use Book further states “Forest reserves are for the purpose of preserving a perpetual supply of timber for home industries, preventing destruction of forest cover which regulates the flow of streams, and protecting local residents from unfair competition in the use of forest and range.” (Emphasis added). The National Forest Reserves of 1905, of course, became the U.S. Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture. Institutes of Higher Education After High School, I applied to two different colleges with two different targeted majors, made my choice, and headed off to Oregon State University to major in Forest Engineering. By working “in the woods”, earning about $2.40 per hour, I was able to save-up enough money to pay my own way through college. (I think college tuition was around $3500 per semester in those days.) As I progressed in my studies, managers at Ketchikan Pulp Co. began to take an interest in my future and “hired me away” from the logging operation in summer months to take part in engineering their annual layouts of logging areas. I became a member of their surveying crew that planned logging roads and cutting units for the 50-year contract. This work continued to enable me to pay my own college tuition until obtaining my Bachelor of Science degree. PLAY WHEN IT’S APPROPRIATE In college, I needed to apply myself to the books to get the grades necessary for graduation. So when I pledged to a Greek Fraternity in my third year, I was seriously disappointed to find that they went to the ocean beaches and partied nearly every weekend. My grades took a nose dive to the point where I had to drop out of the fraternity to get the grades back up. I had a real purpose in being in college and took the responsibility seriously to ensure that the objective would be met. Military Service My college graduation took place during the middle of the Vietnam War era, and, upon graduating, I lost my Student Deferment from the draft. I was then 22 years old and had plans that did not include spending time in the rice paddies of Vietnam. Having returned to Ketchikan to resume my Forest Engineering career, I contacted the Navy recruiter in Anchorage to satisfy my military obligation as an enlistee. Thus I spent 4 years in the US Navy Submarine Service and gained valuable education and experience in that capacity. My enlistment took me to the four corners of the United States (San Diego, CA; Groton, CT; Bremer...Expand for more