K.C.: Let's talk about a little of your background. Your father was in Yellowstone. Wasn't he a park naturalist at Yellowstone?

DAVE: No, my father was a history professor at a small school in Idaho. But he worked seasonally as a naturalist in Yellowstone starting about in 1939. So when I was a kid, I got to spend my summers in Yellowstone. That didn't last long. By 1942 I had to go to work. And I started to work, my first job other than delivering papers and things of that nature, was working for one of the park concessioners in Yellowstone in 1942.

K.C.: What was your job?

DAVE: I was at the soda fountain at Basin Auto Camp Store in Old Faithful. I worked there nine hours a day, six days a week, $55 a month and found. I don't know if people know what "and found" means anymore, that's room and board. Well, in the old days when people lived off the land part of their earnings were called "and found".

K.C.: Well, were you . . . you were in the park. Where were you in the park service before Grand Canyon? Because I met you when you were Chief of Interpretation there.

DAVE: Well, I became interested in the National Park Service the following summer, 1943, and we were in World War II. All the able-bodied, older folks were off at war and, at the age of 17 I was hired as a fire controller, a smoke chaser in Yellowstone. And so I started to learn a lot of the back country and natural resources of that region at that time. Then I went into the Navy for a couple of years, came back and took the same kind of job, again seasonally, in Yellowstone. And I directed my education towards natural history subjects, zoology and wildlife management. I became a permanent park ranger in Yellowstone in 1953. From then on, I was a park naturalist and then the assistant chief park naturalist in Yellowstone until 1960 when I transferred to Grand Canyon as Chief Park Naturalist.

K.C.: Oh, so you actually. .. a the time I met you as Chief Park Naturalist at Grand Canyon . . . Well, others might argue the point, but its certainly one of the most significant and key positions in interpretation in the system because Grand Canyon is so highly visited by so many international guests and also beause it is such a complex story.

DAVE: So where I had eight years of seasonal experience in Yellowstone and Everglades in Florida, and 7 years limited employment in Yellowstone as a park naturalist, naturalist or assistant chief . . . so I knew about what had to be done.

K.C.: Your dad wrote some books too . . .

DAVE: As an historian he wrote, THE STORY OF MAN IN YELLOWSTONE . . .

K.C.: Right, I remember, on one of the Indian tribes . . .

DAVE: Well, he wrote the book on the Nespurth, that was really definitive book on the Nespurth retreat of 1877 and it's called I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER. Of course, there's been a television show by that name. That book has been out in several paperback vesions as well as hardcover.

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