Good People Make Good Places

While I was trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up, a process still under way, our son had little choice but to come along on the trip. It was quite a journey. We lived in eight different cities while Lee was growing up.

Lee proved there may be truth to the currently overused pronouncement: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

No doubt it was difficult for Lee to periodically leave good friends and adjust to a new community and school. I've often regretted causing those problems for him. But I think he became a man of integrity and honor who has been able to adapt to difficult situations partly because of his diverse experiences. The nature of two communities we lived in may have contributed positively to his development.

Forbes latest list of the top 10 best places to raise a family in the U.S. includes two cities where we have lived. Forbes ranked metro areas based on household incomes, costs of living, housing affordability, home ownership, commuting times, crime rates, and local school quality. Lee attended school and participated in organized sports in two of the top 10--Boise, Idaho, and Ogden, Utah.

 

Ogden, Utah, is a great place to live in any season.

Ogden was No. 3 in the rankings. It has one of the lowest crime rates in the country, an excellent spread between incomes and living costs, and great access to outdoor activities. Lee learned to ski nearby; a trip to the mountain slopes was just a few miles from our first home there adjacent to a Wasatch-Cache National Forest boundary. Lee made school friends in Ogden with whom he still stays in touch.

Boise ranked as the seventh best place for families on the Forbes list. Boiseans also enjoy a good income to cost of living ratio and great opportunities for outdoor lifestyles. School quality rated high and the crime rate is low. Several of Lee's early school years were spent in Boise.

 

Boise, Idaho, has a State Capitol and much more to recommend it.

Lee, Sandy, and I conferred today about characteristics of the places we've lived. We agreed the Forbes people got it right with Ogden and Boise. But, because it would be almost impossible to quantify, the raters didn't consider the factor we believe was most important. We all thought the people in those two cities generally were pleasant, thoughtful, and helpful. For us, good people made Ogden and Boise good places to live.

This might lead you to think I was pretty smart about picking places to apply for jobs. Not so.

We had never set foot in Idaho before moving to Boise. The only individual consulted was my sister, who knew a little about the city because her husband worked for Boise-Cascade and they had visited company headquarters a few times. The endorsement was lukewarm at best. Jane's final statement was, "I suppose its OK if you like sagebrush." We made the change simply because it was time for me to move on.

We moved to Ogden strictly to get a Forest Service promotion and the improved income that came with it. Most of the comments I heard before the move were negative, but that was because my boss (who had lived in Ogden earlier) mounted a campaign to convince me not to leave Idaho. Some of it was absurd.

The most imaginative, and least convincing, statement by Boise National Forest Supervisor Ed Maw was, "Those Mormons will steal your horse; then they'll steal your wife."

Well, I didn't own a horse, and Sandy has stayed on as my beautiful wife to this day. We didn't find a lot of bad guys in Utah. What we did find in Ogden, just as we did in Boise, were good neighbors and friends.

Mysteries Great and Small

This Sunday the Rev. Jill McAllister, minister at People’s Church in Kalamazoo, did what I thought was an outstanding job of addressing “The Great Mystery”—who are we, where did we come from, and what is the meaning of life?  Several times, she quoted statements by Forrest Church, a leading Unitarian-Universalist minister, author, and theologian.

Those references set me thinking about one of the minor mysteries in my life—did I or did I not, meet Forrest Church back in 1974?  I pondered the question briefly six years ago while writing a passage in 

Forrest's father, Sen. Frank Church (Wikipedia)

my memoir, “Days with the Dads: Recollections of a Small-Time Journalist.” Included was a story about encounters with the Church family. One was a fairly lengthy conversation with Forrest’s parents. Years later, beautiful wife Sandy and I stayed several nights in the Church family home in Boise, ID after it had been converted to a bed and breakfast.

Because my memory of the first encounter with the Churches was more concerned with a personal lesson in humility than precisely who all the characters in the story were, I spent no time researching the identity of the young man who was present. Here is an excerpt from the story in my book:

“Merely spotting or exchanging only a few words with a famous person is, of course, nothing like spending a little time talking with one. I've had only a handful of those opportunities. One momentarily inflated my ego, but then quickly took the excess wind out of my young sails.

“In 1974 (while serving as Public Information Officer for the Boise National Forest), I was directed to drive over to the Sawtooth National Forest from my duty station in Boise, hook up with my boss at Redfish Lake, and then attend a meeting with some other people at the lodge on the lakeshore. My boss was Forest Supervisor Ed Maw, a man with many years of service in Idaho and other places in the Intermountain West.

“I got there early, and was the only person around as I stood outside the lodge having a smoke and waiting for Maw. Out of the lodge came a handsome man dressed in western-style clothes. A lovely woman and a young man accompanied him. They came directly to me (I was in uniform), and started a conversation about what my job was, why I was there, and what my thoughts were about some of the National Forest management issues of the time . . . .

“The whole situation put me on cloud nine. Here was little old me exchanging chit chat with members of one of the most prominent families in the state, and Senator Frank Church was among the best-known politicians in the country. He served in the U.S. Senate for 24 years, leading many national initiatives. He was a prominent contender for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1976, losing out to Jimmy Carter. His wife Bethine, the lady in our little discussion group that day, was the daughter of a former Idaho governor and was engaged in many high-profile activities of her own.

“By the time Maw approached us, I was pretty pumped up about the prospect of introducing my boss to my famous newfound friends. It didn’t happen. Senator Church stuck out his hand and said, ‘Hi, ya, Eddie.’ He and my boss were well acquainted. I was treated to a good dose of instant humility.”

About 30 years later, I read “The Jefferson Bible,” a document the famous president spent years assembling. Forrest Church wrote a lengthy introduction to the work. That caused me to wonder if the young man I met at Redfish Lake was Forrest. I started doing some research to determine that, but other matters intervened and I never got back to it.

Rev. McAllister’s sermon on Sunday caused me to wonder once again. This time, I checked some dates. The research proved conclusively that I could not have met Forrest Church that day in 1974 at Redfish Lake. He would have been quite a few years older than the lad I talked with. It must have been his younger brother, Chase, who Wikipedia tells us still lives in Boise. Forrest Church died at age 61 in 2009.

Although I’m slightly disappointed at learning I cannot claim a personal encounter with the famous cleric, it is always a pleasure to ponder some of the inspirational words he left behind.

   

May the Ranchers Be With You


One of the things we like about our new home is the way Michigan state and local governments have provided connections with recycling systems.


Most of our household trash is picked up monthly at the curb by a private contractor hired by our township who separates plastics, glass, and paper for processing. State law makes it possible for cans and bottles of many types to be returned to major supermarkets at any time for a refund of the 5 cents each that we pay when we buy the originals.


Where we previously lived in Utah, aluminum drink cans were the only items readily recyclable. We saved them in big bags in the garage for a couple of months, and then had to make a 12-mile roundtrip to a junkyard in a shabby part of Ogden to collect five or six dollars. We did that, not because we were hard up for five bucks, but because we were strong believers in the benefits to society of recycling. Lots of people didn’t bother.


Enthusiasm for new large-scale recycling programs surged throughout the country in the early 1970s as the environmental movement began to flower. The new activists no longer were satisfied with supporting an occasional paper drive by the Boy Scouts or our traditional reliance on random trips to junk dealers who bought scrap metal.


I was the Public Information Officer for the Boise National Forest in Idaho in 1972. The Forest Supervisor was designated as the liaison between the U. S. Forest Service and the state legislature. One of my duties was to help with the legislative tasks.


Up popped a bill in the legislature to require food markets to pay five cents for every metal can turned in to them. At the time, most cans sold in Idaho were steel, not aluminum, and the economics of reusing can metal were not good. An association of can manufacturers and several large grocery chains announced their firm opposition to the “five cent bill.”


One legislator and two prominent environmentalists asked us to testify in favor of the bill. We had to get approval from the Regional Forester to give testimony on a state matter. We asked for approval. A denial came quickly. Regional Office staffers said although we had littering problems on National Forest land, it was a minor concern compared to other issues. They did not want us to appear to be interfering in a state matter by pushing a recycling bill in what was a very conservative state.


Dick Stauber, our Recreation and Lands staff officer, wanted to support the bill. So did I. Stauber was a stickler about keeping our facilities and adjacent lands in good condition, and he thought anything that would reduce litter was worthy of endorsement. I thought supporting the bill would give us some needed support from local environmentalists.


As good civil servants often do, we found a way to game the system. Stauber volunteered to testify, and we had a little strategy meeting with Supervisor Ed Maw. Maw grew up in Idaho and had many contacts in our area. He was well aware that environmental groups were relatively weak, and commodity groups were powerful. He also knew ignoring Regional Office people generally was not a good idea. He reluctantly agreed to let Stauber go ahead. Maw told me to accompany him to the hearing. I got the feeling he wanted me there to take the blame if something went badly wrong.


The hearing room was crowded. Opponents of the bill spoke first. Maw was fidgeting around nervously in the chair next to me. Then, a few supporters spoke before Stauber was called. His opening words were:


“I’m Richard Stauber, Recreation and Lands Staff Officer for the Boise National Forest, U.S. Forest Service. I’m testifying in favor of this bill as President of the Boise Chapter of the Society of American Foresters.”

Who could argue with that? He didn’t really claim to represent the Forest Service. I wondered later if he actually asked any SAF members what they thought about the bill. He indeed was the local chapter president that year, so maybe he felt he didn’t have to.


A few minutes later the hearing ended. Maw had stopped fidgeting and had a little smile on his face.


I said, “Stauber did a nice job, don’t you think.”


Maw said, “Yeah, but that didn’t matter much. As soon as I heard that guy from the Cattlemen’s Association support the bill, I knew we were in good shape.”

Unfortunately, our trickery didn’t carry the day. The bill died in committee. But we did come away with a few new friends, and no new enemies.