Ed Wilson
December 5, 1994The first time I came through Prineville was in 1948. I was taking a course at Oregon State College forestry school. Our professor had set up a field trip to Prineville so we could go through sawmills on the east side of the Cascades. We came here and went on a tour of Hudspeth Sawmill Company and Ochoco Lumber Company.
The trip was especially memorable for me because my distant cousin, whom I hadn't seen in many years, was managing the Ochoco Lumber Company. While touring the Ochoco plant I told my professor I was pretty sure my cousin, Stuart Shelk, was manager. When Stuart was told I was in the tour he came over and invited me to lunch.
Stuart's grandfather, O.M. Clark, and my grandfather, Charles Wilson, started Clark and Wilson mill in Linnton, Oregon where we both grew up. They were brothers-in-law. His family moved into Portland from Linnton when I was small and he went off to college. I hadn't seen him for many years until that day I came to Prineville.
Stuart offered me a job after I was graduated from Oregon State College in June of 1949. I hesitated to accept because I was really interested in going into radio broadcasting. He was patient and said to let him know when I had decided what I wanted to do. At graduation time there were two job openings. One was here with Ochoco Lumber Company and the other was in Boise, Idaho with a radio station. I had spent two years in the service and was going to Oregon State on the GI bill. I was married and had a child and I needed a job that paid fairly well. The radio job didn't and the mill job did. That's how I ended up here. And I'm glad I did.
The day before graduation I asked Dr. Orderman, the registrar, for my diploma. I explained that I had to leave for Prineville to go to work and that I had a trailer rented and we were all packed; my wife and I, our baby girl, and our cat. We had a tiny little trailer and as we left town with a broom and mop sticking up out of the trailer, we looked like the movement to California during the Depression days. We listened to the commencement and all of the speeches on KOAC radio as we traveled out of Corvallis on our way to Prineville, Oregon.
My job title was office boy. I had been taking a business major at Oregon State which required two years of accounting. I had always had trouble with accounting and that is the last thing I wanted to do. When my professor learned I wanted to go into radio broadcasting, he decided to give me a passing grade in exchange for my promise that I would not pursue a career in accounting.
My first day at Ochoco Lumber Company I was told that I would be taking care of the subsidiary ledgers in accounting. Unbeknown to me, I was going to be doing accounting after all. With kind and patient coaching from Frances Juris and Charlie Coons, I learned my job.
Meanwhile, I was able to work with the sales manager. I became familiar with sales and marketing and when the sales manager left for another position I filled the vacancy and remained in the position of sales manager until my retirement.
There were five sawmills in Prineville at that time. All of the management from these mills belonged to a lumbermens' association called Western Pine Association. The organization extended all through the eastern side of the Cascades in Oregon, Washington and northern California. It was an association for the promotion of pine. It was a very powerful group. The managers from the central Oregon area were Ward Rhoden from Pine Products; Hardy Meyers from Alexander-Yawkey/Stewart; Johnnie Hudspeth from Hudspeth Sawmill Company; Jim Garrett from Consolidated Pine; Al Glassow, Sr. from Brooks-Scanlon; Frank Gilchrist from Gilchrist Timber Company and, of course, Stuart Shelk from Ochoco Lumber Company.
Darrel Williams came to the company in 1955. When Stuart retired in the late 70's, Darrel took over as president and Stuart remained as Chairman of the Board. John Shelk came into the management team and took over the management after Darrel Williams retired.
Over the years there was an evolution. The logging camps closed; the trucks were sold; the hauling and logging operations were contracted out to gypos. In the 1980's, under John's able direction, the company expanded with the establishment of the Malheur Lumber Company in John Day. After its completion it seemed appropriate, with the way the forest was being handled, to put in a small log mill. Our payroll grew considerably after we put the small log mill in. We had to add additional planing mill facilities. At its peak there were around 180 to 185 employees.
What struck me in all the time I was with the company was the careful management of the timber lands. I think that is the reason that Ochoco is still here. Stuart was conscientious about monitoring, watching and nurturing the timberlands. Logging was done in a very careful manner on all of our private timber. It was a group of very dedicated lumbermen who started the operation. They had seen what had happened in the old 'cut and run' days when the east coast and the midwest forests were cut out. They believed in perpetuating the company; in keeping the supply of timber coming so it could go on and on. They knew that timber could be a wonderful viable renewable resource if handled properly. This train of thought was deeply imbedded in all of those gentlemen's minds.
And it is going just like that today with John Shelk and his management team.
We did a very careful selective logging on our private forest. The Forest Service used that philosophy early on on the Ochoco and Deschutes National Forests. But there was a change in that policy. Something happened where they started doing more and more clear-cut logging and taking out the older trees. It was the clear-cuts that stood out and offended an awful lot of people. There were times, and there are times, and always will be times, when clear-cuts are necessary. But for general application in our pine forests, it was very offensive.
I was a lumber 'peddler' and it was fun. Ochoco Lumber Company was known all over the country for putting out an excellent, high quality product. So it made my job very easy. The markets have changed to a great degree. As the remanufacturing and utilization of waste products has evolved, particle board, wafer board and paper products have displaced some of the old uses that our wood went for. And then, too, as we've gone through the shutdown of the national forests, we've found ourselves working with smaller and smaller timber. Whatever is available.
We don't have the grades that we had in the old days. We don't have the big wide 'Shop' boards and those big wide 'Selects'. The select grade and other top grades were used in big crown mouldings and other finished mouldings in the old homes. The 'Clear and Better' grades were used in cabinet work and high quality finish. Just beautiful material. The knotty boards and dimension material were used in framing. Knotty Pine was used by the carloads in shelving and panelling. That has all been replaced by particle board and other inferior building products.
In those days everything was done by mail. It was too expensive to make a long distance telephone call. If we were really in a hurry, we used an old Western Union teletype that was hooked into the Bend Western Union office. Otherwise, we would write letters. I dictated all of my letters to a secretary. We would write a quotation to a customer and mail it to New York, Boston, or Miami. Five days later an answer might come back that would give us an order or it might try to renegotiate the price. I can't imagine how our business survived with the time lapse of waiting and finally getting an order put together. It was very slow and tedious compared to today. Now, of course, we use FAX's.
Looking back it was a wonderful time. There was very, very little that was not good in the time I spent in the industry. I am confident the industry will go into the future. The pendulum is swinging back to where there will be a compromise and we'll be able to use the great natural resource on a sustained yield basis.
And Ochoco will be here a long, long time.