Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Interview #395
THEODORE M. SPERRY
SPERRY, Theodore M. (1907-95)
Ecologist; Supervisor of Arboretum Development
At UW: 1935-41
First Interview
Interviewed: 1981
Series: Arboretum History
Interviewer: William R. Jordan, III
Length: 1 hour
Transcriptionist: Premium Business Services (3/18/09)
[See Index for Key Words]
Second Interview
Luncheon Talk at McKay Center
Given: 1982
Series: Arboretum History
Length: 0.5 hours
Transcriptionist: Premium Business Services (3/18/09)
[See Index for Key Words]
Third Interview
Interviewed: 1990
Interviewer: William R. Jordan, III
Length: 3 hours
Transcriptionist: Premium Business Services (3/18/09)
[See Index for Key Words]
First Interview Session (1981): Tape 1
Tape 1, Side 1
00:00:01
WJ:
If you’ve got 15 minutes or so now, why don’t we just do this, and then possibly, out of
this, we could, um, get something which I could write up or you could write up or
something.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Okay. Yeah.
WJ:
But at least, we’d have a start.
TS:
Yes, uh, there may be some dates and some detail that I’d have to look up elsewhere, but
we can find out what they are.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I’ll make a note of it as we go along here.
WJ:
Right, right.
TS:
And just a minute until I get a pencil and something to write on and so I’m a little more
comfortably seated here. Just a minute, please.
WJ:
Yeah.
00:00:35
TS:
Okay. Let me get your name.
WJ:
Yes, I’m Bill Jordan.
TS:
Bill Jordan.
WJ:
Yeah, I’ve been here at the Arboretum since 1977.
TS:
Oh, you have?
WJ:
And one of the things we’re thinking of doing is, uh, having a CCC reunion.
TS:
Oh, you are?
WJ:
In connection with this, yeah, we may or may not, but it’s an idea that we’re kicking
around.
TS:
I see. I know that quite a number of them are no longer living.
WJ:
I’m sure that’s true, but quite a few of them are.
TS:
Strange enough, that had a very high death rate among that group.
WJ:
Is that true?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Well, they were in the war, I suppose.
TS:
No, uh, well, before the war, and the --
WJ:
Afterwards, I mean.
TS:
And the death rate has been afterwards. And it wasn’t actually war connected.
WJ:
Oh, is that right?
TS:
Yeah. I don’t know what it was connected with, but, yeah.
WJ:
I’ll be darned.
00:01:23
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
Well, why don’t you tell me how you came here, how you got involved, what you were
doing?
TS:
Okay. You have the early history, of course.
WJ:
Well, I know the general outlines. I’d like to hear it from your point of view.
TS:
Yeah. I had –
WJ:
When did you come?
TS:
-- done my doctorate work at the University of Illinois under A.G. Vestal.
WJ:
Who was that?
TS:
V-e-s-t-a-l.
WJ:
V-e-s?
TS:
V-e-s-t-a-l, yes, Arthur G. Vestal, who was an ecologist --
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
-- at the university. And I’d come from Indiana over to Illinois. And I got into the, uh,
prairie work, and I was actually introduced to prairie. And in the mean time, um, I’ve
forgotten his name right this minute, out in Nebraska, Kansas, Nebraska, had --
WJ:
Sears?
TS:
-- been doing some work on the root systems of prairie plants.
WJ:
Oh, yeah.
TS:
And Vestal knew about the work and introduced me to it and suggested I might work on
the roots of prairie plants in Illinois. And so that’s what I chose for my doctorate
dissertation. And I have a, the work, which was written up. I don’t know if you have the
reprint of that paper or not, but I can send you one if you want it.
WJ:
I’d like to have it.
TS:
Okay.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Let me see, reprint –
00:02:52
WJ:
Now that would’ve been some of the early ecological work on prairies, isn’t that right?
TS:
Yes, that’s right. I was following Weaver and Clements. That’s who it was.
WJ:
Yeah, Weaver and Clements.
TS:
Yeah, and I talked to Clements a few times, and I knew Weaver. I’d met him quite a
number of times. And so I just followed more or less their line and wrote up that prairie
paper, which is published in ecology, yeah, ecology.
00:03:24
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
And Bill Longenecker and Aldo Leopold ran across the paper and one of the things they
wanted to do there at the Arboretum is to establish the prairie area.
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
And so they wrote around to see where I was, and I had already gone to Southern Illinois
at the Shawnee National Forest and was working for the Forest Service at the time. And
they wrote me and asked me if I’d be interested in working on prairie plants. And they
could give me the supervisory job of that, a big part of it, under the Park Service.
WJ:
When was this then?
TS:
Huh?
WJ:
When would this have been?
TS:
That was 1935 because in 1934, I got my doctorate degree.
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
I beg pardon, 1933, I got my doctorate degree, and in ’34, early ’35 that I was there at the
Shawnee National Forest. And so they made application. I was with the Forest Service
in connection with the CCC camps there. And when they began checking it out, they
said, hey, there’s the regulation that you can’t, as one service, can’t steal personnel from
another service. In other words, Park Service couldn’t get the personnel from the Forest
Service.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And I had to go to Washington, D.C. and go through the Departments of Agriculture and
Interior in order to get a permit for me to move from the Forest Service to Park Service.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
But Leopold had, uh, a good deal of clout in those days, and he and one or two others
there at Madison had made a good case for themselves. And so they did get me
transferred from the Forest Service to Park Service. And so I moved from Harrisburg,
Illinois, with the Forest Service up to Madison with the Park Service in February, I think,
of 1935.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And they got me in there primarily to supervise the prairie plantings and prairie
development of the Arboretum.
WJ:
Yeah, yeah.
TS:
And I got there. The temperature was just 20 below, 20 below 0.
WJ:
You came to the camp here?
TS:
Yeah, at the camp, and they had two and a half feet of snow. And it didn’t warm up until,
oh, for about two weeks, above zero.
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
Yeah, they were really snowed in. That was just about the worst winter they’ve had
there.
4
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
00:06:00
WJ:
Well, what were you doing here in the winter during, you know? You couldn’t be
restoring prairie.
TS:
No, as a matter of fact, the prairie was not the only thing they were interested in. They
were, of course, interested in establishing forests as well.
WJ:
Oh, did you work on that too?
TS:
Yes.
WJ:
Oh.
TS:
I worked with Longenecker, Nelson, and others, and I actually worked in forest cutting as
well. In other words, I was general plant ecology. Plant ecology is my field.
WJ:
I see, yes.
TS:
And, of course, I was called around the area to find where the prairie was, and I would
need to get acquainted with the Arboretum first to what the lineup was and where the
prairie would be and what type of building we’d have on it. So that was being done
during the earlier part of the year.
00:06:47
WJ:
Well, now who managed, who managed this? Was there someone over you as an
ecologist?
TS:
Well, Longenecker of landscape architecture --
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
-- and Aldo Leopold of game management were the two principals scientists in
connection with the Arboretum development. And I was working more directly under,
uh, Aldo Leopold than anybody else.
WJ:
Yeah, tell me about your relationship with him.
TS:
Oh, it was very favorable. He was special wildlife management. I got to know him very
well, and he sort of let me develop the prairie according to my own ideas. And they
made suggestions. They knew where the prairies were in that vicinity, and he suggested
going out and doing both prairie seeds and prairie transplants. And that’s the type of
thing, the way we started out there.
00:07:42
WJ:
What was the condition of the prairie project when you arrived?
TS:
Well, a cornfield, the cornstalks were still up there in the field at the time.
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
Yeah, it had been crops the year before, and then it had lain fallow for a year.
WJ:
What was your feeling, was this, what was your feeling about the whole project at that
time?
TS:
Oh, I was enthusiastic about it. I was quite interested in prairie development.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Were you familiar with --
TS:
It was evident that there wasn’t much of any of it left in Illinois. I went all over Illinois
trying to find the prairie --
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
-- and would find just patches here and there, nothing to speak of, nothing like prairies
that we have now in 1980-81. They just, they were far scarcer then than they are now.
WJ:
Were you familiar with prairie restoration techniques?
TS:
Not, no, I had to develop that myself, and there wasn’t anything being done in prairie
restoration that I knew about. And, as a matter of fact, as far as I know, I was one of the
first ones that did any prairie restoration work.
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
Yeah, I don’t know of any anyplace that’s been done prior to that.
00:08:51
WJ:
What was, where was this idea coming from? I mean, whose idea was that, do you think?
TS:
Um, I suspect Aldo Leopold was probably more influential than any other one individual
on that.
WJ:
Uh-huh, yeah.
TS:
He may have known some others there that had something to do with it. But as far as I
know, well, there was Fasset, eh, I’ve forgotten his first name.
WJ:
Norman.
TS:
Norman Fasset, yeah, who was also interested in that, and I got to pretty well friends with
Fasset. And he was very much interested in that too.
WJ:
Yeah, well, tell me how you proceeded then. When spring came, and --
TS:
Yeah, the only thing we could do was to get a small crew, and we’d go out into what little
bits of prairie we could find here and there. You see more of it in Sauk County than there
was there in Dane County.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And especially along the Wisconsin River, there were bits of it.
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
And so we collected various seed and somebody got permission to dig up some prairie
sod. We took both, took a little, there was a dozen boys, loaded up the truck with sod,
brought it back and dug holes and planted.
WJ:
How many, how did you find these prairie remnants?
TS:
Well, here again, Leopold and Facet had been up there before I had. And they knew
about where they’d found it. And so I just took their word for it.
WJ:
Did you make an attempt to locate prairies that were threatened with destruction, or --
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Uh, no, not specifically, as a matter of fact, any prairie that remained was threatened with
destruction in those days.
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
So there wasn’t any such thing as prairie conservation. That was unknown.
WJ:
Yeah, yeah.
TS:
So there wasn’t any.
00:10:40
WJ:
What was the attitude of the crew toward this activity?
TS:
Oh, [word unclear] they, they were just working. They’d just do whatever somebody told
them to do, whether it made any sense. So much the better if it didn’t by them, standard
government procedure.
WJ:
I see, yeah.
TS:
The CCC, I don’t think there was a single boy there that has really developed any
scientific interest.
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
Yeah, most of them didn’t even have a high school education as far as that concerned.
WJ:
Well, were you --
TS:
So that didn’t make any difference.
WJ:
Yeah, were you working closely with the crews in the field then?
TS:
With the crew?
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Uh, they worked directly under me.
WJ:
In the field?
TS:
I was the technical foreman, ecologist, and the boys were just supposed to do what the
technical foreman said they were to do.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And most of them were not very efficient. A few of them worked hard, but that would be
true regardless of what they were assigned to do.
00:11:39
WJ:
Yeah. Tell me how you can, about how you approached the problem of deciding how to
deal with the problem, the task that you --
TS:
Primarily it was to get what I could and put it in where I could as I could, and depended
on what I found available. If I found sod, why I dug up sod. If not, I collected seeds and
made some little seed spots in there. We had quite a bit of cornfield, old cornfield. They
were old fields, which the quack grass had pretty well taken over.
WJ:
In the prairie, you mean?
7
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Yeah.
00:12:12
WJ:
Describe the site to me at the time, the Curtis Prairie site.
TS:
Strictly second-growth old field, and not quite flat, there was a slight narrowing. You see
the south area, south of that highway, I’ve forgotten the name.
WJ:
The Grady.
TS:
Yeah, hadn’t been acquired yet.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
That was all outside the area, and so we worked south of the U.S. 18 highway.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
In there, and, uh, the idea was to get the best covered as quickly as possible, so I scattered
out my plantings over there, the spots were two, three feet apart.
WJ:
Well, now, was it partly plowed field, partly pasture?
TS:
It had been plowed in previous years. But we mitigated against any additional plowing.
Plowing is considered, at least at that time, to be unsuitable for prairie establishment
because plowing just encouraged the weeds. And we wanted to get as few weeds as we
could.
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
And so we tried to do as much as we could without plowing as such. Of course,
nowadays, we know better, that prairie can be established on plowed field quite well. But
we didn’t know that then.
WJ:
Yeah.
00:13:38
TS:
And my friend Ivan Boyd was working in Iowa at that time, was working a little bit on
the establishment of prairie plants by seeding out plowed fields. He was working with
Soil Conservation Service then.
WJ:
Yes. Right at that time?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
So this work was going on where?
TS:
Boyd’s work was going out of the Soil Conservation Service in Iowa.
00:12:05
WJ:
I see. To what extent would you say that the work that you were doing here then was
really pioneer work in prairie restoration?
TS:
Yeah, the Soil Conservation Service, and our particular branch, ecological branch of the
Park Service were working parallel to them. See, that was still brand new as far as the
Soil Conservation Service was concerned then. And this was just immediately after the
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
Dust Bowl, and the Soil Conservation Service was trying to get anything that they could
grow that would be resistant to drought.
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
That’s the reason they were looking at prairie plants.
WJ:
As a result of the Dust Bowl?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Yeah, we sometimes say we have the world’s oldest restored prairie here. Would you go
along with that?
TS:
Um, do you mean there on the Arboretum?
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
That’s probably right. As far as I know, it is.
WJ:
Yeah. But tell me, since you brought this up, give me the names of any other people you
know, who were working on prairie restoration at that time.
TS:
Oh, at that time?
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I don’t know of any others. Now I will say that Weaver and Clements were working on
the preservation of such prairie spots as they could find that remained.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
But as far as I know, they were not actually trying to reestablish any from other areas.
WJ:
Okay. Who was this person you just mentioned?
TS:
Do you mean Ivan Boyd?
WJ:
Yeah, what was his name?
TS:
I-v-a-n.
WJ:
And his last name?
TS:
B-o-y-d.
WJ:
Uh-huh, where was he?
TS:
Gosh, I don’t know, uh, he was up in Iowa someplace, and I don’t remember where it
was, part of the Soil Conservation Service doing the work.
WJ:
This was at that --
TS:
When he was out, they had Bethany at Baker University in Baker, Kansas.
WJ:
Oh, he still, he’s still there.
TS:
Yeah, he is. He’s retired now.
WJ:
I see.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
But he’s still there. I got acquainted with him at that time and been a friend of him ever
since.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And actually, he might have a little information on prairie restoration.
WJ:
I’ll get in touch with him.
TS:
Yeah, this Ivan Boyd, Baker University at Baker, Kansas.
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
Which is just about ten miles south of Lawrence.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And he has a little prairie area up there at Baker at the present time.
WJ:
Interesting. Is there anyone else that I should know about like that?
TS:
Um, you have the Weaver and Clements.
WJ:
Yeah, sure.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
I’m talking about restoration specifically.
TS:
Yeah. No, restoration, I don’t know of anybody. I wouldn’t say there isn’t somebody
else. There might’ve been.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
But none that have come to my attention. I’ve tried to keep up with the literature on it.
00:17:03
WJ:
Uh-huh. Tell me about your familiarity with these plants. Were you troubled by
problems of reproducing them, of propagating and --
TS:
Oh, yes. Some of the transplants I made were quite successful, and there are plants that
are still growing there. And I put in dozens that never did grow, never came up, or didn’t
persist. And then I have back in my records probably a pretty good record of just what
worked and what didn’t work at that time.
WJ:
Do we have those records?
TS:
No, you don’t have all those. You have the areas where the planting were made or
should have back in the records. But the success rate on that, as far as I know, has never
been tabulated. But the original data, the planting data, I still have buried in my files,
which I’ve been hoping to get out and get into presentation work of some sort.
WJ:
I wonder if that’s something that eventually should wind up in the University’s archives.
TS:
They should, you’re right. And I would like to organize them too and turn it over to
them.
WJ:
I could handle that for you if you --
TS:
Yeah.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
00:18:16
WJ:
Yeah, well, pick this up a little bit more. Tell me in as much detail as you feel like the
techniques that you used for preparing the ground. I have photographs here of the CCC
crews kind of digging up the ground with spades, for example.
TS:
Spades and mattocks.
WJ:
What was the approach? You’d come in here with truckloads of, say, sod.
TS:
Yeah, and then we’d just get a long-handled shovel, dig a hole for it to get out the worst
of the quack grass and the rhizomes, and put the grass right in there.
WJ:
How did you handle seeds?
TS:
Seeds? Just getting out the quack grass, pulling out the rhizomes again, and loosening up
the soil, and more or less pull rhizomes, and planted the seeds a quarter of an inch below
the surface.
WJ:
What time of the year?
TS:
I guess I should say one centimeter below the surface, shouldn’t I?
WJ:
Rake them in?
TS:
Yeah, rake them in or put them in with our fingers.
00:19:06
WJ:
Uh-huh, what time of year were you planting seeds?
TS:
From, oh, when the ground warmed up and dried out enough so you could handle it,
which would be, uh, [words unclear].
WJ:
Uh-huh, May.
TS:
And clear up until November.
WJ:
Oh, all through the planting season?
TS:
Yep. That was, we had the crew all the way from 5 to 25 boys working on it. Of course,
better remember the crew were working [words unclear].
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And night was having [words unclear], and we just kept on all year long.
WJ:
Not all year.
TS:
Then during the winter, of course, we’d go out and pick seeds in order to be planted.
WJ:
I see.
TS:
Took care of them, we didn’t have a sophisticated preparation gadgets they have
nowadays. We did all of it by hand.
WJ:
You said the crew was, as you were working on the prairie, was probably a couple of
dozen, 25 people?
TS:
Sometimes that many, but more often it would be five to ten.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Uh-huh, yeah. So you were guessing what to do as you went along.
TS:
I sure was. There wasn’t any other way of doing it before [words unclear].
WJ:
Well, then, as a couple of years went by, how was it working out?
TS:
Uh, actually, the first of this was done in ’35. You may recall ’36 was another dry year.
’33 and ’34 were extremely dry, and then ’35, as I recall, we actually had a little rain for a
change. Then ’36 turned out dry again.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And we spent, oh, weeks carrying water from the lake to pour on some of the plants to try
to keep them alive.
WJ:
From Lake Wingra?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Oh, with a truck?
TS:
Yeah, just had a flatbed truck and three, four, five barrels on it. And we loaded up the
barrels and bailed it out with pails.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And what, all we had was manpower and minimal equipment, and that was about it.
WJ:
Yeah. And you were getting weed problems.
TS:
Uh, we expected that. As a matter of fact, we had some trouble especially the first couple
years we had some of the quack grass growing into the spots. But if the plants were
resistant at all, why they survived the quack grass. After that, the ragweed didn’t really
bother us too much.
WJ:
I see.
TS:
We sometimes got a bit of ragweed, but it didn’t have a long enough life to really be a big
pest. And I don’t recall that other weeds are particularly bad.
WJ:
How did you do, map out your work? Did you start at one end and work to the other?
TS:
Yes, um, I don’t know if there was any specific arrangement. But I did start on the, oh, I
know what. At the, on the west end for, what do they call it, Wingra Woods?
WJ:
Noye Woods.
TS:
Noye Woods, there at the west end of the area, and I started up there and then worked
down, eastward --
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
-- into the lower area. And I started up there because it dried out first.
WJ:
Oh, I see.
TS:
It was warmer and a little drier, and I could handle that soil before I could handle the
lower soil.
WJ:
Well, how did the schedule go? Did you go so far each year? Could you tell me --
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Um, yeah, in fact, I can almost tell that from the maps that I drew.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
Judging from the, because I had the cutting areas numbered, and [word unclear] I still
have those maps. So I could show roughly how much I did per year I think
WJ:
So you just went in yearly increments. Then you’d pick up the following year where you
left off.
TS:
To some extent, but as soon as I got some plants, blue grass [words unclear] belonged in
a wet area, then I’d start over on the other side. And so I had one area starting from the
west end, and then I had one on the south side, part of the little higher and then worked
down in the lower area.
WJ:
Okay. So you were actually working outward from three points.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Yeah. Then you eventually planted over the whole 60-acre area?
TS:
Well, I left actually before the entire area was finished.
WJ:
When did you leave?
TS:
I left in 1941, when I got a summons from Uncle Sam.
WJ:
Well, that’s when the CCC camp closed down too.
TS:
Right.
00:23:44
WJ:
Do you know anything about the burning experiments?
TS:
The burning experiments, we were just working, were mapping that out when I left. And
most of that was done afterwards. I heard about them.
WJ:
Well, whose idea was that?
TS:
I suppose John Curtis is the principal man behind that. And he had just come into the
University the year or so before. I don’t remember just when he did arrive.
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
But he took over on the management when I had to leave.
WJ:
Oh, he took over when you left.
TS:
As I recall, I’m not sure, but that’s my recollection.
WJ:
But you were here as they were, you were helping set up the burning experiments?
TS:
We were planning on it, yes, and [words unclear] and, in fact, I think we did one or two
little quick burnings before I left.
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
Yeah.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Well, what was the, your attitude and other peoples’ attitudes toward those experiments
at that time?
TS:
My attitude is it was good, but I’m afraid not everybody agreed.
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
Yeah, that was still in the days when the Forest Service was printing in big black letters,
prevent forest fire.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And burning was just not permitted for wildlife management. And we were just getting
the idea then, that fires weren’t necessarily harmful. And so the burning started off rather
sketchily in small areas to start with. And almost from that time on, both the Forest
Service and the Park Service, especially the Forest Service, advocated more and more
burning as a management tool. And those are the two in the lead were recommending
that burning.
WJ:
Excuse me just a minute please. There’s other lines ringing here.
TS:
Oh.
WJ:
Okay. I’m back. Was this thing quite a novel thing then?
TS:
As far as I know, it was. There wasn’t much of anybody who [words unclear] who were
recommending the burning then. And we had to sell the Park Service and the Forest
Service and everybody else on the idea.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And, uh, that was in reserve for matter of fact for Vestal before I ever left Illinois.
WJ:
Who was that?
TS:
A. G. Vestal.
WJ:
Oh, Vestal, yeah.
TS:
That the burning was actually beneficial to the prairie.
WJ:
Well, how did he know that?
TS:
[words unclear] prairie seems to do better when it’s burning --
WJ:
Okay.
TS:
-- in the Illinois area.
WJ:
Now then, to what extent was Curtis’s experiment here new then?
TS:
Uh, try that again. I’m not sure.
WJ:
To what extent was the, were the burning experiments something new in management?
TS:
Well, I don’t think that the burning had been very well accepted, and I think Curtis may
have heard about it someplace other and wanted to try it himself there.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
14
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
And the first year, there were some good results in certain species. I remember lichen
came through much better following the burning.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And let’s see, the tall grasses, the [word unclear] and Indian grass --
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
-- seem to do better after the burn.
WJ:
So you people felt at the time this was a novelty to try this.
TS:
Yeah, we did, as far as I know. And from then on, I became increasingly, hearing more
and more about the burning results.
WJ:
Oh, you mean after you left here?
TS:
Yeah, all over the United States. It was Stan Cain, I remember by then he wrote [words
unclear], which was burning as a management treatment. Do you know Stan Cain?
WJ:
No, where was he?
TS:
Oh, right after that, he was assistant secretary of the interior.
WJ:
Oh, I see.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Was he connected with us here in some way?
TS:
No, he wasn’t, although, I’d gotten my first ecology under Stan Cain when he was still at
Butler University at Indianapolis.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
My undergraduate work there, and Cain was on the staff at that time. He didn’t even
have his doctorate.
WJ:
So do you have the impression that Curtis’s, that those burning experiment here were
seminal?
TS:
I imagine they were.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I don’t have the entire history of it. Somebody who worked on the history of ecology
might have some sort of information on it. But as far as I know, it was fairly original.
WJ:
Now let me turn this tape over. And I’ve got a couple more questions. Just let me turn
over here.
00:28:44
End of Tape 1, Side 1
Tape 1, Side 2
00:28:47
WJ:
I want to ask you, tell me a little bit about the work you did in other plant communities.
You mentioned the forests, for example.
15
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Let’s see, [word unclear] who was another one of the foremen, CCC foremen there, was
[words unclear] and Hollis Hewn was another one.
WJ:
Hewn?
TS:
H-e-w-n. And Hewn also was, worked rather closely with Longenecker and [words
unclear]. And [word unclear] were involved in some areas concentrating on the pines
and to some extent other willow trees in the forest area. And [words unclear]
WJ:
You mean, they were planted in the middle of the winter?
TS:
They were planted all winter long because there was snow and putting them in the ground
in two feet of snow.
WJ:
Is that right.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Now you got in, what area were you talking about exactly?
TS:
Uh, the pine area up next to Noye Woods and all along the U.S. 18 highway. What do
you call that highway?
WJ:
This highway is known as the beltline.
TS:
Oh, they call it beltline now. I just that [words unclear].
WJ:
Well, there’s highway 18 and 14 and 12 and --
TS:
[words unclear].
WJ:
Oh, I don’t know.
TS:
But finally, uh, they were planting up along that road there on the south side of it.
WJ:
Yeah, well, that’s the Leopold Pines now.
TS:
That’s the Leopold Pines, okay, they were planting in there. I was putting them there.
WJ:
You were working as an ecologist for that then?
TS:
That’s right.
WJ:
So you were planting --
TS:
I was the ecologist [words unclear], which included many [words unclear], especially
with the prairie and [words unclear].
WJ:
How did you come about, how did you plan you planting on the prairie even, where you
had to decide what species to get, how --
TS:
I said, I didn’t want [words unclear].
00:31:18
WJ:
What were you using as information? Did you think, was your objective to try to recreate
a natural-like prairie?
TS:
I hoped that it eventually would be. We were just trying to get the plants established at
that time, and assuming that once they got established, they’d [words unclear] they’d
eventually form a natural mix.
16
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Yes.
TS:
But we just wanted to get them in there and growing.
WJ:
How did you, how did you establish goals for abundance and distribution and things like
that?
TS:
Well, we didn’t have any goals [words unclear], just mostly what was available and
recommended the soil.
WJ:
Yeah, yeah.
TS:
And sometimes I’d end up with not more than a dozen spots of some species and [words
unclear]. And then I’d put in [words unclear].
WJ:
What kind of quantity of plants were you working with generally? I’ve heard that you
brought in tons of --
TS:
[words unclear] and sod. And on the seed planting, we [words unclear].
WJ:
Yeah, the CCC people collected the seed for you too.
TS:
Yeah. I was out there, and did my part of it, and supervised, told them what to get. And
they did what I said.
00:33:03
WJ:
Did you, were you involved in the restoration work in Wingra and [word unclear] woods
and the oak forest, where they planted maples?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
You were?
TS:
I really helped on the maple and [words unclear] at that time.
WJ:
Now what area are you talking about exactly? Can you describe that to me?
TS:
Actually, I need to [word unclear] so I can see where on my map.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
And I don’t know the wet area [words unclear] for example, the [words unclear], I
remember hearing about it, but I can’t tell you just exactly where it was.
WJ:
Well, there’s an oak forest right on the south shore of Lake Wingra.
TS:
The south shore of Lake Wingra.
WJ:
Yeah, and that’s the woods I’m talking about. They’ve done a lot of underplanting with
maples in there.
TS:
Well, there wasn’t anything done right on the shore.
WJ:
Well, it’s not right on the shore. It’s back a ways. It’s on the hill overlooking the lake
from the south.
TS:
Oh, that was way at the west end, right.
WJ:
I think they call it Camp Woods.
17
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Oh, the Camp Woods, yeah.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
That’s from the [words unclear].
WJ:
The woods were there, yeah.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
To the northeast, it would be.
TS:
To the northeast, okay.
WJ:
Yeah, but, during Arboretum development, they’ve done a lot of underplanting with
maples and basswood and things.
TS:
In that same area?
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Well, that was all done after I left.
WJ:
Okay. I thought it might’ve been.
TS:
Yeah.
00:34:40
WJ:
Are there any other areas? You were involved in the pine planting.
TS:
Yeah, we planted, and the hardwoods along the [words unclear] on the beltline.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
[words unclear].
WJ:
Where were you getting trees for those plantings?
TS:
That’s a good question. I think it was, I can’t remember. Quite a number of them came
from a nursery someplace.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
I just [words unclear].
WJ:
Do you mean the First World War?
TS:
No, World War II.
WJ:
Well, this was before that.
TS:
Oh, it was before that. Uh, wait a minute. Oh, I guess it was [words unclear].
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Yeah, that was it [words unclear].
WJ:
Anything else about your time here that you –
00:35:41
18
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Yes, and I have an, quite an interest in birds. Do you have a record of Bill Feeney, a
wildlife ecologist?
WJ:
I don’t know.
TS:
You don’t have his name down there.
WJ:
Well, I don’t know.
TS:
Ah, it was Bill Feeney who was in charge of the wildlife aspect. And he took an interest
in deer and also in pheasants [words unclear], and [words unclear]. And I [words
unclear] the Arboretum, but he was at the University. And he was working under three or
four of them, and [words unclear]. So I helped him along that, and next year I was
[words unclear].
WJ:
On the Arboretum.
TS:
On the Arboretum [words unclear].
WJ:
Anything that I’d be interested in in your relationship with the crew or the --
TS:
The crew on the wood [words unclear] was only about four or five boys.
WJ:
I see.
TS:
And he supervised that. And I helped out down [words unclear].
00:37:33
WJ:
Uh-huh. Did you live here at the time?
TS:
Yeah, I did.
WJ:
For all that time?
TS:
Yes, I did.
WJ:
What was it like living here?
TS:
Oh, you’ve been in an Army camp?
WJ:
No, but, well, not really? It was like that, huh?
TS:
Which, not [words unclear].
WJ:
Yeah. You weren’t married.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
You were married?
TS:
My wife was teaching down in Illinois. I was up there.
WJ:
So your wife lived here at the camp with you?
TS:
Nope, she lived down in Decatur, and whenever I could get a leave, I’d go down
there.And then when she wasn’t teaching, then she’d come up and shared my room or
[words unclear].
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
We had a cottage down on Lake Monona, Edgewood College.
19
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Oh, so you’d live at the cottage during the summer.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
I see.
TS:
[Words unclear].
00:38:39
WJ:
Uh-huh. Do you mind telling me what your salary was at that time?
TS:
Oh, I wouldn’t mind telling you if I knew.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I can remember that I started in, I already had my Ph.D. degree, and I started in at $72.50
a month I think.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And that was down at the Forest Service down in Illinois.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And bye the time I got up to Madison, somewhat above that and made around $104 a
month then.
WJ:
A month.
TS:
Yeah. In that case the camp did provide housing.
WJ:
Yeah, yeah, that would help.
TS:
That helped.
00:39:24
WJ:
And what about some of the people? What can you tell me about Leopold, for example,
what kind of a guy was he?
TS:
Well, he [words unclear].
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And he lived on Leopold [words unclear], very nice to get along with.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And he had a [word unclear] to be published, he’d have some of us help out and then
he’d give credit [words unclear].
WJ:
Uh-huh, yeah, was he an easy guy to get along with?
TS:
Very easy, very helpful.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
[Words unclear].
WJ:
I see.
TS:
[Words unclear]. He was a hard worker himself [words unclear].
20
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
00:40:31
WJ:
Yeah. Could you give me your address?
TS:
You mean business?
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
1415 South College.
WJ:
South College?
TS:
Uh-huh.
WJ:
And it’s Pittsburg?
TS:
Pittsburg, without the H.
WJ:
Kansas.
TS:
Kansas.
WJ:
And the ZIP?
TS:
66762.
WJ:
Okay.
TS:
How did you happen to get me?
WJ:
When you were born?
TS:
-- February 1907.
WJ:
1907.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Okay. Because they’re going to want, I will prepare the [word unclear].
TS:
I’m not [words unclear].
WJ:
Okay. Do you have any photographs [words unclear] who have been on the CCC crew
and I talked to them for a while. I taped some remarks, and he remembered you. He said
they used to call you the little owl.
TS:
Oh, they did tell me that.
WJ:
Did they?
TS:
I knew that.
WJ:
Yeah, yeah, but this is the kind of thing that’s gotten me thinking we should try and have
some kind of a reunion, you know.
TS:
Yeah. I’d be interested in getting in on that.
WJ:
Okay. Well, listen, I’ll be in touch with you --
TS:
[Words unclear].
WJ:
Yes.
21
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Just stopped by on the way to Wisconsin, and I didn’t actually visit with anybody at the
Arboretum itself. I drove through the Arboretum [word unclear], but somebody told me
afterwards that there’s a memorial plaque with my name on it there.
WJ:
Boy, I wasn’t aware of that.
TS:
I remember, I saw the [words unclear] out there on the prairie.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And they said there’s one in the [word unclear] with my name on it. But I hadn’t heard
about that, and I haven’t seen it.
WJ:
Well, let me check that out too.
TS:
Yeah, I’d be interested to see if there was a [word unclear].
WJ:
I’ll definitely check that. I ought to know about it.
TS:
Yeah, assume that I would be proud of it, especially [words unclear].
WJ:
Oh, yeah.
TS:
And my name is in that.
WJ:
Oh, sure.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Well, let me --
TS:
Then I, this is, the Arboretum is a place I do want to come visit, and [words unclear].
WJ:
Well, maybe you can come to this reunion then.
TS:
I haven’t been, I retired here now for four or five years [words unclear].
WJ:
Maybe you could come to the reunion.
TS:
I’d like to.
WJ:
Well, let me, I’ll let you know whether our plans materialize.
TS:
Yeah, okay.
WJ:
Good. Well, I certainly appreciate you talking to me.
TS:
Oh, it’s a great pleasure for me to be able to contribute something to the [word unclear].
WJ:
Well, you’ve already contributed a lot. You’ll hear from me in the next week or so.
TS:
Thank you very much.
WJ:
You’re welcome.
TS:
Oh, by the way, I wanted to say, I’ve got those pictures here [words unclear].
WJ:
Oh, I see.
TS:
[Words unclear].
WJ:
Did you go, where did you go when you, you went into the Army out of here.
22
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Yeah, and then from the Army, you went to Kansas?
TS:
Yeah, I actually went to Pittsburg and [words unclear]. Although, I’m retired, and
actually I asked the [words unclear].
WJ:
Oh, you do?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Did you restore it yourself?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Just a moment, please [words unclear].
TS:
You’re too longwinded.
WJ:
He’s our ecologist here?
TS:
Oh, yes.
WJ:
Well, maybe, he might call you back and talk to you a little bit.
TS:
Okay.
WJ:
But I’ll be in touch with you in the next week.
TS:
Okay.
WJ:
Through the mail.
TS:
Uh-huh. Thank you for calling.
WJ:
It’s been a great pleasure.
TS:
Yeah, bye.
WJ:
Good-bye.
00:45:50
End of Tape 1, Side 2. End of Interview.
Second Interview Session (1982): Tape 2
Tape 2, Side 1
00:00:01
TS:
--Personal reflections and mostly an interest in just knowing what did happen to that
work which we did back there in the late 1930s.
00:00:14
And I would like to comment particularly on a little item in this rather remarkable thesis
on the Curtis Prairie, in fact, on both the Prairies. I was just looking at it last night,
stayed up too late at night looking at it. But he sort of implied a criticism, he didn’t
actually say so, in that the first prairie that was planted with a sort of a random pattern of
plantings as contrast to the Green Prairie, which had a planned pattern. And he admitted,
very justifiably, that the Green pattern was definitely superior.
23
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
00:00:55
But I think it may be worthwhile to note just a little bit about the philosophy at the time.
Go back in your history to the early 1930s, the Great Depression, from 1932-35. And
when I came here, in fact, I was, have a, got my doctorate degree in ’33, right in the
middle of the depression. And what do you do when you get a doctorate degree in the
middle of the depression? You look around and pick up whatever job you could. And in
the mean time, F. D. Roosevelt had been elected President. And he inherited a Great
Depression too. And he started in on this conservation idea of doing something to relieve
the work shortage and try to get something out of it at the same time. And he instituted
the conservation programs and probably the biggest single impetus in conservation ever
in the history of the subject. It hadn’t started then. It started with the first Roosevelt, as a
matter of fact, getting the idea to cross and very significantly. But as far as the
popularization is concerned, for many persons, the development of the conservation
programs and especially the CCC to use the young boys to develop conservation projects.
00:02:20
In the mean time, the biologists had been pointing out that the wildlife had been going
down, down, down, deer, turkey, ducks, geese, you name it. The hunters were
complaining, nothing to shoot at anymore. And even the arms companies were
complaining that they couldn’t sell their shotguns and shells as much as they used to
because they couldn’t go out and hunt anything anyway. And all these culminated in the
idea that if we’re going to be involved in our natural biota in any way, we certainly
needed to do something about maintaining it, retaining it. And this is the basis, the
philosophy behind the whole conservation program. And so he got the Congress to pass
the law to provide some money. And the idea was to get out there and just don’t sit
around talking about it, but do something. What are you supposed to do? You figure that
out. Do something. Almost anything would be better than what they’d been doing in the
past, which had disastrous results, resulting in the depression as a matter of fact.
00:03:30
And that was the opportunity, which Leopold had been working for. And he had this idea
of getting the natural area. Of course, Longenecker was the one that wanted a big
Arboretum as such, a collection of trees. But Leopold talked with Longenecker and said,
what we need is not just a row of elms and a row of maples and a row of oaks down
there, that the old classical arboretum had been. But present them in a natural collection
as they grow naturally, not as they grow very artificially in a garden. And so between
them, they came up with this idea of sort of a wildlife area, a natural area, which is not
strictly an arboretum at all. In fact this place should never have been called an
arboretum, except they didn’t have any other name for it. And actually they didn’t, the
name arboretum did have the advantage that at least people knew the word, knew what it
meant. If you call it something else, they would say, well, so what? I wouldn’t mean
anything to them. But it was a respectable word, and so it did have its merit in being
something they thought they could understand.
00:04:46
24
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
I came up here as, I came up here at Leopold’s invitation, to work on the prairie.
Leopold would take some of the natural vegetation areas of the state, said we have prairie
in Wisconsin in addition to the forests, and as long as we’re making a natural area and
natural tree plantings, let’s put the prairie in there too. And as far as I know, he was the
one that got the idea of actually including a prairie in the natural area. And in looking
through his pile of journals, some night up there, he ran across in the Journal of Ecology
an article about the prairie plants, the ecology if prairie plants, which had my name
attached to it. It was my doctorate thesis, which I worked, which I’d done in Illinois. I’d
been working with such prairie fast as I could find, usually little places along the railroad
right of ways. That’s the principal place they could be found and sometimes old
cemeteries, sometimes little old waste corners, to find out that some of the details of these
prairie plants. There was no prairie in Illinois. There wasn’t a prairie in Illinois as big as
this room. They looked for some, as a matter of fact. They just couldn’t find any
anyplace.
00:06:04
There were more in Wisconsin than there was in Illinois. Illinois is all corn land,
farmland, certainly not prairie land. So I’d done my work just in bits and pieces. But he
did find this article of mine, and I was working with the Forest Service at that time. He
asked if I could get up here, take care of a prairie development project. I was interested.
And eventually, that’s what happened. I wasn’t really familiar with the Wisconsin prairie
plants. They are somewhat different from the ones in Illinois, further north and a little
more, they lay more trees around them. And so I had to sort of feel my way along. I took
the advantage of talking with Leopold and with Fasset. They were my primary mentors.
They knew where the prairies were and the camp that had already been established here
on the area, down here below the building, we were said, here’s 200 men. We got ten
trucks and some long-handled shovels. You know, make a prairie out of that, using
whatever you can find. They had already drawn the map of the area. They didn’t have
all the land, but they did have at least part of it, and said, we’re going to put trees all
around the edge, and then you just, the central part, you make into a prairie. Well, that’s
all I had to do. I had to put men and machines to work right away, not having anything to
work with and not knowing exactly what we were to do. But that was the idea. We went
out along Wisconsin River, found little patches of prairie, and as soon as the weather
broke, as I said, I got here in the middle of the winter. But long about, oh, middle of
April, weather got good enough so we got out. We looked at some of last year’s prairie
and dug up some and needed to put it in. The first thing I found out was the little blue
stem, sort of a high, rocky knoll. Now we didn’t have any high, rocky knolls in the
Curtis Prairie area at all. But we did have the highest, driest spot up there, which would
probably be the best for it, and so I put them in on that particular spot.
00:08:21
As was also said, that initial spring was followed by an extremely hot, dry summer, no
rain at all. And we were not only putting in that prairie plants, but they were also putting
in a lot of horticultural, planting a lot of pine on the Leopold Pine area, and then some
horticulture plants on this other side. And they were getting a lot of those too. And so
most of the crews were actually working on that. And my prairie crew was a rather small
crew, maybe 10, 15, 20 men doing the prairie plants. And it was simply a matter of
25
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
putting those in in that particular area. We didn’t know at that time it was going to be
very hot and dry, but hoped the rains would eventually come, which they never did to
speak of. But the planting, as a result, was more or less of a flop. Some of them
survived. I have records of how much did survive. But it was, most of them died off
because of just too much heat and sunshine. We tried watering. That was true of the
pines and the horticultural plants as well as the prairie. They didn’t have any pumps here,
of course. They took a truck down to Lake Wingra and found a spot down next to the
edge of the lake, sort of off the eastern end of the lake, put in a sub-jug power pump,
gasoline pump in there, and pumped water up into big oil drums on the bed of the state
truck. And you got up here, and we had buckets to dump the water out onto the plants.
And see the bells, empty them, and then go back and get another one. Of course, the
roads were very rough and wiggly at the time, jump over the land, and the water would
slop out over the course.
00:10:03
But we got some of the water onto the plants, tried to get some of it on the prairie plants
too. But the prairie plants were little things here, and didn’t, we didn’t have too much
water, and young kids didn’t know what the prairie plants were, and they’d walk all over
them. It was pretty unsatisfactory. Anyway, they’d actually paid money for some of
those trees, especially the horticulturals. Somebody had donated money for that, and they
had priority. Prairie plants were way down on the list because those were free except for
the labor of getting them. So they didn’t get very much water. But so as to protect the
little plants, they put two eight-hour shifts from 4:00 to noon, and then from noon to 8:00
in the evening. Then they changed to 3-hour shifts, 3 8-hour shifts, worked 24 hours,
round the clock. So that’s in carrying water from the lake to put on all the plantings that
we had here. And they did that for about three weeks. Finally, we got a little bit of a
shower, and we breathed a sigh of relief. At least we’ll have some water to help things
out. So we just suspended the watering for three days, and had to go right back to it
again. The shower wasn’t enough to really help at all. That was the origin of our first
plantings. Subsequent to that, we moved with some of the big bluestem, which we got at
another place and brought it in, a little further in here. And that succeeded much better.
We did some the first year, not a great deal. The next year, we had things better
organized, knew what we were after. We tried sod planting at first. But by that time, we
could also start from seed planting. The sod was awfully heavy. A truckload weighed
one and a half, two tons and occupied a spot maybe as big as this room. Because there
are a lot of spots out there on the prairie, and even then, the spots were three or four feet
apart. But when we found some seed, then we put this in.
00:12:07
And it was something of a tussle to decide what we were going to do with these
plantings? Were we going to make a very carefully organized garden, or were we going
to try to cover an area? Obviously, Jackson and his money raisers wanted to see
something then out here, and we decided to spread the prairie rather thin perhaps, gut at
least over as much area as possible. So let’s make it look like we were doing something.
And so we put in patches of blue stem here, and then we got some Indian grass over here,
and we got some baptisia, and whatever plants we could cease we could get and get little
patches of it here and there more or less a hit-and-miss way it just happened to come up.
26
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
We didn’t have any particular plan of what came next. But whenever we had some
available, we got some stipa, one of the things. We don’t have [word unclear] is
probably good for stipa. That takes a dry, sandy soil, for the most part, and we didn’t
have any sand out there. I picked a spot over on one side, where it was dry and probably
the best bet we could put in, and I’d put it in there. But I really didn’t expect it to do very
much of anything because I hadn’t had the opportunity to select a good place for it. I
took Bill out there a couple days ago and said, there’s the, we got the spot of stipa plants
here. Let’s see if there’s any of it left. My original record showed rather poor survival.
But I sort of figured this is about where it showed, I had a map showing were it was
supposed to be. And within one minute, we’d found our first stipa plant. And a couple
minutes later, I found two or three others. I had told Bill ahead of time, I hadn’t seen any
stipa out there on the Curtis Prairie. I looked around for two or three days to what I, well,
I had found one plant. But there wasn’t any out there.
00:14:11
But when we started looking, why here were the stipa plants, and a few minutes later, Bill
had to come back and go to work. I went on down and found quite a patch of it there.
That’s the only one of stipa I’ve found since. And it’s not the ideal place for stipa. But it
was put in there, and the stipa plant said, we can deal with this. And they’re there to this
day. They haven’t spread much. But they haven’t actually taken over. There’s a lot of
other things in there too. But they’re still there. And you can tell just exactly where that
planting was because this is where the stipa is still present in that area. And that’s been
the success of all the work which I’ve been doing since, doing what we could with what
we had in the time that we had available without any definite plan except to cover
territory. And hope that some of them, at least, would find they were places where they
could survive. I suppose I’ve talked enough here. [Applause.]
00:15:17
VOICE #1: Does anyone have any questions for Dr. Sperry?
VOICE #2: How many years did you do it, how many years -TS:
I started in spring of ’36, and had to leave in the spring of 1941, when I got an invitation
from Uncle Sam to join the Army, five and a half years.
VOICE #2: What does stipa look like?
TS:
Stipa, native grass.
VOICE #2: Oh.
TS:
Okay, among other names. It has a half dozen names, porcupine grass is something else.
VOICE #3: Are there things you planted that you have not been able to find?
TS:
Oh, yes, in fact, when I brought them in, I had a little seed, petalostemum candidum, for
example, I said, ah, I bet petalostemum candidum will grow here. They never did. And I
don’t know if we have any on the green prairie or not. It might grow there. But it
certainly wouldn’t grow on our area here. In fact, the petalostemum purpureum, I didn’t
think that would grow. I did find a half-dozen plants of it. They survived. It’s not a
good country for them though. It’s not an area for them. But if I had it, I put it in, hoped
27
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
something would work at least. And it has I suppose, oh, 20% of the various species, no
good at all, nothing.
VOICE #3: But that means an 80% success rate, which is pretty good.
TS:
Which surprised me, remarkably good.
VOICE #3: Considering that you really didn’t know what would take and what would not.
TS:
We did not know what would take, and we knew that we did not have the areas here that
would be suitable for many of the species. We needed some lighter soil, and we needed
some sandy soil.
VOICE #3: And we didn’t own the Grady tract at that time.
TS:
And we didn’t have any, no, we didn’t have the Grady tract. And there was an area out
there, near where siltation pond is now, which was a hill. And it’s marked on the map as
a control area. Actually, it wasn’t. It was reserved area. Leopold had the idea we’d go
out and bring in some river sand and put three feet of sand over that whole hill and make
a sand prairie out of it. In the mean time, we’d gotten the Grady tract and found the sand
over there. So we abandoned that idea, and that’s where the limestone, limestone’s been
put on top of that now.
VOICE #3: Yeah, uh-huh.
00:17:29
VOICE #4: Was there much disagreement over objectives between what people like Joe Jackson
wanted to see the place look like and what the scientists wanted it to look like?
TS:
I didn’t get in on that part of it. Yes, uh, there was something of a disagreement between
Leopold and Jackson. Jackson was something of a [word unclear] in his look on what the
Arboretum should be like and hadn’t quite got onto the idea of natural areas, under
natural appearance. But Leopold was very persuasive in his very gentle way, in
persuading him that this is what was really needed. And Jackson went along with it. As
far as I know, there wasn’t any outright disagreement at all. Of course, Leopold was very
solicitous with Jackson because Jackson was the one who knew how to get the money.
And that’s what they needed as much as anything. True, the Park Service did provide
labor and men, and a certain amount of support money, but not the basic materials money
that the Arboretum needed.
VOICE #5: Did you do any birding in the Arboretum?
TS:
Oh, yes, I was an ornithologist from way back before that. And from the time I first got
here, I began keeping track of the birds. And we had a student over at the University, he
was named Anderson, who had a few bird traps, doing some bird banding. And so I got
interested with that and helped him with his bird banding. And when Anderson left at the
end of the first year, I kept on the bird banding all the time I was here. I banded about
3,000 birds here on the Arboretum. And then we had a wildlife foreman, Bill Feeney,
that came in a couple years later, who was here primarily under Leopold’s direction, to
provide for wildlife management on the area. And Bill Feeney and I worked together
quite extensively. Bill, Bill Feeney was working especially with pheasants, pheasants
bobwhites, game species, which Leopold was especially interested in. But I kept track of
28
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
the others, and we have [words unclear], Birds of the Arboretum. You may have a copy
of it. But it’s published in one of the journals.
00:19:55
VOICE #6: Ted, what about early experiments here with fire?
TS:
Um, a little work had been done with the advantages of fire before I ever got here. Vestal
at Illinois, who had been my major professor, had something of an argument with [word
unclear]. He said there’s some ecologists saying fire was essential for prairie. And
Vestal said, it ain’t so. There’s some other factors too. And Vestal pointed out in Illinois
where they had prairie which has not burned over. And the driest spots were not prairie,
they [word unclear] spots for prairie. And that didn’t agree. So they had this argument,
which lasted for over ten years as to how important a fire was, the result of, of course,
that fire is a very important part of it. But not entire, not the whole story. They were of
the idea that we should try some of the burning, and I had that in mind while I was doing
the planting. But there wasn’t much object in burning prairie until you had something to
burn. So it took about three years before we had enough grass out there and had made
enough growth so it could actually make fire worthwhile. And about the last two years,
we did try burning some little narrow [word unclear] little strips, and sure enough, the
lichens and some of the other fancy responded beautifully to the fire. And, of course, that
was as far as it got that time until after World War II, 1946, and they were able to get
back at it again. And Curtis and others began using fire in a big way then, although they
didn’t do their first general burn until 1951 I think before they did their first big burn on
the prairie. But, uh, yes, we had done a little bit and found out there was a tool. Of
course, in the mean time, Stan Cain had written his famous report for the Park Service on
the fire management and the national parks and had shown very conclusively from that
committee report that fires were essential for wildlife management. And from then on,
why the use of fire has been a widely accepted tool. But that was done, oh, in 1950
sometime, when Cain wrote that report. Cain was my undergrad professor.
VOICE #3: Stanley Cain was?
TS:
Uh-huh. I took my first botany and ecology under him.
VOICE #3: At Illinois?
TS:
No, he was at Butler University in Indianapolis in those days.
VOICE #3: At Butler? I knew him at Michigan.
TS:
Yeah, that was before he went to Michigan. And he went to Michigan from there.
VOICE: Did you find the prairie on the edges pushing forward by itself quite a lot?
TS:
Uh, not really. There’s a tendency actually because of the physical difference, for the
forest to push in on the prairie. And the only way the prairie has any advantage is by the
fires burning out into the forest.
VOICE: Clearing the forest.
TS:
Yeah, and in a very dry area, where the fires will burn well into the forest, then the prairie
can spread. But on the moister years, there’s a tendency for the forest to move in on the
29
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
prairie. And we have some very good examples of that in Kansas. We’re showing that
prairie movement back and forth, dry and wet years.
VOICE: Back and forth, that’s interesting.
00:23:36
TS:
Uh-huh, I had the opportunity of working in the Congo in 1952, and the forest, prairie or
grasses border was very sharp there as a result of the fires. I have some good
observations on that.
00:23:55
VOICE: Ted were you also involved in the planting of the bog around what is now [word
unclear]?
TS:
No.
VOICE: That’s entirely separate funding?
TS:
Yes, they were constructing the bog at the time, but it’s another thing. It isn’t done yet
when I was here.
VOICE #3: Have you looked at that?
TS:
No, I haven’t.
VOICE #3: [Words unclear].
TS:
I was disappointed in the bog area in the eastern point of the, I mean, eastern end of
[words unclear] western end, Lake Wingra, how it much it is growing up, and it’s nothing
like it used to be. I thought it was much better then than it is now at this point.
VOICE #3: That’s an area that Jim Zimmerman has been very much interested in and has had
students working on it to try to determine what the reasons are for the gradual
disappearance of that area. The, of course, several acres of it have been destroyed by the
deposition of sand and assorted crud from storm sewers coming down out of, under
Monroe Street.
TS:
Actually, that’s been going on for the last 3,000 years.
VOICE #3: Well, it’s a lot worse since they built houses and streets over there.
TS:
It very much accelerated it, you’re right.
VOICE #3: It came, it comes in in a very different way, and it carries with it entirely different
kinds of material.
TS:
Yeah, we knew that when I was here.
VOICE #3: And we’ve got, I’m sure you did. Finally, next fall, we’ll start building a catch
basin over there.
TS:
Oh, you’re going to do that over there?
VOICE #3: Yeah. It should help to save the rest I hope, and the city will pay for it.
TS:
Good, very good. Well, Wayne?
30
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
00:25:44
WAYNE: Do you remember what the far eastern section of the prairie used to look like? I’m
sure that that’s a, where the -TS:
Eastern part of the Curtis prairie?
VOICE #3: Over there.
TS:
If you look on my map, it says experimental nursery, I mean, temporary nursery and
temporary food plots. That’s what it was when I was here. It was all plowed up.
WAYNE: Was there a section over there that was too wet to plow in sort of the north central
east?
TS:
Uh, the northern part was too wet to plow, yes. But the southern part, when it got up just
a little bit, where they had that --
VOICE: Was there some native prairie vegetation down in that lower area?
TS:
Yeah, along the edges, there was quite a bit of blue stem and various other species. There
was quite a little [sportanas?] there, some of it.
VOICE: These food plots were plots of corn grown for the pheasants and things.
TS:
Uh-huh.
VOICE: Yeah, I’ve got some photographs of that. I didn’t know exactly where they were.
TS:
Well, they show on that Map #8. They’d put the corn in there and grow corn for the
winter feed for deer and pheasants and so forth. And Bill Feeney was awfully
discouraged. After he got his food plot all fixed up going through there, sees the
pheasants go right down the row and pull up the young farm plants, he’d see all the, right
down the line.
VOICE: What were there ran in a prairie species that were here? I was trying to remember from
the [words unclear], but was there a prairie rose or some kind of milkweed or what
evidence was there that there was prairie here when you first started?
TS:
I have a list of those plants, which I remember seeing and growing up various places on
the Curtis area in the pasture areas. I remember [aspidistra?] was one of the first ones I
found, but there’s a little aspidistra and a little baptisia, and then, of course, quite a
number of the blue stem and [sargastrum?] grasses, and some [orientium?], some, what
else? There’s several of them I have them down in my records someplace. It should be
in my report.
VOICE: Well, if that’s all, some of you may want to stop and talk with Dr. Sperry, but –
00:28:05
End of Tape 2, End of Interview.
Third Interview Session (September 13, 1990): Tapes 3-5)
Tape 1, Side 1
00:00:01
31
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Field interview with Ted Sperry, Bill Jordan, conducted by Bill Jordan, Wednesday,
September 12th, 1990 at the Arboretum out on Curtis Prairie.
TS:
Out there, and it takes me about a half a day to establish one flag.
WJ:
Oh, yeah?
TS:
And then after I get the marker flags, then it goes much faster after that. And I’ve been
able to get about, oh, 10 to 15 plots surveyed in a half a day. It runs 20-25 plots a day.
Do you have any pheasants out here?
WJ:
Oh, sure, quite a few sometimes. Actually, there’s been a group of young ones around
the building in the last month or so.
TS:
I’ve seen one. There used to be colonies out here. I was wondering whether there were
colonies here or not.
WJ:
Oh, yeah.
TS:
They nest onto this stuff?
WJ:
I don’t know, Ted. I think the pheasants do live in prairies very happily.
TS:
Yeah. They most of them used to nest more in the marsh next to the lake.
WJ:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
TS:
But I know there was, I’ve seen nests out here. Any [word unclear] sparrows?
WJ:
I believe so, yeah.
TS:
There used to be [hensel?] sparrows when I was playing out here. Most of these birds are
gold finches I think. How would you pass a car on this trail here?
WJ:
Well, if think if you squeezed your car over. We don’t want to be responsible for [word
unclear].
TS:
Sure don’t [Skip in tape]. There’s enough edge here, you can get by it quite well. But
that one to bring you and Gina [Skip] pretty good savannah here. It’s not maintained as
savannah very well yet, but I think it should be, nice little sun area.
WJ:
How would you maintain that?
TS:
With fire, mostly. Now I was supposed to have a flag right around here someplace.
There.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Can a car get by me over there?
WJ:
Oh, I think so, yeah. Can you get out, Ted?
TS:
I think maybe I can squeeze my way out. Here they are. That was put there, it was 25-2,
I think for each one.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And, uh, it was 25-2 and 27-1, gone through the numbers, there’s 27-1 there. Now the,
each number represents a particular species in a kind of particular way. And the 27 of the
32
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
baptisia leucophaea, and 27-1 is the first planting of that, and 27-2 is the second planting
of the same thing.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
And I have 1 to 13, it goes up to 13 plantings of it. And I think that’s the most I have.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
Mostly just one or two or three, and sometimes just one. There’s 25-2, kind of lost my
[word unclear]. Now I’m pretty sure that didn’t grow at all, so I don’t expect to find
anything on that. But Baptisia leucantha is the one that just forms solid thickets all over
the area. And it’s a heck of a one. But leucophaea is rather slow growing and smaller,
and it doesn’t spread very much. And the competition, I haven’t found any. Are these
signs put up for any special reason, or [words unclear]?
WJ:
What, Ted?
TS:
Are those signs put up [word unclear]? The baptisia leucophaea right in this area.
WJ:
Up at the southern end of Curtis Prairie, the high ground between the prairie and the, and
the beltline, Jenna Cline and Ted and Pam and I are visiting some of Ted’s plots so that
he can show us how he’s been doing his survey.
TS:
On your map, the pond’s over there, the [word unclear] is over there. And the prairie
headed for this red spot right here.
WOMAN: The red spot.
TS:
Hmm?
WOMAN: I laughed. I said, I didn’t know whether that was a mosquito bite or -TS:
No, it was a red spot.
WJ:
Yeah, I got it.
TS:
Okay. And we’re right up in here now.
WOMAN: Nursery Plot #3.
TS:
Yeah, you can’t find it anymore, but we grew quite a number of our prairie seeds in the
nursery first and let them grow up, and then --
WOMAN: Where’s the road here?
TS:
See, this map was made before the highway was put in.
WOMAN: Where’s the fire lane that we’re on?
TS:
Uh, right about in here.
WOMAN: Okay.
TS:
Okay. As a matter of fact, trying to survey this area is difficult because the old public
road is on here, but they moved the highway. They moved, it was a six-lane highway and
they put a curve in it. So it comes clear down to here someplace. I don’t know where it
belongs on this map. But this was originally [word unclear] forest about in there, I think
where those curves. But I have never found just where the highway goes along in here.
33
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
But some of these plantings are no longer, this is no longer visible, and these are not
visible because the road took them off.
WOMAN: Uh-huh.
TS:
Come on, Jenna -- not having known [word unclear] not even a road for sure. I
determined my locations by the plants, let the plants tell me. And when I came down
here, up on here, the whole big patch of the Echinacea, and you go through the prairie,
and you don’t fine Echinacea in big patches like that. But these are where they planted,
and the Echinacea is planting 43-4 on our map. Got it?
WOMAN: Uh-huh.
TS:
And the Echinacea, see it’s extending clear back through there?
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And you look here, where you’ve been mowed, and sure enough --
WOMAN: It’s in here too.
TS:
Yeah, it’s all here, and here you have the Bangor leaves characteristic of it.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And so there’s the 23-4. You fall along the edge of the Echinacea, and you come out
here. There’s Echinacea out there. Over there, no Echinacea.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
There’s your boundary land right along there.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
Right from there.
WJ:
That’s pretty clear.
TS:
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to do, illustrate that they plants tell you where the old
plantings were on some species. Some species spread so widely, back to the [word
unclear] is pretty poor.
WOMAN: So your trick was to locate the corner of this 23-4.
TS:
Yeah. And it didn’t make too much difference which corner it was. But I more or less
automatically [word unclear] this corner there.
WOMAN: Oh, my [words unclear].
TS:
I’ll be darned.
WOMAN: By that sign for that [words unclear].
TS:
I’m trying to [word unclear] this Echinacea here that spread here just a little bit. It
spreads rather badly. And it moves down a little bit, I figured the line was probably right
about there. And this is spreading, a little spreading of it. This is an indication of the old
farmland, asparagus.
34
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Strictly European kind, actually you do
quite a bit of eyeball. You could [words
unclear], but the Echinacea extends along here quite well. And the map shows you that
33 is adjacent to the Echinacea just to the west side of it. And that’s aster laevis there.
And so you get over here, and your heavy Echinacea disappears, because it’s scattered
plants. And you got quite a bit of the aster laevis. Isn’t that what you have, this one?
WJ:
Aster laevis?
TS:
Aster laevis, the smooth blue. And you find the Aster laevis through here.
WOMAN: Thirty-three is Aster laevis?
TS:
Thirty-dash-three, yeah. And 30 is the Aster designation, and the dash-3 is the third
planting of aster laevis I put in here. And the other asters are all spread around the
Arboretum. See this is the aster laevis area. It’s not as dense as the Echinacea, but it’s
still considerably more dense than it is in much of the rest of the prairie.
WJ:
Oh, why is this mowed out here?
WOMAN: Because it’s sweet clover.
WJ:
Oh.
TS:
It’s some of the sweet clover. We didn’t kill it all.
WOMAN: Yeah, we kept a lot of the sweet clover.
TS:
And checking your planting here, just to the south of the, well, south of the Echinacea, is
Silphium integrifolium, and south of the Aster laevis is 42, 41-3, which is Silphium
terebinthinaceum. So let’s go down and see what we find. That’s one of the reasons I
brought you out here because you can walk around on this without having to push
through so much grass. You can see what you’re doing.
WOMAN: I’d like to get rid of all these burrs on my -TS:
Running around, I think maybe I have a spot and then I’m not too sure of it when I come
back to it. So I just take a piece of Kleenex and put it on top of the plant. That tells me
the spot where I was.
WOMAN: Did you plant [words unclear]?
TS:
See, right there?
WOMAN: Did you plant the gentians in here too?
TS:
No, there were no gentians here when I was here.
WOMAN: Wow.
TS:
Who brought the gentians in? Where did they come from?
WOMAN: We’ll have to check the planting record and see.
TS:
Uh-huh. No, we had none here at all. I’m delighted that they’re here, wonderful.
WOMAN: [word unclear].
TS:
I have no idea of the history of it.
35
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WOMAN: Now this is [word unclear].
TS:
You’re out of the Echinacea right away. But you got the [word unclear] in here, just
solid through there, Silphium integrifolium. Do you see it?
WOMAN: I can see it there, and I can see it over here too.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. In other words, the --
WOMAN: Over on the west, on the east boundary of it.
TS:
You’re on the south boundary here.
WOMAN: Yeah, but I mean the east boundary, see it here?
TS:
Yeah, that’s right. So you have an idea just where the original planting was [words
unclear]. There is just some wooded area, and here is -- Silphium terebinthinaceum,
which is common here. Now the Silphium doesn’t tell you too much. There’s some in
here, yes, in fact, a lot of it. But it’s common everywhere else [words unclear].
WOMAN: Yeah, it’s even dense in other places.
TS:
Yeah, they can be quite dense in other places. This, you notice, there’s a lot of them in
here, most of it without the tall, flowing spikes.
WOMAN: Yeah.
TS:
Flying stalks, so that it’s here. There’s some Silphium laciniatum, which is also --
WOMAN: There’s quite a lot of it, Silphium laciniatum. I was surprised.
TS:
Well, uh --
WOMAN: Where was the nearest place you planted that?
TS:
Look on your map again on, what number is that? Oh, yeah, 57-1, that’s the right
adjacent to the --
WOMAN: Oh, yeah, right there.
TS:
And that’s the Silphium laciniatum.
WOMAN: That doesn’t spread very much, so that’s a good marker for you too.
TS:
Yeah, well, that’s -- again not a lot of tall, fine stems, but still, it’s almost dominant.
Now be sure and come right close to this. You got a lot of these things on your jacket,
and carry them back with you. Now over to the west of the Silphium laciniatum, there’s
18-3, and that’s a rose. I didn’t plant the rose. It’s Rosa Carolina, which is the little low
one. But I did find when I was planting that there are quite a number of these roses.
They grow in patches. And when I found a patch, well, I just put some stakes around it,
the little wooden stakes is what I used those days, and just left that as a natural
revegetation rose patch, which means the sooner you get past the laciniatum, well, you
should be getting into a patch of roses. Now let’s see how well that works. Go out this
way, and see if you can find roses.
WOMAN: Here, I see one.
36
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Do you? There you are, right here. That’s all the higher they grow. Go out and see if
you can find some other roses.
WJ:
How long, Ted?
TS:
Fifty years.
WJ:
It lasted 50 years?
TS:
Well, that we knew about.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
-- mark this area off.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Aren’t they nice?
WOMAN: Uh-huh.
WJ:
One with fruits.
TS: Yeah. There’s something to photograph.
WOMAN: All right.
TS:
In your book, see all the little red fruit there.
WJ:
So, Ted, that was here on old farmland.
TS:
On the old farmland.
WJ:
Is this pasture up here?
TS:
Old farmland as far as we were concerned, I mean, it had been allowed to grow up for a
year, and I’m not sure just what the original planting. Nobody made a special survey of
what was here before.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
WOMAN: When you planted, did you just use a just big enough shovel to get plants in or seeds
in?
TS:
Yeah, I said the roses were never planted.
WJ:
The roses were here.
TS:
The roses were here.
WOMAN: Oh, I see.
WJ:
And they just staked them off.
TS:
I just put a line around it.
WOMAN: I see. I heard you say you put stakes around them, but I didn’t realize they were
here.
TS:
I did put stakes around these others.
WOMAN: Yeah.
37
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
But I put, I also put stakes around the rose, patch or roses too. But just have to, I didn’t
have to plant it, already planted.
WJ:
So did you put, so you didn’t put anything into that plot at all then.
TS:
No, I didn’t put anything there.
WJ:
I see.
TS:
It was set aside as a natural revegetation unit. It’s what’s marked on the map, natural
revegetation. Now the rest of the story, you look for the plants that were here or you
planted in here. But you want to see if they spread out into the other areas or will also
spread into them. And so what I’ve been doing is for 18-3, planting 18-3, I gave you
your copy.
WJ:
No, that’s okay. I --
TS:
And it’s Rosa Carolina. And this is the 12th of September ’90. And the roses, the
categories I’ve been using, you can’t tell anything about the original planting spots as
such. So the category I use are abundant, pollen, scattered, and intermittently and few or
rare. And you just make guesses as to which is which. But certainly the roses here are
common. I wouldn’t say they were really abundant, but they’re common. And so I just
write down common.
WOMAN: What is the limits of the area we’re looking at right now? How far over are we
supposed to be looking? Yeah, I mean, but how far is that?
TS:
Oh --
WJ:
Scale.
TS:
Scale, that would be about 15 feet across.
GINA: So you think we’re at, near this corner then?
TS:
Yeah, because we just left the Silphium. The Silphium, there’s [word unclear] sited right
by your pants legs.
WOMAN: Yeah, I see them, coming down here.
TS:
Uh-huh.
WOMAN: There’s a rose there, so we’re somewhere near the line.
TS:
Somewhere, but you have to come, take into consideration spreading. And some of the
species spread rather widely, and some don’t. Well, in this patch of rose, we have the
rosa, which is common. And we have lots of Andropogon gerardii.
WJ:
We got a lot of Indian grass.
TS:
We have what?
WJ:
A lot of Indian grass.
TS:
Yeah, and Sorghastrum. So those, in fact, there’s more of the Sorghastrum than there is
the Andropogon here.
WJ:
Yeah, the Indian grass is really common here.
38
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WOMAN: Why is there grass there?
TS:
It’s very interesting to note that sometimes the Sorghastrum is much more abundant than
the Andropogon, and the next place, well, the Andropogon is more abundant, and I --
WJ:
Well, does that reflect planting at all?
TS:
Not so much. Matter of fact, they were growing that way when we first collect them.
And all the planting number 2, and we have more of the 2 than anything else. There’s 211 here, and there’s 2-12 there. Now the 2 means Andropogon and Sorghastrum. Uh, we
dug them up together and planted them together.
WJ:
I see.
TS:
And so they’re mixed in. Some places, the Sorghastrum took over, and the other places,
the andropogon took over. Some places, they are pretty well mixed with both of them.
And now in this particular case, we also have Rhus and write down Rhus. What is that,
Gina, glabra?
GINA: Glabra.
TS:
Yeah,
WJ:
And, uh, goldenrod, Solidago.
TS:
Solidago.
WJ:
What altisima?
TS:
Which one?
GINA: Not this one, well, altisima and canadensis are lumped. So it’s one of -TS:
Okay. Which one does --
GINA: I call that altisima.
TS:
You call it altisima.
GINA: I think [words unclear] is canadensis also.
TS:
Canadensis, I want to follow the not written [word unclear]. I was going to follow the
[word unclear], which was --
GINA: Yeah, so we can check it out.
TS:
-- which was the model.
GINA: Canadensis is a very hairy one.
TS:
Taken after the Britain Brown, the up-to-date version.
GINA: There was quite a bit of Silphium terebinthinaceum, but I don’t know how far over we’re
supposed to consider.
TS:
Well, how, would you say it’s common or scattered?
GINA: It depends on how far over there we go.
TS:
I’d say it’s common, so write down Silphium terebinthinaceum is also common. It’s in
with the roses here.
39
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
GINA: Liatris aspera, which is -TS:
And Liatris aspera is scattered.
GINA: Scattered.
TS:
Okay. We’ll put in scattered here.
WJ:
What’s the small grass down in there? Is that blue grass?
GINA: Most of it will turn out to be [word unclear].
TS:
Be what, Gina?
GINA: Kentucky.
TS:
[Words unclear], probably left over from the old horse pasture days.
GINA: You’ll find [word unclear] in just about every quadrant that you run.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. I haven’t been recording that unfortunately, sorry to say.
GINA: No point in doing it, have to send every one.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh.
GINA: I see some Monarda.
TS:
Monarda, okay, got Monarda down on your list?
GINA: I only see one plant, but it’s tall.
TS:
Well, it’s not common. It’s scattered in there, and what’s this? Is this Panicum?
GINA: Panicum virgatum.
TS:
Panicum virgatum, that’s what I thought, something plain. Thank you for verifying that.
And it’s not common. It’s scattered. And --
GINA: There’s a Ratibida plant without any flowers on it.
TS:
Well, that’s all right. I don’t care about the flowers right at the present time. Common or
--
GINA: Well, I figure I’ve only seen one.
TS:
Scattered, okay, Ratibida.
GINA: Pinnata.
TS:
And there’s Aster laevis there?
GINA: There’s one.
WJ:
Oh, here’s a rattlesnake master.
TS:
Yeah. You know, don’t you --
WOMAN: The rattlesnake, yeah, well, I’ve only seen it dried. Oh, and it’s starting to get dried,
yeah.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. So Eryngium, that’s scattered also.
40
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
That’s just, just see one here.
TS:
And then I’ll compare this list with my 1982 survey.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And then compare that with the 1946 survey, and when I planted it, there wasn’t much of
anything in the rosette. And this is, uh, what?
WJ:
Cherry?
TS:
Prunus --
WJ:
Serodna --
TS:
-- and you can put that in too. You can see the effect of the shading that this is very
different here than it is right down there.
WOMAN: [words unclear]. I think you have that down already.
WJ:
Is that a Desmodium over there about ten feet?
TS:
Yeah, it is. Now Desmodium has an insect or fungus of some sort, makes --
WOMAN: [word unclear].
TS:
[Aspodesia capitata?], yeah.
WOMAN: What is this?
WJ:
That’s Liatris.
TS:
Liatris, blazing star.
WOMAN: All right.
TS:
Liatris aspera. Okay. That’s why I do it.
GINA: The only thing I find troubling, Ted, is not knowing, having a better idea, and I’m sure
you have a better idea of where the boundaries are if you’re going to make estimates as to
whether it’s scattered or not. You really have to know how, you know, what area you’re
looking at.
TS:
You sort of take a count [word unclear] to see how abundant it is. And you know from
the map it wasn’t very large at first.
GINA: Just, you know, if you know roughly the corners there, but I don’t have a feel for that.
WJ:
Well, you don’t have a sense of the scale of this map.
GINA: That’s right.
WJ:
But you could pick up on that.
TS:
Yeah, you pick that up.
GINA: Yeah, I would say I think you probably have a better scale.
TS:
-- very well.
GINA: [words unclear].
41
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Yeah, Lespedeza is one of the common ones, and it’s widespread in much of the prairie.
The Liatris aspera is very widespread, not quite as abundant as the Lespedeza, but there’s
a lot of it. The pycnostachya, I don’t find too much of it, and even where, uh, I was
looking this morning for the Liatris pycnostachya, which I planted there. And I couldn’t
find, in most places, not at all. So I get it right there, down in the bottom, and it just is
solid down there. And I found the, I didn’t know it when I planted it, but the Liatris
pycnostachya takes the lowland. And it spread all over the area there. And then you got
the Liatris aspera, and it’s up here. So they separate themselves.
GINA: [words unclear] one of the first explosions.
TS:
What’s that?
GINA: That was one of the first explosions they had as a population, the pycnostachya.
TS:
The pycnostachya, uh-huh. Uh, Asclepias aspera, the milkweed, is the one with the
narrow leaf and the very slender pod. And [rotislota?], Asclepias rotislota, and I planted
it several places. It exploded all over everywhere. Before I left, I couldn’t find any. And
it was evanescent. It comes up under disturbance, and it just goes wild. I haven’t found
any, I don’t think I found any in 1982, and I know I haven’t found any this time. And I
tried some Incarnata, and I haven’t seen it either.
GINA: Anything else you want us to write down?
TS:
Well, that was the idea. That’s what I do on my survey is write --
GINA: Is there any other place that you want to hear [word unclear]?
TS:
For each planting, I make my list for that particular planting. And there were quite a
number of them this morning, like Sporobolus I think, something of that sort. And I say,
no Sporobolus found. I just don’t see any. It’s gone.
GINA: Where are you now on this map?
TS:
Well, we’re sort of on the boundary line between the Althea and the terebinthinaceum,
which is on here. I think this was apparently terebinthinaceum mostly here and the [word
unclear] over here. How much time did you say you want to spend on this?
WJ:
Oh, I’m at your service here, Ted.
TS:
Well, I --
WJ:
You want to get on down to your other plot, I suppose.
TS:
Yeah, I want to do some that I haven’t done before. There’s Ratibida, which is scattered
in here. And some places Ratibida is abundant where I planted it. And it dominates the
whole thing. But the place I looked in this morning, where I said I planted Ratibida, I
couldn’t find anything. So in some places, it does very well, and in other places, it just
disappears completely.
GINA: I think it’s a real disturbance species. I think if you plowed up any part of this prairie,
you’d get a lot of it.
TS:
Yeah, you see that’s the advantage of the bison. The bison would just disturb things
enough to get some of these things like Elymus and Ritibida and others to come in and
take over. The, another effect I’ve found is the Ceanothus, the little strawberry plant. It’s
42
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
a good marker, but you don’t see it very much through the prairie. Well, the deer browse
it. It’s one of the favorite deer browse plants. And they browse it off to about 2 feet
high.
GINA: One of the few things above ground during winter.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. And I think the deer probably browse the rose too. The deer like those
woody plants. And the roses, I think, are deer browsed. I know the poison ivy is deer
browsed. The deer go to poison ivy in a great way. I haven’t seen it out here so much,
but can’t --
GINA: [words unclear] rabbits around, a lot of rabbits around.
TS:
Yeah, both of them. But we have some down in Kansas there, a whole big field of poison
ivy, and all chewed off about 12-15 inches high. It was bitten off -- widespread, not very
common.
WJ:
What’s that, Ted?
TS:
Euphorbia corollata, but I find it in many of the plantings and the aster, this white aster. I
can’t remember the name of it. This is wonderful. It’s not big enough.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
But it’s --
GINA: We’re going to have a big one, Ted over on the southwest Grady.
TS:
Oh, yes.
GINA: About 25 acres.
TS:
Fine.
GINA: Do you remember Jake Jacobsen?
TS:
Huh?
GINA: Do you remember Jake Jacobsen?
TS:
No.
GINA: He was one of the first supervisors here.
TS:
Oh.
GINA: And he planted acorns over there in the southwest Grady, and he spaced them like a
savannah.
TS:
I see.
GINA: And they’re now nice round-headed trees.
TS:
Very good, uh-huh.
GINA: Waiting for the prairie to grow underneath.
TS:
Originally in this area most of the prairie you had was savannah prairie rather open, tallgrass prairie. I don’t know if there was very much of this solid tall grass at that time.
43
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
GINA: Down at the corner here is a lot of big blue, real tightly packed, not much else there. I
wonder what that planting history was.
TS:
I have no idea. I am sure I didn’t do any heavy planting of that. Well, maybe I did. I’m
not sure.
GINA: Standing right about here, this wouldn’t be a big blue plot, would it?
TS:
Uh, could be.
GINA: On the right-hand side here.
TS:
It could be, uh-huh. I notice right down here one little patch of Silphium perfoliatum.
Do you have other perfoliatum on the area or not?
GINA: Mostly in the new areas they planted. It seems to do well when we plant it now. So
there’s quite a bit in here on the left.
TS:
Yeah, that’s where I saw it. But I haven’t seen any out on the open prairie at all.
00:33:51
End of Tape 3, Side 1
Tape 3, Side 1
00:34:00
WJ:
Continuing this tape, we’re back, we’re in the McKay Center on the afternoon of
Thursday, September 13th, 1990 for a sit-down interview between me, Bill Jordan and
Ted Sperry.
TS:
[words unclear] stuff on these cards is to get it well tabulated.
00:34:28
I think about that old notebook that I turned over to Gina, and it’s downstairs now.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
She said she transcribed them on these sheets here. And she did, but they’re sort of
summarized and not too well organized the way I’d like them.
WJ:
Is this okay?
TS:
Sure. I like to get the notebook. I think I’ll transcribe my field notes into that notebook.
And then once I get them in there in an organized manner, and I want to write it up, write
a complete report on the 50-year survey. And that would have to be rewritten for a paper
presentation someplace or other, publication. But I, my original report would be too
long, too detailed for publication.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
I want the data down, and we can use it to rewrite the [word unclear].
WJ:
Sure, excellent.
TS:
Sorry, my voice isn’t quite as good as I would like for it to be. I’m kind of dry.
WJ:
It’s picking up pretty well.
TS:
Okay.
44
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Would you like to go get a drink or something?
TS:
I just had a couple of them.
00:35:50
WJ:
What I’d like to do, Ted, is go right back to the beginning. And I’d like you to tell me a
little bit about your own background and even when you were a kid and how it was that
you got interested in ecology, prairie ecology.
TS:
Well, I didn’t start to school, the first class attended was in third grade. My mother, we
were living out in the country, and mother had been an old school teacher. And so she
had me and my brother, and she conducted her own school --
WJ:
What school?
TS:
-- her own school, in the morning. She had a class of two, my brother and myself. My
brother was about a year and a half younger than I was. And she just hauled the ritual
right on down, had piano and played the songs, and I had arithmetic class and art class
and history class and things of that sort.
WJ:
Where were you growing up?
TS:
This was the suburbs of Indianapolis probably two miles outside the city in the suburban
area, fairly wild. There was farmland all around us. So by the time we were ready for
the second grade, I was in third and my brother in the second, by then, we could take the
interurban car into town and the city school. So we went through the regular city schools.
WJ:
Were you growing up on a farm?
TS:
No, suburban.
WJ:
I see.
TS:
There was farmland all around us, but we just had a couple, one or two acres, some
country land.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Wooded land, lots of dogwoods and redbud and oaks and hickories and so forth, that was
around Indianapolis.
WJ:
Well, where do you trace your interest in the natural --
TS:
Oh, it was just an ordinary school for the grade school and went to Shortridge High
School, which was really good.
WJ:
What high school?
TS:
Shortridge.
WJ:
Short?
TS:
Shortridge.
WJ:
Shortridge.
TS:
Uh-huh, named after Mr. Shortridge, and it was one of those classical high schools
compared to the others. They taught calculus and three years of Latin and one year of
45
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
Greek in the high school and other subjects. They had some 2,000 or 3,000 students. So
I had a good high school education. Then I went to Butler University there at
Indianapolis and, uh, didn’t know what I was going to get into and took some math the
first year. And I decided, oh, I stayed out a year so I could get some money. And then I
went back and decided a pretty good field, I knew I was interested in science. There was
a field in chemistry, so I might as well see what, in chemistry. But, oh, it was all right. I
liked to get outdoors and played outdoors and I worked outdoors all the time anyway.
And so -WJ:
As a kid, you mean.
TS:
Yeah, and grew up outdoors out there in the country.
00:39:10
So they somehow got in touch with Dr. Friesener.
WJ:
Friesener?
TS:
Uh-huh, and he talked me into biology. So I started in my junior year in biology, botany.
And Friesener was good. He had some top students in the country in his classes, Rick
[Stovenmyer?] and Stanley Cain as a teacher and [Potsger?] there.
WJ:
What was the first name?
TS:
John, I think, John [Potsger?], and Willard [Klute?], the botanist.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
He really had a good group of teachers there, had I think four, about four years in a row,
presidents of the Ecological Society were his students.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Well, he was the one that really got me interested in botany, and so I graduated in botany
and did pretty well. I wasn’t a whiz of a student, but did pretty well, kept my nose to the
grindstone. And he talked me into going to graduate school right away. And so I applied
to Wisconsin and Illinois, I guess about four or five other schools. But I got replies from
both Wisconsin and from Illinois.
WJ:
Now you mean in Urbana, University of Illinois in Urbana?
TS:
Yep, well, yeah, University of Illinois and University of Wisconsin here at Madison. But
the Illinois one came through first, and I accepted it before the Wisconsin even gave me a
nod. Wisconsin was two or three weeks later on their acceptances. So I went to Illinois
[words unclear] and went through graduate school, got my master’s and then my
doctorate. I had Arthur Vestal, who is the ecologist at Illinois, and, uh, so I did my thesis
on root systems of prairie plants.
00:41:32
WJ:
Yeah. Now how did you happen to pick that?
TS:
Weaver and Clements had been doing their classic, basic work on prairie root systems out
in Nebraska. And so talking with Vestal, and we came up with the idea of doing the
same thing in Illinois. And so I just followed them as far as Illinois was concerned
46
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
instead of the drier land of Nebraska. Illinois had a higher rainfall. And it made a
difference. Weaver had published while I was still in school, I think, is a paper showing
that the further west you went, why the shorter the grasses were, and the shorter the roots
were. And as they went eastward, the plants grew taller, and the roots went deeper. And
then, when I got to Illinois, I found the grasses grew taller, and the roots were shorter.
WJ:
Shorter?
TS:
Yeah, because in Illinois, they had a water table. And they went down to the water table,
and as the water table came up, the roots just went down and stopped at the water table.
So that was actually, they justified a doctor’s thesis.
WJ:
Well, now how did you study the roots?
TS:
Huh?
WJ:
What techniques were you using?
TS:
Well, how would you plan what the roots did if you were after them? Use a shovel.
WJ:
Dig down.
TS:
Dig a pit five, six feet deep, go down as far as the roots go.
WJ:
And just follow the roots down.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh.
WJ:
-- tease them out of the soil, yeah.
TS:
Use an ice pick, get them out of the soil.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
That’s the hardest way, and afterwards some of us tried washing roots, but the soil just
pulled the roots, pulled them apart of the washing. That washing technique didn’t work
that well. The method I used was hard enough.
WJ:
Was that hard work?
TS:
Well, not too hard, it was tedious mostly. There was the job of digging the soil out all of
the time.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Going out, but it was getting the roots, the soil loose from the roots and keeping the roots
intact and the job.
WJ:
Yeah, and untangling the different species, huh?
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. So --
WJ:
So you made a contribution to the development of the prairie ecology tradition.
TS:
Yeah, I was a prairie ecologist done for my graduate work. And so I published it.
WJ:
Excuse me, Ted. We were talking about the root research.
00:44:13
47
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Well, yeah, when I got out of school, remember that was 1933. It was following the
Depression, and there weren’t any jobs anyplace. But the CCC project was just getting
started under Roosevelt. And the conservation groups, especially in the Forest Service,
they had a new forest in southern Illinois, just creating one. And they had CCC camps
there. And they referred me to them. So I applied and got a job with the Forest Service
working down there. In the mean time --
WJ:
Where was that, Ted?
TS:
Shawnee National Forest.
WJ:
Cheyanne?
TS:
No, Shawnee.
WJ:
Shawnee, in Illinois.
TS:
Uh-huh. It wasn’t called Shawnee back in those days. But Shawnee purchased a unit and
the Illini purchased a unit.
WJ:
What were you doing with them?
TS:
Foreman in the camp, we were working on forest, doing a forest survey really. Uh, the
reason for the survey is they wanted an evaluation on the land for purchase of the forest
by the federal government, establish a forest. And so we were doing forest survey work.
It was actually cruising timber is what it amounted to be mostly.
00:45:41
In my spare time, I rewrote my doctoral thesis for publication. My doctoral thesis is one
thing, and publication is something else again.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And, uh, I wrote it up for submission to Journal of Ecology. And the editor accepted it
right away. It took me, oh, a year, more or less, to rewrite it and for him to get through it
and get it into publication. And that was about 1935 by the time that it came out.
00:46:18
And ’35 was just the time when Aldo Leopold was looking for a prairie ecologist to
manage the prairie here. On the other foreman, they had the camp, had just been
established, and they could get foremen for their landscape architecture and for their
forestry and wildlife from here in Wisconsin. There were no prairie ecologists in
Wisconsin at all. Now there weren’t many prairie ecologists anyplace. They were scarce
commodities in those days. There were, oh, there were a few, but usually at the
university or something. But I was a prairie ecologist that was working in the forests.
And Leopold asked me, wrote me and asked me if I’d be interested. I said I would.
WJ:
He saw your paper in --
TS:
Yeah, he read my paper in Ecology, and he asked in his letter what a prairie ecologist was
doing down in the Forest Service. He didn’t have to ask that very seriously because he
worked for the Forest Service himself for a few years.
WJ:
Yeah, that’s right. When did you get that, do you remember getting that letter?
48
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
I probably still have it at home, I suspect.
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
Uh-huh.
WJ:
How did you feel?
TS:
Well, I wasn’t, I didn’t know much about prairie projects or prairie ecology. You know, I
had been working on the root systems. But --
WJ:
Had you heard of Leopold before?
TS:
Yeah, I had, although he wasn’t well known, but he was, see his book came out, he
mentioned, came out in 1933. And so even though he was the author of the book at least,
and actually, I said I would. And then I didn’t hear anything from him at all, nothing.
And I figured the project just hadn’t materialized at all. And I discovered later what the
reason was, and you’ve already read it in your, that paper we published.
00:48:42
WJ:
That’s right, that’s right. Tell me, at this point, were you married yet?
TS:
Uh, I married the year after I got my doctorate.
WJ:
In ’34?
TS:
No, ’35, two years after it. I got my doctorate in ’33, and met my wife there in the
Botany Department in Illinois. And she got her doctorate in 1934. And we both had to
get out and earn some money so as to be able to afford to get married.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
So she got a teaching job right away.
WJ:
Teaching in the college?
TS:
At her hometown is Decatur, Illinois. And they have James Millikin University, which is
just a little small college.
WJ:
Millikin.
TS:
Uh-huh, and that’s where she’d done her undergraduate work, and she got [words
unclear]
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
So, uh --
WJ:
You were married at the time you were working for the Forest Service.
TS:
I was married at the time that I was working for the Forest Service, yes. I got, and then
we --
WJ:
Well, then you, were you able to live together when you were working for the CCC then,
for the Forest Service?
49
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
No, she was teaching there at Decatur, and I was working down in Shawnee or what was
the town, Harrisburg, Jonesboro actually is where I first started and went over to
Harrisburg afterwards.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
So the Forest Service, no, I commuted back and forth.
WJ:
Yeah, weekends, you mean?
TS:
Whenever we had a holiday or some weekends.
WJ:
By train or car?
TS:
I drove back, I had a Model-T Ford.
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
Uh-huh.
WJ:
So you had a car at that point.
TS:
Yeah. I sort of had to have a car to get around. And so the first money I made I got a
car, transportation, and we used it for getting back and forth and romancing.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And we got married, well, we went back to Urbana and got married at Urbana, neither at
Decatur or at Jonesboro. We went back there, our little church we attended there at the
university town.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Married in a little university church.
00:51:22
WJ:
Yeah. So late in 1935, you accepted an offer to come up here.
TS:
Yeah. Actually, I was, I didn’t get my offer until 1936. I was offered the job in ’35, but
nothing happened. And it was February of ’36 before I heard from Leopold again. And
he said --
WJ:
Tell me --
TS:
-- the job was materialized. And so I, well, they had already terminated my position
there, so as to transfer me up here to the Park Service.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
It actually was just a transfer from the Forest Service to the Park Service.
00:52:01
WJ:
Tell me again, just for the tape here, how you came into Madison and found the camp and
so forth.
TS:
Well, the, um, letter, I guess it was a telegram first, I believe, from Leopold, and then a
letter telling me the job had materialized here. And so they gave me a couple weeks to
finish there and move out of the quarters there in Harrisburg up to Decatur. And my wife
50
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
had a little house there in Decatur. I dumped all my stuff there, and I came out here in
Madison and got up into Illinois, I mean, to Wisconsin, ran into one of these big
Wisconsin snowstorms.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
It was 0-degree weather, and it had 2 feet of show on the ground.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And I came up by train. Sometimes I went car and left it down there for her, through
Chicago and then on to Madison. And it was about the time the second semester was
starting approximately, and there were lots of students there. And I got off the train, and,
uh, all the students were wanting transportation, taxicabs home where they were living.
And I had to wait an hour before I could get a taxicab. And when they found out I
wanted to go up to Camp Madison, they were too busy, having local business first. I
finally got to the camp rather late of the evening. It was 10:00 at night or something.
And they said see what I could do. And they had the roads open just enough two-lane, I
mean, two wheel tracks. And once in awhile it would be wide enough so you could, you
had two cars pass each other. It was just the two tracks, and I got to the entrance, and
that’s as far as they went. And from there on, they just had a path going into the camp
here. And so they dumped me out there in the country someplace, and I took the bag and
walked in here and saw the Park Service sign up here on the old farmhouse. But it was
locked up tight, nobody around. But there sitting right down, just past this building here,
was the headquarters of the Army barracks. And it had a light on, and sure enough, there
was some guy on duty there, supposed to be. And he’d never heard of me and didn’t
know anything about it at all. The grant as qualified was a service foreman, Park Service
foreman, and I think I was probably wearing my uniform for the Park Service, Forest
Service had about the same thing.
00:55:00
And, uh, the Park Service did have one barracks for the park foreman. And he went there
and fixed me up a cot, and it was okay for the night. And next morning, when I met one
of two of the men who were down there, and they’d never heard of me either, didn’t
know anything about it. But they introduced me to the superintendent and he came in,
was supposed to be at 8:00, but it was after that before they got through the snow drifts to
get out there and got me introduced. He had heard, yeah, there’s somebody supposed to
be coming in for the prairie job. He didn’t know anything about it either. It was Harold
Madden. Did you know him? He knew, and he called up Longenecker somebody at the
University, and, yes, they were [word unclear] and said, by all means, get him established
there. So I was about a couple days to get established on the camp routine here and
quarters and we got the paths dug out on the snow. And a couple days later, why
somebody from the University, I guess Longenecker himself came out here to get me and
take me back to the University.
00:56:32
And I had the interview with him there and with Leopold there. All they knew about me
is that I got my degree at Illinois, and I was apparently qualified in plant ecology. And
they wanted to interview me to see how I might work out, hope that it would work out
51
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
some way and what my background was. It was, I spent I suppose most of the morning,
most of the morning there at the University and talking with Fasset too, Fasset, the plant
taxonomist.
WJ:
So that worked out all right.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh, they –
00:57:22
WJ:
The understanding was that you would do what?
TS:
Be in charge of the prairie project.
WJ:
Specifically?
TS:
Yeah, that’s the reason I was brought up here because they didn’t have anybody that
could plant this prairie here. And Leopold, who was actually administrative in charge of
the operations out here, I don’t mean Leopold, Longenecker in charge of the operations
here, he didn’t know anything about prairies either. The only reason he put a prairie there
was because Leopold wanted it and thought it would be a good idea. And he went along
with it. But when he talked prairie, he turned me onto Leopold at once, and Leopold
hadn’t done a lot with prairies. But he’d been working with the Forest Service and
worked out in Arizona and New Mexico and knew what deserts were like and grasslands
were like.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And he was pretty well read man in the first place, so that he had more or less an idea
what it would be like to put a prairie in. Where he got the idea of having a prairie there, I
don’t know, except that somebody there in the Botany Department had been worked on
vegetation types in Wisconsin and found that the prairie is an important vegetation type
in the southwestern part of the state. And so that seemed to Leopold to be a good idea to
establish that vegetation type. And as I noted in the paper, the prairie was, oh, how do I
want to say it? A type that was present here, and it would be a good idea to establish it,
but nobody had studied it very intently and knows what should be done to develop it.
00:59:24
But Longenecker actually liked the idea because it was the low vegetation, and he was
interested in his forest types. He was a forest man primarily. And he wanted these pine
forests and the maple forests and so forth, hardwood forests in the various spaces, and
looking at the, over the prairie, and to see the forest, well, you could actually see it that
way. I mean, it just got into the forest, and the problem was you can’t see the forest
because of the trees.
WJ:
And so it made a nice perspective.
TS:
Yeah, and so it was the perspective that Longenecker was interested in for the prairie.
And he assumed it was grasses, and gave him the view of the prairie. But Leopold was
the one that was really more interested in it as a vegetation type, especially for the game.
He was primarily interested in game.
WJ:
Do you remember what he said to you when he introduced the project?
52
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
I haven’t the slightest idea. The general gist of it was we would like to get a prairie
established here, and we have 60 acres out here of this old farmland, not very good. It’s
the reason the guy sold it. And we have a camp established there as, I have a truck, and
we got a dozen of the CCC men with long-handled shovels. Go out there and make a
prairie out of it. That’s essentially all the instructions I had. I suppose Tetton was the
one that, I don’t mean Tetton, Fasset.
WJ:
Fasset.
TS:
Fasset was the one that could tell me more about the prairie plants than anybody else.
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
Uh-huh, because he was interested in all the various types. He specialty later, however,
was water plants, aquatic plants. But he was pretty well up on the prairie too.
01:01:26
With the other ones, not told me so much what the prairie was because I’d already found
that out in Illinois, been working for, with the prairies for two or three years down there.
But on the Wisconsin, uh, manifestations of the prairie, and actually, it was a bit more
savannah here than it was down there. Although, back in those days, savannah, while it
was known, it was not very much emphasized. And, in fact, most of them didn’t even
think of savannahs as type [words unclear]. In fact, I didn’t find a real interest in
savannah until this last grassland meeting. And we had a whole section just on savannahs
as contrast to the rest of the prairie. And so they’re now dividing it into the prairies, the
true prairies and savannahs, which is how it should be. And the early travelers coming
through here didn’t talk about the prairie so much except the difficulty getting through it,
but they talked about the savannahs because there, they had trees, they had wood and had
a shoulder, and they didn’t have the heavy grass to get through as they had out in the
open prairie itself. So they, early travelers went from one savannah to the next to the
next and plowed a tunnel through the prairie to get to them.
WJ:
Right, that’s right.
TS:
And apparently, even the game preferred savannahs to the oak prairie, although the big
old bison could go through anything.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
They did.
WJ:
Yeah. Did you work, so tell me about how you went about that work.
TS:
Well, what we were looking for is some prairie that we could transplant. It was the first
idea. And they, I don’t know who –
01:03:38
End of Tape 3, Side 2
Tape 4, Side 1
00:00:01
WJ:
Yeah, well, I was, just tell me how you start, how you --
53
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Oh, we were talking about the prairie up there on the ridge, and they were going to
develop it, and they wanted to put a road through that area. And sure, we could have the
prairie plants on the road because they tear that up anyway. So they found [words
unclear] go through there, and we could dig up whatever we wanted to there. And again,
boy the whole thing was a glacial moraine, boulders mostly 2-4 inches in diameter. Boy,
it was hard digging. They were pretty good prairie plants. But you sure couldn’t get very
deep in that sandy, rocky soil. And instead of having great big clumps, like we’d hoped,
you just had little handfuls of sod. It’s about all you kept, would stay together in that
gravelly soil they had there. And the gravel was awfully hard to dig in. But we managed
to dig it out and bring it in, and since it was an upland dry type, we started over there next
to the, what’s the name of that woods down there?
WJ:
Noye?
TS:
Noye Woods, yeah. And that was the highest, driest part, and so we planted along on that
slope. Longenecker [words unclear] drawn his prairie map was to go up to the Noye
Woods and had sort of a narrow tongue there, and widened out as it got to here. And the
Leopold plans were going in just south of it. And they were already planting plant in
there at that time. So I took that part was designated prairie, and put my plants all along
there. And it turned out --
WJ:
You brought them back in trucks?
TS:
Yeah, we’d bring a truckload at a time, and have, I suppose five tons, something sort of
dried up old rocky sod.
WJ:
Drive up in the morning, back in the evening.
TS:
That’s right.
WJ:
And then plant the next day, or how did you do it?
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. We’d stay there until we got a truckload. If we got less in a day, we’d
bring it back. But actually, it was about an all-day trip. We took lunch along and dug it
up there. And then we’d plant them out in that spot the next day do dig holes in the sod
and put them in there.
WJ:
How did --
TS:
We started out in, what was it, April, yeah, late April.
00:02:41
WJ:
What was, what kind of people were the enrollees you were working with? Do you
remember any of their attitudes or anecdotes from the work?
TS:
No, just a general mixture of kids that weren’t too well trained, a lot of work, something
to do. And the CCC program was just a make-work program. But they did use mostly
the young fellows all the way from, oh, 18 to 23, 25 or some sort. And the arrangement
was that the actual feeding, housing, and general care of the enrollees was up to the
Army. And the Army would turn over most of the men to the project superintendent at
8:00 in the morning. And then we’d come back at 4:30, 5:00 and turn them back to the
Army. So the Army had the responsibility all the time except when they were out on the
job working.
54
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
00:03:51
WJ:
Do you remember any experiences connected with collecting those plants that were
exciting or interesting?
TS:
Not particularly. They, most of the fellows just did what they were told to do, and they
wanted to dig up rocks and boulders and things of that sort, why, okay. Some of them
didn’t care much for them, but the Army said that they [words unclear], well, they were
okay.
WJ:
If they what?
TS:
If they were growling about it, why, they’re okay.
WJ:
Oh, I see.
TS:
Yeah, they stop growling, then you sort of get uncertain, good old Army philosophy.
WJ:
So this wasn’t a particularly colorful bunch of people.
TS:
Oh no, they were just some work at, sort of like the gang over, one of them showed some
interest and aptitude, why he was our straw boss, help out. And I had somebody who was
one of the enrollees themselves to sort of look after the rest of them, so as to divide the
responsibility and so it wouldn’t all be Park Service versus the enrollees. But the
enrollees, if they had their own straw boss, why they worked together a little bit better.
WJ:
Uh-huh. What kind of work was that, hard work, drudgery, grueling?
TS:
No, I wasn’t a slave driver at all. You kept at it, but they tried to keep a little
conversation going, and I’d talk a little bit about the plants we were digging up and things
of that sort, what we wanted to do. No, there wasn’t any animosity among the group at
all, just general chatter while they were working. And then we got here, and the next
day, we’d go out and dig holes in the ground there and put them in. And I had most of
the job was just seeing they did it right, and I’d show them how I wanted it done and see
they do it right. And if I didn’t have anything else to do, of course, I’d help right along
with the rest of them.
00:06:28
WJ:
What was the attitude, your attitude about the significance of this work?
TS:
Sorry, to answer, let’s see, if we could get the plants to grow, whether it would develop
as a prairie or not, I had my fingers crossed on that. I didn’t know just what to expect. I
knew what I’d sort of like to have, but whether it ever materialized or not, and, of course,
we ran into that dry weather a month later. And the chances of getting them to grow in
that dry weather was not at all good. And we began watering all those trees and shrubs
and good things, the other crews had been planting on the other projects, and they needed
the water worse than my prairie plants did because prairie plants knew what to do with
dry weather. And the other trees, they didn’t.
00:07:33
WJ:
Yeah. Well, tell me about that watering brigade that you had going there.
TS:
Oh, the only way they had for it was to get the water out of the lake, they had a flatbed
truck and got a big bunch of oil drums with the tops out and drive it down to the edge of
55
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
the lake and take the water out of the lake and dump it in the drum and drive it back over
rough trails. And the truck would wobble back and forth, and water would splash, splash,
splash. And we felt lucky to get the barrel more than half full by the time you got back.
And then you’d dip it out of the barrel, and pour it on the plant.
WJ:
Where did you get that, from the lake? Where did you drive down to the lake?
TS:
About halfway down there someplace. It seems I recall they go down right down here
someplace.
WJ:
Okay. Just about midway on the south shore of the lake.
TS:
Right, so they had this road, the two over here already at that time.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
And they wanted to, where they didn’t have too far to go from the road off to the lake.
And it’s about [word unclear] enough ground for us to have some kind of footing for the
truck.
WJ:
Right, right.
TS:
And down on this other end, where that brown is there, why, that was too marshy.
WJ:
Yeah, it’s too wet down here.
TS:
Yeah, it was too wet up here too.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Yeah, there’s less, probably about down in here where the higher ground comes down.
WJ:
Right across from Baldwin Street there.
TS:
Yeah, I don’t remember just where. But someplace where you didn’t have to drive over
any marsh to get to it, and it had high ground right down close to the lake itself.
WJ:
Did those guys climb right down in the lake and dip water out?
TS:
One of them would, and some [word unclear], a few days later, a day or two of that is
pretty show, and they got a little pump, a gasoline pump, pump, pump, pump, pump.
WJ:
Oh, yeah.
TS:
And it would pump it up into the barrels.
WJ:
Yeah, yeah.
TS:
I had the job trying to keep the doggone motor going. But it did work better there.
WJ:
Hot weather.
TS:
Yeah, as a matter of fact, that drought continued and got just day after, week after week
and 100-degree temperature. And we just weren’t getting, we couldn’t haul enough
water to do very good. They put on two shifts, started early in the morning clear up until
sunset, two different shifts. And then they still weren’t keeping up, so they had three
shifts, 24 hours a day. And the nightshift would work on the plants closer to the road.
WJ:
So they’d be driving back and forth all night during that time.
56
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Yeah, and by the whole crew and three shifts, just to keep one crew going all day and all
night.
WJ:
That must have been uncomfortable work in spending time, nights in the camp and
everything. That must’ve been unpleasant, huh?
TS:
Well, they were, stayed at the camp anyway.
WJ:
Yeah, but, I mean, in such hot weather I mean.
TS:
Oh, well, the nightshift had the lucky, they were the lucky ones. They could work in
cooler weather. And the afternoon shift really had the rough going --
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
-- when the temperatures were really high.
WJ:
How’d they break up those shifts, noon to 8:00?
TS:
I don’t remember. I remember all the three shifts. The prairie group, we didn’t try to do
any night watering on the prairie. The prairie group got whatever surplus we could get
because the horitculturals had definite priority. And the forest tree plantings were next.
And if there was any work left over, why, we could get whatever we could on it. But we
didn’t have a lot, but we did try it on some of the prairie plants.
I had the spots there, and I didn’t want the kids trampling on the plants there, and I’d try
to work around the spots. As they couldn’t be positive, work enough just to carry the
water out and pour it on the spots and having, try to avoid the spots, try to even see where
they were. They weren’t very good. And they said my newest suspect maybe they
trampling in spots did about damage to the plants as the lack of water.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And that, the watering, the plants needed the water. There’s no doubt about that. But
watering spots on the soil. Now the trees and shrubs, you could see where they were
there. But they couldn’t tell one plant from another. As far as they were concerned, they
were all weeds.
00:12:58
WJ:
Why did you choose the technique if planting single species stands the way you did?
TS:
Now good question. I don’t know. I suppose that’s primarily what we had to start with.
Uh, the upland ridge plants that we got first, and that only lasted, oh, two or three weeks,
and the road spot played out. And I suppose we hauled a total of, oh, maybe eight or ten
loads. But we planted there, those upland species Andropogon [scoparius?] was the
principal one. But there were leadplants and [Papsasin Smothes?] that were also in there,
and we planted whatever was there. Mostly the Andropogon scoparius that grew was
[ridgely?], maybe a few others. But as I said, that fall, I made a check after the fall rains
did arrive, and there was about 8% of them or some sort that apparent had, spots so it had
[words unclear].
WJ:
Eight percent.
57
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Uh-huh. And the rest didn’t show anything. And then after a rather hard winter, and the
growth started in spring, why, I got, made a resurvey of the same planting again on that
same north area, I mean, west area. An only about 3% of them came the next spring.
WJ:
Three percent, discouraging start.
TS:
Yeah, quite.
WJ:
How did you feel at that point?
TS:
That’s what happens when you got dry weather.
WJ:
Yeah, you have to figure that.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Yeah
TS:
But –
00:14:58
WJ:
Had you worked with a crew all summer on the prairie?
TS:
Yeah, we started in and including the watering, we worked right up until the frost.
WJ:
Uh, how large a crew?
TS:
Usually it’d be about, oh, from 7 or 8 up to 12-15 because they had a whole, they had
about 200 in the camp.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And they were running all kinds of projects. The tree thing took a crew, and there had,
they dragged a line out and doing some pond digging and had to put a road in someplace.
I didn’t have anything to do with the other projects. Harold Madden was the one who
directed the crews on the various projects. And, of course, Madden did what
Longenecker suggested he does. Longenecker was the one that assigned priorities. And
Madden transferred the priority over to the various crews. And the various crews were
under the management of the crew foremen, which were not, who were not CCC
employees at all. The crew foremen were actually employees of the National Park
Service that were picked especially to look after the CCC crews.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I was one of the crew foremen.
00:16:44
WJ:
Yeah, 3% survived after the first winter.
TS:
Yeah, but I figured that we could probably do better than that. Afterwards, I think
possibly, I’m pretty sure it was, the same season toward the middle of the summer or late
in the summer, they found a spot over in here someplace, I don’t remember where. It was
a bluestem prairie.
WJ:
Over to the east here?
58
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Over to the east here someplace. And we went in there and dug up that, and that came
up, it was in the rocky soil, the clay soil, and it came up in big chunks, 8-, 10- 12-inch in
diameter. You got 12 inches, they’re pretty heavy to handle. But 8-, 10-inch sods, we
could handle that. And we couldn’t put nearly as much on that, as many clumps on a
truckload. But they weighed as much.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Actually, it was considerably easier to handle.
WJ:
And grow better.
TS:
Oh, yeah, and that, we knew, went on much lower soil. And so I came to this side of the
prairie, and over near the corner of the golf course out on that low soil and picked a spot
there. Close to the road as we felt the prairie was going to extend on Longenecker’s map.
And it started on the border and worked on back. That’s what I was doing this afternoon
just before you came in is to, the first of that bottom prairie, the big bluestem and
Sorghastrum was some we planted along just off the corner of the golf course there. And
that’s what I got lost in. That stuff was up there 8-10 feet high doggone it.
That’s some of the heaviest stuff you have on the whole Arboretum. And that’s, so that
was the first planting we did on the low ground as contrasted to that upland prairie we
had back by the woods. And that is beautiful prairie but beautiful as far as the cover of
grass is concerned. It had surprisingly few forms in it. It has just plain [Strikvet?] and
blue stem and Sorghastrum.
And that’s about all it was there, a little fuel and rods, and [words unclear], and what else
I found there. There was very little. Now I said solid Andropogen and Sorghastrum, 7feet tall, solid, and then mixed in with them just a little bit of the Solidago canadensis and
a little wild rose in there and a little sunflower, Baptisia too, and a few Monarda. But
they’re just scattered plants.
WJ:
You mean, that’s the result now.
TS:
Yeah, that’s what I found today, this afternoon.
WJ:
Yeah, 50 years later, 50-odd years later.
TS:
Yeah, that’d be about 54 years down there.
WJ:
Right, that’s right.
TS:
Long time for me to put in, and these other plants, other than the grass were just little
passive spots right in the [word unclear] plants.
WJ:
So some things have spread in there since then.
TS:
Well, yeah, I suppose those did just spread in. By the way, one of the problems you have
is the Cornus, dogwood. You have lots of that in the prairie.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
They’re not hurting anything, but it’s there.
WJ:
Yeah, we’ve got some shrub problems out there.
59
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
I’m interested in the Cornus because it’s common all over the prairie, everywhere. But
it’s not bothering any, the little low stuff. Apparently fire keeps it clear down to the
ground. And it only grows, oh, a few inches, several inches tall mostly. And they, it
doesn’t dominate, or it doesn’t appear to dominate any of the other prairie plants at all at
present.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
How, if it does have an effect, I don’t know what it is. I don’t see it.
WJ:
It doesn’t seem to seed much.
TS:
Huh?
WJ:
It doesn’t seem to fruit much.
TS:
No, just [words unclear] I found a little fruit but not very much. It’s usually a border,
that’s where you get the fruit. But it’s almost no fruit, Cornus fruit out there. It needs to
survive more than one year to fruit much.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And most of this is just the one-year’s growth. Apparently the roots stay alive, rhizomes.
WJ:
It works like the oaks then.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Yeah, you continued through the next three or four years, through 1940 planting these
little plats.
TS:
Yeah.
00:22:07
WJ:
Now you told me at one time, Ted, I want to verify this, one of the reasons you planted
the little single-species plants was because it was easier to supervise the crew that way.
TS:
Oh, a bit, yeah. We didn’t do much seed planting the first year. This was the sod
planting. And we started collecting seed that fall. But I decided not to try putting it in, so
we just held the seed over winter and put in seed spots. And they’re of course, before
that, crews came in with mattocks and scalped the old-field growth, pasture growth, or
cornfield growth, which is mostly quack grass and bluegrass, which had come in after the
farm had been discontinued. And we just scalped the top of it off, and then it took [words
unclear] turned it over, broke it off a little bit. But the quack grass especially has very
heavy rhizomes, and we’d get in there, break it up, and pull out those rhizomes. The
bluegrass, the rhizomes are very thin on top, and you just can cut them off the top, no
problem. But the rhizomes in the quack grass are deep.
WJ:
You’re talking about planting seed now with those [word unclear].
TS:
Yeah, and, well, we took, pulled the rhizomes out and then broke it up and put the seeds
in there. And I had the fellows putting the spots in about a meter apart roughly.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And I did practically all the seed planting myself.
60
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Uh-huh, from the seed you’d gathered the year before.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh.
WJ:
Yeah, how did that work out then?
00:23:52
TS:
And it worked out very well. As a matter of fact, the seed swatches [word unclear]
easier, and, uh, was, got, you know more coverage from the work we put in --
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
-- than we did with the sod. Now the sod was not only big and heavy in the first place,
but there wasn’t a great deal of it in the first place. It wasn’t available.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And we could get more seed along the railroad [words unclear]. Occasionally, we’d have
enough seed in one particular patch or railroad that I could take a crew of three or four
out and gather. But often I did it myself.
WJ:
So you were out gathering seed, with, would you like this closer?
TS:
No, that’s all right.
WJ:
So you were out gathering seed with these guys.
TS:
Occasionally.
WJ:
Did they enjoy that?
TS:
Most of them did. I picked those who showed more interest in it, more cooperative, and,
yeah, they were okay. Uh-huh.
WJ:
You planted those seeds what time of the year?
TS:
Well, if I got them in the spring or summer, I’d plant them in a week or two, right away.
But if it was too late in the fall, why, I’d hold them over winter. We had a little shed,
I’ve forgotten what it had been used for. But we moved it out here just off the edge of
the camp, near the edge of where the prairie would be. And we kept our shovels and
mattocks in there, and I had some shelves built up there, and we filled the shelves up with
a lot of packets and seeds, different species of seeds in different packets. And I’d get a
packet here and sow that bunch, and I’d get another packet and sow that bunch. And I
have, oh, 30, 40, 50 packets, different kinds seeds or even if it was the same kind,
collected at a different place or under different circumstances.
WJ:
Right, and, of course, that’s all recorded in your notes.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh.
WJ:
So as the project went on, did you go more away from planting sods and more toward
seed?
TS:
We planted sod when we had it. If we could get some, why, we’d do it. And we tried on
the big Silphiums and a few of the other plants where I didn’t have a sod, but we could
dig up the individual plants. The Silphiums had big roots, and we could dig those up and
put them in an individual, individual plantings. And one thing I’ve been discovering on
61
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
the last two or three days is those transplants of Silphium don’t survive. You put the
seeds in, and they come up beautifully. We got lots of Silphium all over the place. But
my transplants, those places are empty.
WJ:
Is that right?
TS:
Yeah, Silphiums aren’t there. And we established prairie out there just off the edge of the
golf course there, I mean, a prairie nursery, and I grew some in there. I put some of the
seeds in the nursery and let them grow up. And then you can take the plants that grew in
the nursery, and they did grow pretty well in the nursery, and then transplant them out on
the prairie. And my transplants didn’t survive. So the wild plants from the wild that we
pulled in there didn’t survive, and the nursery plants didn’t survive.
WJ:
I’ll be darned.
TS:
But if you put them in seed spots, why, they grew well.
WJ:
Yeah, yeah.
TS:
And hard to say, in fact, I don’t know what the reason is.
00:27:47
WJ:
Tell me about living in the camp here. You were separate from your wife the whole time.
TS:
Yeah, except for if we’d go back and forth. During the summers, when she wasn’t
teaching, we got a little cabin over here on the south side of Lake Monona and drove
back and forth.
WJ:
You had a car.
TS:
Yeah. We had the car all along, but she kept the car down in Decatur.
WJ:
Uh-huh, yeah. You didn’t need it up here.
TS:
Yeah, and so she, I’d go down there sometimes if we had an extra-long weekend just by
train. Or if we had, she had a holiday, or during the summer, she drove up here.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
But she had a Christmas holiday and tried driving up here, and about halfway up, twothirds of the way up Illinois, ran into an ice storm and ran the car into the ditch. And she
had one heck of a time getting down to Madison. She didn’t like coming to Madison in
the winter at all.
WJ:
So, but you did have Christmas here then?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Where did you stay when she was here? Did she stay at the camp?
TS:
No, we got a room here someplace in the area, stayed in the room. There was a, oh, a
tourist room. It wasn’t much, very much tourists business in the winter.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
But we found a tourist room.
WJ:
What was your wife’s name?
62
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Gladys, no, let me correct that, Gladys C. Gallagher. She never adopted the name Sperry.
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
That’s right.
WJ:
What modern woman.
TS:
She had her own doctorate degree, and she didn’t want to be a sidekick of somebody else.
She had her own. She was a very remarkable gal, very remarkable.
WJ:
Really?
TS:
And she was independent. I encouraged her right from the very first to keep her own
name. And so she was Dr. Gallagher.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And I was Dr. Sperry.
WJ:
Did she teach her whole career?
TS:
Huh?
WJ:
Did she teach her whole career?
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. She taught there at Millikin for, oh, quite a number of years until about,
oh, ’55 or sometime. But she finally got tired of that, and, oh, I remember 1951 because
in 1951, I got a leave, what was, not, I forgot the details. I was in graduate school. No, I
wasn’t in graduate school either. I was planning on teaching. I started my teaching in
’46. That was at Pittsburg, Kansas. And in 1951, I got the request for a consultant, for a
project in Africa. And during the time that I was in Africa, she took my classes there at
Pittsburg, Kansas. She came over. And when she came over to do the teaching there, I,
the president we had a that --
00:31:36
End of Tape 4, Side 1
Tape 4, Side 2
00:31:38
TS:
--it was another thing we were already a little concerned about the trend, the population
around [words unclear].
WJ:
Oh, really? Tell me a little bit about life in the camp here, Ted. Did you enjoy living out
here?
TS:
I, uh, it was about like living in the Army. No, you don’t live, oh, there are a few guys
that can live in camp life, Army life, and get along very well. But most of us put up with
it.
WJ:
Yeah, so --
TS:
Did you ever have any Army experience?
WJ:
No, uh-uh, no.
TS:
Well, you just put up with it.
63
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
It’s all right, nothing to brag about.
WJ:
Were there any little incidents in camp like that would be interesting to know about?
TS:
I was pretty much then, as I am now, interested in my own particular projects, and I
don’t socialize to extensively with the others.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And I’d much rather take care of my own interests. And, oh, I’d go around to some
social affairs from time to time, but with the, go off and get the things done that I want to
get done is I think more important than –
00:33:07
WJ:
Did you tell me about the time when some guys bet that they could get away from a
bulldozer?
TS:
I wrote that up in one of your, one of the articles.
WJ:
Tell me that story.
TS:
I was among some of the other camp foremen, Park Service foremen, Lee Cutler was a
bulldozer operator, and Paul [Monzaroa?] was the tool man. And Lee Cutler is quite a
sociable kind of guy, hale fellow, well met, and was kidding around with the rest of them.
And Paul said something about his big old lumbering Caterpillar tractor and he says,
don’t you deride that Caterpillar. It’s a doggone good machine. And he said, well, it’s
sort of a lumbering elephant. Said you just try and get away from the elephant. See how
well you do. He said, and Paul said, I can out-dodge that thing anyway. I’m nimble
enough, and you can’t turn around fast enough. So Lee challenged him to get away from
the bulldozer. Now they did admit as they were going down the road Paul could run
faster than the Caterpillar could go for the first five minutes. But when it came to him
doing it, why the Caterpillar keep on going, and Paul, but they agreed that since it wasn’t
a matter of speed down the road but it was maneuverability, and they picked a spot just
outside the window here, which was going to be some of the prairie planting or other
shrub planting in there. But they wouldn’t be getting to the planting yet for two or three
years. And so they’d say right within that field, uh, Lee had his Caterpillar on one edge
of the field, and Paul could take any place he wanted to, and he got away from me. And
so he took the Caterpillar there, and what Paul hadn’t realized that Caterpillars are end
right in the middle and run one track and then the other one and can turn around right, oh,
half its own length. So as Paul would dodge one side, why Lee was right there after him.
And that contest lasted only about three minutes. Bing, no way, Paul could see he was
going to get run over, it doesn’t matter which way he turned.
WJ:
Didn’t stand a chance.
TS:
Uh-huh, not a chance.
00:36:05
WJ:
Do you remember the night the building burned down here?
TS:
Uh-huh.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
How did that come about?
TS:
[Words unclear] as far as I know, began in the chimney or some sort. It was long about
the middle of the night, or in 2:00, 3:00 in the morning I guess.
WJ:
Really?
TS:
Uh-huh.
WJ:
Someone told me that they moved a pool table out of that building.
TS:
Oh, you mean, after the fire started?
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Yeah, I suppose they did.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
About the only thing they could salvage out of it. They set up a tent here, and they just
had a mess tent.
WJ:
Was the food all right here?
TS:
Oh, God, old Army food.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
The Army food, if they have anybody saying [words unclear] always all right, nothing to
brag about. But it was certainly nutritious and entirely edible, and if you got a crew
that’s hungry and been working, they’ll eat almost anything because they’re ready for
food.
00:37:10
WJ:
Tell me how the, how your experience at the camp here came to an end.
TS:
It was simple enough. They had the, what do they call it, selective service. Everybody
had to register. And they had the big lottery, and pulled the numbers out of the goldfish
bowl in Washington D.C. And that was a big new item at the time. They reached in
there and pulled out a capsule and they’d read it off, the number in the capsule and write
it down and reach in there and pull out the next one and mixed them up every so often
and pull them out. So the sequence of the numbers was the order in which they were
called out. And I wasn’t the first, but I was among the early ones drawn. And we were
called up for service before the war started and organized. And I got my notice, draft
notice, I had to --
WJ:
When was that?
TS:
1951, 1940 --
WJ:
1941.
TS:
1941, uh-huh.
00:38:31
65
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Well, I want to go back just a second. Tell me about, I’d like you to talk a little bit about
the results of the prairie work, the weed problems. How did, once the prairie plants
started growing, what was the situation? How did the prairie look?
TS:
Pretty sad, just plants here and there, and that notebook I’m telling about shows my
survey during those years, whether that particular plant was growing and whether another
one was not. That was one of the advantages of planting individual plantings of the same
species as you had an outline and the plantings all within the outline, and you could count
each spot, and you knew they were all, everything had a spot. And how many of them
were developing and how didn’t, how many did not. And so we could get percentages of
germination. Now if you had mixed planting, as Curtis later recommended, after I left,
why there was no way of telling which species came through in good order and which
were in poor --
WJ:
Right.
TS:
You got a good mixture when they did come up, but no way of keeping track of it
afterwards. I sort of figured that at the time I put it in, and I wanted to see which of these
were growing and which were not. And as I find out, sometimes if you transplant them,
they grew. But if you put the seed in, they didn’t very well. Or if the seed would grow,
but the transplants wouldn’t.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I had, my numbering system was each species had its own number, but the series with the
seed plants, the seed spots, were a different series than those which were transplants.
And so I’d have sometimes two numbers for Petalostemum purpureum. Those were put
in seed and this are is put in transplants.
00:40:42
WJ:
Uh-huh, right. Did you, when you saw a lot of weeds coming in, how did you --
TS:
Ordinarily it didn’t bother, I didn’t bother too much of them. The plants have to grow
with a lot of competition anyway. And there wasn’t much of any way of taking weeds
out. And when the seedling come up, you weren’t too sure what you were, plants put in
there, I’d, we’d just let them go.
WJ:
Did you wonder whether the prairie plants were going to make it?
TS:
Sure.
WJ:
Against the weeds, I mean.
TS:
Uh, I wasn’t too much worried about it. I figured the prairie plants probably could out
endure the weeds any day of the week.
WJ:
You figured that?
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. Weeds are ephemerals.
00:41:35
WJ:
Well, when did you start thinking about fire?
66
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
We weren’t even thinking about fire because the area was very much trampled. We had
been doing the seed spots, and there was just some growth of grass, and there were a few
persons that were a little concerned about quack grass getting back in there. But the seed
spots where the rhizomes had been pulled out had maintained the plants well enough,
allowed them to grow well enough. So they weren’t too much [word unclear]. We didn’t
have enough vegetation over the surface to do any burning at all until about the third or
fourth year. By that time, by then the plants were getting growing up all around them.
And sure enough, there were grasses, weed grasses were fairly abundant around them.
But you could still look in among them and see the individual spots easily.
WJ:
Had you been planning to burn all along?
TS:
No, no.
WJ:
How did that come up?
TS:
Because we could see the weeds were getting pretty heavy there, and noted that the plants
in the heavy weeds weren’t flowering quite as well as some of the rest of it. And we did
know that the management of prairie pastures were improved by burning. The ranchers
had been burning for years. And so we knew that ranch grazers did burn, and we figured
maybe the burning would help. Well, I said, okay, we’ll try it. Remember that was in
Smokey Bear days.
WJ:
That’s right.
TS:
We prevent forest fires. And there was a big emphasis countrywide against burning
natural areas. And we figured if it wasn’t any good to burn a forest, why they shouldn’t
burn the prairie either. But I did say, when we suggested putting a fire on it, we’ll try it
and see. We had a pasture out here, not too far off from here, that had pretty good
growth. It had been put in, oh, two or three years earlier, some of the earlier. And it had
pretty good growth on it.
WJ:
Prairie plants, do you mean?
TS:
Right, it’s where I had planted the prairie plants.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And the growth was the prairie plants and the weeds, the prairie plants and the weeds
around them both. And there were two or three plantings. I remember Liatris was one of
them. I’ve forgotten what some of the other plants were. And we went across two or
three of the plantings, I just drew a line there, and we burned everything. And it was the
end of the line. And we had the next line, and this we didn’t burn, a control, and another
patch where the prairie plantings had been made, a strip through there, and then an
control strip. And we burned two strips across the patch and had the unburned control.
And by June, the first of July, hey, the burned strips were showing beautiful Liatris, and
some of the other plants were growing nicely. And the unburned strips were having a
tough time surviving, being it looked like fires were definitely a benefit. I suppose
somebody has photographs of that. I don’t remember whether they do or not.
WJ:
Who, now who initiated, who inaugurated those fires?
TS:
It was my idea.
67
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
That was your idea.
TS:
Yeah, or burning the strips. I don’t remember who suggested we burn it, but I was the
one that set up the experiment.
WJ:
You burned it with the CCC boys.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh.
WJ:
You don’t remember who suggested that?
TS:
No, but I had, we’d been talking about it for some time.
WJ:
We, who’s we?
TS:
Me and I suppose Longenecker and maybe Fasset, and I don’t remember who else were
in on it. And there was quite a bit of criticism against doing any burning at all because of
Smokey Bear. In fact --
WJ:
Criticism from whom?
TS:
Persons who, I couldn’t say who, who knew about the burning process and wondered if it
would be any good or not.
WJ:
Did you get calls?
TS:
No [words unclear] conversation, nobody on the outside, maybe somebody on the
committee who had learned we were going to burn maybe brought a call in. But not very
much. But it was just a small patch and didn’t have probably too much effect.
WJ:
Now you’re saying you did this because of the experience of farmers and rancher
managing.
TS:
Yeah, that was one, the reason I agreed to have that fire, strips across there and laid out
the experiment for it.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
That was in 1940, I think.
WJ:
1940.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
The last year you were here.
TS:
Last year, uh-huh, last year, and so I left, and the next year, before we’d done enough
planting and before there had been much growth or plants at all.
WJ:
Did you, were you thinking of the old prairie fires of pre-settlement times when you did
that at all?
TS:
We knew that it occurred, and we didn’t know whether that improved the prairie or not.
We did know the prairie grew in spite of the prairie fires.
WJ:
Yeah. So when you got the results, that must have been kind of interesting.
TS:
It was. And we would’ve followed up the next year, but Uncle Sam beat us to it. And
everything closed down, bang and nothing --
68
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Well, I –
00:47:56
TS:
So we didn’t know anything about it further until the end of the war or close to the end of
the war when Curtis came in. Curtis had been here at the University all the time, and he
showed interest. He’d finally had his vegetation in Wisconsin book published.
WJ:
Did you work with Curtis when you were here at all?
TS:
I knew [words unclear], no, when I was here, why, he was still trying to grow orchids
from seed. That was his project. And he didn’t, really didn’t, he got out to the
Arboretum here once or twice, but didn’t show too much interest in it. And not until after
the war that I wasn’t around, and they were talking about getting the Arboretum going
again that he began showing up. And he wanted to follow through on that fire deal. And
so he ran a series of experiments with fire on the prairie. And they were controlled and
large enough areas. So he was the one that wrote up the effect of fire and had data to
support it. My two little strips, I’d burned in 1940, weren’t enough of a control to prove
anything. And he needed far more than just that. And he got it. So his work, as far as I
know, is pioneering in use of fire. And I, he’s been given credit, and I give him credit for
showing that the fire is definitely beneficial.
WJ:
What time of year did you do your burn?
TS:
I did it about March, soon as the soil dried off enough to burn, before the growth has
started appreciably. It hadn’t been any growth yet, as during the summer, that summer in
1940.
WJ:
That was on Curtis Prairie.
TS:
Huh?
WJ:
That was on Curtis Prairie.
TS:
Oh, yeah, we were out here, just up, 100 yards from here.
WJ:
Just south of the building here, huh?
TS:
I found just where it was. I might, in fact, I probably have it someplace in my notes, a
map showing just where I put it. But it was right out in this area, south of the building,
where I put in quite a number of prairie plantings.
WJ:
Did, tell me just a little bit again --
TS:
I will say, uh, I think I was the one that first showed the effect, the beneficial effect of fire
on planted prairie.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
But it was not enough to publish a paper on.
WJ:
Oh, yeah.
TS:
It would take more than, and Curtis did the work on it.
00:50:35
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
How did you feel at the time you were working on this project about its significance for
conservation?
TS:
Uh, we just hoped it work, what we wanted, at that time, it was just an example of what
the prairies were like. There weren’t any around to speak of. You know, there were
some old mowed pastures, I mean, mowed fields, and pasture fields that had been prairie.
But they were still maintained commercially for the hay or for cattle feed.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
And none of them had ever been set aside as far as I know as a prairie. Now they were
establishing some forest areas. But I don’t know of any established pasture areas.
WJ:
Did you think that maybe this would turn into a way of getting the prairies back?
TS:
Possibly. In fact, that was the idea, get a piece of prairie back, if you’re going to restore
an arboretum with the various forest types, well, you have the prairie type too. And, yes,
we wanted to establish prairie here.
00:51:44
WJ:
How much interest was there on the part of people like Fasset and Leopold in the process
of restoring the prairie?
TS:
Uh, Leopold, as far as I know, is the only one that really had the scientific interest in it.
Fasset wasn’t opposed to it, and he, Fasset did establish some little plots out here,
planting plots, primarily to see what would grow, not as far as managing was concerned.
Fasset didn’t oppose the burning. In fact, he approved it as worth doing. And I think
Fasset was here at the time that the burning was done.
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
Uh-huh, he may have been. I’m not sure. But he knew about it at least and saw the
effect. But mostly Fasset and Longenecker, especially Longenecker go along with
whatever Leopold suggested. Leopold was, I felt, the way I figured it, he was the brains
behind it. He was the, a good scientist.
WJ:
Did he come out and talk to you, work with you on the prairie?
TS:
Oh, yeah, not work with me. I don’t think he ever turned over a single shovelful of earth.
WJ:
Did he discuss what was going on?
TS:
Yeah, he’d come out, oh, once every week or two and see what was going on. He kept an
interest in it all. And if you had any suggestions to make, he’d be more apt one to make a
suggestion than anybody else. I say this was done under Leopold’s supervision.
WJ:
What kind of suggestions would he be likely to make?
TS:
Mostly, go ahead, you’re doing fine.
WJ:
Really?
TS:
Uh-huh.
WJ:
Just a second.
TS:
He didn’t have any reason to make further comments.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
00:53:40
WJ:
I’d like to finish up this little bit of type by asking you to tell me a little bit about your
career after you left here. You were in the Army and England and you were in Africa
and Pittsburg.
TS:
Yeah, and [word unclear] from ’41 to ’45.
WJ:
What were you doing in it?
TS:
I went to basic training down in Camp Walters in Texas. And then they had that deal
about the married people, married men, they shouldn’t be engaged in military work when
we were still were not at war at that time. We did have to go through our basic training.
And at basic training, I was dismissed from the Army because we weren’t at war. And I
was sort of looking around for a job, and, yeah, I came back here.
WJ:
To Madison?
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh, because I wanted to see what was going on on the prairie work here.
WJ:
What time of year was that?
TS:
It was in April.
WJ:
Of ’41?
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh, because I was out someplace on the prairie as I recall, uh, a cold day,
Sunday, April 7th, and I didn’t know anything about the Japanese attack.
WJ:
December 7th?
TS:
December, that’s right.
WJ:
You were where?
TS:
Beg your pardon, no, that was not here. I was --
WJ:
You were in camp then.
TS:
I’d been dismissed from the Army, sort of a reprieve. I was dismissed until action
started. And after the fact, then we, I got back into the Army again.
WJ:
What did you say, you missed, that you missed Pearl Harbor?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
Where were you?
TS:
I was out in the field.
WJ:
Where?
TS:
Hiking out wherever I was at the time. And I don’t remember right now.
WJ:
Probably in Illinois.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh. I was in the field all day. I didn’t know anything about it until the next
day.
WJ:
Yeah.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
00:56:13
TS:
Anyway, when I went back in, I figured I wanted to, well, I actually prefer the Air Force
rather than the Army. I suppose interest in it, and primarily I was interested in the
weather. And so I got back into the Air Force, and I applied for weather right away. And
they put me in a general draft pool, and during the interview, they wanted to place me,
they suggested I be tail gunner because I’m just a little guy. And they want the little guys
for the tail of the gun because there’s not much room to move around back of the tail --
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
--of the old B-17s.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
But, uh, I said, uh-uh. I didn’t like the idea at all. So I went into weather. And they said,
well, we don’t have very much call for weather. Anyway, that got to, have to have a heck
of a big, a high GCT, general test score for weather. What are your GCT? Gosh, I don’t
remember. I’d taken the test. And he said, never mind, I can find out. And he called up
the test office, and asked me what my GCT was. And they held on the phone for two or
three minutes while he was looking it up. He said, oh, what? How high did it go
anyway? And he said, no question about what you’re going to do. You qualified for
weather. He said, you’re the first person I’ve ever had, this was the officer who was in
charge of it, who had a higher test score than he had.
WJ:
Better watch out. So you got into meteorology.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
For the Air Force.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh, and so they sent me to weather school. And I went through weather
observer. And as soon as I got out of weather observer course, why, they put me in as an
instructor. And this was at [word unclear] field in Illinois.
WJ:
Grand Tool?
TS:
Grand Tool or whatever the field was at Grand Tool. I’ve forgotten the name of it.
WJ:
Rand Tool?
TS:
Yep, uh-huh. And they had a big weather school there, various aviation activities, but a
weather school was an important part of it. And I had a colonel in charge of the school
and we had some visiting general from around inspecting, and they gave special
instructions to have the school working perfectly, just if the general didn’t show up right
away, why, just keep classes going anyway. And they’d already put me in charge of the
teaching the meteorology for the school. And I could see that the general wasn’t showing
up. I told the instructor, I said, I’m supposed to take this bunch of students next, and
you’re supposed to hold onto them until the general comes around. But there’s no sign of
general anyplace around. Let’s skip the regulations. And he turns the bunch loose, and I
have them there short break, not a ten-minute break, but just a little short break. And
come on back into my class. The other instructor was tickled pink because he didn’t
want to have them hanging there when the general was coming around anyway. And so
he turned that bunch loose. The rest of the classes kept going.
72
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
01:00:15
But we turned that bunch loose and told them, now, you just keep quiet and don’t make
any fuss in the halls, and come right back here. What was it, oh, three, four, five minutes,
and we’ll start right in, so to get this class going, rather than staying in that other class all
the time. The guy said, fine, I’ll do it that way. So they came back into the room I was
taking, and I had my lesson all worked out. It was a rather technical aspect. I’ve
forgotten just what it was, something rather technical in meteorology. And I got started
teaching them, and sure enough, that’s when the general showed up. And by that time,
the other classes were getting so restless and some of them were being turned loose.
They didn’t know what to do with all that time. And here my class was going perfectly.
They were all back in there. And the colonel was tickled pink, at least one class was
going well. And the general came in, and I was going right through a lesson and had the
attention of the class. I had a good lesson and a good class, and I was doing a good job of
presentation. And the colonel was impressed. So was the general, I suppose. I don’t
know. And from then on, the colonel knew who I was. I had the rank of PFC.
WJ:
Who was the general?
TS:
I don’t know [words unclear].
WJ:
But at this time, you were in Illinois.
TS:
Yeah.
01:01:54
WJ:
How did you wind up in England, and what were you doing there?
TS:
Oh, well, I’d put in my application for weather forecaster. They have two sections of
weather observer. This was a weather observing class, and then an application for
weather forecaster. And so the next call for forecasters came up, why, I was right on the
top of the list. I went on to Miami, where the forecaster school is. I went through
weather forecaster and got my -- oh, from weather forecaster, then I went into Army,
what do they call it, officer training corps, officer’s training school. I went in there and
got my commission. And then assigned down to Biloxi, Mississippi for my first
assignment. And then the call came up to a bunch of officers go to England. I was in on
the shipment.
WJ:
You shipped over there?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
When?
TS:
Oh, this was about ’43 I suppose by this time.
WJ:
Where were you stationed there?
TS:
At England, Burleigh, England. They had --
WJ:
Burleigh?
TS:
Uh-huh. It was in the Midlands there, had bases all over England. It was a particularly
deep placed. Part of them were RAF bases and part of them Army Air Force bases.
73
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
So you were helping with weather forecasts over --
TS:
I was a weather officer for the Air Force.
WJ:
You were providing advice –
01:03:40
End of Tape 4, Side 2
Tape 5, Side 1
00:00:01
TS:
-- we gave the crews that were going out is what we were told to tell them from weather
central. They had weather central someplace in England, and they send in their messages
what -- how the preflight meetings, oh, there were a couple hundred aviators in there.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And they’d tell them about all the details of the mission and always one of the sections
was the weather section. And they were always interested in that.
WJ:
Sure.
TS:
It was important aspect. They never argued with the weather.
WJ:
Yeah. Well, then you came back after the war and you started working in –
00:00:54
TS:
Yeah, there wasn’t any, after the war, why, this place was dead. It had been kept alive all
during the war, but just as a paper organization.
WJ:
Do you mean the Arboretum?
TS:
Yeah, the Arboretum, there wasn’t anybody doing any work here to speak of. I don’t
know how long it took them to get some money to get the thing going again. Like Curtis
I remember I was told, I didn’t talk with him, I was told he came out and had a few
graduate students doing a little work. In fact, that’s about the time he was doing his work
on the fire studies.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And I think he published a paper within a year or two after that.
WJ:
Did you come back here after the war?
TS:
No.
WJ:
Even to visit?
TS:
No, I had to get the money first. You didn’t make much money in the Army.
00:01:49
WJ:
I thought you made a visit here though in, when was the first time you came back to the
Arboretum?
TS:
Oh, I, oh, I did make a visit in ’46.
WJ:
I thought so.
74
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Yeah, and I was looking for a job. I didn’t have a job anyplace and had applications in
various places. And while I was looking for a job, I did come back here in ’46 in April or
May, and I think it was May or June. And did run a survey of all the plots like I’m doing
now.
WJ:
Oh, you did?
TS:
Uh-huh, in ’46.
WJ:
How did it look then?
TS:
I was surprised that a number of them were coming through quite well, showed up quite
well. I didn’t finish the survey, and had a period, I have a period, but I don’t remember
just what the dates were.
00:02:43
I didn’t finish it, but I did get my job during the summer, started in June teaching there at
Pittsburg, Kansas.
WJ:
And you’ve been there ever since.
TS:
At the university, yeah, uh-huh. I had my summer classes, and then we had a vacation
period after the summer classes between, before the fall class. August was the vacation
month. So I came up here in August to finish my survey here that I didn’t finish before I
got my teaching job.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And so I have a complete survey of all the plantings 237 of them, in 1946. But after I’d
made that survey, then I had to go right back to my teaching job again.
WJ:
How did you feel about --
TS:
And I never did publish it. It was just put, had the notes, but never had a chance to do
any publishing. But in ’46, they were showing well, quite well.
WJ:
Really, you were pleased?
TS:
Oh, yeah, I was quite pleased.
WJ:
There hadn’t been much burning at that point, had there?
TS:
Um, no, the burning wasn’t done until the year after that, I think. I don’t think there was
anything done in ’45.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I don’t remember when Curtis did his first burning experiments.
WJ:
I don’t know.
TS:
Uh-huh, but he did his first burning experiments some time around in that area.
WJ:
You’d been at Pittsburg –
00:04:05
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
And then I just kept right there right straight through except for 1951, when I was called
on this consultant job in Central Africa.
WJ:
Where was that?
TS:
In what was then the Belgian Congo. They had, what a Marshall Plan or some such thing
of foreign assistance for these countries that were having trouble getting themselves
organized and operating. And they thought the American experts could come over and
give them some help. And that was the idea, American money, but it was under the
supervision and in this case, it was the Belgian government.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
The Belgium had their own agriculture, and Belgium is very intensive, extremely
intensive. But they had this big area down there in the Congo, Belgian Congo, which
was still much, pretty much undeveloped. And they wanted to see what they could do
down in the Congo, and much of the eastern part of the Belgian Congo. The western part
is solid tropical forest, rainforest. But the eastern part is going up into the mountains.
And they have a lot of savannah there. They call it savannah, but actually it’s prairie
grass, mostly. But there were a few scattered trees around. And they had two areas. I
beg your pardon, they had one area in the northeastern part of the Congo, and then they
had another one, which was also under Belgian control at that time, Rwanda. That was
just south of the Congo. And they had the two areas our [Nioka?] area and then the
Rwanda area. Then they had the two teams there. I was the plant, was the botanist for
the Nioka team.
WJ:
What was the, what was your job, your objective?
TS:
To survey, see how much prairie there was there and what condition it was in. And it
was remarkably similar to this right out here.
WJ:
Really?
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
That was natural prairie there.
TS:
Yeah, natural grassland.
WJ:
Different species, of course.
TS:
Different species. Instead of the Andropogons, there was one Andropogon that did occur
there, but mostly, huh, [word unclear] big grass genus, several species. But it had much
of the same aspect as our tall-grass prairie here does, quite similar.
WJ:
That’s the one you said was tall enough to hide an elephant.
TS:
Well, no, that was Panacetum was the elephant grass, which is a different genus. But it
was, occurs in some areas. We didn’t have too much of that big Panacetum right on our
area. It was adjacent to us. We had mostly was, I’m getting old. I don’t remember the
name of that genus. It’s an important genus. But is has the same aspects of our tall-grass
prairie here.
WJ:
Did you see elephants on that prairie?
TS:
Occasionally.
76
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Yeah?
TS:
Mostly, the thing we watched out for the buffalo, lots of antelope, antelope all over the
place.
WJ:
And buffalo could be dangerous you mean?
TS:
They could be. They weren’t as a matter of fact. They’re about as dangerous as the
buffalo are here or the bison are here. In other words, they would prefer not to tangle
with you. You leave them alone, and they’ll leave you alone.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And they work out where the bison, and no problem ordinarily.
WJ:
How long were you in Africa?
TS:
A year.
00:08:02
WJ:
You were there for a year. Did your wife go?
TS:
No, she kept, in fact, she took my classes there at Pittsburg.
WJ:
Oh, yes, yeah.
TS:
I left, she left Millikin and came over there and just, she took the same classes I would’ve
taught.
WJ:
Oh, you mean, she’d been living in Millikin at that time? You were living separately.
TS:
Yeah, we were living separately, both commuting back and forth.
WJ:
Really?
TS:
Uh-huh.
WJ:
For years.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
From Kansas to Illinois.
TS:
And then after I got back here, then she quit her job at Millikin and lived at Pittsburg all
the time. We bought a house down there, set up housekeeping then.
WJ:
Yeah, and you retired in, you were teaching biology, history of biology.
TS:
Yeah, 17 different courses, I think.
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
That’s what they do in small colleges
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I was the ecologist primarily, botanist, nearly all the botany and the ecology and
conservation.
WJ:
Yeah. Ted, what I’d like to do is let’s take a few minutes and just walk a little circle.
77
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Okay. Can you get Buffy to agree with that?
WJ:
Yeah, she’s got simple dinner.
TS:
-- big tall stuff down in the lower area
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
And they get to it. And I was trying to work my way through that big tall stuff. All I
could do was look up and see the sky, nothing else. Because there isn’t room around here
to take a piss.
WJ:
It’s pretty crowded out there.
TS:
Pretty crowded when you get into that tall stuff.
00:09:52
WJ:
Yeah, I wanted to ask you what you had to do. Did you do any more prairie work in the
years you were down in Kansas, and restoration?
TS:
No, no restoration. No, Kansas isn’t conservation-minded, and they’re just getting a
little into it now. But Missouri, if want conservation in prairie, we don’t do it in Kansas.
We go across the line into Missouri.
WJ:
Did you do anything personally?
TS:
Not very much. I tried to run my own little prairie on my lot at home. I have it there
now, but it’s too small. It’s shaded all around, too much shade.
WJ:
Oh, really? Just a city lot, huh?
TS:
Yeah, about an acre --
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
-- sized lot but it’s mostly forested. No, there wasn’t too much of anything to do. The
best prairie around there is across the line in Missouri. They have some pretty good
prairie there.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Now since then, we got started, they were planning, I got a place up in Manhattan,
Kansas, the Konza Prairie.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Which is a darn good prairie, but the only reason Kansas has that, not because of the state
but because of the nature conservancy, that arranged for turning that over to a --
WJ:
Right.
TS:
So they have a good one there, but don’t give Kansas Legislature any credit for it.
00:11:20
WJ:
I thought, Ted, you might want to just glance at these old photographs we have here in
that they might --
TS:
Yeah, that’s the one you had out there.
78
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
That’s right. That’s you on the truck there.
TS:
That’s me on the truck.
WJ:
What’s, do you want to tell me what’s going on there? That’s --
TS:
Oh, we just came in with a load of some of that sod I [word unclear] today, this
afternoon. And we’d just brought it back and were unloading it out on the ground.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
And this is the area where we were planting it.
WJ:
That’s planting into the Arboretum there, huh?
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh.
WJ:
So that’s unloading.
TS:
That’s unloading.
WJ:
Yeah. Here’s maybe a picture gathering plants?
TS:
No, that’s also planting here too.
WJ:
Is it?
TS:
Uh-huh. Yeah, he’s carrying some, and they had me point to something just to show
some action.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
That’s photographers just have a way of doing that.
WJ:
That’s the site there at the time. Do you want to describe what the field looked like at the
time you got here?
TS:
Old pasture, an old farm field.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Nothing to brag about at all, very unexciting.
WJ:
Same thing, right?
TS:
Yep, uh-huh. You see, there’s oak trees there at the corner of the golf course. And this is
just being put in here at the time, and now that stuff is clear up that high. It’s 7 feet tall
right in that same spot.
WJ:
Where you were this afternoon.
TS:
Yeah, right where we were this afternoon. It was, I could locate the spot because I had
my map here that shows, there are the oak trees.
WJ:
That’s right. Yeah, this is a picture with you pointing off to the right and the truck off to
the right and four or five CCC boys planting. Here’s a picture of the bucket brigade.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
That might’ve been that summer of ’36 that you were talking about.
79
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Oh, yeah, I’m sure it was. In fact, that is the only time they used the buckets for watering
plants was that one, one year. That isn’t me though, is it?
WJ:
I don’t think it is.
TS:
I don’t think so.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I don’t remember anything like that.
WJ:
It didn’t look, it doesn’t look to me like that. Here’s a wonderful picture. It’s one of our
classis pictures of the CCC boys in a row under the November sky.
TS:
Yep.
WJ:
Do you remember that incident?
TS:
No, I don’t, but I did recognize when I studied it afterwards that is a Park Service hat.
WJ:
The guy about the fourth from the right, huh?
TS:
The rest of these are CCC hats. See the one in behind here?
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
That has the flat-brim Park Service hat.
WJ:
Ah.
TS:
That’s me. And these others had the other flap hats come down over.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
And the Park Service hat is distinctive. And that’s the one you have out there too.
WJ:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s our best picture.
TS:
Yeah. Well, that’s you took it off the wall, did you?
WJ:
No, there’s a bigger one down there. Here’s a picture of Leopold at one of the burns
back in the ‘40s.
TS:
Oh, now this is after I was here, after I left.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
Our burned strip was much smaller than this. It was a little narrow strip.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I think our burn was only about 2 feet wide or 3 feet wide, something.
WJ:
Oh, really?
00:14:58
WJ:
Well, let’s walk out, Ted.
TS:
I don’t know. I didn’t have anything to do with that.
WJ:
Well, show me through the camp. Pretend it’s 1937, and you show me through here.
Where the McKay Center is here, that was the Nelson barn.
80
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Yeah [words unclear] barn was they made it into a mess hall afterwards. And it was the
mess hall that burned down.
WJ:
Did you ever meet Charlie Nelson?
TS:
I don’t remember him.
WJ:
No?
TS:
No, who was he?
WJ:
The guy who owned the land here before.
TS:
Oh, no. No, I don’t think I ever met him at all. All I know is the old farmhouse is right
back there.
WJ:
Off to the left of the road, you worked out of that house.
TS:
Yeah, that was the Park Service headquarters. Now the Army headquarters is right down,
in fact I think that building there is the original Army headquarters building
WJ:
We can walk around down there.
TS:
Oh, yeah, let me go here. The house is right up here among these trees. These trees
were somewhat smaller than they are now. But I think it’s probably that open [words
unclear]. It might have been right in about where this [word unclear] is. I suppose
somebody knows just exactly where the house was sitting.
WJ:
There’s a little dip in the ground, which I think was probably --
TS:
It had a little basement in it, not very much of one, a little bit. And we, it had a parking
lot right in front of it. We all came up here and parked the cars in front, walked in here,
and all our Park Service activities, we were operating out of this office. And work in the
morning, we’d come, we had a barracks, where the Park Service had its own barracks
down there, and we’d come up here, and then the Army would send their crews up here.
And we’d meet them there and assign, and the garage was like right over the hill here.
WJ:
When did you start work in the morning?
TS:
Oh, about 8:00.
WJ:
Did you have sort of a reveille?
TS:
I don’t remember. And, of course, the Park Service personnel weren’t under the Army.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Although, the Army did feed us. We got our food, the mess hall was over here, went
down there, got our food.
WJ:
Do you want to walk on down through here, Ted?
TS:
But our activities, as far as we were concerned, we’d just go from the parking lot up to
the office and get instructions, meet the crews out here and go out with the crew. The
trucks would come up from below, and we’d load in the trucks and drive off wherever
they were going to work.
WJ:
Yeah.
81
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
And the camp was spread out down below here.
WJ:
Off to the southeast.
TS:
Yeah, I think the Army office was the first one of the series of buildings, and they [word
unclear] two directions.
00:18:11
WJ:
You stayed in one of the barracks yourself?
TS:
Yeah, the Park Service barracks, yeah, I stayed there at the barracks. They, well,
originally, it was just one big room in there. Then they divided it off into little cubicles.
So each of us had our own room --
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
-- after the first couple years. The first year it was just a big, long barracks room, and
then they had little cubicles, and we each had a little square, 10 to 12 feet, some sort.
WJ:
Yeah, for each person.
TS:
Yeah. You didn’t have to stay in the barracks. You could or could not as you wish.
WJ:
Well, where would you stay then if you didn’t?
TS:
Well, during the summer, when my wife came up, why then, I got a cottage out there on
the south shore of Lake Monona.
WJ:
Oh, yeah.
TS:
And, uh, I drove up there in the evening and drive around here in the morning and meet
the crews here.
WJ:
Yeah. Should we walk on down?
TS:
When we had, I had to have some Park Service on duty all the time. And for the
holidays, Christmas or Thanksgiving or something sort, one of us would be here, and I’d
do my share of holiday service. And then she’d come out here, and we’d spend the day,
usually right in the barracks I think.
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
Uh-huh, but maybe up at the office or someplace else. If we ever had to go out around
the Arboretum and I’d check my bird traps. I was operating them.
TS:
And that’s your, where the work was that I was doing. I didn’t have to stay in the
barracks the whole time. I could just be available around the camp here. And we’d go
down to the barracks for the meals, and they’d treat her as a guest.
00:20:21
WJ:
Now here’s the only remaining barracks, Ted. Do you remember, was this the one you
lived in?
TS:
This is, I think this is the Army barracks here.
WJ:
Oh, really?
82
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Army headquarters, and ours was right adjacent to it someplace in here. I’ve forgotten
just where. I remember the two of them were not very far apart. The garage was back
over here someplace. I think because, see, these trees weren’t here at all then at that time.
WJ:
Right.
TS:
Now the someplace right behind here, why, they put in a bunch of trees, what are those,
spruces?
WJ:
Yeah, maybe, or firs.
TS:
Maybe, but the barracks were here, and then the trees in behind, and I don’t remember
specifically what the range of the buildings were. It was right on this area. But I think
those trees have been put in since.
WJ:
Should we walk back on down past the washhouse and maybe take a quick look at the
prairie? This building just to the west of the barracks here, what was that for?
TS:
Well, remember that old photograph of the camp that shows the barracks going out in two
directions?
WJ:
Right.
TS:
One going out, more or less right angles to each other, coming to a point. Where were
those buildings located at that time?
WJ:
Well, I think they went down like that, and the other leg went off that way.
TS:
Wasn’t that off where those are now?
WJ:
Toward the east I think, yeah.
TS:
Yeah, and the other went off to the --
WJ:
South.
TS:
-- southwest, south or southwest. And I don’t remember this building here at all.
WJ:
You don’t? Well, where were the lavatory facilities?
TS:
Well, there was one in the, east barracks had their own lavatory.
WJ:
Oh, there was?
TS:
Uh-huh. We had ours. They didn’t work too well. You always had to take care of the
plumbing.
WJ:
Really?
TS:
Yeah, but they were, each barracks had their own lavatory.
WJ:
Really? Well, was this maybe for laundry or something like that?
TS:
It might have been. I suppose the camp did have one. I don’t remember.
WJ:
Yeah.
00:22:56
TS:
I don’t recall. It’s changed so much in appearance that it’s hard to, and I guess my
memory isn’t all that good anyway. My little shed, tool shed for the prairie, and that was
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
just the, for the prairie crew only. And we’d, I’d take my crew down there, and I’d get
my seed or the tools we were going to work. And we’d walk along that path, the path
going across the prairie out toward the Noye Woods, which I still think of as the Sperry
path, since it was my crew that established the path there in the first place.
WJ:
Now which path do you mean exactly? You’ll have to show me that.
TS:
That’s the one that starts out across the prairie, it was. It starts now up here near the oak
tree, but it was right closer in originally. I think my, well, I said, it was just about where
that little pump house is.
WJ:
Oh, really?
TS:
Uh-huh. And then we went down here to the path and took out across the prairie there.
That’s the main path going lengthwise.
00:24:21
WJ:
Oh, I see. That was the, was there a sort of sense of, did you usually have the same
people working on the prairie crew.
TS:
Usually, you had the fellows assigned to the crew, and then they stayed at the same crew,
operating whatever the project was, more or less continuous base or week after week
after week. Now the crews would have a few more assigned to us sometimes, or they’d
take, pull them off a crew if they needed to do, have a, put them on some other project.
But usually, I would say I had mostly six or eight fellows doing the work. And if some
project wasn’t working very well because of something broke, a truck had broken down
or a machine had broken down, they’d dump another half-dozen fellows. I’d get a larger
crew, sometimes 15 or 20.
WJ:
Was there sort of a special spirit about a particular crew or a difference?
TS:
Once they knew what they were supposed to be doing, then they liked to stay with that.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
Same kind of job, and the prairie crew was mostly a matter of those that sort of wanted to
work with me. I wasn’t too popular.
WJ:
You weren’t?
TS:
No, I didn’t have the rapport that some of the hale fellow, hardy fellows well met, that
some of them do.
WJ:
Well, you had a nickname.
TS:
I did?
WJ:
Little Owl.
TS:
Well, I guess some of them did call me that. They didn’t use that very much around me.
WJ:
Let’s go down and take a look at the prairie, Ted. Just entering Curtis Prairie here at, on
the fire lane near the little pump house.
TS:
One reason I don’t get along with work crews very well is I know too much. They don’t
like to have guys that are too smart and show them up all the time. And that’s why I’d
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
always pop off on something that made them feel sort of inferior. So I’m just not too
popular. As a matter of fact, my wife found this, found the same thing, that she was more
popular than I was. She was a darned good looking gal, very good looking. The fellows
all take a shine to her right away. But after they talk with her for an hour or two in the
evening some sort, they never dated her after that. And one of them told her, said, you
know this trouble with you is you just know too damn much. Because she, she didn’t
mind popping off to anybody that she was talking to. And if the college president didn’t
get something just right, why she’d up and correct him, tell him what it was like. And
she was always trying to get things straight, get the ideas across and so she wasn’t too
popular. Fellows don’t like smart girls.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
They don’t like somebody that shows them up. And that, the same thing was probably
true in my, the reason I wasn’t too popular is the reason I was called an owl.
WJ:
Oh, I see.
TS:
I knew lots. What was it, an owl is a wise old bird?
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
The less you spoke, the more you heard. The more you heard, the less you spoke. I
wasn’t he. Wise up there in the oak or some such thing.
00:28:36
WJ:
Yeah, well, Ted, here’s the prairie. How do you feel when you come back here?
TS:
Boy, it’s amazing to see the height and the density of it and the lack of the original
vegetation completely replaced by apparently what appears to be natural prairie
vegetation. I doubt that it is, if there is such a thing as a natural prairie vegetation. This
is not a true prairie. This is a true restored prairie, and I’m sure if somebody made a
careful study of it, they’d say, now, a natural prairie wouldn’t have this. The restored
prairie might have it. And so we have to consider this, now, what a restored prairie looks
like. And we’re not at all sure just exactly what a natural prairie looks like. I don’t know
as anybody ever described one that well. Not as far as I know.
WJ:
But it must be nice coming back after 50 years.
TS:
Oh, it is, yes, it’s, and coming over that hill on the west end, coming in, where you’re up
where you can look over it, you see that sweep of prairie going clear off to the horizon,
it’s tremendous effect, very dramatic, and with enough of these trees along the outside so
they show the savannah border, which is characteristic of prairie.
WJ:
Uh-huh, should we just walk on down the trail here and --
TS:
Okay. Go on.
WJ:
You can comment on anything you care to.
TS:
I suppose there was a number of reports that –
00:30:19
WJ:
I think if I’m on this side, it might be better for the traffic noise, Ted.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Okay. That’s right. That’s one thing about this prairie that is not at all natural is to have
that beltline traffic. That has a continual roar in the background day and night. And once
you discount that, why it’s a beautiful prairie. That roar is constantly there all the time.
And those who are sensitive to the calls, fortunately, the goldfinches and nighthawks and
things of that sort don’t seem to bother them a bit. They react very much. I remember
the hensel sparrow, about the same thing, just chirp away, or the sedge wrens behave
perfectly natural without being bothered by the beltline noise.
WJ:
Did you expect this to work so well when you started?
TS:
No, no, goodnight, no, I had no idea that we’d get growth as big as this.
00:31:31
End of Tape 5, Side 1
Tape 5, Side 2
00:31:33
Original travelers often, made note of the monotonous of the prairies. You got this tall
grass there that just mile after mile after mile monotonous prairie. The first ones, of
course, that don’t have an appreciation for the various prairie flowers, which naturally
occur in there, and don’t recognize the difference between the various types.
WJ:
You don’t find this monotonous?
TS:
Oh, goodnight, no, in fact the most monotonous part of the long trail that we’re walking
on here was the sort of semi-weedy plants. They grow right up on the border of the trail
itself. But you get 5 feet off the trail here, and then you got the solid grass. And there it
begins looking like a real prairie instead of a sunflower, goldenrod border, such as we’re
walking along here. Now there, your goldenrod is going into the prairie itself on that
tree. But it must [words unclear] bad at all. Actually this looks, I consider it more
interesting in June than it does in September because you’re having the smaller flowers
that come up early and bloom, and the grass is not high enough to hide all the flowers
that are in there. I’m surprised the number of flowers that are back in there, but you can’t
see them until you walk in to see them. Here, all you see is grass above the level of the
flowering plants. There are certain spots, like this one right in here.
WJ:
Show me, Ted.
TS:
That’s one, right inside here, where they have much less of the tall grasses, and they have
some lower grass in this area. And here they’re low enough so you can actually see
what’s in here. And you notice, we’ve got the goldenrod and prairie dock and the
Lespedeza, which show up quite well. I don’t know why these low spots do occur.
There may be a little difference in soil. Of course, you do have that experimental area
over there. I don’t know whether that’s the reason for it or not. But I do find other, now
back here occasionally yet less vegetation, and I assume there’s probably less, due
probably to a hard soil or a low soil, something [word unclear].
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I’m not sure of the reason. But these are very nice spots, which do occur here and there
through the prairie, and there’s quite a nice place over there on that hill that shows that
over there.
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
WJ:
Yeah. Well, it must feel nice to have planted all this.
TS:
Well, you sort of forget about that after 50 years.
WJ:
You’re still coming back though, Ted.
TS:
It’s nice to know it’s here because you had something to do with getting it established in
the first place. I’m quite conscious of it, especially when I’m up here.
WJ:
This is our newest little patch here.
TS:
Tell me about this.
WJ:
We just started putting that in in about 1986. This was the old nursery.
TS:
Oh, this is where the nursery was.
WJ:
In fact, the last time you were up here in ’82, this wasn’t even here.
TS:
I see.
WJ:
This is the old nursery.
TS:
Yeah, I wondered about that.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Hey, that’s Petalostemum. I was looking for some of that today, and I couldn’t find it.
You got quite a nice little patch of it right in here.
WJ:
Yeah. That was all seeded in here just three and four years ago.
TS:
Now some of my original plantings came up close to this, the bluegrass, I mean bluestem.
Were there bluestem here as soon as you closed your nursery down?
WJ:
No, the nursery was just trees and shrubs.
TS:
Oh, trees and shrubs. No wonder I had trouble recognizing what, where my original
planting boundaries were. But I remember, I had quite an area here that shows planting
of bluestem, but just where the boundary is of those areas, I can’t tell you. That nursery
you put in, I think, after I left, as I recall, which is the reason I can’t spot it as to its exact
location. And one difficulty I have, my planting maps here, show what was here at the
time. And I don’t have anything definite to tie in my particular planting boundaries with
the things that are here now. Had I been here all the time, I’d probably superimpose the
new developments on top of my planting maps. But I wasn’t here at the time, and so I
don’t have anything to tie in. And [word unclear] who was here at the time was going to
survey the area and put in the marker posts. He got the marker posts made, concrete
blocks or something sort, but I never did know that he got any of them put in, not as far
as I know. I haven’t seen any around the prairie. Do you have any definite markers?
WJ:
I don’t know much about that, Ted. Gina would know. We can ask her.
TS:
Uh-huh, but I haven’t seen anything. And I certainly don’t have any record of it on my
planting maps. You’re not bothered too much by mosquitoes, are you?
WJ:
A little bit. Well, Ted, have we forgotten anything important here? We could --
00:38:02
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
Well, I’m not really ready to say for sure that anything is important. It’s hard to say. But
I am impressed by the, what, hundreds of visitors?
WJ:
Oh, I guess, sure.
TS:
I was going to say up to 100 or more each day.
WJ:
Did you have any visitors out here in the old days?
TS:
Oh, very few. Outside of an occasional parent who would come around wanted to see
what their boys life, but the other visitors we had are some town girls would come out to
see the boys.
WJ:
Oh, yeah.
TS:
And we had quite a number of them would sneak out and try to find some of the fellows
all around the edges someplace. They weren’t common, but it would occur from time to
time, as you would expect.
WJ:
I’m walking back up to the McKay Center here.
TS:
By the way, how’s your solar roof on this [word unclear].
WJ:
Well, I, it’s working now. For a while it wasn’t working --
TS:
In fact not all just green grass and trees.
WJ:
So the McKay Center you mean.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
That’s right, with the solar system, sure.
TS:
Yeah, uh-huh.
00:39:36
WJ:
Well, Ted, I just, I wanted to ask. Now you’ve been to a couple of the SER Conferences,
and you --
TS:
All you had.
WJ:
You’ve been to both of the ones we’ve had, right. That’s true. And so you’ve met a lot
of the kind of new generation of people getting involved in this work. And I just
wondered if you’d like to comment on what do you think about the way things are
shaping up?
TS:
They’re very, shaping up very well. I’m rather pleased with the way you’re doing. The
only thing that distressed me at all is we’re getting [word unclear] of the multiplicity, the
Grassland conferences, the biennial ones, overlap the SER to some extent. Of course,
you have Grassland, they more or less limit themselves to grasses and the animals that
live in the grasses. Where the SER take in all types of biotic areas. So it’s not a
complete overlap, but as far as our Grassland people are concerned, we show up at either
one or the other or both. And then there’s the other scientific groups also that are sort of
edging in on the borders of that type of thing.
WJ:
Well, there’s almost --
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Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
TS:
And you can’t keep up with all of the meetings.
WJ:
No, you can’t. And, of course, any area that you define is going -- almost anywhere you
define a subject, you’re going to have a lot of overlap like that.
TS:
Yeah.
WJ:
But what do you think about, I mean, does it surprise you to see the growing interest?
TS:
Oh, sure, yeah, and just a measure of the general interest in environment, it’s
countrywide, worldwide. And I’m glad to see it, and this is just one of the
manifestations. They’re all very much interrelated with each other.
00:41:32
WJ:
Well, now when we went through a great increase in environmental awareness back in
the ‘60s and ‘70s. And restoration was not really part of that, was it?
TS:
No, it wasn’t. No, it started out with other aspects and not restoration. Restoration sort
of followed in. Oh, I suppose there’ve been a little restoration, usually little backyard
projects or something of that sort for years. And I should, I suppose the Arboretum fit in
mostly in a larger concept than most of the others have been and that increase in size.
And then we found out later, after the Arboretum got well established, it wasn’t big
enough. And they definitely need something bigger, and as they knew then, that these
areas weren’t big enough for bison. And so it took them, oh, what, 10, 15 years to finally
get an area big enough to put bison on. As far as I know, the [word unclear] were the
first ones except for some of the national parks, which were not established primarily for
prairie or even for grassland.
WJ:
You made an interesting point, that in the case of the prairies, it seems as though the
restoration came before the preservation.
TS:
Yeah, that’s an interesting point.
WJ:
You mentioned that to me the other day. And I think it is an interesting point.
TS:
Yeah, I think it is too.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
Well, you can see the, the logical sequence of it.
00:43:03
WJ:
Well, what do you think the, now as we go through another spiral of environmental
interest, this time with a, taking more serious interest in the business of restoration, what
does that imply about, is that a new kind of environmentalism?
TS:
It’s an aspect of it. But with the greenhouse effect, the ozone layer, the other factors and
as we mentioned last night, especially the population problem, they’re all fit in together.
You can’t separate them.
WJ:
Uh-huh.
TS:
And what is going to develop from those newer aspects, take somebody a good deal
smarter than me to figure that one out. I think only the lord knows. Just to be quite
honest about it, what we need is a new federal administration and get rid of the Reagan89
Theodore M. Sperry #395 (1981)
Bush effect. You need somebody, well, Carter was good compared to, and, of course,
FDR was one of the best of the restorations in the early days.
WJ:
Yeah, you vote for him?
TS:
I did, yeah. When Reagan came in, I voted for Anderson.
00:44:32
WJ:
What would you say makes, motivates you in all of this work?
TS:
Oh, interest, I suppose, scientific interest. I don’t have, no, I don’t have any axes to grind
with anybody, no national or political [word unclear] at all with any of them.
WJ:
But, I mean, you have had choices through your life. And you wound up doing ecology.
TS:
Oh, I just like to be outdoors ever since I was a youngster. I remember in grade school
experience that mother gave me long before we got in public schools, I, she had me
making some drawings, and I drew a picture of an oak leaf, oak tree and the leaf and the
acorn. And those were pretty good drawings. But she didn’t tell me what to do. She just
said work on something, and that’s what I chose. So I’ve been interested in the botany
ever since.
WJ:
Yeah.
TS:
I was that I, at that time, so it’s been all along, all the time. And we grew up out in the
country, suburbs I’d say.
WJ:
Right near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
TS:
Oh, a mile and a half, two miles --
WJ:
Within earshot though.
TS:
Within earshot. And those old cars were pretty noisy in those days.
WJ:
And they still are, Ted. Yeah. Well, there you go. I just wanted to –
00:46:15
End of Tape 5, Side 2. End of Interview #395
END
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