A TRIBUTE TO FOUNDER, HARRY CLARK

Forest Festival's Deep Roots

A TRIBUTE TO FOUNDER, HARRY CLARK

Copied with permission from the Simpson Lookout (1952)

When the bands strike out and the parades begin to move in the seventh annual Mason County Forest Festival next month, one man watching the proceedings with pride in his heart will be Harry Clark of Woodfiber.

Harry Clark--more than any other single individual-was responsible for starting the Forest Festival. Few public causes or celebrations come from a single person. Harry has never claimed honors for single-handedly creating the big show which is built around the idea of protection of the forests from fire. But it is well-known by men and women who worked with him in the first years of the festival, that Harry was the man who had the idea out of which has grown a county-wide demonstration of faith in the forests which is now nationally famous.

Harry is now a painter, working on the paint line which coats tile products at Woodfiber, but for 13 years he was in the State and Federal Forests Service. He ran fire crews for the United States Forest Service in Idaho for three years. At one time he was associated with George Frisk, foreman of the McCleary dragsaw unit in Shelton Bay, as assistant district forest warden in Stevens County. Frisk was at that time district forest warden. Frisk and Clark were assigned to Shelton in 1942, with Clark still assistant to Frisk.

During his first year in Shelton, 1942, Harry organized a movement among boys which went far toward stopping careless fire practices. He considered the

idea of organizing Junior Forest Wardens. He called at all the schools in Mason County and gave talks on fire prevention, impressing upon young lads the need of protecting timber which would someday provide them with jobs. He worked up courses for the boys to study in school. He suggested a uniform so simple and inexpensive that every Junior Forest Warden could have one. This was simply a gray sweat shirt with a fir tree stenciled on the breast under the words "Junior Forest Warden" and a red hat.

At the height of this program, 700 boys in Mason County schools were wearing the sweat shirts and hats of Junior Forest Wardens. The schools were devoting an hour weekly to meetings of the boys at which forest practices were discussed. The State Division of Forestry, recognizing the good work Harry Clark had done in Mason County, named him school work director for Western Washington. With the assistance which he obtained from private companies, cities and counties, Harry Clark succeeded in organizing young Forest Warden groups in several counties. The second growth "practice fields" which he established in a number of communities were forerunners of the small

tree farms and student forests which are being continued in many Western Washington high schools today.

The good work of Harry Clark through 1942 and 1943 became a war-time casualty. As a part of curtailments in the interest of national defense, the State Forestry Division discontinued its work among the schools and the program withered through lack of individual leadership. In 1944, Harry Clark returned to Shelton as district forest warden. That year, Mason County became the first branch of the new KEEP WASHINGTON GREEN program sponsored by American Legion Posts of Washington. Harry Clark

was the first chairman of that committee.

He was also the Legion's first department forester, assigned to directing work done by the Legion in conservation fields. Harry explains he got the idea for a Mason County Forest Festival one day while driving to a KEEP WASHINGTON GREEN meeting. "I realized that in Mason County we had all that is fine in life," Harry told Lookout. "We had the finest of lands for raising young forests, we had the mountains and the lakes and the salt waters, we had everything that leads to a complete and happy life."

All of this was centered in our forests in both the old growth and the second growth. Harry's idea of a celebration built around the forests was heard with interest by the members of the Mason County Keep Green Committee, but only a few favored undertaking the event in 1945, when our country was still at war. Harry recalls the support given his position of starting a Festival by Oscar Levin, Maurice Needham and Reggie Sykes. These four men were the key officers in the opening year of the Festival.

Harry Clark wrote the first pageant, "Voice of the Spirits," which was presented in the old Lincoln Gym under direction of Mrs. Ollie Cleveland. The first Festival of 1945 was presented in April, a month earlier than the present Festival. This initial undertaking seems small in comparison with the show which will be offered through four days, May 10 to 13,1952, but it was the beginning which laid a firm foundation for the years to follow.

The Shelton Chamber of Commerce undertook sponsorship of the Festival in 1945-46 and out of this support grew the non-profit Mason County Forest Festival Association, Inc., which Rudy Werberger has headed for the past several years.

Harry Clark's idea has given Shelton and Mason County the unique position of being one of the few communities anywhere which combine the fun of celebration with the serious purpose of conserving a valuable natural resource - the forests.