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SUGAR. PINE INCENSE CEDAR.

341| Easr 26th Slreet Los Angeles 23, Cqlif. ANgelus 8-2726

PONDEROSA PINE WHITE FIR,

Since l90l

Represenfotives ior Pickering Lumber Corp. cnd West Side

Bill Grohqm Knew Giqnts in His [7-Yeor Lumber Coreer

J. W. (Bill) Graham, a 47-year of the most colorful figures in the try, is hanging up his tally book lumber veteran and one west coast lumber indusand grading pencil. Best

Polo Alto' Colifornio

DAvenport 6-9669

Lvmber Co. ond ofher Refioble Sources identified as a supervisor for the West Coast Lumber Inspection Bureau for the past23 years, Bill Graham is known from coast to coast wherever lumbermen get together.

IIe was born in 1893 in Gardiner, at the mouth of the Umpqua River, and was knee deep in sawdust from the time he was a toddler. His 9O-year-old mother, Mrs. James Graham. still lives in the house in Gardiner where son Bill was born and where she has lived for 73 years. Bill's father, Captain James Graham, was likewise born in Gardiner, and operated the stern-wheeler "Eva" from Gardiner to Scottsburg for the Umpqua Navigation Company, of which he was a stockholder.

Bill Graham was one of six children and, after graduating from the old Gardiner grade school, entered Oregon Agricultural College at 14, graduating in 1911 with bn engineering degree. His first job was with the old Gardiner Mill Company, a pioneer lumber firm founded by the famed Hinsdale family.

In 1919, fresh from his navy duty, Bill Graham took a job as inspector for the Pacific Lumber Inspection Bureau :until 1923. For two years he conducted classes in lumber grading for the State Board of Vocational Education under the Smith-Hughes Act.

Bill Graham has a restless energy and always has to be cloing something interesting and constructive. He became chief inspector and shipping clerk for the old Pacific Spruce Company (C. D. Johnson Lumber Corporation) in 1925 and worked in that capacity until 1933. As early as 194O he was conducting joint grading classes for the Pacific Lumber Inspection Bureau and West Coast Lumber Inspection Bureau. Seventeen of his 23 vears with West Coast Lumber Inspection Bureau were spent in the San Francisco area, and the last six years he has headquartered at Gardiner to be near his aged mother.

Bill always stayed at the Golden State hotel in San Francisco, a sort of hangout for'the lumber inspecting crowd. Tommy McCormick, long-time manag'er, recalls ihat Bill Graham and Tom Andrews, an old-time California Redwood Asso_ciation inspector, always kept the lobby knee deep in sawdust when they were around. They would figuratively grade pieces of lumber half the night,-arguing over allowable characteristics. It was a sort of mental gymnastics exercise these two hardies took every night just to keep fit and in shape for the next day's work, McCormick believes.

Many a young inspector and supervisor for the West

Coast- tgdayowes much of his early training and knowledge of lumber to loquacious Bill Graham, the man who was never at a loss for a word. He would spend endless hours with these young men who were eager to learn their trade, and he was a dedicated teacher whoSe one interest in life was lumber, and who lived, ate and slept lumber.

In his last few years in Gardiner, Bill Graham has channeled some of his restless energy into youth work and, although a bachelor, has acted i. spottsbt and mentor of a teen-age basketball te-am, paying their expenses on trips and in general looking after [hem.-He traini boys in hunting, teache.s them safety in handling of firearms,-and buys arimunition for those who otherwise couldn't afford thij sport.

"Bill Graham was one of our most valued employes,,,'said his immediate sup_erior,_ Howard Brown, g.tteraf superin- tendent of the West Coast Lumber Insfection Bureau. "There will never be another just like him.^He was honest, conscientiouj;, and no job was too tough or too mean for him to handle. He had a way with people. I have never known a man with so many friends. I hope he enjoys his retirement clown there along the Oregon Cbast, the iountry he loves and b-elongs-to, but.I don't know how he is ever going to completely disassociate himself from the lumber induitrv of which he has been an important part for nearly half i century. All of us here at West Coasf wish him the best of Iuck."

. Tlris amazing lumber expert has been on an intimate, first-name basis with yirtllally every important lumber fig_ ture of the West Coast. Numbered-among his friends aie such men as Howard Hinsdale, former Gardiner lumberrnan ; Jud_g_e Carl Wimberly of Roseburg; Colonel W. BGreeley; Harry Murphy, nbw head of th"e' pacific Lumber lnspect_i_o_n Bureau; Hal Simpson, executive vice president of the West Coast Lumbermen's Associatior, atrd a world of others.