Merck Forest Board Memories Frank Hatch

JB FH Place Date

Page 1 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

Jane Beck Frank Hatch Manchester, VT 6/26/01

TAPE 1, SIDE A JB

[.10]

--Frank Hatch.

FH

Manchester, Vermont, on a hot Tuesday afternoon.

JB

June 26.

FH

Well, George Merck, as everybody knows, was an extraordinary man.

And I had the good fortune to

marry into the family in 1952. had been in Maine.

[.41]

And my roots

I’d come to northern Vermont

skiing, but I’d never had any exposure to southern Vermont.

Or to the kinds of things that interested

George Merck.

There’s a wonderful story about he

happened to locate in Vermont.

[1.02]

He had a

Secretary, Miss Kelly, who looked, always reminded me of a walking coat rack. angular.

She was very tall and

And he gave her and two other people a

compass, a swing that he had made from West Orange where he lived, and the arc was throughout New England and then went, of course, over to New York State.

And

his rationale was that he wanted to get a place that

Page 2 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

he could drive to on the weekends without killing himself.

[1.49]

And they, prior to that, had lived

in Quague on Long Island and he and his wife thought that the pace was too much for their two young girls.

And so he gave these little maps and one day Miss Kelly called and she was out with her sister and she said, “Mr. Merck, I’ve found a place that is just over your line.”

[2.23]

And so he talked about it and

then he said describe the house and so forth and so on.

And so she did and she said, and he said, “Well,

does it have water?”

And she said, “I don’t know.”

And he said, “Well--well, you go ahead and put the down payment on, provided they can find water.” never saw his place here before he came up.

And it was a wonderful bit of luck. was prior to World War Two.

So he

[2.50]

But as--and this

This was just at the

beginning and so he, for instance, put in a swimming pool which was the last bit of steel that one could get in those days, but it just happened that it coincided with the War.

[3.20]

In the War he was

extremely busy, but all the time thinking about what he was going to do up here.

His wife thought this was

Page 3 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

to be a wonderful retreat for him where he could get away from everything.

And when we had the dedication

of Merck Forest after his death, John Marquand, one of his great friends, said that this was understood.

[3.47]

And he said, before very long, there was

George Merck buying up these abandoned farms in the vicinity and, eventually, he put together 2,700 acres.

And, to me, the genius of it was he did it because, he told me, he was convinced that New York, the metropolitan acrea was going to expand, and that people were gonna be more mobile, and that there would not be enough land available for multiple land use by the public.

[4.31]

At that time there was one other

big forest down by Shaftsbury and, of course, the Green Mountain National Forest, but, in terms of private land, this is what he felt was important to have in this area.

So he gradually got this land

assembled and then began thinking of what he was going to do with it.

And he really was way ahead of his

time on the precepts that he used for, for launching it.

The first thing that he did was to say that

there had to be a representative of the Selectmen in

Page 4 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

the Town of Rupert and of the State, as well, on the board.

[5.29]

The second thing he did was that there

would always be a, a contribution made to the town in lieu of taxes. eight or -nine.

Now this was back in nineteen fortyI’ve forgotten when it was founded,

but it was around in there somewhere. absolutely extraordinary.

And this is

And then, and this became

very relevant when McGeorge Bundy got into a terrible fight with the Congress over the Ford Foundation.

[6.13]

And Uncle George provided in the articles of

incorporation that if the trustees of Merck Forest ceased to operate the land, the property then reverts to the University and to the State, in that order.

And so that’s why--and I forgot to mention that the University is another person, is another entity that’s supposed to appoint a board member--but, in any case, that’s what he did then.

And, finally--and this has

been a great lesson to me because we have over the time accumulated some land ourselves--but it was never to be shut for hunting.

[7.04]

And his rationale was

that if people had been used to using the property for an interminable, for a long time, that they, you can’t

Page 5 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

suddenly build an iron curtain around it and exclude people.

[7.22]

So it always was open to hunting.

So

those were the benchmarks that he used to establish the foundation.

I was elected to the board in, I

suppose, nineteen fifty-four or -five, in there somewhere, and at that time the board was very small.

I had a wonderful farmer who was also, coincidentally, the head of the Rupert Board of Selectmen at that time, Francis Leach [8.03], and there also was a program which came out of the trust.

He, Francis

Leach, suggested that if they really wanted to show something about the value of cutting timber in a sensitive way you should devise a project which would allow people to see the ideal cutting and then do something with the proceeds.

[8.33]

And so for many

years there was this series of scholarship {loss}, which I’m sure would have been covered in other, by other people.

But it was, to me, an inspired thought

that Francis Leach had.

But he had Dorothy Canfield

Fisher, he had John Cowan _______, he had Johnny McCormick, he had--well, those were some of the principal ones.

[9.11]

Oh, he had Bob {Beakner}, he

Page 6 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

had--I guess that’s about--there may have been--I’m

sure there were one or two more, but, in any case, it was a very tight little group.

[9.24]

The Executive

Director was a man by the name of Bill Meyer who ultimately became the first Democratic Congressman from Vermont.

And Uncle George wanted to, in addition

to forestry, it was originally called the Vermont Forest and Farmland Foundation, and he wanted to conduct experiments on the big sixty-acre meadow in the middle of the Foundation to demonstrate different kinds of treatment of land for what you could do.

[10.04]

What the new fertilizers were, what the new

seeds were, and so forth.

He had Will Meyer make

these squares of--I’ve forgotten how big they were, but they weren’t by any means enormous, but he kept very careful records on each square to show how one sort of fertilizer worked, how one sort of legume worked.

And out of this came the use of _______ for

trefoil as an under-story for hay land, which was supposedly preferable to alfalfa.

[10.56]

Of course,

immediately one of the problems that was frustrating to him was that everybody said, well, now, of course,

Page 7 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

it works up there, Mr. Merck, pointing up to the top

of the hill, but down here it’s altogether different.

[11.15] him.

[LAUGHS.]

And so this was a hard one for

He also was infuriated with the deer damage and

one of the first practical political realities of what Merck Forest can do, could do, was he had a series of plots in various parts of the Foundation which were very carefully monitored and delineated which enabled him to assess deer damage.

[11.48]

And so I remember

being taken around, one of my first official trips, as it were, and seeing that the deer had just consumed acres of ash.

It’s just as though they were candy

sticks at Christmas. the records.

And so he took photographs, kept

They got sponsorship of legislation and

out of it came the first doe season in a very long time for this part of Vermont.

[12.29]

Now that’s,

obviously, hasn’t recurred, but these were the ways that his mind worked.

He really cared about trying to

demonstrate new and better ways of doing things.

And,

also, to encourage people to use the property instead of keeping them out. concept.

[13.04]

I mean, that was his

In terms of how the venture was funded, he

did it all.

Page 8 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

And as Judy undoubtedly said, I mean, he

could have endowed the Foundation with no trouble at all, but he felt that if the Foundation were to be any good and prove itself, better it be funded by people who were concerned as to what it was doing and to make sure that it had a real role in life instead of they were just plowing income back.

[13.52]

On the other

hand, he gave us a very, a deferred endowment in terms of the fact he never cut a stick of timber, so that when he died and all of a sudden the checks didn’t arrive anymore, we had a timber reservoir which we could tap on occasion to help pay the freight until we got really reenergized again.

One other aspect to all

this was that he got his interest in forestry, not that he wouldn’t have had it probably anyway, but there was this wonderful, colorful man named Arlie Shink [14.45] who would stride about in knickers and with a big, long staff.

And he came from Lindenfels,

Germany, and he was one of the preeminent foresters in the world.

And he started the Piscah Forest in North

Carolina for George Vanderbilt.

[15.09]

And he had a

forestry school there and I was lucky enough to be

Page 9 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

taken to one or two Biltmore Forestry School reunions at Luchows in New York, a very famous German restaurant.

And {Uncle Ollie} would be there with his

big, flowing moustache and they’d have special beer steins and everybody would toast and sing the Biltmore songs together.

Well, every once in a while, Uncle

Ollie would be up here.

[15.49]

And it happened that

my wife and I had a very, very long courtship and it was clear that they thought I ought to do something before long.

And so I had always been told that one

should ask in the proper way if the father considered it all right for the wife, for his daughter to be married.

[16.24]

And so I said this with some ceremony.

Well, apparently, that was the last thing

Uncle George expected.

He thought it was just, it was

just extra baggage, but he was too polite not to say anything and so he arranged to--we sat out under a tree on their terrace.

In the meantime, my wife-to-

be, her sister and her mother were listening from the bathroom window over the stairs.

And Uncle Ollie, who

couldn’t really say, hear much of anything, was, finally said, “Oh, yes, it would be wonderful to get

married.” very good.

Page 10 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

And he said, “Chorgie, Chorgie, very good, Let’s get drunk!”

[17.23]

[LAUGHTER.]

And, anyhow, the reason for all this backup is that he was the forester of the old school and he believed in walking his territory.

And the Government gave George

Merck a surplus jeep after the War in gratitude for all the salary that he didn’t charge.

[17.57]

And so

this, of course, became the official staff car, if you might call it, of the Forest.

And both Will Meyer and

George Merck had very heavy foots on the accelerator and they’d try to go up something and all of a sudden the jeep would shudder and then they’d start going backwards.

[18.23]

And I remember on one of these

occasions Uncle Ollie, who was sitting up in front with his staff, said, “Chorgie! falk! jeep.”

Chorgie!

Get out and

You can’t see what the voods are from your And, so anyway, he was very much of a, and

also thanks to Uncle Ollie, it was partly a family venture, as well.

The amount of time that George

Merck invested in the Forest was prodigious.

[19.01]

I remember going to West Orange where he lived in the winter and he would have Will Meyer fill out these

Page 11 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

complicated monthly reports on the status of all the

various projects and he’d sit there and read ‘em every weekend and then he’d call Will Meyer or he’d write memoranda.

So this was not something that was a part-

time avocation.

This was, this was something that

really was a consuming interest of his and caused, as I said earlier, John Marquand to say that he thought that everybody was, that George was gonna just use this as a retirement vehicle. anything but.

[19.58]

And it was

And anybody who knew George Merck knew

that he’d never had any prospects of being [LAUGHS.] anything but a real drain on time.

When he--I’m

trying to think of--he, because of his connections in politics he had a very high profile in Vermont, even though he didn’t come from here, so it was not at all unusual for him to call the Governor or to have people come down and see what he was up to.

[20.38]

When he

died so suddenly in, I think it was 1956, maybe, but I’m not positive on that. there somewhere. problem.

It was right around in

Of course, that posed an immediate

And we had a trustees meeting.

And I can

also remember one other person who should have been

mentioned as being on the board.

Page 12 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

There was a

wonderful man named Harry {Mitigee} who was appointed.

[21.20]

He was, he worked for, I think, the Federal

Reserve.

Or he worked--no, he worked for--I’m sorry.

He was in the Soil Conservation Service.

And Uncle

George had spotted him and Harry went on to have a very distinguished career. meeting.

But we had this very small

And believe it or not, there were some

trustees who felt that it would be easier to let the property revert to the, to the University or to the State.

[21.55]

And, as I recall--this is not telling

tales out of school, but I, my recollection is that Bob Beakner was of this school, as was John _______ to a degree.

And then I said, “Well, I think it’s too

bad if this happens.

Shouldn’t we give it a try and

see what we can come up with.”

And the next thing I

knew, there I was sort of having drafted myself.

[22.35]

But that was not the decision, my decision.

I mean, I didn’t want to have it happen that way.

The, Will Meyer was elected to Congress very soon after I took over and so we had to look for a replacement.

[22.56]

And we found a wonderful man in

Bob Fish.

Page 13 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

We, as I said earlier, painted over some of

the holes in the floor by, really, it was quite outrageous at the time because the Federal Government had paradoxical kinds of funding mechanisms in place.

Specifically, one decision I’ve never been proud of is that we planted Christmas trees in the big sixty-acre meadow because the Government gave you funding to do that and we needed some cash flow.

[23.40]

The other

side of the equation is we were shameless because there were other parts of the field and the Foundation that needed clearing and we got paid for clearing them, so, on the one hand, we were puttingthings in the field and then taking them out, on the other.

We

cobbled together some income in that way and we did have a bequest in his will, and I can’t remember what it was, but it was something like fifty thousand, but to help tide us over.

We made a very heavy commitment

into, or trying to increase group usage of the place, which was modestly successful.

[24.24]

In terms of

the fact that we made a conscious effort to try to attract large groups of people, of organizations--in other words, the Scouts, for example.

I at that time

Page 14 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

was mixed up in Scouting myself in Massachusetts.

But

the Scouts could come up there and they did so in such numbers that we ultimately built an organization site, which is about, I suppose, a quarter of a mile away from the house that’s overlooking the meadow at the toop of the hill.

[25.11]

And that was used with

great regularity by large groups of people.

And,

because we had a little--again, paradoxically, the counselors thought it was very nice if we would build them two or three lean-tos where they could sleep out of the rain, but the kids got out in the field. so we did that and we did a big

And

cooking facility and

we put in a few scenic lean-to places where Adirondack shelters, really, where you could hike into, where anybody could. started.

[26.00]

And so, gradually, that got

We then, also, had a, sort of an interesting

experiment, but the trouble is it is now all grown over.

But the concept was that somebody told me once

that if you clear-cut it was a terrible thing to do in certain places.

[26.27]

And it was much better to,

in terms of regeneration, which I believe is the case, not to clear-cut, but to selectively cut.

So I said,

Page 15 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

“Well--,“ to wonderful Bob _______, “Well, why don’t we try to see what happens when you do this?”

So we

made a, we laid out three squares on the left-hand side of the hill as you go down from that house toward the pond and toward the organization site.

One we

clear-cut, the second one we cut quite drastically, and the third one we cut hardly at all.

[27.17]

And

whether it was the topography or what, I don’t know, but to my horror the clear-cut did much better [LAUGHS.] than the others did, but we did not, of course, check the long-term cost, but the presumption was that you would get a much better catch in terms of regeneration and you might get a lot of weeds. it didn’t happen there.

And so

But, in any case, we also

began to make some adjustments, thinking that if we had large groups that were gonna be there for any length of time, we would have to provide some facilities.

[27.54]

We, during that particular era,

we--I don’t know whether Judy had this come our way or how it occurred, but the Student Conservation Association asked us if they could come to Merck Forest for a program and we, of course, said sure,

we’d love to have ‘em.

Page 16 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

And they, at that time, we

were the first non-national park site that they had used.

[28.30]

And I can’t remember at which, the

timing on this, but we did put in that big pond so that they could have some place to swim.

And, as you

know, these roads were laid out and named.

And it’s

significant that Hatch Road is the only road on the Foundation that doesn’t lead anywhere.

[28.56]

But,

in any case, when I could name things, for a long time we, we named that--I wanted to call Lake George Junior.

And to my horror some administration just

removed it and it’s now called Willow Pond or some innocuous kind of thing, but I think that Mr. Merck would have liked that.

About the same time that all

this was occurring, I saw that we did not have the top of Mt. {Antone}, nor did we have the ridge on Master’s Mountain.

[29.43]

That was all part of a farm which

was owned by Edwin {Gibley}.

And his uncle, I believe

it was, Eli Stevenson, the oldest living graduate of Yale at that time, he’d inherited it from him and he used to summer there.

So I, it’s hard to get big

pieces of land even in those days and this was, oh, it

was 475 acres, I think.

Page 17 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

And after an extended

negotiation with Edwin Gibley I was able to buy the farm and my wife said, “Just leave me out of this. family have enough land. with this.”

[30.36]

My

We don’t want anything to do

And I said, “But this is, I’m

gonna get it anyway ‘cause we have to give the top of the mountains to the Foundation.”

So I did that.

And

the curious thing is that over time she and I and our children spent, used to ski over the mountain, or walk, and spend the day in the Gibley place.

We

ultimately reconditioned a sap house there, so that some of the kids could stay there for a couple weeks if they wanted to.

[31.13]

And instead of turning

the farm over, as I had anticipated, and getting another buyer, we just became more attached to the land and so that’s where we are today.

And when

anybody says, “Well, what means the most to you about Merck Forest?”

Well, as a practical matter, we’d

never have the place we have today had it not been for this happenstance. at--I say feeble.

Bob--we made some feeble attempts They weren’t all that feeble, but

it was hard getting people to come to meetings.

Page 18 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

[32.10]

And also getting the right mix of people.

And I have a very profane friend who comes from Massachusetts and loves to hunt partridge. course, had a vested interest in that. funny.

But he’s also serious.

And, of

And he’s very

And I remember one

meeting, , we were sitting around, and his name was Neddy Roberts [32.30], and I could see that he was building up to some sort of explosion.

And I said,

“Well, Neddy, what do you think we ought to do with this place?”

He said, “You ought to build a god-

damned big concrete wall around it and keep everybody out so I can shoot partridge.” of thinking. business.

And that was one range

But gradually we got into the education

Bob Fish ultimately left to go to get

married and he lived in Randolph. we had another forester named Bob. _______.

[33.09]

And then

He came from

I’ll think of it in a second, but, in any

case, nobody filled quite the hole that Bob Fish left, at least in my opinion.

And, finally, I should say

that, in terms of some of the problems that we had in early days, first, structurally--I’m not sure that I-[33.49]

Page 19 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

END TAPE 1, SIDE A START TAPE 1. SIDE B FH

[.27]

--I’ve not done any of that kind of work.

And

I’m sure that sitting through my meetings was a chore because I went through all the detail, a lot, in the way I thought that Uncle George had done, but it can’t have been a very elevated experience for the participants.

But we did have a lot of comeraderie

and we did, at least we got through the first phase and embarked on a shaky basis, to be sure, but there was no talk about letting the property revert to the State and, at that point.

[1.31]

And it seems to me

that I probably was the Chair for maybe, I suppose, seven, eight years.

And then I got off and then, and

since then one of our children has been on and everybody is, in varying degrees, interested in how it’s going.

JB

That’s quite a story.

The thing I’m struck by is

George Merck went in there and faced all the, what could have been real problems with the town, out well.

He, apparently, has gotten on with the town.

FH

Page 20 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

Well, this is--I’m glad you asked that question

because, initially, believe it or not, the negotiated figure for the town was $350.00.

[2.47]

And, of

course, the minute he wasn’t there--I’m not a very imposing figure, and so the town got pretty upset.

And there was this one who was opposed to me, a renegade, difficult selectman--or lister--by the name of Bill Lourie.

[3.15]

So I made it my business to

go get to know Bill Lourie.

And I made a friend that

I, has been one of my best friends ever since.

And so

what we did was, we negotiated a new base figure.

And

then, as the tax rate went up, we would increase the contribution in corresponding terms. that’s the way it worked.

[3.47]

And

And it seemed to work

pretty well, as far as I know.

Now, and, of course,

in strains, but I believe that with the advent of this new administration they’re gonna see a different side of Merck Forest because they go down once a month and they bring the food and cook the meals for the elderly. sensitive.

[4.34]

And they’re being very, very

And this is not in any way to degrade what

is going, has gone on in the past because there was

Page 21 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

some wonderful people who did their respective best.

For instance, Caroline {Herder}. her in town.

[4.53]

They loved

She used to run like a whippet.

And

she’d go in the road races around, around Rupert.

But, generally speaking, there was a, quite a barrier between the town and the Forest.

[5.16]

that’s disappearing to some degree.

And I think

One thing I

should also mention in retrospect, it probably a dumb thing to do, but we wanted, when Uncle George died, to do something for him.

And it was always known as the

Vermont Forest and Farmland Foundation.

[5.50]

And

it was clear that the agronomy, per se, was not gonna be what drove the program at the Foundation, so we-there was a big body of opinion that we should call it Merck Forest, after George Merck.

We did it, with

varying degrees of enthusiasm, but didn’t realize the full significance of calling it Merck Forest because everybody then assumed that the company was gonna keep it going when, in point of fact, the company doesn’t have anything much to, doesn’t have anything at all to do with it.

[6.51]

I think there have been two

checks since I’ve been keeping track.

And I think we

Page 22 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

might have been better off if we’d stuck to the original {last}.

The one thing that is a vignette

which I cannot forget, but John Marquand, he’d been a friend of my father’s, as well as a particularly close one of George Merck’s, and he used to live in Newburyport, so Bambi and I were then living in Beverly, used to bring the great man up and take him back.

[7.36]

And when he, when we had the dedication

it was very important, but I asked him if he would write a piece and deliver it on that occasion and he said he’d be happy to do it.

So we brought him up and

I think it was in the fall, but I’m not positive, and we, we went up to that house, the hunting lodge they call it.

Anyway, we were up there on the little--

there’s a little bit of a hill.

And this was not an

occasion which had thousands of people present.

[8.21]

It was a very intimate kind of an event with

maybe twenty-five or thirty people.

And so John had

delivered his remarks, which, with, he used to--he had a habit of going _______ like this whenever he’d, it was sort of for punctuation. them.

There were several of

Of course, a lot of those.

And he sat down.

Page 23 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

And John {Collinholden} was always, he was the most deliberate person.

[8.54]

And he got halfway through

his talk when all of a sudden there was this huge roar and up came three or four motorcycles, just, you know, behaving the way motorcycles can. irate.

Well, John just got

He turned beet red [LAUGHS.] and started

chasing them out.

[LAUGHS.]

And it’s always

punctuated, it’s always amused me the way that punctuated the dedication ceremonies because it was [LAUGHS.], it couldn’t have been better timing.

[LAUGHS.]

But, anyway, there were a lot of other

things, I’m sure, that I haven’t covered, but coming back to the central theme of realizing the mass of population which would be within easy driving distance of this part of the world and having the foresight to set it aside, to put a mechanism in place so that it didn’t revert to the family. in any sense of the word.

It was not a tax shelter

[10.11]

And that’s what,

of course, the McGeorge Bundy problem was, and some of those other Texas foundations. real genius.

And so that takes a

And you figure that he was in, well, he

died at sixty-three, so he must have had this--

JB

That’s young.

FH

Oh, absolutely.

JB

_______.

Page 24 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

[BACKGRUND NOISE OF VEHICLE OR MACHINERY RUNNING.] FH

He had a stroke and--

JB

Here or--

FH

No, he had it in West Orange. like a telegraph pole. was.

And he just went down

And everybody said--well, it

It was a terrible thing, but I felt at the time

and I continue to feel that for somebody that active, that hyper, to continue as a vegetable would have been just unthinkable.

[11.19]

[VEHICLE PASSING?]

And,

in point of fact, his widow just, she all of a sudden came to the floor and really accomplished a lot of things, so, from his perspective, I think if it had to happen it was lucky that it happened with finality instead of one of those lingering.

JB

Harder on those left behind and better for the person--

FH

Right.

JB

Did his wife take much interest in the Forest?

FH

Not really.

Page 25 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

[12.01]

She, I got her to give a

corrider from Wingap Farms so that--‘cause when he died the road that you entered it by, there was no, they didn’t own it.

So they now own the right-of-way

and a strip along either side.

She took a lot of

interest in the sense that she liked to know what was going on, but that was not her real piece of tea.

[12.36]

And we, we had a terrible time because we,

one of the things we did early on was to try to restrict the use of mechanized vehicles ‘cause you can’t have people driving around. that didn’t much appeal to her.

Well, of course, And we finally

arranged it so that she could be taken around when she wanted to be.

[13.05]

But she, she liked picnicking

on the mossy meadow overlooking it or, then there was a nice, very attractive site called Serena’s Window overlooking the big meadow and we would take her up there for picnics and so on.

And--oh, there’s one

other story which should be noted.

[13.35]

The two

closest friends George Merck had were Gene Tunney, the boxer, and John Marquand.

And on one hot July

weekend, with the temperature very much as it is

Page 26 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

today, the three of them, they were having lunch.

And

as, in those days they would always have a martini or two before lunch.

And so you would sit at the dining

room table--and Burton {Blackmer}, the then farmer on the place, would come in and say, “Mr. Merck, what would you like to have me do today?”

[14.31]

And

Uncle George loved that, so he said, “Well, today,” he said, “Mr. Beakner and Mr. Tunney and I, we’re gonna cut, improve the hedgerow along the Foundation field.”

And he said, “If you’d bring up some axes, we’ll be up there after lunch.”

And so they had their martini or

two and went up there on this hot day.

And Burton

Blackmer was a very resourceful man and he knew all about Gene Tunney.

[15.14]

And so he had an axe by a

tree for Beakner and he said, “Here, you take that tree.

And then here’s yours, Mr. Merck. And then

here’s yours, Gene Tunney.”

Well, Beakner and Uncle

George had normal sort of maples or even softer woods.

He gave Tunney a huge, hardhack.

[15.50]

And so Gene

Tunney got hotter and hotter, and he swung harder and harder with the axe, and everybody [LAUGHS.], by then they realized what he had done and they all got

laughing.

Page 27 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

And, of course, he didn’t know it.

And he

finally hit the tree so hard with the axe that he shattered the handle.

[16.09]

[LAUGHS.]

was the kind of thing that they did then.

And so that And then

Burton Blackmer’s successor, Vernon Beebe--he was a wonderful man--he used a little bulldozer that George Merck bought for the Foundation.

And he built most

all the original roads around the Foundation.

And ponds and everything else. incidents.

[16.40]

And I remember two

One was, we had him, we wanted a pond--

this was after Uncle George died--and we wanted a pond up, more remote, with the camp site.

And it’s up in

the Wade Lot and it’s--and, anyway, we named it the Beebe Pond.

[17.14]

And I remember coming up one day

and as I walked into the forest, and Vernon happened to be there and he saw a man coming down and he said, “Well,” he said, “where you been?”

“Well, we’ve been

up at a cabin up--I think it’s called Beebe Pond.”

“Well, did you catch a trout?” trout there.”

“There aren’t any

“Yes, there are,” said Vernon.

there aren’t,” said the man.

“Yes, there are!”

finally the man said, “Well, how do you know?”

“No, And He

said, “I put ‘em there!” ended that one.

Page 28 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

[17.55]

[LAUGHS.]

That

And Vernon had such a penchant for

building roads that when we, and for building ponds, that we had a very complicated, big pond that he had dug over at our place.

And when he heard that we had

hired this man with a very big bulldozer, Vernon got up at five o’clock in the morning on his little slow bulldozer and he went all the way up over by Mt. Antone, down the side, and he got there to, the site, about an hour before Bob Slater, the man with the big bulldozer from Salem, arrived. had done all the sitings.

[18.45]

And Slater

And Vernon had started to

dig that pond too far up the valley and there was nothing you could do to turn it around, so it became a ______ _______, [LAUGHS.] so we now have two ponds because Vernon came over early.

[JB LAUGHING.]

Well,

that’s--that’ll--is there anything else that you-JB

No, I think you’ve really covered it well.

The only

thing I was going to ask was do you think it’s going in the right direction now?

Should it, are things

going as, say, George Merck would have foreseen? because of outside circumstances--

Or

FH

Page 29 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

Well, the way George Merck would have wanted it has been a euphemism that’s been used around there for years, covering a multitude of sins.

[19.47]

But I

really feel, since Bob {Fish} left, this new direction that they’ve got up there, it really is gonna excel once again.

This week, for example, I’ve been trying

to get them for years to go up and see the educational process that they have at Shelburne Farms.

It’s quite extraordinary.

JB

Yes.

FH

And nobody would do that.

[20.14]

Megan Camp.

And Ken Smith, the new

Director, for the first time, he’s all excited.

[20.32]

He’s taking the whole staff up to see how a

first-class place is run.

And I’m just confident that

the farmland part of it is gonna be much better focused and also the forestry end of it.

And I think

it’s, it’s a great tribute to the trustees and to the staff and everything for weathering it over the years, but I, for the first time, feel really enthusiastic about the outlook.

JB

[21.09]

The one, working with--both, I think, Judy and Bambi mentioned, were the experiments.

Page 30 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

FH

Oh, there’s gonna--

JB

And I was gonna ask you about that.

Is that still

going on?

FH

Yes.

It’s going on in a very different way.

[21.29]

In fact, I asked--I shouldn’t say this, but I asked Ken to see--we, obviously, we and the _______ Merck Fund, want to help ‘em get going.

And he’s got an

extremely interesting project that we’re gonna be funding, I suspect, when it comes in, that is [HEAVY VEHICLE NOISE.] a sort of a, it’s a computer age experiment, in the sense that he is taking a very careful inventory of a portion of, that portion of the Forest that’s below the big field and goes down to the boundary.

[22.26]

And then he’s divided it into

quadrants and he’s gonna have management’s plans for each sector, for varying kinds of managements, and he’s gonna put it up on the Web, so that somebody can actually not only get the data, but they can see what it looks like and see progressively how it reacts.

And these are the sorts of things that are so important.

Not only because of the well-being of the

Foundation as an entity, but, also, in terms of being

Page 31 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

able to attract other funding because the competition

for the environmental dollar today is vastly different and much more competitive and much more high-stakes that it was fifty years ago.

[23.22]

And so in order

for them to be anything more than a, a kind of a nice resource for students and looking at the view, if they can produce some hard-edged research that nobody else is doing, it’s gonna give ‘em a new lease on life.

JB

And I wondered, too--you were talking about the three, the clear-cut and semi-cut.

Could you go back to that

and-FH

Oh, sure!

They can--

JB

--and follow it.

FH

Oh.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you see, now what they’re doing,

they’re being certified. next step that you get to.

[24.06]

And so this is the

And they’re one of the

first being certified forests in this part of the world.

And, of course, the idea is that owners like

us around, you get the _______ certified stands of timber and then you market them, as you know particularly well because of Centennial Hall.

The

Vermont Family Forest, we gave them the first grant to

get ‘em started doing that.

Page 32 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029

[24.42]

And the trick is

to get it, a) get a big enough mass of, or a big enough, amount of--no, big enough amount of timber, of the finished wood, so that you can actually do something fairly major, then you have to get the architects to change their specifications. is all happening.

And this

So I’m just confident that they are

going to really succeed in this.

Now what you ought

to do is talk to Ken Smith and get him to tell you, in much better detail than I have, about what he’s up to.

[25.35]

Because, for instance, there have been this

idea of, they have of having endangered animals.

You

know, they have to, they have work horses, but they also have these, they had cows that were a different sort of-JB

Oh, I remember seeing the sheep and--

FH

Yeah, yeah. things.

And they have all kinds of different

And they have, of course, the market garden

and--but Ken should really describe that. love to do it, I’m sure.

JB

Great.

And he’s very lucid.

Well, this has been--

END TAPE 1, SIDE B

And I, he’d

[26.22]

END TRANSCRIPTION

Page 33 Frank Hatch/TC2001.0009 2000.0029