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Jack Ward Thomas' book cover ().

Before drafting the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) northern spotted owl recovery plan, and before he became head of the Forest Service, Jack Ward Thomas spent some happy years in La Grande.

Thomas recently published a book, titled "Jack Ward Thomas: The Journals of a Forest Service Chief" — a series of journal entries covering his high-profile years of public service from 1990 to 1996.

Thomas was a wildlife biologist at the La Grande Ranger District for several years beginning in 1974. Throughout the book, Thomas speaks of his fondness for La Grande and the Wallowas, when his life as a biologist was simpler and less political. Several of the journal entries were written in La Grande and the Eagle Cap Wilderness.

In the late 1980s, Thomas first entered the public arena when he was picked to be part of a team to develop a management plan for the northern spotted owl. The plan his team developed called for limiting logging in Northwest old-growth forests as a means to protect the northern spotted owls. The plan was extremely controversial with the timber industry and with conservative politicians. Thomas himself became the target of personal and professional attacks from some of the most powerful politicians in the country.

One of the Thomas' first experiences with these attacks came in 1990 while he testified before a U.S. Senate public lands subcommittee. Thomas said a member of the committee, Malcom Wallop of Wyoming, "launched into a vituperative tirade that lasted some 10 minutes. He insulted me personally; attacked the science of the Interagency Scientific Committee report ... accused us of being rabid environmentalists bent on the destruction of the American way of life."

Appointed

Forest Service chief

Three years later, Thomas' reputation for integrity had grown in political circles, he was asked to become chief of the Forest Service by assistant secretary of the Interior Jim Lyons. He was reluctant at first, partly because his wife was ill with cancer.

"At first, I told him I was flattered, but given Meg's (his wife's) battle with cancer, that just wasn't possible.

"However, when I mentioned the conversation to Meg, she became the steel magnolia, and she informed me that she was not pleased that I had made this career decision without consulting her. We talked over the issue and she said she wanted us to take the job.

"I suggested she deserved to live and die in La Grande among friends who care, rather than in Washington. She said she would concentrate on living and let the dying take care of itself," Thomas wrote.

When he received the call in La Grande from Lyons on Oct. 8, 1993, that Bill Clinton had formally appointed him the chief of the Forest Service, Thomas wrote, "What was not relayed to (Lyons) was how badly I needed this hunting season in the high Wallowas, particularly just now. I have a real need to draw strength from the wilderness and the isolation and the majesty and solitude."

Storm King tragedy

The Storm King tragedy, in which 14 Forest Service firefighters, most of them Prineville Hotshots, died in Colorado, was one of Thomas' darkest moments as chief. He recounts traveling to Glenwood Springs, Colo., and speaking directly with the firefighters involved. He recounts talking to the head of the fire crew that was wiped out.

"I told him what his crew had said about him — that he was loved and admired. He put his face in my chest, and when my arms encircled him, he began to sob uncontrollably, and so did I."

Retirement

After Thomas decided to retire from public service in 1996, he visited ranger districts in Detroit and Oakridge that had been vandalized. The Oakridge Ranger Station had been burned to the ground by arsonists, and at Detroit, vandals torched a Forest Service truck and spray-painted the office.

"A reporter asked why I was so intense about the situation when I was retiring at the end of the month. I replied, ‘Until 1700 hours on the 30th of the month (November), I'm chief of the by-God Forest Service — and then there will be someone else there to replace me. Until then, I'm the man."

Thomas' journals were edited by Harold K. Steen and published by the Forest History Society and the University of Washington Press (hardcover, 416 pages, $30).

— By Pierre LaBossire